Someone Always Has To Be The First

The Writing Dead - 10/25 Contest Submission

Someone Always Has To Be The First


          The first time I died, the world was still flat, and the sun was yet to be named.

          I was UpEyes then. Seventeen years, sixteen humid seasons, and then the fever. The insect was tiny, black, and quick. My clan dragged my cooling body away from the camp's perimeter, so the rotting scent wouldn't draw the meat-eaters after the up bright--the dawn--had gone.

          When I woke, there was no light, only the heavy, wet darkness of the earth.

          My memory is a perfect, uninterrupted scroll, three thousand seven hundred years long, but the moment of my reawakening remains visceral, stripped of philosophy. There was confusion, cold, and then the screaming hunger.

          I followed the noise.

          It was the perimeter. My old clan--or what was left of it--was locked in battle with the 'meat-eaters,' the great predators of the night. But these were wrong. They were upright, like us, but their movements were clumsy, their howls pathetic, and their teeth were tearing at the soft, living flesh of my people.

          The rage was a fire too hot for the cold body I now inhabited. I ran toward them, a screaming, flailing thing. I picked up a handful of hard ground and threw it. I scared them away. My resurrected body, stiff and tasting with dirt, was more substantial than theirs, driven by a fury that transcended mere subsistence.

          When the frantic, gnashing shadows retreated, I was left standing in the ruins of the camp.

          That was when I saw it. The thing the meat-eaters had been fighting over. The remains of a hunter I had known since childhood. And hovering before my eyes, a terrible, swirling mosaic of light and shadow was the floating pictures. Pictures of my clan, of the seasons, of fire and toolmaking, pictures of the 'ones like me, but not like me.'

          The hunger was more critical.

          Yet even though there was a crushing biological command to consume, the pictures held me. They were knowledge, the accumulated wisdom of our tiny tribe, imprinted on the gray matter before me. I understood, abruptly and perfectly, that the mindless frenzy of the others was a consequence of eating indiscriminately. If I wanted the pictures, the knowledge, the control, I had to choose.

          I ate the brain first, and the floating light solidified, becoming patterns, logic, and self-awareness.

          That day, UpEyes died forever. Lirael Morween Eldra was born in the night, the first zombie who retained her soul through meticulous consumption. My curse was simple: I needed human life to exist, but unlike the stumbling, slavering masses I had unwittingly spawned--the horde that would plague history--I could not afford to lose my mind. I needed the most vital pieces to maintain the delicate balance of my unnaturally preserved intellect.

          The Ritual was established: brain, eyes, heart, lungs, kidneys--the seats of thought, foresight, passion, breath, and filtration. Everything else was a waste.

          We evolve, we build, we shatter. I have been a constant, a pink-skinned shadow moving through the millennia, disguised by the dust and the fashions of the age. My purpose became a function: to ensure life continues to create good things. When the task is done, I feed.

          I cannot be a queen--the attention is lethal. I must be the indispensable advisor, the catalyst, the quiet hand that tips the scale toward progress.

          240 C.E. - The Jewel of the East

          I went by Varya of Antioch. The desert sun was brutal on my complexion, but the sheer force of willpower I exerted kept the skin youthful, perpetually twenty-five, though my eyes were centuries old.

          Zenobia, warrior queen of Palmyra, was brilliant, but rash. Her ambition was a bonfire, beautiful but unsustainable. Rome watched, vulture-like. My job was not to quench the fire, but to build a stable foundation beneath it. I spent years in her court, advising on trade routes, structuring the taxation system, and ensuring that the vast cultural wealth flowing through the city was cataloged rather than squandered. I instilled in her advisors the necessity of a buffer zone, delaying the arts and sciences' flourishing before the inevitable confrontation.

          History records Zenobia's fall, but they forget the libraries that survived, the engineering techniques preserved because Varya insisted, they be duplicated and spread far beyond the city walls.

          When the Roman legions were finally messing up, and my work was done, I walked out of the opulent Palmyrene court and into the bustling marketplace.

          I chose a merchant named Titus, a man who beat his wife and routinely extorted grain from the poor. He was a small knot of rot in a vibrant system. Unimportant. Unmissed.

          The act is never pleasant, only necessary. I led him to an abandoned cistern outside the walls. His last screams were muffled, lost to the deserted wind. When I finished the organs--cold, efficient, the metallic taste of vital energy filling my depleted core--the floating pictures of Zenobia's court intensified. The memory of the preserved knowledge was locked down, reinforcing the walls I built daily against the screaming hunger of my lesser brethren.

          My consciousness was stable. I vanished before the sun rose.

          1475 C.E. - Renaissance Shadow

          They called me Isabella da Ferrara then, a spinster scholar from a lesser noble house, obsessed with measurement and celestial mechanics. Florence was a jewel box of ideas but choked by dogma and political rivalry.

          My proper focus was geographical expansion. Men were sailing blind, guided by old scripture and wishful thinking. The world was crying out to be mapped, systematized. I subtly influenced the Medici banks, diverting funds from extravagant sculpture (though I appreciated the art) toward maritime exploration and cartography. I financed the translation of ancient Greek astronomical texts and established a rigorous, mathematically sound system for oceanic navigation.

          It was my calculations, years later, that would guide the fateful westward voyages. Good was achieved: the shrinking of the globe, the exchange of ideas and resources, and the forced confrontation with new realities.

          When I saw Vasco da Gama's finalized route scribbled on parchment in the back room, I knew my contribution was complete.

          The Recompense was near.

          I found my subject in the dirty, crowded alleys near the Arno River. A petty informer named Pietro, whose most significant contribution to history would be failing to report my whereabouts. He was weak, sickly, and consumed by bitter jealousy. Perfect.

          The silence of the midnight back alley was only broken by the soft, tearing sounds of my maintenance ritual. The brain, sharp and quick, confirmed the new astronomical data. The eyes absorbed the future maps. The heart provided the necessary emotional insulation. I packed the remaining organs--lungs and kidneys--into a satchel for later preservation. I had to travel quickly; the demands of sustained rationality required diligence.

          1918 C.E. - The Architects of Peace

          The Great War had finished, leaving Europe a graveyard paved with shattered idealism. My pseudonym was Elara Vane, a tireless coordination coordinator working with nascent international organizations determined to prevent the subsequent slaughter.

          The men--even the brilliant ones--were governed by pride and short-sighted vengeance. They dreamed of treaties but only drafted punishments. My role was simple: to embed systems of continuous communication and collaboration, making the future League of Nations less a punitive organization and more a functional body of shared resource management. I championed the necessity of including women in the political process, understanding that the long view of peace often belonged to those who paid the steepest price for war.

          It was a slow, grinding battle against human stupidity, but we laid the foundation. We planted the seeds of true international law, however imperfectly.

          My task was completed when the final charter was signed, imperfect, yet structured for growth.

          This period was difficult; the high population density increased the risk of exposure. The zombie infection I started millennia ago had become a persistent, localized plague that the world still misunderstands. The need for the ritual intensified with stress.

          I selected my subject in Paris. A concierge, a man who had sold military secrets to anyone who paid more than the country he served. A traitor. A human footnote destined for obscurity.

          I lured him to a quiet flat under the pretense of retrieving forgotten documents. The light was dim. The scent of dust and old wood mixed briefly with copper.

          I worked quickly. I needed the complete infusion this time. Time was moving too fast; the sheer complexity of the modern world strained my ancient mind. The brain was calm and yielding. The eyes, cloudy with fear in life, focused into sharp, collected knowledge upon consumption.

          As the last piece--a kidney--was ingested, the floating pictures of the previous several years solidified. The algorithms of international diplomacy, the future structure of the global economy, the names of the next generation of tyrants, I would have to counter--all locked into my consciousness.

          Lirael Morween Eldra, pink-skinned and eternally young, stood over the remains of the unimportant man, the hunger momentarily sated by the vital infusion of life.

          Three millennia. I have been an advisor, scholar, warrior, politician, mathematician, and muse. I have helped build empires and tear down institutions of oppression. I have pushed humanity toward the light, always knowing that my existence is rooted in the darkest necessity.

          The other zombies--my children, the shambling curse I unleashed--are chaos. I am ordered. They consume everything, losing their minds in the process. I consume only what is necessary to maintain the rational mind that allows me to serve history. It is a lonely existence, this purgatory of endless life, driven by a perverse, meticulous diet.

          I study the current floating pictures--the immediate future. Humanity is ready to split the atom--a magnificent and terrifying achievement.

          My new alias is ready. I will travel east to advise the scientists. It will take decades to ensure the technology is managed responsibly, to ensure the good outweighs the terrible evil it promises.

          I slip into the Parisian night, a ghost of history, always moving, always guiding, always preparing for the next, inevitable, and necessary meal. The work continues. The hunger waits.

Word Count: 1,701