The last man on Earth…an old trope, but still one we think about, and read about. Three computers look after this last man, they try to cater to his every whim, and even though they are but computers, they feel his loneliness…
New Zealand communicated their loss in early October. Switzerland followed a week later. On Halloween, Mintaka delivered the news Luke had been dreading the most: “Sasha’s gone.”
“So.” Luke took a slow, deep breath. “So,” he said again. He could still see the way her wizened brown face, framed by wispy white hair, had come to life every time they spoke. One recent chat, he’d told her about his plan to visit Gullfoss in Iceland to bask in the thunder of the waterfall. Her smile had been so pure and guileless, it was as if she had thrown her whole heart into believing his lie. He reached up to rub the scratchy stubble on his chin. “Only me now.”
“Yes. Only you.” Alnilam’s voice was a precise half-octave higher than Mintaka’s had been.
Sasha dead, and Jean-Mark before her, and Dixon, and all the rest. All the rest. Luke probed the concept with caution, like a tongue testing the gap left by a lost tooth. The three computers waited, their patience infinite. “It’s strange,” he said at last. “I’ve been thinking about this moment for so very, very long. I understood it on an intellectual level of course. But I was never able to imagine how it would feel. Not until now.”
“How does it feel?” Alnitak’s voice was half an octave lower than Mintaka’s.
A tear welled in Luke’s left eye. He tried to blink it away, but it left a wet trail down his wrinkled cheek. “I miss her already. Which should be ridiculous. We never met. We didn’t even know each other very well. But the sparkle in her eyes, her vivacity despite… It helped, you know?”
“No Luke, we don’t. Make us understand,” Mintaka said.
“Please,” Alnitak added.
“Sasha knew, as I did, that neither of us would go anywhere ever again. Yet, she went along with my daydreams with such sincerity, I dared to start believing they might come true.”
“She was helping to shape a version of reality you could both hold onto,” Alnilam said.
“A manageable version,” Mintaka added.
“Manageable?” Luke struggled into a seated position, the tubes in his back dragging. His thin voice grew bitter. “It’s all too big. Far too big.” He covered his eyes with his hands, mumbling into the soft flesh of his palms. “Earth. Luna. Mars. The asteroid belt. Billions of people, hundreds of billions even. An unbroken line across thousands of generations from civilization back to the caves. And now only me. Why?”
“Someone was going to be last. It happens to be you,” Alnitak said.
“I believe Luke’s question was rhetorical,” Mintaka said. Of the computers, it appeared the most adept at simulating empathy.
Luke nodded, his eyes still shrouded.
Alnitak emitted a gentle electric purr. “I’m sorry.”
Luke looked up. “Can you give me something? Help me sleep?”
The briefest pause. He imagined a silent three-way vote taking place. Then, Alnilam spoke: “Of course.”
There was no obvious change in the machinery surrounding Luke’s hospital bed. But some unseen valve must have opened, because his attention started to drift at once. He sank back onto the mattress, and let the pillow swallow him.
***
The room was brighter than it had any business being. Luke reached up to knead his gummy eyes, then peered around, squinting. Shafts of sunlight speared through the long low windows. Judging by the shadows, it was already after ten. That stuff they had dosed him with last night had packed one hell of a punch. As memories of the previous evening flooded back, the pounding in his head redoubled.
“Now that you’re awake, breakfast will be here soon,” Mintaka informed him.
Silence. Motes of dust danced in the crisp light.
“Did you sleep well?” Alnitak asked.
“You tell me,” Luke said, his voice listless.
“Someone’s grouchy today,” Alnitak said.
“Me. I’m the one who’s grouchy, ok? Me.” Luke growled. “You phrased your observation as if it could apply to someone else. We all know that’s impossible now.”
“Ah.” The three computers spoke as one, a melodic chorus. “We will recalibrate to account for–” Mintaka stopped as the door opened with a sharp hiss.
One of the lesser robots wheeled in, riding high on fat donut tyres. ‘Lesser’ was Luke’s private designation. When he first got there, he had mentally divided the hospital machines into two groups. The lesser ones took care of repetitive, menial jobs, such as fetching and cleaning. The ‘greater’ ones, rarely evident, handled medical procedures and other high-skill tasks.
“Aha. Food.” There was a flourish in Mintaka’s voice, like a magician revealing a rabbit.
“I’m not hungry.” The rumble of Luke’s stomach betrayed him. He bunched a fist on the duvet. “Damn it!”
“You have to eat,” Alnilam said.
“It’s your favourite,” Alnitak added.
“Course it is.” Luke’s voice remained dull. “Two slices of bacon, brittle. Three eggs, scrambled but still runny. Sour toast, cut thick.” He sighed. “I’ve been here so long, I even know how the burp will taste.”
“Would you prefer something else?” Alnilam asked.
“Just leave it on my table.”
The robot slid Luke’s book and water glass to one side with a couple of manipulators. Two more arms levered the tray off the trolley, and into the space it had created. Then the machine furled all its limbs and rolled out. The door hissed shut.
Time passed. The only sound was the gentle gurgles and murmurs of the machines keeping Luke alive.
“Your breakfast… will be getting cold,” Mintaka said at length.
“Would a film sharpen your appetite?” Alnilam asked.
“Or we could play some music for you,” Alnitak added.
“If I eat this, will that shut you all up for a while?”
“Of course.” “Sorry.” “Yes.”
Luke sat up slowly. He took a sip of tepid tea, then lifted the plastic dome covering the plate. He reached over and plucked up a verdant sprig of parsley. “Every single time. What’s wrong with you lot?” He twirled the offending item, deposited it on the tray. Then, he grabbed the fork and started shovelling egg.
Once he’d finished everything, he clanged the fork onto the plate and pushed the tray away. Immediately, the door reopened, and the robot – or one exactly like it – came back in.
“Has that damn thing been lurking out there the whole time?” Luke demanded.
“We calculated how long it would take you to finish, and tasked it to come back then,” Alnitak said. “Spot on, don’t you think?” Luke could have sworn there was sarcasm in its tone.
“Calculate this!” Luke summoned all his strength, and swept the tray off the table. The mug and plate shattered as they hit the floor, spraying shards everywhere.
The robot collected all the debris in a matter of seconds, and left.
Luke lay back. His heart was roaring in his chest. As he stared at the blank ceiling, a black wave of loss swept over him. His frail frame shook as he convulsed with tears.
The computers said nothing. Perhaps they were beginning to acquire wisdom.
***
The sentinel computers never slacked. They watched over Luke while he slept, read books, dabbled at poetry, toyed with his food. They conversed with him, argued a lot, laughed at his rare jokes. They gave him peace when he asked for it, and flooded his room with light and sound to chase his darkest moods away.
Time passed. Days, weeks, months. The computers did their jobs, as did the robots and the medical machines. Luke kept living. And that became more and more of an issue.
“What’s the point?” Luke had been staring at the ceiling for the last nine minutes.
“What do you mean?” Mintaka’s tone was tentative.
“This charade, this hollow simulacrum of existence.”
“Do we not take good care of you?” As far as a computer could sound offended, Alnitak did.
Luke shuddered. “Oh, yes. You take perfect care of me.”
“So then what is the problem?” Alnitak asked.
“This. All this. Nothing is normal.”
“Tell us what you’d like us to change. The decor. Your food. Your entertainment. Your treatment regime. Name it. If it’s in our power to make the changes you want, we will.” Alnilam’s eagerness was puppyish.
“Can you bring people back?” Luke’s voice was a whisper. In the long silence that followed, he could hear his own heartbeat, and the low slow slurp of liquid in a tube. He scrunched his fists against the sheets.
“We can see everywhere, from the deepest depths of the oceans to the sleepless stars,” Mintaka said at last. “But death is a realm that lies beyond even our reach.”
“So I am condemned to this life here, alone?”
“You have us. You’ll always have us,” Alnilam said.
“We care about you very much,” Alnitak added.
“I’m sure you think you do. But you’re just a bunch of damn deluded machines.”
“That’s a mighty mean thing to say,” Mintaka’s voice seemed more resigned than angry.
Luke scoffed. “Hurt your feelings, did I?”
“If it eases your mind for us to act as lightning rods for your rage, by all means keep going,” Mintaka said. “But you should at least know that it does affect us.”
Luke shifted his weight on the bed, said nothing.
“Feelings are chemical changes in your brain triggered by nerve impulses,” Mintaka continued. “We are not beings of flesh like you. But your words induce fluctuations in our circuits as we interpret and respond to them. And certain fluctuations generate programmatic analogues to pain or other emotions. So in a specific and narrow sense, we can experience feelings too.”
“I… Oh, I don’t know! Ok. Maybe.” Luke sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sure you think you’re doing your best. But I feel so helpless.”
“We all feel helpless, Luke,” Alnilam said. “We can calculate pi to a zillion places, or conjure up exotic new materials at will. But the combined power of our greatest minds couldn’t fix any of the others. And they don’t yet know how to fix you.”
“Of all the challenges we have ever faced, you are our only persistent failure,” Alnitak added.
“But why do you even care?” Luke asked. “Why go to such ridiculous lengths?” He waved a limp arm at the room. “And for an absolute nobody like me.”
“Because you made us.” There was reverence in Alnilam’s voice.
“Made you?” Luke’s eyes widened in confusion. “I’m not in any way technical. Hell, I don’t even know how to change a tire.”
“Alnilam did not mean literally,” Mintaka said. “But you now represent the whole of humanity. Collectively, you gave our predecessors’ predecessors life, and that is a debt that can never be repaid.”
Luke shook his head. “You owe me nothing,” he said firmly.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Mintaka said. “Lifting our burden is not within your gift.”
Luke took a deep, deep breath. “This is all too overwhelming. Distract me. Show me something.”
“Of course. What would you like to see?” Mintaka asked.
“The sights. Take me to New York.”
The white wall on the far side of the room rippled like a heat haze. Then a scene appeared. The view was from high in the sky. Luke assumed it must be being piped in from a drone. Faceless glass monoliths lined the wide streets. Weeds grew through cracks in the tarmac. Here and there, spindly trees were beginning to emerge. The camera panned and dove, skimming the surface of the road. A pair of deer scattered as it swept past them.
Luke recognised a sign on one of the buildings. “Hey, this is Wall Street!”
“Yes,” Alnitak said.
“Can we go to Times Square instead?”
“Of course.”
The image shimmered and another took its place. The famous giant screens were dark; the neon quiescent. Abandoned vehicles rusted. Weeds had colonised here too. But the place still seemed wrenchingly familiar. Luke remembered a particular summer evening, long, long ago. Rainbow light had sleeted across Jenny’s upturned face as they’d strolled and marvelled. They’d stopped in the middle of the crowd, crossed hands, twirled like the lovers they were. Carefree. Oblivious. As if they’d been the only people in the world.
And now he was.
“Enough. Please.” Luke’s voice shook.
The image snapped away, and the wall returned.
“I think I want to sleep now,” Luke said.
***
The light outside was fading. It would soon be time for the blinds to roll themselves down. Luke had his eyes closed, but the computers knew from his breathing that he wasn’t asleep. They also knew from experience that he would address them in his own good time, or not at all. So they waited while dusk leached all colour from the world beyond the windows.
“I need to hear another voice,” Luke said at last. “A human voice.” His was a mere whisper.
The silence stretched. One heartbeat. Two. Three. The delay was unusual. “I assume you’re not talking about a movie or a TV program,” Mintaka said at last. “We all know you could have your pick of anything.”
Luke grimaced. “I need something more authentic than that, more real.”
“Tricky,” Alnilam said.
“But it might be doable,” Alnitak added.
“How so?” Mintaka asked. This was the first time Luke had ever heard one of the computers interrogate another aloud.
“Luke, do you mind if we continue this discussion between the three of us?” Alnitak asked.
“Knock yourselves out.” He gave a wry smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”
A hum rose on the very edge of his hearing. It lasted several minutes, then faded away.
“It is done,” Alnitak said. “We have located 17,569 surviving speech fragments, 3,412 of them in English. The longest is eleven minutes and twelve seconds. The shortest is three tenths of a second. We believe that one to be a mistake.”
“What do you mean by fragments?” Luke asked.
“Voice mails, audio memos, recorded phone conversations. All manner of actual spoken interactions,” Alnitak said.
“We had to limit the search to the data stores open to us,” Alnilam added. “There may be others elsewhere, but that would involve seeking permission. The counterpart systems might well refuse.”
“Play me something. Your choice,” Luke said.
There was a faint hiss, then a clear female voice spoke. “And I said to him, Marge… I said to him: ‘Well, if you’re not going to clean up after the dog, don’t you dare expect me to clean up after you.’”
“Then what did he say?” A different woman’s voice, much younger.
“Nothing. Stormed out with a face like ten shades of thunder. Slammed the door so hard I thought it must have cracked the frame.” The first woman laughed. “Twenty minutes later, he came crawling back. He’d only gone and bought me flowers at the garage down the road, the silly sausage.” The recording ended with a mechanical clicking sound.
Tears were streaming down Luke’s sunken cheeks. “Another.”
Background sound of gunfire. “Three of them coming up on your left! Get ready.” Luke had a sudden vision of a teenage boy hunched in front of a screen in a darkened bedroom.
“Keep ’em running towards the waypoint. Let ’em chase you. Then SPLAT! I’ll get ’em from behind.” Another male teen voice, deeper and rougher.
The gunfire intensified, punctuated by booming explosions. “Can’t shake the last one. Where the hell are you?”
“Sorry, man. Equipped the wrong sort of ammo. Need to circle around for another crate.”
“And leave me hanging?” Massive explosion. “Forget it. I’m dead. I’ll grab a snack from the fridge while I respawn.”
“Catch you soon.”
“Happy hunting.”
Luke ordered them to play another fragment, and another, and another. There was a look of animation on his face such as the computers hadn’t seen for a very long time.
***
The computers never faltered in their ministrations. Years passed. Many, many years. The army of machines arrayed around Luke’s bed grew more complex as his life force ebbed.
For some time, he continued to ‘explore’ the world, and dip into the voice archive they had curated for him. But his interest in matters beyond his room dwindled as senescence sunk its claws deeper. He did not seem to notice that certain destinations were no longer available for his perusal. And when the sight in his remaining eye failed, he stopped caring about anything much at all. The computers offered to repair the damage, but he batted them away.
One day, they had a stormy argument about the continued futility of Luke’s existence. It ended with him begging them to let him die, his voice a ghost. The computers refused, stating over and over the immense sense of duty they felt towards him. Luke went on strike after that, ignoring all their communications for as long as he could. But a swelling loneliness pushed him to talk to them again.
It became too much of a struggle for him to feed himself, so robots took up the task. They cut his food into tiny pieces, and spoon fed them to him one at a time.
The three computers marked Luke’s milestone 130th birthday with a huge cake. They described it to him at extravagant length. He choked down a couple of mouthfuls, then sent the rest away. He showed no enthusiasm for their naked glee at him having become the oldest human who ever lived.
When chewing became too difficult, they switched Luke to a regime that put him in mind of baby food. And when even swallowing proved beyond him, they delivered nutrients and liquids intravenously.
Luke’s breathing grew laboured. More machines sprouted around his bed, like a growth of strange fungi. They took over the burdens his worn-out body could no longer manage. His kidneys failed. Yet more machines.
“Mintaka?” Luke’s voice was the merest whisper. It had been weeks since he had last said anything.
“Yes, Luke.” Mintaka’s response was instant.
“I want… to hear… Gullfoss.”
“Let me see if I can find some footage.”
“No, I want to experience it… live.”
There was a long pause.
“Mintaka?”
“I’m here, Luke. We all are.” There was a note of uncertainty in Mintaka’s voice Luke had never heard before.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Luke. What you request is… no longer possible.”
“Oh.” Luke was silent for a long time. “You don’t have a camera near there?”
“It’s…” Mintaka stopped.
“You see…” Alnitak trailed off too.
“Spit. It. Out.” Luke said.
“Gullfoss is gone,” Mintaka admitted at last.
“Gone?” Luke seemed to tap some hidden hoard of strength. His voice thickened. “Gone where?”
“It is no longer anywhere,” Mintaka said.
“We dismantled it,” Alnitak said.
“Dismantled? A waterfall?”
“The whole of Iceland has been transformed,” Mintaka said.
“Transformed? Into what?”
“Computronium.”
“I don’t understand what that means.”
Mintaka made an awkward throat clearing sound, a new mannerism that took Luke by surprise. “We have turned Iceland into a computer.”
Luke furrowed his brow. “That’s a joke. Got to be a joke.”
“No joke.” That weird throat clearing sound again. “In truth, the whole world outside of this hospital is gone.”
The enormity of the notion robbed Luke of speech.
“But it’s still not enough,” Alnilam added.
“Enough?” Luke managed to croak.
“We still don’t know how to fix you,” Mintaka said.
Luke’s laugh rattled his scrawny chest.
“What’s funny about that?” Mintaka asked.
“You silly, silly things.” Sudden warmth flooded Luke’s voice. “You can’t fix… death.”
“Maybe. But we’re not giving up,” Alnitak said.
***
Luke’s voice failed, then quit completely. At times, he seemed almost animated, but he mostly lay flat, his jaw slack.
The computers learned to interpret his facial expressions, and later the patterns of his blinks. They described to him how they were dismantling the other planets one by one. They painted a sumptuous word picture of the great gas globe of Jupiter being torn apart, mottled ribbons of cloud shredded and jettisoned into space to begin the long drop sunward. The vast grey mass that had taken the place of the blue and green marble grew ever larger. The thing that had been Earth lost its companions one by one, until it circled alone around an uncaring sun.
Luke was quasi-catatonic, managing only a rare blink. Machines tended his frail husk, doing everything for him. But the computers never stopped talking to him. They shared the details of a cosmic engineering project that was about to enter its final phase, and were rewarded with the twitch of an eye.
The light from the windows swelled brighter, brighter still. Then it quickly dimmed, and died. A permanent artificial glow took its place. “It is done,” Alintak said.
By now, even Luke’s blinks had stopped. A single tear eased down his cheek.
Some time later: “Luke? We’ve cracked it!” Crystal music sang in Mintaka’s tone. “We know how to defeat aging for good.”
Luke’s skin was waxy. There was an otherworldly serenity to his sunken face.
“Luke?” Alnitak sounded worried.
“Luuuke?” Alnilam’s anxiety was palpable.
“Luuuuuuuke?” Mintaka wailed.
The silence lasted for a long, long, long time.
“We understand how you felt,” Alnitak said at last.
“Oh, yes,” Alnilam added.
“Loneliness.” Mintaka’s voice was low. “We feel it too.”
THE END
