The Last Man

Moment, to moment, to moment.

I sip my Piña Colada on the beach, a faint breeze, and the even fainter sound of tropical music— muffled, not too quiet, not too loud, just enough to help a person not to think.

Moment, to moment, to moment.

The grainy white sand of the beach, this place, maybe an actual Carribean island. Somewhere beginning with ‘A’. ‘Antigua’, ‘Angover’, ‘Angeria’, ‘Angina’.

The watch on my arm makes a click and a beep, my heart-rate elevated, the overseers alerted and silently sparked into action.

Some drug in my system now, maybe only in trace amounts, but meant to settle my nerves. Vision blurs. The waves are rolling, rolling, rolling.

My red shorts are still damp from the pool beside the sea, the moisture, cooling, concealing a drop or two of sweat. Regulated, monitored.

Moment, to moment, to moment.

I am surprised that I remembered ‘Antigua’. The watchers probably already know and have been alerted. Tonight, when I am asleep, in the emperor bed, in the wood panelled room beneath the fan and the verdant palms (all false), they will enter. They will fix my memory.

If I strain, I can recall a name: rrrr… Richard Carrier, my name. We aren’t supposed to remember names. Who knows how much they hear, how much they know when I think.

I sit up on the vinyl wrapped pool lounger, it’s stripes between green and blue in colour, a calming turquoise. Remember, never move severely, always remember the rules.

Rule 1. Always relax.

Rule 2. This is paradise.

Rule 3. Don’t fight paradise.

I do miss something: the words on a page. I can reach for a magazine, sure. But inside there is no writing, only doctored photographs, only peace and joy and…

Moment, to moment, to moment.

Maybe I can stand and walk into the ocean and… No. There wouldn’t be much point. This is the world, the whole world.

Strain harder Richard, think about how you got here. I could have died and come here, but I know in my heart that I came here by boat. The year? 2051, maybe earlier, maybe later.

A little robot with dangly legs and a button nose comes towards me. I ought to cry, but if I did he would taste my tears and know whether they were of fear, or joy.

‘Don’t fight it’, says the voice in my head. Is this an angel, a devil? Or, is it just them?

If only the choice were an easy one: ‘sleep and dream, or wake and die’. I would like that choice.

I remember only one non-compliant. She had sat where you are now, on that recliner. She held a plate full of stilton, cheddar, brie, and grapes: bundles of grapes, a cornucopian mountain of them.

I smiled at her, she had a pointed chin, wary eyes, wavy blonde hair, and a look of indelicate beauty that I took as an affront to the nature of this place. I thought that I might have recognised her face, she was once a news-anchor, perhaps. Or, maybe she would have become one had she not partook in the Homecoming.

My fingers flipped through a flicker, one of those picture-book magazines. I’d turn a page and blue eyes would eat a single grape. First green, then red, then red and red, then just green.

One grape, two grapes, three grapes— twenty grapes.

Then she stopped. She stood up slowly, I barely glanced at the movement over my sunglasses, but glance I did. She put her hands to her head and then started smashing her watch on the smooth metal of her lounger. The device leaked a green liquid on the ground, as if it was an organ filled with pus.

She put her hands to her ears and started to scream.

She put her fingers through her hair and started to pull.

First just a few hairs came out, then a whole clump of hair, then as I saw them coming in my peripheral vision, I looked down and away.

I did continue to listen though. I heard her feet in the sand, and then the splash and the screams in the sea. She shouted, ‘I am coming, I am coming’. She sputtered and coughed and tried desperately to submerge her head, to exhale, to swim and kick and scream, and ultimately her aim was doubtless clear— die, or escape.

The sun came and went awhile after that. She was once again beside me, on the recliner. Her hand holding a grape, her eyes shimmering in the heat. She was changed, but stayed the same.

One grape, two grapes… moment, to moment, to moment.

Maybe escape is possible. I still cling to the idea of it, and I cling to something else too. I have one object from before, a memento, a relic, something I have managed to preserve. It had been Richard Carrier’s before all this, small, made of bronze and for whatever reason they had never asked me to remove it, or hand it over.

At night, when we are all asleep, they change our clothes out for fresh shirts, dressing-gowns of Egyptian cotton or silk, depending on the season. But, when I wake, there right beside me lies the heart-shaped locket, never taken, never moved.

Perhaps its glare is enough to scramble their sensors. Or maybe it is seen as a trivial detail, a bit of waste metal, a harmless trinket. However they perceive it, what matters is that they don’t take it. So, it remains mine, and mine alone.

I lie in the midday sun, my body neither too warm, nor too cold. Perhaps the locket can be of greater use to me than they have realised. Love conquers all, after all.

Like cave-men, we humans know when we are being watched, and when it is safe to open a locket without raising suspicion. I breathe normally. Inhale... Exhale. There is my mother Martha. It has been a long time since I have seen her features, her green eyes are bewitching, and her unimpeded stare is a fragment of a different time.

I hold up the locket high above me, give it an audience to a dozen cameras hidden in bushes, in shells, in the sand. The cameras watch in silence. I hear nothing, no footprints, no sounds of cougar robots about to pounce.

So it’s true. They cannot see my mother, she yet casts her spell and makes them blind.

A little glass sits between the bronze of the locket. I pluck a shell from the beach: smooth, harmless and place it on top of the hinge. As if cracking a nut, I firmly squeeze the two sides of the locket together and hear a crunch. Fragments of glass fall into my hand, alongside the ancient photograph.

I close my eyes, finding relief in the darkness. When I open them again: no attendant, no waiter, or keeper, or master, or slave. Only me.

This is the shot that I have been waiting for. My one chance at non-compliance. How many centuries have I been here now? Enough. I look again at my mother. Maybe I will thank her if I see her again.

My name is Richard Carrier, I am 312 and it is my will to end this nightmare.

Hesitation. I have the means to do something, I feel the cold glass in my hand, I could use it against them— I could use it against myself. I raise it to my… But my watch is beeping, suddenly I don’t feel the urge… Suddenly...

Moment, after moment.. The drugs and the dreaming begins in earnest. I feel myself fading in oxytocin. What real choice do I have?

I am still conscious… just about. My last thoughts? Trust humans to make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. I see the palms swaying.

Trust mother to… Robots, they are coming. Please, God. Don’t let them come. I see the outline of my Piña Colada with my eyes wide shut.

[End of memory]