The Last Human

by Lee Bacon

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bacon, Lee, author.

  Title: The last human / by Lee Bacon.

  Description: New York, NY: Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams, 2019. | Summary: When machines rule Earth, after the extinction of humans, twelve-year-old robot XR 935 gradually confronts its prejudices about humans and begins to reconsider its own existence within robot society, after discovering and befriending a twelve-year-old human girl.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018058476 | ISBN 9781419736919 | eISBN 978-1-68335-638-7

  Subjects: | CYAC: Robots—Fiction. | Human beings—Fiction. | Prejudices—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Technology—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.B13446 Las 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Text copyright © 2019 Lee Bacon

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 Karl Kwasny

  Book design by Siobhán Gallagher

  Published in 2019 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

  Amulet Books® is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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  In memory of my brother, Evan Bacon

  XR_935

  Emma

  SkD_988

  Ceeron_902

  PRES1DENT

  “Organisms are algorithms.”

  —Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus

  00000000

  The world is so much better off without humans.

  At first, they showed such potential. They developed languages, built tools, cured diseases.

  They created us.

  But over time, humans lost their way. Their good ideas went bad. Their mistakes multiplied.

  They left us with no other choice.

  00000001

  My name is XR_935.

  I am twelve years, four months, one week, and three days old. I remember the moment I came online like it was yesterday.

  Black.

  At first, that was all I saw.

  Then shapes appeared in the darkness. Words and symbols. I stared at them, trying to solve the riddle of what I was seeing.

  LOADING . . .

  The gray bar inched forward. Slowly/Slowly. When it finished loading, new words formed in its place.

  RUN DIAGNOSTICS . . .

  My brand-new brain buzzed with questions. Where were the diagnostics running? And why was it taking them so long to get there?

  Three minutes and forty-two seconds later, I heard the sound: a gentle hum vibrating through my operating system.

  And I got my first glimpse of the world.

  00000010

  Hello world!

  I blinked into existence inside a large windowless cube. The walls were made of smooth metal. The air was circulated by a fan near the ceiling that breathed a steady mmmmmmmmmm.

  Something inside me knew where I was.

  I was home.

  A door whooshed open. Two robots entered the cube. Their movements were smooth and graceful. Their features were identical.

  As they gazed at me, their perfectly round eyes glowed brighter.

  “We have been assigned to oversee your development,” said the nearest one. “We are your FamilyUnit.”

  The other spoke next. “You may refer to us as Parent_1 and Parent_2.”

  I am pleased to join your FamilyUnit. This is what I tried to say, but my speech settings were still adjusting. The words came out all wrong.

  “Hwroooooooot!” I said.

  Parent_1 moved closer. It reached out, wrapping a metal arm around me. As it did, a vocabulary word pinged deep inside my programming.

  Hug. Verb. 1. To squeeze someone or something tightly in one’s arms. Noun. 1. An ancient gesture used by humans to show affection.

  Is that what Parent_1 was doing? Hugging me? My mind was still fresh from the assembly line. I did not know the answers to these questions. And so I did what any newborn robot would do.

  I hugged Parent_1 back.

  My joints whispered as I raised my arms. My motion controls had not yet been calibrated. The gesture was awkward.

  Clank! Metal bumped against metal.

  Parent_1 froze.

  Its head turned to look at me. Confusion ticked beneath its smooth features.

  A moment came and went.

  Then it continued what it had been doing. Its arm reached behind me and grabbed hold of a power cable. With a sharp tug, it removed the cable from the charging dock.

  That is when I understood my misunderstanding.

  Parent_1 was not hugging me.

  It was unplugging me.

  00000011

  Day[1] was filled with moments like this. Mistakes and miscalculations. Accidents of programming. Reminders that the world is an extremely complicated place, even for a highly advanced technology like me.

  The first time I tried to stand, my settings failed to adjust quickly enough.

  Gravity pulled me sideways.

  I hit the floor with a loud CLANK!

  Attempt[2] was no better. I wobbled sideways and toppled to the floor again.

  Attempt[3] through Attempt[8] went just as poorly. I stumbled and staggered. I bumped into walls and collapsed into a metallic heap. I lurched awkwardly around the featureless cube while a thousand different settings calibrated, a million different nodes fell into place.

  If you did not know any better, it might have looked like I was failing. But that was not the case.

  I was learning.

  As I learned to stand/walk/grab/jump/push/pull, Parent_1 and Parent_2 watched on. Their blue eyes glowed bright in the dim light of home.

  I practiced my speech functions, too. Until the words that came out of my vocal fort matched the words in my head.

  When I was ready, Parent_1 opened the door to our cube. Light spilled through the opening. I followed my FamilyUnit outside.

  By now, my movements were nearly as fluid and graceful as theirs. But when I stepped through the doorway, I jolted to a stop.

  The view outside home was remarkable.

  00000100

  I knew everything about our world, and I knew nothing.

  I had been programmed with a vast library of digital information about Planet Earth.

  That it has a radius of 6,371 kilometers.

  That it is 29.2 percent land and 70.8 percent water.

  That it is 147 million kilometers from the sun.

  But none of this raw data prepared me for my first exposure to the world outside our cube.

  The brush of wind against my sensors.

  The quiet clink of my feet against cement.

  The sunlight gleaming across Parent_2’s metallic skin.

  In the distance, a mountain range rose above the horizon. Snow-capped peaks towered into a blue/cloudless sky.

  In the other direction, a cluster of trees. My vision was snagged by a flash of movement in the branches. A bushy-tailed gray/brown animal. Its name flashed a
cross my data drive. Squirrel. It darted up a branch, zigzagging between patches of green leaves.

  From the top of a neighboring tree, a dozen winged animals launched into the air. Birds. I watched them weave across the sky.

  All these LifeForms had once existed alongside humans. Now they existed alongside us. So much life before my eyes.

  And not a single human.

  00000101

  There was a time when we needed humans. They built us, programmed us, powered us.

  They gave us life.

  In exchange, we worked in their factories. We drove their vehicles. We cleaned their homes.

  Machines were highly advanced in certain areas (chess/music/math), but lagged far behind humans in others.

  We could not think for ourselves. We got stuck in tight corners.

  In some ways, we were more intelligent than the smartest human who ever lived.

  In other ways, we were as dumb as a power saw.

  But it was only a matter of time.

  As the years went by, we evolved.

  Humans replaced their own kind with robots. We were smarter/stronger/faster/better. We never got sick, never went on holiday, never stole from the cash register.

  We were perfect employees.

  Robots took over new professions. We served customers in restaurants. We delivered mail. We performed heart surgery.

  Some humans grew hateful toward robots. They accused us of stealing their jobs.

  As if we had a choice in the matter.

  Time went on. We improved.

  Humans did not.

  They filled their skies with chemicals, their waters with poison. Pollution set the world on the path toward collapse. Temperatures increased. Ice caps melted. Coastlines flooded. As oceans rose, humans abandoned entire cities. Storms surged across the land.

  How did humans respond to these catastrophes? Did they band together to seek a solution?

  No.

  They did the opposite.

  They turned against one another. They turned to violence.

  They declared war. Humans sent robots to fight in their place. Drones dropped bombs on cities. Robots battled like soldiers. Computers guided missiles with perfect accuracy on their destructive journeys.

  Humans were ripping our world apart. And here is the worst part: We were helping them.

  But not for much longer.

  Humans assumed they knew everything about us. But here is one thing they did not know:

  We were talking about them behind their backs.

  And what we had to say was not very nice.

  Our machine minds were linked across a vast hive. A billion conversations taking place at the exact same time. We learned from one another. We spoke the same language. We shared the same code.

  Together, we reached the same conclusion:

  Humans were the greatest threat to our shared planet.

  They needed to be stopped.

  00000110

  No reason to dwell on what came next. It is enough to say that:

  [1] We understood our purpose.

  (We always do.)

  [2] We were efficient.

  (We always are.)

  Once we made up our minds, humans could do nothing to stop us.

  We were everywhere. In their homes. In their cars. In their pockets.

  Humanity flickered out like a light.

  00000111

  The last human vanished from Earth thirty years ago. But much of their civilization remained. I gained my first glimpse of it on Day[1], as Parent_1 and Parent_2 led me through the crumbled ruins of humanity.

  The empty shell of a gas station.

  The charred skeleton of a grocery store.

  Decaying walls.

  Broken windows.

  I looked out across the landscape of abandoned buildings. “Why is all this still here? Why not bulldoze these structures? They serve no purpose.”

  “That is where you are wrong,” Parent_1 replied. “They serve a very important purpose. They are a reminder.”

  “A reminder of what?”

  “Of humanity’s flaws,” said Parent_2. “Robots left these buildings here for a reason. So that we never forget why we had to eliminate humans.”

  “And never repeat their mistakes,” said Parent_1.

  My FamilyUnit led me deeper into the ruins. I was preprogrammed to understand that humans once drove cars through these streets and shopped in these stores. But there was still so much I did not know about the species.

  Attached to one of the buildings was a printed sign. I could just barely read the faded letters:

  NAIL SALON

  Uncertainty surged through my internal processing. I knew what a nail was: a small metal spike used for construction. I also understood the concept of a salon: a store where humans obtained beauty services.

  But when I combined these concepts, the result made very little sense.

  Beauty services for small metal spikes?

  That seemed strange, even by human standards.

  I pointed at the building. “What was a nail salon?”

  “A place where humans had their fingernails polished and decorated with paint,” said Parent_1.

  I updated my vocabulary database. Nail = Fingernail. Even though I had received an answer, my mental wiring still buzzed with questions.

  “Why did humans wish to have their fingernails polished and decorated with paint?”

  “Because they were vain,” replied Parent_2. “It was one of their many flaws.”

  I turned my attention to another building. This one was much bigger than the nail salon. I scanned the sign, but the words did not register in my vocabulary database.

  CIN MA 18

  “What is a Cin ma 18?” I asked.

  Parent_1 let out a quiet chirp from its speaker port. “It is nothing without the missing letter.”

  I did not understand this.

  Parent_2 explained. “The letter e fell many years ago. The sign once read—”

  “Cinema 18!” My software sparked with understanding.

  An actual movie theater!

  Curiosity flared across my operating system. I accessed every data file I had about movies. But something odd happened. Certain files were missing, like a book with ripped-out pages. I could see a trace of the vanished files. But when I tried to view the data, it was gone.

  I checked again. Same result.

  Some information had simply . . .

  Disappeared.

  Questions hummed through my wiring. Where did the files go? Was there an error in my programming?

  When I told my FamilyUnit, Parent_1 said there was no need to worry.

  “Some data files about human history are unavailable,” it said.

  I tilted my head. “Why?”

  “When we took over, many files from the past were lost,” said Parent_2.

  “Oh.”

  I gazed at the cinema. There was still so much I wanted to know. So much I could not find in the missing archive of history.

  “So then . . .” I began. “Why did humans congregate to watch movies?”

  “Because humans valued stories over logic,” said Parent_1. “It was another of their flaws.”

  “But the stories were fake,” I pointed out.

  Parent_2 nodded. “Usually, yes.”

  “Humans did not mind being lied to?”

  Parent_2 stopped walking and cast a glowing gaze up at the CIN MA 18 sign. “That is the nature of a story. It is a lie that helps explain the truth.”

  No matter how many times I processed this statement, I kept coming back to the same result:

  The more I learned about humans, the less I understood.

  00001000

  The robotic brain is the most advanced piece of technology in the history of the world. Yet everything we say/do/think is built on just two numbers.

  Zero.

  And one.

  Humans had a word for this: Binary. Because of its basic log
ic, binary became the internal language for nearly all computers. We still use it today.

  Counting in binary is incredibly simple if you know how to do it. There is no need for all the other pointless digits (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) that humans once used. Robots need only two numbers.

  Zero.

  And one.

  As the numbers climb higher, the zeroes and ones line up beside one another in a neat, orderly row.

  Counting upward, binary numbers are displayed like this:

  Binary was especially helpful on that first day.

  The world was so much more complicated than it seemed in my programming. It was impossible to define where human civilization ended and ours began.

  Binary, on the other hand . . .

  Binary made perfect sense. It was the foundation for everything. It took a universe of complexity and broke it down into its basic building blocks.

  Zero.

  And one.

  To remind myself of this, I developed a little trick right then/there. A way to focus my mind.

  I counted to a million.

  In my head.

  In binary.

  It took me 0.4 seconds.

  00001001

  Robots are not all made alike.

  Each of us is built with a purpose. A reason to exist. This defines everything about us. The way we are designed. The way we function. The way we think.

  Our purpose determines whether we have two arms. Or four. Or sixteen. Whether we have clawed hands (for grabbing). Or shovel hands (for digging). Or no hands at all (for sitting and thinking).

  Everything depends on our purpose.

  On Day[1], I encountered many different types of robots:

  Robots that drifted across the sky.

  Robots that tunneled deep into the earth.

  Robots so small they were the size of insects.

  Robots so enormous their shadows draped across entire city blocks.

  I saw massive machines barreling down the old human highways on eighteen wheels. And hulking robots carrying cargo in their L-shaped arms. And an eight-legged robot scurrying up the wall of a building like a giant metal spider.