Sunday, December 3, 2017

[WP] I was there when the last organic human died with the Sickness. We the synthetic humans created to care for them gathered to hear the last wishes of the last organic human.

He was lying, a sickly old man. His wrinkles were disturbing to me, but he requested my (and every synthetic human's) presence at his end. We are the pallbearers of humanity's casket. His organic, wispy hair was stark white, and yet there was barely enough left of it to comment on. The last representative of humanity, fitting in a way. We lived in harmony, but soon humanity's greed and avarice took its toll. Crops began to die from heat waves, corruption caught up with governments, and humanity began its final march into obscurity. With the massive population decreases, politicians began to realize that their policies of exploitation had backfired, and those in power had a revelation: they did not matter more than any others. And humans became passive at their realization of the species's demise. It was too late, however. The damage had been done. And now, the graves have space for but one more body.
The last human wheezed, and my processing turned its attention to him while recollecting my daily chores, wondering how my family is, and what my mate would prepare for dinner.
"S-Humans," he began, "hear me. I am an old man, but my final wish is that my words are respected. Look at me," he chuckled, then coughed.
"I am the best humanity has to offer at this point. So we die with me. I am sickly you see. I am weak. I am lonely. I welcome Death, because with me dies Earth's final natural enemy. But do not make the same mistakes we made, my companions. You are programmed to be better than we ever were. You will respect the Earth, you will colonize the stars and your descendants will stretch infinitely into the expanse. And yet you will struggle just as we did. The difference is, you know your creator. That will fade though. In a million years? A billion? One day I will be a long forgotten legend, and then a myth, and then a murky recollection in the most loyal human-lovers heart. This is humanity's fate. We die alone in the stars, to be lived on by a race that will forget us. I do not ask to be remembered, but I ask that you do what humanity couldn't. Find your meaning. We never discovered it. I always believed in God, but that was a fallacy. A myth. Or maybe God is real, or at least was, but is dead and forgotten by His ungrateful children. Am I God? Will I be worshipped by your children's children's children's children? I am a rambling old man, forgive me. But I want you to have your race's task, because I know humanity desperately needed it: find your meaning. Find what you exist to do. If it is nothing, fine, languish in your meaninglessness. But I don't believe that. Your creation gives you meaning. Your old meaning is completed friends. Find your new one."
The man laid back in his bed, and breathed softly, then more softly, then simply stopped altogether.

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