His name was Max. But he preferred his chosen name:
IQ.
IQ was a super-villain. A teenager with a brain that had been tampered with, making him an unnatural genius. He was the smartest being on the planet.
Not that it meant much, now that he was alone.
IQ stared out at the wasteland. The genius with hair died red and black who was dressed in Gothic/Punk Rock style outfit was stunned. Nothing alive could be seen. No plants, no animals, no humans, no nothing. America was bare. A kingdom of nothingness.
"This..." IQ fell on his knees. He was completely horrified. "This... This wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to stop me. THE SUPERHEROES WERE SUPPOSED TO STOP ME, DANG IT! THAT'S HOW IT WORKS! THAT'S HOW IT ALWAYS ENDS!"
***
It had been a week now since IQ had accidentally killed all of humanity except for himself.
He flew by the use of his jetpack, still looking for some sort of human life. Maybe one of the superheroes had survived.
But no, IQ found no one alive. No humans, no animals. No life to be found no matter where on the planet he looked. Only those damn plants that had mutated and gained the ability to move and do stuff mammals do. This was thanks to IQ's weapon that had killed everything else but the plants.
Mad science was funny like that.
IQ groaned as he landed in the middle of Paris. The once famous city was now a ruin. The Eiffel Tower had been cut in half. The Triumphant Arch was now anything but what its name implied.
IQ tapped his foot on the ground impatiently as he waited for his drones to arrive and give him a report. After a couple of minutes, all seven of them arrived. They were egg-shaped, black, hovered above the ground and had red truck girl decals on them.
"So?" The impatient teen asked his machines.
"NO LIFE DETECTED WITHIN A RADIUS OF 200 MILES, MASTER." Drone 1 said. "EXCEPT FOR EVOLVED PLANTLIFE."
"Dang it!" IQ kicked Drone 1, making it bump into Drone 5. "There has to be some survivors! My weapon couldn't have killed EVERYONE on the dang planet, I won't-"
IQ was interrupted by the thunderous noise of a horde of chestnut trees that was galloping toward him.
"Perfect. JUST perfect!" IQ rolled his eyes in annoyance as he grabbed his solar based ray-gun. "Drone one to seven, combat mode!"
***
It had been two weeks since IQ had accidentally killed all of humanity except for himself.
And right now, a strawberry bush was doing everything in it's power to hasten the complete extinction of the human race.
The mutated plant had its vines wrapped around IQ, trying to squeeze him to death. He would die in mere seconds unless he thought of something. And he WOULD think of something, since getting killed by a new species he had created would be the mega-genius equivalent of drowning with your head stuck in the toilet.
He stretched his finger as much as he could. He was dangerously close to fainting as he finally pressed the button on his belt, activating his jetpack. He was sent flying upward, the power of his jetpack was enough to pull the dang plant up from the ground with roots and everything. IQ could see a giant, red eye between the roots that stared at him as they flew. But then, it turned white, and the vines lost their strength. IQ gasped as the strawberry bush lost it's grip and fell to the ground.
"This..." IQ finally began to breath normally. "This is the LAMEST apocalyptic future EVER!"
***
It had been a month now since IQ had accidentally killed all of humanity except for himself.
"Funny I never thought about reading this stuff before." IQ closed a very thick book about modern psychology and picked up another one. He had managed to find in the rubble of a bookstore, meaning that he now had something to entertain himself with. He had found a more or less intact chair underneath a pile of bricks so he had something to sit on. "I'm serious, why did I never think about studying how the human mind works and stuff? I'm a super-genius with a mutated brain without limitations, I can handle all sorts of knowledge, and after reading some of these books, I guess my old shrink was right: I DO have daddy issues, but he was MEGA boring to listen to. Do you know what that is like? I mean, trying to listen to someone because you know that they are telling you something important, but they are so boring that your brain shuts down?"
The skull of the deceased hero Valor said nothing. IQ had placed it next to the pile of books to keep him company.
"Oh, don't give me that. All of this is your fault, you know that?" IQ closed the book he had just picked up, deciding that he had read enough for one day. "I told the entire world about my big-ass bomb and how I intended to use it. But I didn't want to use it, you know? I never did. I wanted to fail. Like I always do because some superhero stops me before something major bad happens." As IQ finished the sentence, his face grew tired. "Well, not anymore. No one can ever stop me from anything ever again due to obvious reasons." He gave the cranium of Valor an angry glare. "Why didn't you stop me, you dumb, fat cow?"
***
"Ouch!"
IQ sucked on his middle finger. He had accidentally hit it with his hammer as he was about to build what would, hopefully, become a house. He could have it build by his robots in no time, but he was bored and needed something to do.
It had been a year now since IQ had accidentally killed all of humanity except for himself.
"You know, this looked soooo much easier in Little House On The Prairie." IQ said to the skull of Valor. "You know that TV show?"
No reply.
"Yeah, you DO look like a book person." IQ picked up another nail and went on with his work. "But the series was based on these books written by a woman who was a child in the 1870s. You really never read it?"
No reply.
"Yeah, I hate small talk as much as the next guy." IQ decided to call it a day. He felt a bit hungry and decided to dig into the lunchbox he had prepared for himself. It was a sandwich made out of a giant mutated mushroom that had tried to eat him. "So..." he said to the skull as he took a sip from his water-bottle with juice from a very angry cactus. "You wanna hear a secret about me?"
No reply.
"Before I made the whole world go Planets of the Apes... I had only killed three humans."
No reply.
"Oh, it's true. Really. You see, my entire life, I wanted to be a supervillain. So the day I discovered that my brain had mutated into a super information sponge, I was trilled. And the first thing I did was building a machine that teleported my mother to the Amazon rainforest. I don't remember why, I guess I was mad at her or something. And then I kidnapped three girls that used to bully me at school. I didn't HATE them, they were just... annoying. And I killed two of them in some bizarre and creative ways."
IQ took a pause so that he could finish eating his sandwich.
"But here's the thing: After I had dehydrated the second one and looked at the pile of ashes that was all there was left of her... I realized that I didn't like it. Killing felt... uncomfortable. It wasn't funny or exciting. I had expected some sort of rush, that I would feel powerful, but... but I just felt like I was going to puke."
IQ was quite for a moment.
"But I felt that I had... I don't know, passed the point of no return I guess. And I now HAD to be a super-villain. So I told the third girl that I would give her a chance, that I would allow her to try and run away and give her a head start so that I could enjoy chasing her. But that was a load of shit. I wanted her to run and warn everyone. So then a superhero came, I made a show out of it to lose and be thrown to jail so I wouldn't lose face. And then, just to make everything worse, I learned that my mom was dead. I just wanted to annoy her and scare her, but she had died of a heatstroke in the Amazon Jungle. Making her the THIRD person I had killed. Or maybe the first one, I don’t know." IQ sighed. "So, if I had such a rotten first day doing something I hated, why did I keep doing super-villain stuff? I will tell ya why: I wanted to matter. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be remembered. And because I was a dumb teenager I thought that the only way to make sure of that was by making some noise, fight some superheroes and make grand schemes where I would constantly take a dive so that no one died."
The skull said nothing, as expected.
IQ blew the skull a raspberry. "Yeah, well, that's just YOUR opinion."
***
It had been four years now since IQ had accidentally killed all of humanity except for himself.
IQ sat inside the little shack he had build for himself. It looked like something that even Groundskeeper Willie would have too much pride to live in. The genius who was now a young adult was about to take care of the wounds he had received after an intense battle with a horde of rapid apple trees. He was all alone now. He had even gotten rid of the cranium he used to talk to as he realized he only did it because he in his dumb teenager brain thought it was kinda cool, NOT because he was crazy. He was in fact very sane. Sane enough to think all sorts of things.
But the problem with being alone with your own thoughts is that you get to think all sorts of things. No matter how grotesquely they are.
"Wait a minute." IQ realized something that would be kinda funny if it wasn't so terrible and absurd. "My GRANDFATHER was an Afro-American guy who married a white chick. That means that Martin Luther King is PARTLY to blame for me being born! Martin Luther King is PARTLY responsible for the death of humanity!"
And then, all the color in IQ's face faded away.
"Oh my god." A single tear fell from his left eye. "I... I did it, didn’t I? I did it. It's all my fault. No one is to blame but me. I... I killed all of humanity!"
IQ couldn't hold his tears back and began to cry like a little child. His cheeks were wet with tears, his nose dripped and he screamed as if he had lost a limb.
"I'm so sorry! I'm... I'm so, so sorry!" Max yelled over and over again, knowing fully well that it was much too late for apologies. "I'm so god damn freaking sorry!"
***
It had been twenty years now since Maximilian Augustson had accidentally killed all of humanity except for himself.
At the moment, Max was doing some gardening. He liked taking care of his carrots and found it odd that he had once despised them. But once you learned to treat them with respect and feed them properly then you didn't have to worry about getting tiny bite-marks on your fingers.
It was almost impossible to recognize the former terror teen who had once been one of the world's most chaotic super-villains. Not just because he was now an adult with a well-trimmed beard, but there was none of his former traits left. He had stopped dying his hair red and black so it had it's natural nut-brown color again. He wore a light-blue T-shirt and green pants instead of that silly "Gothic/Punk Rock" style outfit he used to wear. And, most importantly: He never smiled anymore. No that there was much to smile about. And it didn't really matter if he was unrecognizable or not since there was no one left to recognize him.
As Max finished gardening, he decided to make himself a cup of tea. He left the garden, passed the spaceship (he had build to find another planet with intelligent life on it but decided not to in order to punish himself) and took off his shoes before entering the beautiful house he had build for himself with his own hands. He boiled some water and took a look at the kitchen and all of it's equipment. Like the rest of the house and everything inside it, it was handmade by Max who had plenty of time and needed to keep himself occupied to evade insanity. Sure, going crazy would at this point be a blessing, but he didn't really feel that he deserved it. As he waited for the water to boil, he pondered whether he should build a piano or an organ.
After Max had made his tea, he took his cup and went into his library. He had a good little collection of books he had managed to find in the ruins of homes and libraris as he traveled the world looking for potential resources. After taking book after book out of his shelves only to change his mind and put them back in their proper place, he decided to pick the last Harry Potter book in existence (volume two, written in Swedish) and went out to the terrace. He sad in his favorite chair and began to read.
Life was tolerable.
For now.
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