Many decades pass

…

He was over a planet that had once teemed with civilization, contemplating his choices.

For fifty years Rarend had plied the stars, alone, and for fifty years he was only further assured that he was the last man left in the galaxy. Warp travel was safe, for as the last cities of sterile humans aged and died, the emotions that fed chaos were eternally drained. Where once a burning maelstrom spun to forge the Immaterium, now a gentle stream of white silver spun. No daemon nor monster could climb forth from the Immaterium as there was nothing left to birth it. Rarend finally let his navigator die after they were spun off course and, in the space of two minutes in the warp, finding one century had passed in the Materium. The last sterile mutant cities were depopulated. Rarend was the last man in the galaxy. There was no more need to travel these empty stars.

He sighed with the weight of what he knew. The Imperium was gone, as was chaos and so were the xenos. The plan that the doomed eldar had set him on finally came into focus. He still had Project Gaia.

"Why me, Asurmen. Why me?" Rarned looked down at the planet through the window in the chamber of his craft. He touched the window and weighed his options.

On one hand, he could repopulate this world with intelligent life or he could break the small mechanical artifact.

"If," he said aloud, "I populate this world, I could sew the seeds of a brand new Imperium. A new human, a new empire, all from me." He closed his eyes. "On the other hand, I could reawaken chaos as well. Would this empire be as depraved as mine? Would it even be an empire of humans?" Rarend grew sick the prospect of spawning an Imperium of xenos. As a member of the Ordo Xenos, to do something like that would be the ultimate failure. But life was life! Was it then better to have a galaxy of emptiness? Would Project Gaia even work? Was he being tricked by the eldar into doing something else entirely? But mankind surely deserved another chance. All he had to do was drop the cylinder onto the planet. It was unbelievably simple and he would not live to see the fullest results. If he spawned an alien society from the bosom of the world he brought to life, he would die in blissful ignorance of it.

So what would he do?

Rarend opened his eyes. Reaching into his holster, Rarend produced his plasma pistol and turned it off. He looked over the room he sat in. It was rectangular, its floor covered by a red rug, and the wall opposite the windows carried only bland star charts. Rarend occupied the only chair and intentionally left the small table in the corner empty. He would unconsciously make the choice. If the pistol's barrel faced the window then Rarend would seed the planet below him with Project Gaia. If it faced the charts, then the galaxy those charts showed would continue on without his intervention.

Rarend flipped his pistol. The weapon landed with a clatter then went still, its position definite. Rarend sighed and nodded: he settled on which choice he would take. Rarend looked down at Project Gaia in his hands. A shaft of sunlight reached into the window, catching the tiny artifact's metal. The light shone up from its surface, illuminating Rarend's somber eyes.

THE END