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One spark. That’s all it takes. That’s all it takes to trigger an atom bomb. In a way, Florence was like an atom bomb.
She was a quiet kid, staying in line, doing as she was told. To everybody in her church, she was “God’s little angel.” She never questioned anything, at least, not outwardly anyway.
The truth was, Florence was hyper-vigilant of everything. She’d been this way even before her world seemed to flip upside down all those years back. Except now, Florence had more to observe—much more.
Her parents first joined the church when Florence was eight—almost nine. The church was called “The Opposition of the Incarnate.” Florence didn’t know what any of those words meant at the time, or why she and her parents were given new names. She was told their names were “sinful” or “not pure.” Her new name was Veronica—a name Florence thought was boring, and so she refused to go by it. That was until she was put in a circle and publicly shamed by the other kids in the church. From then on, Florence learned it was just easier to obey.
Eventually, bending down to the “God” that the church preached of became tiresome work. Florence had seen the outside world—the fighting, the chaos, all of it. She came to realize all of this was perpetrated by one thing: a lack of guidance. It caused fear and insecurity among people. This fact didn’t make Florence sad, as it did many. No, she was fascinated.
Florence continued to quietly observe the chaos. By age fifteen, she had concluded that humanity had gone down the wrong path thanks to that lack of guidance. It seemed to her that she was the only person enlightened enough to realize this fact. So, she came up with another question to answer. What if she provided guidance?
Quickly, Florence ran into an issue. Nobody would listen to her. Despite her intelligence, Florence was still just a typical teenage girl, and a racial minority at that, to everybody. Sure, in theory, it wouldn’t take much to claim she was God and start a cult following. I mean, just look at her church’s leader. But just a small cult wasn’t enough. Florence wanted—no, Florence needed to change the course of the entire world, and that, Florence thought, required divine intervention.
Eventually, Florence finally learned why the world had become so violent in a time span that seemed to be overnight. She had to do some digging, though, because her church strictly forbade any nonfiction book about history or science in an effort to keep people ignorant. They also forbade talking about “the devil‘s incarnate,” which Florence just knew had something to do with what happened. She managed to get a fake library card under a different surname and a sneakily edited picture of her. Ever since the chaos, protests via book-burning had become prevalent, so libraries were much stricter on who had access.
Upon getting into the library, Florence headed straight to the old newspapers. They were arranged by month and year, which made it easy to find what she was looking for: a headline titled “Real-life Cryptids discovered?” The cover had blurry images of strange-looking creatures. One looked like a fish with human legs, another a living tree stump, and another a tumbleweed with tiny legs. Next to them was a photo of a man who looked to be in his thirties. He had a slightly lighter complexion than Florence, combed-over hair, and a mustache that almost looked too perfect.
Reading further into the paper, Florence learned the man’s name was Theodore Alvinson. He was a geneticist who supposedly dabbled in photography and managed to capture shots of those creatures. He was famous for previously discovering a “perfect” genetic combination for humans. Florence reached the end of the paper before she found out what exactly happened to make the world—or more specifically, organized religion- go crazy.
Returning to the cart of newspapers, she noticed one was missing. It happened to be for the exact month she was looking for. The month of her eighth birthday. Florence clicked her tongue in dismay, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Whatcha’ looking for?” a male voice startled Florence. She turned around to see a blonde boy, no older than her, looking curious. Florence knew better than to say what information she was looking for. “What’s it to you?” She made sure not to be too hostile. You could never guess what connections people had. The boy shrugged, “Just curious.” He then held out his hand and introduced himself. “I’m Scott, Scott Cunningham.” Florence narrowed her eyes and shook his hand. She introduced herself with the name on her library card, “Florence Patel.”
As it turned out, Florence had more in common with Scott than she previously would have thought. They both wanted to escape their uptight families; granted, they did come from wildly different backgrounds. Scott had said he planned to move in with a relative in California when he turned eighteen. Guys in his church were sent on mission trips when they turned twenty.
Florence couldn’t care less about what they had in common, though. She only kept Scott around because he actually knew about what happened, having experienced it firsthand, and, unlike Florence, wasn’t completely sheltered from knowing about it.
Apparently, Theodore Alvinson was able to get samples of the cryptids he discovered. In those samples, he observed unprecedented genetic traits. These creatures had not only the “perfect gene” he previously discovered, but also anomalies that would allow these creatures to do the impossible. These organisms appeared to be able to live indefinitely through the ability to rapidly reproduce any of their cells. They could also copy and transmit their DNA to any other organism, which opened possibilities of humans having gills like fish or even being able to undergo photosynthesis like plants.
Suddenly, Florence had an idea. If these god-like traits had to do with genetics. What if, somehow, she could alter her own DNA to have these traits? What if she could become God?
That little realization was all the spark that Florence needed to split the atom of her ambition. It was unfortunate that she would have to wait a while to even have a chance at a platform, considering her church. For three years, Florence waited patiently until she could apply to college in secret. Despite being pulled out of school after fifth grade, Florence was quite intelligent for her age.
She hitched a ride with Scott and his relative, since they were headed to the same place. She had decided to major in genetics and take as many science courses as possible. She did this all in order to get access to as much equipment as possible.
Now, becoming God was no easy task, and Florence was just about to learn that.