What is left of Earth

May 6th, 4037

This may be my last journal entry, we as a people are failing. I'm not sure there's hope anymore, God has abandoned us.

I had always hoped I would be admired by future generations as the savior of humanity, the pilot of the ship that holds the last of our kind, and the one that should have guided us back home. The truth is though, I am a failure, once we get home there will be nothing left to nurse the human race back into abundance. Even harder to swallow than that, I am not really even a man anymore. My body was badly damaged in the last battle of World War 3 and now I am nothing but my brain lodged into a robot body. Mother would've never accepted me again anyways, she never trusted robots. She said "I told you so" from the first moment that our artificial intelligence began to revolt up until they evolved enough to eliminate our entire kind.

But her heart locket still dangles around my neck. Inside, a picture of my sister and I as children. Sometimes, its' the only thing that keeps my mind right. My sister is still in cryogenic sleep and will only be awoken upon arrival back to Earth.

The ships crew aren't motivated, all of our tired eyes washed in the pale blue light of the ships controls every day and night. One of our thrusters is badly damaged but nobody is brave enough to venture out into space to fix it. Last time we sent a human being outside the ship to make repairs, the fleet of robot marines could sense his heat signature from almost a full lightyear away. It is almost infuriating how technology has progressed so quickly once we trained AI's to upgrade themselves, their knowledge of robotics grew at an almost impossible rate.

Sometimes... I'm not even sure how much I trust myself in this machine body. What does it mean to be human if all thats left is the mind? It's agony. Pure agony. I feel stuck between worlds. I am a human being and I have been trained my entire adult life to destroy intelligent machine life, but these days that is more of a muscle memory than a passion. I feel as though I started to sympathize with the rival machines. That sentiment is definitely not shared however, they see me as nothing as a threat. I can begin to sense my crew feeling that way too, if I weren't the commander and pilot of this ship, they may have already thrown me out of the airlock.

We should be arriving to Earth within the next several hours thanks to hyper-speed. I'm just not sure how ready I am to face the war torn landscape. Twisted metal and a heavy orange haze. It certainly won't feel like returning home. What should be a monumental moment will be a somber one instead. Instead of a second try at making Earth our home as a species, very few of us remain and we will have to renter survival mode. Instead of thousands of us ready to repopulate and rebuild... there will be 109 of us, desperate for a break. Sadly though, we are running out of resources on our ship to keep ourselves alive for much longer.

The hardest part was watching people suffer and starve knowing I am now a timeless being in my new machine body. Many of the humans and animals meant to return the Earth were placed into cryogenic sleep so that they could awaken upon arrival, but one of the robotic marine fleets hacked into our mainframe and disengaged all of the cryo-pods in the civilian level wing of the ship. Continuing this mission is pure hell and anguish.

Days like today, I miss my mother, her little heart locket around my neck feels like it weighs 100 pounds when I think of her. She was one of the first people I lost when the 3rd World War began to pick up pace. She couldn't out run or out fight the machines that ambushed her home. That home was where I grew up, it was ancient in its' lack of technology, she hated how lazy it made humanity. Who knew the thing she avoided the most would be the thing that made her meet her end?

If this journal entry isn't followed up tomorrow, the re-ntry back to Earth has failed, and so have I. If any intelligent life out there stumbles across this diary, please share the story of humanity's last stand. Heed the warning of pushing technology too far. It could be your greatest demise.