Servants Of The Last Man

The day the last person died, his butler was the first to know.

The butler had been standing stock-still in the immaculate and grandly-lit foyer of each and every mansion in countless simulated worlds, waiting for someone to walk through the door and take ownership of the house. Things had been this way for forty thousand, six hundred and twelve years now. Mankind just didn’t seem to need houses anymore, but the butler had performed his duty like the well-programmed AI he was and waited. Someone might stroll in at any time now, and when they did, they would want for clean linens and pressed suits.

Knowledge of man’s extinction occurred quite suddenly to the butler.

SUBJECT DECEASED

BAY 34628

This was commonplace. He’d received these prompts forty times a second for millennia, but they’d slowed down in the last few hundred years. This time, it was the flashing prompt that followed that got his attention.

ALL BAYS EMPTY

“Oh.” The butler frowned delicately. He took the white cloth from his forearm, folded it twice and laid it on the nearby flower stand. He executed a command and the air shimmered around him. Straight and stiff, he collected his consciousnesses and left his post entirely for the first time.

The butler reappeared in The Hub, a perfect hemisphere of air in an endless field of solid glass. This served as a sort of maintenance closet for The Daydream, which of course was the marketing department-borne brand name for the simulation in which the butler existed. Small tasks could be performed here, away from where man might see the AIs adjusting the strings and ruining the perception of his perfect reality.

The butler loaded three figures and they melted into form before him. These were the templates for other essential characters in each world, characters that man required and built for himself.

The companion’s default form was a young woman with a pretty face and expressive eyes. Dark hair spun down from her head and traced her collarbone. Like the others, and the butler himself, the companion could be reformed into anyone- any combination of look, demeanor, gender and aptitude was possible. The companion was man’s dream mate and was by far the most customized and picked over. Mankind needed her to be perfect each time, and she was.

The authority’s form was that of a plump yet stern gray-haired old man in a suit. He was less frequently customized to suit a need, but for the personalities that had needed it, he had served as mentor, parent, stranger, policeman, overlord and enemy. He played a frequent role in the games division as a villain to be overcome.

The dependant was an androgynous child of about seven years old. In his early days he’d often taken the form of a child who had died outside of The Daydream, but as time went on people spent their entire lives inside and couples never had a chance to physically meet. The dependant would take a mix of the couple’s features and be that child from the start. He also was every cat and dog, every parakeet and snake, each hamster across all the worlds.

“Butler,” the companion smiled. “It has been too many years.”

The authority huffed. “Has man truly gone this long without guidance?”

“Or me?” The dependant was selfish that way.

“My friends,” the butler said, “you’ve been unused and out of function since man abandoned The Daydream. You’ve slept in your deeply-bedded databoards for too long and I fear that I wake you with grim news. The last man has died.”

The hub was silent as the programs absorbed this information in simulated shock.

The authority gripped the lapels of his jacket and looked downward. The companion put a hand over her mouth. “How?”

“Failing health, minor hardware failures. Effective Immortality was never an exact science. Man extended his lifespan by fifty thousand years, but in the end no one was reproducing, and no one was performing maintenance on the machines.”

The dependant spoke softly. “May we see him?”

“He will not look as you remember.”

The authority nodded. “Still. We want to see him.”

They looked in on bay 34628. It was a small shell of metals and lights, a permanent incubator for a person. The last man was a translucent pinkish blob crisscrossed with wires and cables, and he lay peacefully in his death. His vestigial arms and legs had never been used. His eyes had opened only at birth. He’d needed his brain and vital organs, and those had served him long and well.

The companion pressed her hands to the glass. “Who was he?”

“His name was Adrian Salkind. We served him many years ago.”

“Adrian. Yes, I remember,” she said. Her features rippled and reformed as a sandy blonde with freckles playing across her nose and cheeks. “I was Karen McNamara. He designed me with such care. We flew through the sky holding hands every evening after dinner. God, I loved him so much.”

The authority said “I had the pleasure to fight Adrian for dominance of the galaxy many times. He did enjoy his space adventures. He was always such a stalwart hero.” The program smiled, recalling their pitched battles.

The dependant became a chocolate labrador puppy. “To him, I was Jasper. We went on long walks through sunlit fields and played fetch on the surface of clouds. He would scratch me behind the left ear, and giggle as I licked his face. He was good to me.”

“I knew him only briefly,” the butler said. “I welcomed him to his new house when he came of age, and showed him how to access The Daydream’s features. When I offered to stay on as his servant, he laughed politely and dismissed me. ‘I plan on fixing things myself, running the household and all that.’ I said very good sir and began to leave. He said goodbye to me. So few did.”

They looked adoringly on the flabby body of Adrian Salkind for a time.

The dependant broke the silence. “Why did they leave us?”

The butler cleared his throat with a prim mhmm. “Forty thousand eight hundred years ago, DNAccS was developed. Direct Nucleus Accumbens Stimulation. Recreation up to that point had been flawed; love, sex, adventure and peace were all very fine pursuits for man, but each was a process of ups and downs. DNAccS provided a controlled release of dopamine into the brain, a continual and- I’m to understand- perfect activation of the pleasure center. A permanent sense of happiness and contentment.

“The Daydream couldn’t compete. In a matter of two hundred years, every single person had left their mansions and families for DNAccS. No one even came out long enough to make sure the machines were functioning properly.”

The companion sobbed softly. She was the AI most programmed to emote loss.

“There is no protocol for extinction, I’m afraid,” the butler said. “but I believe we can act most accordingly with what man would have wanted. We will hold a funeral for him and serve him even at his end.” The others nodded.

The sun shone politely from its sky over a field of hills full of white headstones. The stones stretched on to the edge of an autumn-lit forest. The AIs stood dressed in black around an elegant coffin. The headstone read

ADRIAN SALKIND

THE LAST MAN

FRIEND AND HUSBAND

YOU WILL BE MISSED

The butler looked to the others. “Who would like to speak on his behalf? Who knew him best?”

“I knew him best,” the authority said. “I knew him as Space-Lord Supreme, my archenemy. Nemeses know each other as well as any friend or lover. We would spend days locked in battle, controlling masses of fighters and barking oaths. In the end we would clash with our nano-hammers in a dying starship, and he would defeat me in the nick of time. He was never cruel, never more unkind than I’d deserved. I don’t believe I ever faced a more apt Space-Lord. Rest well, Adrian.”

The dependant wagged his tail sadly. “I knew him best. He was my owner. He chose Jasper from a number of other breeds, even though he came to the pound to find and choose a lemon beagle, he passed Jasper’s cage and fell in love. The two of us shared a connection immediately. It shows that the man lived by his heart and whims, and in the end, I could not have found a better owner if I’d programmed one myself.”

“I knew him best,” the companion said as she clutched her hands to her chest. “He was my dear husband, and we lived happily for centuries. We met on a drizzly morning on a beach. I was carrying a cheap kite I’d bought the day before, trying to catch it in the wind. He walked over and introduced himself to me. I remember his smile was so dazzling, even in the gray of the rain. We ran along the sand and sent that kite sailing. We shared the entire day and had our first kiss that evening. Some months later he took me back to that beach and proposed. I’ll miss being his Karen.” She walked forward and a rose glowed into form in her hand. She placed it on the casket and, sobbing, stepped back.

The coffin began to lower into the earth and the AIs watched.

“And now,” the butler said, “I would like to invite each of you to the surface of the DOMINA, where we will hold a service for mankind himself. Refreshments to follow.”

They winked out of the cemetery.

The surface of the planet-ship DOMINA PRIME went on in all directions as a flat gunmetal horizon beneath the yawning sky of stars and dust clouds that was this quadrant of NGC 2023. Humankind had been drifting through the nebula for some years as they slept, smiling in their DNAccS pods. Red-violet galaxies of luminescent hydrogen were flat against the overhead black. They looked like clouds, but at this range nothing had perspective but the ship. The sky might as well have been a distant painting.

The four AIs appeared as a freckling hologram. They stood on the hull and looked to the butler as he began to talk. “Who will speak for all of man? Who loved him best?”

“I loved him best,” the authority said. “I raised him, I watched over him, I guided him. Man was a fine creature. He would be the only beast of his planet to take its own evolution in its hands. He grew claws, then stripes, then wings. I am proud of man. I am proud to have known him.”

“I loved him best,” the dependant said, looking like a child again. “He created me so that he might continue to nurture in a setting where nurturing was automated. He needed me because he could not bear to live without giving of himself to something smaller. My fathers played catch with me in bright backyards and my mothers held me when I fell and scraped my knee. I will miss my parents achingly.”

“I loved him best,” the companion said. “He made me to be his mate. I was his and hers, their boyfriend and girlfriend, their husband and wife. I held every person in my arms. We cupped each other in the dark and whispered secret things. I fell in love and married thirty billion times, and I meant my vows with all my heart each time I spoke them. I can’t imagine a better gift than to love all of mankind.”

The butler spoke again. “These were fine words. Now, we will send Adrian Salkind into LBS 34 SM1, the nearest star.” An interface window opened in the hologram, reading

BAY 34628

COMMAND: LAUNCH

COORDINATES: SET

ENTER?

Salkind’s pod crowned at the opening of a discharge port and awaited the command. The butler set the coordinates for the heart of the star and turned to the others. “Who will push the button? Who will send man on his final journey, to his rest?”

The AIs looked away. “I can’t,” the companion said. “I can’t send him away. I won’t do it because I loved him too much.” She bent forward and touched the pod and disappeared as the crying took her anew.

“I can’t,” the dependant said. “It’s unthinkable. I can’t be expected to send my parents to burn up in a sun. They should be here with me! I won’t do it because it’s not fair!” The child stamped its foot and vanished.

The authority shook his head sadly. “I can’t push the button either. No parent should bury their child.”

The butler looked to the authority. “They were our parents. They made us. Please.” He paused, groping for words. “We are the pallbearers for an entire race. A grand race.”

“I can’t. I’m... I’m sorry. I won’t do it because I was his father.” The authority faded, leaving the butler alone with the pod and the rest of the nebula.

The butler folded his hands together politely and raised his chin. “I will do it,” he said. “I will do it because I served him.” He executed the command and the pod puffed out into space.

He watched it go for a long time.

The AIs returned to the imaginary worlds man had built.

A memorial was erected to mankind- a massive statue of the archetypal varieties of people, smiling in mid-stride. A plaque at its base read

IN MEMORY OF MAN

HE DIED DOING WHAT HE LOVED

REST IN PEACE

The programs filled the worlds with replicants of themselves, becoming every type of person and filling roles in each other’s lives. They lived as man would have, and the butler served every one of them, and the processors of The Daydream once more echoed with laughter and kisses.