The Last Human

by Lee Bacon

  PRES1DENT slung out its arms and gracefully wrapped its machine fingers around Emma’s neck.

  01100001

  I raced toward Emma, but the EnforcementBots were in my way. They moved in closer, surrounding Emma and PRES1DENT. A swarm of gray/brick-shaped robots.

  I screamed, but my voice was lost in the chaos. I attempted to push past the machine mob, but a blocky arm knocked me back.

  My balance settings spun wildly. The world shifted into a digital blur.

  I crashed to the floor.

  As I climbed to my knees, the robot horde was already breaking up, dragging its victim away.

  But it was not Emma.

  It was PRES1DENT.

  I could barely believe my visual ports. Realization clicked into place.

  The EnforcementBots had not hurt Emma.

  They had saved her.

  The president let out a terrible computerized scream. It tried to fight, but resistance was useless. The EnforcementBots were designed for this process. There was no stopping them.

  The room echoed with a racket of clanking/screeching metal as PRES1DENT was pulled away/away/away.

  The moment was repeated in every screen, every digital surface, broadcast live across the Hive and in the mind of every robot on Earth.

  A door slid open in the digital wall. The EnforcementBots heaved PRES1DENT into the darkness on the other side.

  01100010

  Emma was hunched on her knees. One hand pressed against the floor, the other gently against her throat. Behind the curtain of her hair, I could see fragments of her face. Her cheeks were splotched with red. She strained with every breath.

  I placed a hand softly on her back. “Are you injured?”

  She shook her head, her voice a weak whisper. “I’ll be okay.”

  “PRES1DENT is gone now,” Ceeron said. “You need not worry.”

  SkD appeared at her side, images glowing on its screen.

  A faint smile appeared at the corner of Emma’s mouth. “Of course you can have a hug!”

  She wrapped her arms around the small robot.

  How can I describe what happened next? It must have been a result of my overworked operating system. I was not built to withstand so much in such a short amount of time. No matter how many fans hummed inside me, my processors were burning up.

  I was exhausted/drained/pooped.

  For once in my life, I was not thinking about anything at all.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I leaned over and stretched my arms around Emma/SkD. An instant later, I felt a heavy weight on my shoulder. A giant metal hand. Ceeron joined in.

  A definition pinged inside my programming.

  Group Hug. Noun. 1. When three or more individuals embrace. 2. An ancient gesture used by humans to show affection, support, and/or solidarity.

  My memory skipped like a stone on a still pond. Over twelve years into the past. All the way back to Day[1]. My first minutes of life. The way Parent_1 had reached around me. I thought it was hugging me, but I was wrong.

  It was unplugging me.

  Twelve years was a long time between giving a hug and receiving one back.

  It was worth the wait.

  01100011

  There was one thing I needed to say. I did not know whether this was the right time—inside a TransportDrone, surrounded by flickering screens—but I did not care.

  I had delayed long enough.

  “I want you to know something,” I said to Emma/Ceeron/SkD. “You are my . . .”

  The word hovered at the edge of my vocabulary drive. I hesitated one final moment.

  “You are my friends.”

  Silence.

  For a second, this was the only response.

  Maybe I should not have said anything. Maybe I should have kept my friendship to myself. Maybe—

  SkD’s screen glowed.

  One image. Many meanings.

  I approve.

  It is about time.

  Let us be friends.

  Ceeron said, “Me, too.”

  “I knew it!” Emma’s excited voice mixed with the humming engines. “You guys are total BFFs!”

  As the four of us were group-hugging and talking about friendship, the floor shifted. The O-shaped platform lowered, carrying us back down.

  Out of the DigitalDome.

  KA-THUNK! The platform landed in the middle of the forest clearing. We stepped off, and the giant metal O lurched into motion again, returning to the enormous X in the sky.

  And like a magic trick, the rising platform revealed something marvelous underneath.

  The hatch.

  Emma slung her backpack off her shoulder. She unzipped a front pouch, reached inside, and removed a slim/metal/gray object. About the length of her pointer finger. Round at one end, jagged at the other. I searched my image database, and the object’s name appeared.

  Key

  Getting on her knees, Emma dusted off the bunker door until she found what she was looking for: a hole to match her key. But the hole was packed tightly with three decades’ worth of dirt. And no matter how much Emma scraped at it, she could not clear the dirt away.

  Chirrup. Emma looked up from the dirt-filled keyhole to see SkD staring back at her. Its screen blinked.

  I said to Emma, “SkD would like to make wind.”

  Emma giggled.

  I stared at her, confused. “What is so funny about SkD making wind?”

  “Nothing,” she said, still giggling. “Go for it, SkD! I officially give you permission to make wind.”

  The small robot extended one of its arms toward the keyhole. From the tip of its finger came a burst of highly pressurized air. FWOOSH! A tiny storm aimed straight into the keyhole. Dirt flew everywhere. When the robot was done, the hole was clear.

  Emma grinned at SkD. “Thanks! You’re awesome at making wind!”

  She took a deep breath. Inserted the key. Turned it. And then—

  Click.

  The sound came from deep within the hatch.

  Emma grabbed the handle. A thick metal cylinder. She pulled/pulled/pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  “Perhaps I can be of assistance.” Ceeron took hold of the handle. With a single tug, the massive robot twisted the cylinder 90 degrees.

  And when it lifted, the door eased open.

  Curiosity surged through my operating system. I leaned forward. So did the others. All four of us peered down the opening. This is what we saw:

  A round metal tube.

  Stretching down/down/down.

  Into the shadows.

  Into the bunker.

  A ladder was attached to one wall of the tube. Emma eased herself onto it, one foot at a time. She climbed down the ladder. When she was halfway into the tube, she hesitated. Her eyes turned in our direction.

  She said nothing, but her silence said everything. It was full of fear/hope/excitement/dread.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  SkD beeped with agreement. Its screen glowed its own version of support.

  Ceeron spoke in a rumbling voice. “We will see you again later, alligator.”

  This brought a smile to Emma’s face. “After a while, crocodile.”

  And with these strange words, she set into motion again. Down/Down/Down.

  Deeper underground.

  Until the shadows swallowed her whole.

  01100100

  While we waited, I counted in binary.

  When I reached a million, I started over.

  Again.

  And again.

  My brain filled with a steady stream of ones and zeroes. It was the only way to keep my thoughts from wandering down the dark pathways of probability.

  Probability[1]: The humans inside the bunker do not possess the medicine Emma needs.

  Probability[2]: They will refuse to share it with her.

  Probability[3]: They died long ago.

  Probability[4]: . . .

  I did not want to think about these
scenarios, and so I repeated my task, concentrating on ones and zeroes, stacking them up in neat/orderly rows until—

  A sound from far below.

  A faint clang.

  Flesh against metal.

  The binary numbers vanished like smoke in a breeze. I peered down into the tube. At first, all I saw was darkness. Then a pale form emerged from the shadows.

  “Emma!” The volume of my voice surprised me. It echoed against metal walls. “Are you okay?”

  Silence for 1.2 seconds. And then—

  “Yes.” A voice from the shadows. Emma’s voice. “I’m all right.”

  “And the medicine?”

  A pause for 0.6 seconds.

  It felt much longer.

  Then Emma called up, “They had it! I got the medicine!”

  I could hear excitement/relief in her voice, filling the small metal space.

  As she climbed, Emma explained: The other humans were staying below. For now. They would vote on what to do next and decide together whether it was safe to leave their bunker, their home for the past thirty years.

  Emma emerged from the hatch opening. Her eyes rose to the sky. The TransportDrone still hovered above us.

  She peered up at the enormous metal X. “So, do you think your robot buddies will let us hitch a ride back to my bunker?”

  01100101

  Now that my fellow robots had decided not to kill Emma, they were much more willing to help her.

  The two bunkers were 48.6 kilometers apart. Which was even farther than the distance we had traveled from the solar farm. I would not have wanted to make the trip back on foot. Fortunately, we were able to fly the entire way in the TransportDrone.

  PRES1DENT was on the craft with us, being held in a separate room by EnforcementBots. The Hive would decide what would happen to PRES1DENT next, what its punishment would be for going against the will of robotkind.

  All around us, the DigitalDome displayed a view of the landscape far below. I watched as we flew over familiar terrain, our journey unspooling in reverse.

  The forest that turned the world green.

  The mountains where Ceeron told a knock-knock joke about a wooden shoe.

  The mall where I died and was reborn.

  The orchard where Emma sampled apples.

  The TrainDepot where we tried/failed to drop Emma off.

  Electronics Extravaganza where Emma spent the night.

  A new sight drifted into view. The solar farm. It glimmered in the afternoon sun. I had spent nearly all of my waking life among these panels. But I had never seen them like this before. From so high up, the solar farm appeared oddly small. As if I could wrap my arms around it, hold it against me.

  My memory drive replayed my first glimpse of the solar farm. For a split second, I had been convinced that it was the ocean.

  Now it looked like a pond. Gleaming and blue and lovely.

  And small.

  A splash of blue, surrounded by a great big world.

  Working in the solar farm was my purpose. But not my only purpose. Not anymore.

  Perhaps someday I would see the real ocean.

  01100110

  The TransportDrone dropped us off in a stretch of gently curving hills. We walked under the shivering shadows of tall oaks. Emma stopped next to a pile of broken branches.

  She pulled them away, one by one.

  Underneath was a hatch.

  It was a familiar/unfamiliar sight. It looked identical to the other hatch. But the bunker underneath was a completely different world. Until two days ago, it was the only world Emma had known. It contained her FamilyUnit, her friends. But were they still alive? Inside Emma’s backpack was the antiviral medication they needed. But what if we were too late? What if they were already dead?

  I could see these same questions in Emma’s face.

  She turned a key, twisted a handle, and opened the metal doorway.

  She took a long breath, as though preparing to dive deep underwater. And then she climbed into the bunker.

  01100111

  Zeroes and ones.

  Ones and zeroes.

  My head was full of them.

  Time stretched forward.

  Seconds/Minutes/Hours.

  And I waited. And I counted. And I forced my artificial brain to think of nothing else.

  Except zeroes and ones.

  Ones and zeroes.

  01101000

  Over the next five hours, twelve minutes, and forty-one seconds, Emma came up from the bunker three times.

  Trip[1]:

  When she emerged from the hatch, she carried with her good news and bad news.

  First the good news: The people inside the bunker were still alive.

  And then the bad: The sickness had taken a devastating toll. Many inhabitants were unconscious. Some barely clung to life.

  Emma had given the medication to all of them, but was it enough?

  She wiped the sweat from her forehead and went back down.

  Trip[2]:

  This time, a faint note of optimism clung to her worried features.

  “It’s still too early to tell for sure,” she said. “But I think some of them are getting better.”

  She took another deep breath and descended into the bunker again.

  Trip[3]:

  The third time Emma climbed up through the hatch, she was not alone.

  01101001

  Emma was followed out of the bunker by a man and a woman. These were only the second/third humans I had ever encountered in my life.

  I stared.

  They wore the remnants of their illness. Dark circles beneath their eyes. Ashen skin.

  The man had a black/gray beard and green/brown eyes. The woman’s curly/brown hair hung down to her narrow shoulders.

  I ran a comparative analysis of their facial features. “Are you Emma’s FamilyUnit?”

  The woman nodded. “I’m her mom.” She tilted her head toward the man at her side. “And this is her dad.”

  The man brought a hand down on Emma’s shoulder. His gaze moved from Ceeron to SkD before finally landing on me. “Our daughter tells us the three of you saved her life. You saved all our lives. Thank you. Thank you so . . .”

  His words trembled into silence. Tears formed in his green/brown eyes.

  SkD responded with a high-pitched beep. Images flickered across its screen.

  Ceeron provided the translation: “We are happy to help.”

  SkD beeped again. Another symbol appeared.

  “And also,” Ceeron continued, “Emma is an absolute treasure.”

  “We agree.” Emma’s mom smiled.

  “Is it true what Emma told us?” her dad asked. “We can leave the bunker? We’re safe up here again?”

  I nodded. Hours earlier, SkD, Ceeron, and I had uploaded all our memory files of Emma to the Hive. This gave every machine the chance to evaluate our interactions with her. And her interactions with us. She became a test case. A real-life example of a human in a robot world.

  And we opened the Archive of Human History. All of it. Including the files that PRES1DENT had kept hidden all these years.

  This made everything very complicated.

  Our machine minds are used to thinking in binary. Dividing the world into two categories.

  Zero.

  Or one.

  But it turns out, humans are too messy for binary. They cannot be sorted into just one of two choices. They are so many things all at once. They are angry/happy/evil/good/vain/humble/greedy/giving/cruel/kind.

  And so much more.

  But after many hours of calculations/debates/analysis, the Hive came back with its verdict.

  Humans were no longer the enemy.

  Not all of us reached this conclusion. Some still believed that humans deserved no place in our civilization. That the threat was far too great. That the humans could not be trusted.

  But these voices were drowned out by the majority of robots.

  Our decision: From n
ow on, we would share the world with humans.

  When I told this to Emma’s FamilyUnit, relief spilled across their features. They peered at their surroundings. Nearby hills soaking up the last rays of sunlight. Evening sky filtering through the trees.

  “Wow,” Emma’s mom whispered in disbelief. “I forgot how big everything is up here.”

  Maybe she was overwhelmed by the outside world. Or still feeling the effects of her illness. Maybe both. But in an instant, Emma’s mom lost her footing. Her knees crumpled beneath her. She started to fall. Fortunately, Emma was there. Wrapping an arm around her mother, supporting her.

  Emma’s dad frowned with concern. He moved toward his Family-Unit, but seemed just as unsteady on his feet.

  Ceeron extended a large metal arm. Emma’s dad flinched, then took a second look at the huge robot’s steady hand.

  The fear faded from his expression.

  “Sorry. I thought for a second . . .” He offered a weak smile. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

  Hobbling forward, he leaned against Ceeron.

  Emma cast a nervous gaze from one parent to the other. “I told you guys it was too soon. Let’s get you back to bed.”

  SkD’s screen offered a suggestion for their recovery.

  Emma helped her FamilyUnit back through the open hatch.

  We waved goodbye.

  But that was not the only family reunion of the day. When I turned, I noticed a pair of robots watching.

  Parent_1 and Parent_2.

  01101010

  I did not know what to say to my FamilyUnit. But that did not matter. Because as soon as I saw them, they began speaking. Their voices poured out quickly, one after the other.

  Parent_1: XR—we were concerned.

  Parent_2: We did not know what happened to you.

  Parent_1: When you vanished, we ran the probabilities. They were not good.

  Parent_2: We assumed you were hurt. Or worse.

  I considered thousands of possible responses. None were satisfactory. None could undo what I had put my FamilyUnit through.