But he was feeling complicated because he was out of chances. He had effectively destroyed Earth and everything he had built. If his new creation failed him, he would never have the opportunity to try again.
Silas remembered looking at the devastation he had caused. He knew that Earth was beyond salvation now. The fallout from his experiment had done catastrophic damage to the Earth's atmosphere.
He remembered concluding that all life on Earth would die...
It was fortunate that under his leadership, Earth had already terraformed the Moon and Mars, so humanity could still exist even without Earth. However, the colonies outside of Earth were not self-sustaining. So, if Earth were destroyed now, Silas knew that the extinction of humanity was not far off.
Of course, not everybody on Earth would die; people who were already in bunkers and were not directly affected by the plethora of energies released by the explosion had a chance of survival on Earth.
Perhaps if these people survive underground for the next 100,000 years, they may one day rise to the surface again.
But Silas recalled that he didn't have the mind to care about these trivial things because he had succeeded...
---
Sitting by the curb, Silas went into introspection. He had been too excited before, so he hadn't paid much mind to his actions, but now, as he recalled past events, he realized that he had been incredibly rash.
He was not always this obsessed... He couldn't believe that he had no backup plan. He really staked everything on one gamble.
This was not something Silas would ever do, yet he did. Perhaps this was old age. Maybe it was the age that made him so desperate, or it was his growing frustration at not achieving his ultimate goal.
Silas was 174 years old. A hundred and fifty of these years were spent seeking the truths of the universe in one form or another. Perhaps, this long journey had taken a greater toll on Silas than he imagined. Silas, 50 years ago, would never have been so rash.
Once, Silas was a theoretical physicist. He was a man who had decided to find out the secrets of the universe. With time, he realized the limitations of being a scientist, always having to rely on others for resources.
So, he 'brought peace' to Earth by becoming its rightful leader. With his new role came greater power and resources, and he used these resources to further his own curiosity.
But perhaps it was his lack of capability or the almost barren level of resources in his previous world; he never even came close.
By barren, Silas meant limiting. In his previous life, he discovered countless resources in the boundless sky. He discovered ores and metals that advanced the field of Material Science and subsequently elevated Earth's technology to a new level. However, he never found anything that completely solved the problems of resource availability.
For example, he discovered Deuterium in Saturn's rings. This was a heavy hydrogen capable of combining with Tritium to create a fuel that powered his empire for hundreds of thousands of years. With this discovery, he ensured that humanity under his wing would never have any need for energy before they grew enough to terraform the Solar System completely.
So, the resources of the universe were undoubtedly vast. But they were not enough to sustain his growth. The Deuterium found in the Solar System could power humanity for tens of millions of years. However, it still couldn't provide enough energy to build a particle accelerator capable of reaching Planck-scale energies and help Silas tear through the fabric of reality.
At Planck energies, space-time permits "rips" or tunnel-like connections, revealing hidden extra dimensions and gateways to other universes. The Planck scale is the universal limit, beyond which currently known laws of physics break down.
This was what Silas meant by barren. The world couldn't provide enough resources for Silas to actually peer into its secrets.
Of course, he made significant progress, enough to ensure that if any human survived, they would never forget his contributions.
He had accomplished so much that when people remembered him, they would not think of him as a demon incarnate but as a great man who eventually turned into a demon and destroyed the world.
At least, that is what Silas hoped. Perhaps this was the last shred of vanity Silas had left. He subconsciously wanted people to remember his achievements.
On the other hand, Silas was not satisfied with his achievements at all. This was the key reason for the catastrophe. He just couldn't stand his death when he still had so much to achieve.
Even though Silas himself will never admit it, the reason humanity was extinct was that Silas was not satisfied with his progress. So, he decided to gamble the fate of humanity to achieve his goals.
And humanity had lost the gamble, but Silas had won... He found no absurdity in this. He had single-handedly elevated humanity from mere barbarians fighting each other to the masters of a star system.
Silas had spent the last 150 years of his life searching for the truth, but he had found nothing significant. He judged this to be the cause of his rashness.
His despair was induced by the absence of any significant breakthrough in any scientific field. Even with the brightest minds of humanity working in unison for close to eleven decades, there was no qualitative breakthrough...
Sure, under his lead, humanity progressed rapidly.
By the time of its extinction, it had control over the entire Solar System. They had life-extension methods that increased the life expectancy of an average human to 200 years, and scientific theories compiled over the last eleven decades formed the Unified Theory—the first proven theory of everything, that represented their mastery of the universe.
But Silas knew that these improvements were superficial. The Unified Theory was Silas's life's work. This was why he knew it was incomplete; others may not think so, but he knew for certain.
Recalling all this, Silas suddenly started laughing violently, "Hahahaha! So this was the moment."