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I feel terrible. Absolutely shitty. How dare biology make humans do shit like this for nine months? More than just moral upgrades, humanity needs more biological upgrades. When I’m done with genomes and cybernetics, babies will slip n’ slide out of there. This is a highly inconvenient process! No wonder pregnancy’s the leading cause of mortality for women. It would be for trans men and non-binary folks, but transphobes are number one there.

I’ve been down ever since I lost my powers. My nanites are keeping me healthy, but I think they missed handling the effects of the hormones on me. They were specifically ordered to let hormonal changes happen. That’s important for the kid. Blocking them would have hurt Alexander’s development, but I was trying to avoid all the crying and shit. I guess I should have had the OB-GYN help out with that, because I did a shit job.

I’m really lucky I didn’t fuck over the world more, because the truth is I’ve gotten super lucky. Or I’ve been able to recover. Or people covered for me. Somehow, amazingly, the world survived me and my arrogance.

Yeah, so I’ve been in a bad mood. I know Holly and Sam are losing patience. Qiang wore her armor in once when she came in to bring me a tray of food. It wasn’t enough food, either, but I had to pee first. I had to pee while eating. I had to carry in the last of the food to finish it off while sitting my bloated body on the toilet to pee some more. Please, I just want to stop peeing. I need a cork, but they won’t let me into the basement to design one.

I figured this would be a lot of boring stuff to write down and then never send, like so much other crap. Hell, probably a lot of what I sent is deserving of just never being talked about. The change happened when the lights went out.

I was in the garden, humming to myself while checking on my peppers. I had some gorgeous golden cayennes growing this year, but a section of Boston pickling cucumbers wasn’t doing shit. They had a few flowers, but nothing was turning into a cucumber. So when I got to the cucumbers, I dropped the happy humming, leaned in real close, and yelled, “Why aren’t you growing, you little cuke?!”

“Stop stressing!” Sam called from the back porch. My girlfriend was sipping a bottled water and keeping an eye on me. “It’s not good for your health!”

“You hear that, plant?” I asked the cucumber vine. “You’re hurting my health. You want to put me in the hospital?”

“Holy shit, you’ve gone full mom,” Sam said. “This is awakening strange new feelings in me, babe.”

I groaned as I stood back up, having noticed the shade fall on me but then realizing it wasn’t from clouds. The sun was just dimmer. So was everything else. “What’s going on?”

Sam shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know if I ever know. I think you’re just with me because you want to be and you don’t actually care about me and my life. I’m interchangeable to you, just like I was interchangeable to Mix N’ Max.”

I fucked up and upset her. I’ve done that a lot. With my fucked up life, I’m shit at romance or letting people know how much they mean to me. “It’s not your fault, babe. It’s mine.”

While things got darker metaphorically, they got darker photonically as well. The lights went out. I tried moving to low light mode with my cybernetic eyes. Sam pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. Her light went out, and my eyes just couldn’t penetrate the growing darkness. At 1:13 in the afternoon, it was darker than the darkest midnight. “Sam?” I called out.

I didn’t hear anything. I couldn’t even hear the wind through the plants. I reached out and felt the planter, but then it was like it pulled away. There was nothing. A nothing surrounded by nothing. I put my hands over my belly protectively. No wonder everyone from the future acts like I’m not around. I probably die before Alexander gets to know me. That’s been a constant. Or I’m in prison, where I deserve to be. Or maybe I’m as much of a deadbeat to him as I am to the Buzzkills.

My thoughts weren’t pleasant. And on top of that, I had a growing headache. I thought I heard a scream in the distance, but then I got a transmission through my internal radio. “This is a repeat of the psychic message I just sent, in case anyone couldn’t hear me. People of Earth, you’re under attack. The dimensional barrier failed and an entity has entered our reality at Earth. It’s- just think of it as the Dark. It is darkness, the end of all light. Everything good and everything you can see. It consumes all light and all positive thought. Before long, it isolates everyone it comes into contact with, but you’re not alone. You must rage and hope and love. You must stand, now, or Earth will disappear. Maybe more than Earth. Use whatever you can. Think of those you love. Spite it. Think of your hopes and dreams. Try everything you can and fight it while we try to stop it.”

I laughed. Look at that, I fucked up physics so bad that some “thing” that just exists to be contrary to the functioning of the universe decided to pop in and eat us. I never would see my family again after all. I’d never see the new Thor, or see if I could get my girlfriends and wives to dress up in harem girl outfits. Or dress myself up in a harem girl outfit for them.

And it was funny because I deserved this shit, but a lot of people didn’t. Alexander, who at this point had been baking in my lovin’ oven for like 9 months, didn’t deserve this. Qiang is a good girl. Sam, Holly, Venus, Medusa. Leah. My half-brother Davilo. Hell, people I’d actually helped and saved. It wasn’t fair, and that’s life, but it was more than that. It wasn’t right.

I began to get pissed when I realized how unjust this was. And I began to mutter to myself, because I talk to myself plenty. “Death comes for everyone and life isn’t fair, but some of us can make the world just.”

I didn’t even realize I’d sunk down to the ground, which didn’t feel like much of anything. But I stood up. I could do that. This bastard didn’t deserve to have me make it easy for them. My powers might not have been working right, but I tried everything. I tried to create a light on the end of my unicorn horn. I tried to shine floodlights from my cybernetic eyes. And with enough pushing, the darkness began to brighten.

At the risk of seeming all “Old Man Yells At Cloud,” I raised a fist to the sky. I didn’t even have anything really coherent to say that would sound good. I felt like a Karen thinking about how it didn’t have the right to do this, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right for me, it wasn’t right for Alexander, it wasn’t right for everyone. And yes, I realized it wasn’t right to me. I deserved worst, but not from this thing. I didn’t even wrong it. Yet. Give me an opportunity, though…

I stomped off toward the house, able to see a short distance ahead of me. It was like I was a light in the darkness, just not a very good one. Which, I had to concede, makes sense. Through the door and onto the porch stood Sam, who recognized me as I got close. She grabbed me and kissed me, hard. After she decided to come up for air, she told me, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, and I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve the life I have, but I love you. You’re amazing. I choose you, understand?”

She nodded and kissed me again. Together, we lit up the entire porch. I grabbed her hand and entered the house. I glanced over my shoulder to see my path from the garden and through the porch was still lit up. The whole kitchen joined us in the light. And nearby, I heard Qiang screaming from her room. She came running at us, all lit up on her own.

“I have an idea!” I said. I hugged Qiang and the three of us made our way to the storage closet for a lightbulb.

“You don’t have powers dear,” Sam said.

“But I have knowledge and knowledge is power. I know how to summon the darkness.” We headed downstairs to the basement, Sam and Qiang helping me gently down the stairs. I had to run a cable from my armor and the house’s hidden power supply to the lightbulb, which I quickly programmed the nanites to reinforce. I have to use a computer for something like that now, but I needed to make sure it wouldn’t burn out. I also wired in some replacement energy sheath pieces from my armor’s gauntlets It took awhile. Meanwhile, Sam was calling Holly.

“Do you want me to call the other mommies?” Qiang asked.

I kissed her on the top of her head. “No, dear, they’re probably working on stuff right now. If they text you, let them know you’re fine and that I’m working on something. But if I’m right, they’ll figure that out soon. Everyone, close your eyes!”

I finished tightening one last plastic screw. The room became as bright white as was possible. It was incredibly light, incredibly bright and focused in a lightbulb.

Sam yelled because the light was so loud. And I guess there was a noticeable hum to the bulb, but not enough to justify yelling. “How does this work? You light a big light and that gets rid of it?”

I shook my head, then remembered the whole blinding light thing. “No. Now, we get its attention further.” I started chanting. I still remembered some stuff from my omnipotence days,. It was a tiny bit of a gamble considering powers went haywire for me now. As a goddess, I could access magic just fine. As a homo machina, that was always an issue. My body now doesn’t quite count the same way, but apparently it’s close enough. The chant was the magical equivalent of “Hey dipshit, come on if you think you’re hard enough!” And I believe it heard me.

I was no longer connected to the rest of the world, so I don’t know what resistance the Darkness faced, but I knew that it wasn’t just us three in my place. For all their faults, humanity can fight back like nobody’s business. Like with that chant and me using magic; in the heat of the moment, I couldn’t even feel a strain.

The lightbulb went from brightest light to darkest black. It was a complete void, the darkness fuzzy at the edges. “Got you,” I told it.

“I am the darkness that makes the world. I am back to judge, to consume all,” a whispery voice vocalized.

“You have no right to judge me,” I told it.

A portal opened, occult in nature. I looked through to see a circle of people in a cave. Miss Tycism and Captain Lightning II stood out to me, along with a Grau in a tight suit. A ghostly astral projection of Captain Lightning flew toward the portal and grabbed the lightbulb. “So this is where our spell forced it. We’ll take this from here, amateur” he said, then he looked closer at me. I guess my chanting didn’t have anything to do with catching the Darkness. Lightning’s eyes narrowed. “You.”

The portal snapped close, leaving the lightbulb and the Darkness in the care of a whole team of mystics. I relaxed. Sam caught me. “Well, that was easy-” I stopped because my crotch was wet. And as I looked down, the growing wet spot on my stretchy sweatpants was replaced by more liquid just flowing freely from me.

“Mom, did you just pee yourself?” Qiang asked.

“Nope, your little brother’s on the way,” I answered.

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