There was a flickering and a buzzing, it seemed to come from a great distance. The world was darkness except for the flicker of light. But the light brought with it incredible pain. There was coldness, not everywhere, but it was present. Gradually the coldness and the light brought with them awareness. He was in a small room. A dark room. The ground was hard, rough and cold. The air had a damp chill to it. And there was a small flickering light overhead. The light buzzed slightly, as if it too was just waking from a painful sleep. He lay staring at the light, up at the ceiling.

What is this place, he thought. How did I get here? He moved to put his hand on his head. Or he tried. He instantly came against bindings around his wrists. And his ankles were bound as well. His headache seemed to continue completely unabated and the buzzing did not seem to help. Worry and fear seemed to well up from the darkest corners of his mind. He started jerking at his bindings. He feared to call for help, fearful of who might come. Whoever put me here is the only one who would come.  He continued jerking against the bindings, which appear to be just rags of cloth. Though they do not seem to give even the slightest bit.

After a couple minutes of tugging and pulling, he hears a loud clang in the distance. He freezes momentarily, looking over at the dark shape he assumes is the door. After a couple seconds that lasted years, there, another metallic clang, this one sounding much closer than the last.

He turned back to the bindings with even greater vigor. He knows that whoever is coming is not good news. His frustration grows with the pounding in his head. The bindings do not seem to even slide, no matter how he twists and tugs at them. Panic seems to infuse his entire being. There is no way out! I'm going to die in here all alone.

Then there is a grinding of metal as the door lock gives a loud clunk, and then is quickly pushed open to the protest of the rusted hinges. A man stands in the doorway; a thin man of middling height and frail appearance. He stands unmoving for a moment, leaving the silence to fill the space.

"I hadn't expected to see you up before the procedure," he said in a voice that sounded lost between a squeak and gravel. "You mustn't be awake yet, I have need to move you." He then lifts something long from his side and brings it down with great effort. A flash of bright light, pain, darkness.

Pain, a headache that could have no equal. That is his companion. The reason he crawls back to consciousness. That or the loud clatter of motion around him. The man from earlier is moving about, rushing from one strange machine to the next. Twisting knobs and pulling levers, checking gauges and monitors. All the while he is talking as if to an audience.

Looking around he sees no such audience in attendance, the room is shrouded in shadow. He is bound in a small glass vessel little bigger than a coffin, and opposite him is a metal statue of a man. Made with rivets and plates of metal that seem to reflect what little light that is present. It looks almost like a suit of armor or an old divers suit, except for the face. The face seems to be designed after the human skull. Glass windows where the eyes would be, a mouth which looks slightly jaw like. Completely bald and devoid of ornamentation or features.

It is then that the words of the thin man begin to become clear. "They said it could not be done. That it isn't usable energy. That it wasn't natural or humane. That it was evil. But I will show them. I have solved it. I will be the father of a new world." The last was said with a loud crazed laugh.

"The other subjects were just tests, needed to work out the kinks in the process. They showed me the way. Helped make this possible. They won't be forgotten, they died for science. There is no better cause. No purer purpose. They should have been grateful. Should have been proud. But they are just as closed and small as the others. The world will see."

And then the thin man turns and looks at him. "You will serve a scientific purpose. A purpose for the betterment of mankind." Then he presses a button. A flash of bright light, pain, darkness.

The world is pain. Pain so absolute, there can be nothing else. There is no light, no darkness, no up, nor down. There was nothing before the pain, there can be nothing after. Liquid fire and purest ice clash in a war of eternity. Pulsing and flashing it courses out to the edges of existence and comes reverberating back. Never ebbing, never changing in its fluidity.

Then, there is no pain. Gone as if it had never been. A memory of a memory is all that remains. Was it a dream?

There is light, and sound, then all the world comes to focus. The room is cast in dim shadow and the light overhead seems to flicker back to full brightness. A thin man stands to one side, turned away. He seems to be looking at what is on the opposite side of the room. A glass chamber, filled with black smoke obscuring what is inside. The machinery in the room seems to be winding down. The thin man turns and looks, a smile blossoming on his lips. He walks forward, and stops a step or two away. Then he steps sideways, his gaze locked.

"You see me," he says. "You are alive."

"Who are you?" The words come from some place unknown. The voice unrecognizable and artificial. I can speak? Was that me? What am I? "Who am I?

"You are alive!" he screams at the top of his lungs. After a moment, he visibly calms himself. "You are my son, and I am your father. You’re the first of something great. And your name is Galvin."

"My father..." he says, as if lost in thought. Memories begin to flash through his head. Memories of a man, a man he knew as father. Memories that did not include the thin man. Then, he sees the smoke in the glass chamber has lessened and he sees a man inside. Or what was once a man, for all that remains is a charred dried husk. A corpse.