I do not keep diaries.

It is an utterly useless hobby. I do not have time to sit and reflect, to waste my energy writing about the nothings of a day. Ari, however, bought me a journal to celebrate the new year, claiming that I need something to fill my thoughts with, whether it serves as a scientific journal or a personal one. I don't care for the idea, but I took it merely to be kind. I'll let her feel that she is doing something good.

It is late now, and my eyes burn from exhaustion, but I cannot sleep. Not yet. I decided to take up this journal because I can feel myself rambling. The goddesses guide my hand to write. If I do not pen this train of thought, it will come spilling out of me as manic nonsense which none are meant to hear.

I have not slept in days; no, I can't -- there are many things to consider, many plans to make. A new project to develop, a new experiment to conduct.

Ari does not know about this project. I've hardly even explained it to Mirriak. I refer to it in simple, vague terms so that she does not question the parameters that it entails; the people that will go missing, the things that will soon be wrong -- things that I will inevitably have to ask her to hide. It is something big, I told her once. Something revolutionary. That much is true.

Sacrifices must be made for the sake of progression. Mirriak knows this well. I know that she will agree when these sacrifices come.

I intend on keeping it a secret from Ari for as long as I can. It is still too far in its infancy, and I fear such an idea might frighten her. After seeing how my benefactors acted at the mere idea of having something in mind, I decided it was simply the best course of action that no one would know. Such wretched, writhing worms, my benefactors -- they don't deserve that knowledge. I only care for their money and the potential such riches hold for me.

It has no name yet. It is merely an idea; a culmination of every thought, every word, every dream that has ever cursed me. An extension of the cores. A way to reshape the world that I have stoked from death.

It is something grand, and it is something better than what the people of these planets deserve. These people, so stupid and dim, would never even comprehend what I have in mind. I could take these planets, with their resources and failed capabilities, and I could use them to fix everything wrong. Reach into the seams and pull out the opportunity.

Soon, they will understand. I will draw them out.

There is a place outside of here, and there are eyes watching. They watched me save lives and sculpt lungs from molten rock. They bless me with knowledge. I want to be with them. That is what I dream of, what I wake from in cold, sweaty stupors; to convene with the goddesses and dine on stars, to drink the Milky Way.

When Ari looks at me, I wonder if the goddess Keplari sees me through her eyes, far away in that deep antimatter of space. It is redundant for a scientist to believe in gods; but if a scientist alters the world, if he creates life from nothing but a hypothesis, is he not a god as well?

It would be blasphemous to say. It would be truthful to believe. I know that others believe it, too.

Ari has told me this; she tells me that I am a prophet sent by her ancestor to help Kepla in its darkest hour. I have accomplished my goal, and now my usefulness dwindles. It is a maddening concept. I have flung myself back into my work to take hold of my merit once more, picking apart the cores to piece them back together, living inside of them like a parasite within the mouth of a fish. I need to. If not, then I am forgotten. Then I am no longer a god.

Mirriak is not like her daughter; she is not as starry-eyed as Ari. I know her too well; she believes that I live only for my work and nothing more. She doesn't like that I focus so fervently on it. She told me once, during one of many times when we had watched a ball from the mezzanine, that she misses when it was just her and Ebeneer and I, young and carefree -- and so frustratingly dull. Truthfully, she only longs for it because she hates her duties. She is jealous and overwhelmed.

To live within your work -- what a dream it is, in my eyes. The cores are my creation, the reason any of us even live, so why should I not dive so deeply into it? The air in my lungs is replaced by steam, the blood in my veins is as warm as magma. My heart is the core that keeps this goddess-forsaken planet alive. My skin is the earth. It is beautiful, but it is imperfect. If I must tear it to shreds in order to ensure it thrives, then it will be done.

The machine is a mirror. My eyes are chambers of magma. The goddesses carved my soul from the blazing sun and placed it within Kepla, within Jhone, within Yona. If I peel away my skin and tear out my hair, I could explode into a violent mass of light, the infrared beauty of a star. And those eyes watching -- those eyes like mine, dark and silent and speculative -- they are like-minded, and they are waiting. Stars that glitter in the night. They feed me hydrogen and tell me secrets about others who listen. Others outside of this world, outside of this three-dimensional space where nothing surpasses.

Nothing but me.

I will find a way to make Ari understand. She will see the things I am trying to uncover and then she will know. If not her, then I will find another vessel. Someone who sees what I see, who knows what I know. A wonderful, terrible thing made of clay that I can mold to my liking.

I intend to take this page, tear it out, and throw it into the magma. I'll take great satisfaction in watching it burn into nothing. Maybe then, I'll feel some fragment of adoration once more as the magma clambers to devour what I've created, just as others have done once before. All I know is that I need it. Desperately, I need it, like bread and wine to fill my stomach.

I will achieve perfection.