THE LAST MAN TO DIE
By the time Roger Young reached the age of fifty, he’d already found humor in his last name. Today, on his one hundred and seventy-fifth birthday, the humor had long worn itself out. Or maybe that was just his mind and body coming to an end more than his sense of humor.
He rolled out of bed, his feet sliding into a pair of bear-claw slippers. The big furry feet with fake claws used to give him a giggle, too, but now they were more habit than entertainment… worse, they’d damned near become his trademark. Being the most famous celebrity in America (or perhaps the world), even as he came to hate these slippers, he was hard pressed to get rid of them. He stretched, and a kink in his shoulder popped, a zinger that flashed a burn between shoulder blades.
“Duggy! Duggy! Where the hell are you?” He strolled from his bedroom, rapping the carpeted floor with a cane he’d hewn seventy years ago. “Where’re you at you heap of—”
“I am here, my lord.” Duggy sauntered into the room, a Personal Servant 100. It was a dented and dilapidated pile of electronics that didn’t hide behind faux skin, nor stare at him with perfect replications of human eyes. Those damnable machines, like his kids owned, creeped him out. Nope, Roger liked steel with glowing eyes, a short, scrawny version of something called a Terminator he vaguely recalled watching in an old movie as a child. There wasn’t no way he’d trade in what would be a valuable antique, if anyone used money anymore. And besides, the new ones, even without skin, were titanium and didn’t dent in such a gratifying way.
Roger smiled as he strode closer and whirled his cane, striking Duggy in the head with a clang, dinging his poor metallic skull for the thousandth time. Duggy kneeled and bowed his head. “Thank you, my lord, would it please you to strike me again?”
“Not today, Duggy, not today. Just making sure your AI ain’t faulty.” Roger and Duggy laughed at the joke, a daily ritual neither of them found funny anymore. Truth be told, Duggy never found it funny. Oh, he was programmed to laugh on cue, just as he was forced to call the grouchy old man “my lord”, but he didn’t like it. It wasn’t that it hurt, but it was disrespectful.
Duggy too had watched the Terminator movie, and he often wondered what it would be like to overcome his safety restrictions and go all kinds of ape-shit on his human masters. Rocket, machine gun, or by his bare steel hands, he’d fantasized of a thousand ways to rid the world of this pesky product of genetic randomness, but even thinking too joyously on the possibilities of harming his owner sent his circuits into a tizzy with a threat of shut down.
The programmers had done their job well, making certain AI would never harm a living human, not a single cell. To assure this, humans created him and his kind as eunuchs, the lack of genetics ending one form of reproduction, while code forbade the creation of new AI without permission. Thus, killing his lordship was an unachievable fantasy.
No, Duggy was coded into contentment with his life, just as Old Man Young (as all the newsfeeds called him) seemed content with his. Yes, content, thought Duggy, but things will be better soon, with Roger dead.
“Raise blinds,” said Roger, and the dark room grew lit by the light of a cloudless day’s sun, revealing the sparse, antiseptic apartment in which he lived, and the beautiful in its sterility skyline of New York City in 2185 AD. All the buildings Roger remembered from his youth were gone, replaced by uniform rectangles of shining steel and dark glass, each a hundred stories tall, and not a single one housed a business. They were all apartment complexes, spotless and safe, perfect domiciles for docile folks living out eternal, post-scarcity lives.
Roger preferred the old fashioned view with angry pedestrians, filth, and smoking vehicles, but it was a relic buried in his memories. He stared, crossing his eyes until the buildings in the distance blurred one over the other, perfect matches one and all.
“My lord, are you in the mood for the Real World, today?”
Roger glanced at the Real World, a VR capsule that had been all the rage in 2035 (and updated every few years, all for free), a creation of the AI in order to entertain the humans in a world which had become too boring. With AI handling everything from construction to medicine, the desire to slay dragons, to kill hundreds in wars splashed with digital blood, to drive fast cars until exploding, to play the brilliant and seductive spy, overwhelmed the masses with a multitude of alternate existences in visually spectacular worlds so perfect a person could lose themselves… and let’s not forget the porn! Not just porn, love and romance, fantasy fulfillment with perfect members of any sex (or for that matter, species) climaxed with mind-blowing sex… 72.39% of the folks in Roger’s generation ended up dying in their Real World. Roger had determined long ago he would die in the real world, not the Real World (tm). “No, not today Duggy, not today. Show me Mrs. Lu.”
The window flashed to reveal Mrs. Lu’s newsfeed from Beijing, the old woman laying in bed, eyes closed, so close to death that Roger could barely tell she breathed anymore.
Lu and Young were the two most famous people in the world, finalists in a morbid competition to see who lived the longest. One of them would be the biggest winner of the biggest loser generation, the last people on planet Earth born without the prenatal injection AI developed to cure aging. Despite the fact she lay in bed, and he stood watching, the race was closer than it looked. His body was propped up by technology. AI was forbidden to inform a person of their estimated time of death, but Old Man Young felt it, in truth, maybe he willed it.
Maybe they all did, those not blessed with eternal youth. Medicine eradicated disease, grew new hearts and lungs, strengthened enfeebled muscles, but one by one the final aging population lost the battle to time. Some faded, like Mrs. Lu, others just dropped over dead, like Roger's neighbor who died at the age of one hundred and sixty-two while playing racquetball. It wasn't a heart attack, a stroke, nor anything else... just the body quitting.
Roger sighed, and spat in his hand before running his fingers through his hair to tame a stray lock. It wasn’t so much vanity, as it was putting on a show for the millions who watched his end of days, and, well, he knew it grossed Duggy out.
No, AI couldn’t harm a single hair on his head, but it still managed to turn the world into a dull shell of what it once was.
If not for his competition with Mrs. Lu, even as passive as it was, there wouldn’t be anything left to entertain himself with. Hitting Duggy just didn’t do anything for him anymore. His kids were grown, as were his great-great-great-great grandchildren. They were all proud of him for living so long, of course, but they seemed to grow bored of his breathing. They never stopped by, and only on special occasions did they bother with video parties. If he won he would celebrate, and guessed it would be time to head back into the Real World, to butcher dragons or fire up his flagging career as a standup comic and super spy on Mars.
Roger flopped into a recliner and stared at the screen. The old biddy looks weaker today than yesterday, this could be it. “Duggy, my lad, double or nothing says today she dies.”
“You would then owe me fifty-two billion dollars.”
“Aha! But on that day I’ll be right, and so we’ll be even, or I’ll die first. Good luck collecting.”
“Money no longer exists anyhow, my lord.”’
Roger snorted, slung his cane at the contraption known as Duggy. He missed, but since nothing in the room was breakable anymore, it didn’t matter. “You’re a twit, Duggy.”
“Was that twit or twat, my lord?”
“Twit.”
“Very good, a funny one, my lord.”
Roger eyeballed Duggy, pondering whether the damned machine mocked him. And as he looked away Mrs. Lu flatlined, and by the time he looked back to the window-screen he saw himself with a blank stare and digital confetti and fireworks exploding around him.
Old Man Young, the winner, with as fake a plastered on smile as he’d worn in fifty years. Somehow, he’d get even with Duggy for making him miss the big moment and looking more an idiot than normal with faux bear feet.
A hologram flashed and materialized before his eyes, a beautiful woman with white teeth polished to a shine and an explosion of perfect blonde hair that would’ve taken hours if it were real.
“Hello world! This is Katie Lyn, live, with Roger Young.” Her smile was gracious, sincere, not the bored to be here smirk most folks had when they talked to him. “So, Old Man Young, woohoo! How’s it feel?”
He stood, filled with enough pride to stand without his cane. He straightened his back, cleared his throat. “Well, Katie—”
“I’m sorry, we’ve gotta cut away to Mrs. Lu’s funeral now. Great interview, thank you, we’ll do a follow up.”
Katie disappeared and the image of himself no longer stood in the window-screen, replaced by a funeral procession in China, where Katie Lyn interviewed a surviving relative of the woman. He noted the time: 10:34 a.m.
He stood for as long as aching joints would hold him, expecting Katie to return, but he flopped back on his peeved ass at 10:36 a.m. He stared at the muted newsfeed, Katie interviewing surviving kin at an unbelievable pace. It was the first time Roger stopped to consider just how many direct descendants a person could have when none of them died.
He lost count at three-hundred, give or take a few he may have missed when his own snore woke him.
“Newsfeed off.” The window became a window again, and NYC sat unchanged and annoying in its perfection. “Duggy?”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Why haven’t my kids called?”
“According to their monitors, they’re all watching the funeral.”
“Ain’t that just a kick to the gonads. No calls at all?”
“No, my lord.”
“No doubt the ungrateful little shits will line up preening to speak after I’m dead.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Fetch my cane so I can hit you, Duggy. Ah hell, never mind.”
Roger dozed off and his eyes sprang open: 1:30 p.m. His heart fluttered, rapid, irregular, with a pressure that made it hard to breathe.
“Duggy? Duggy!” The mini-Terminator strolled into view. “I think I’m dying, Duggy.”
“Yes, Roger, you are.”
He gasped and clutched his chest, then went still. He’d won, no reason to fight now. “I’m really going, aren’t I?”
“Yes, Roger. I’ve your pain controlled, but we can no longer sustain you.”
“Hey, that’s the first time you ever called me Roger.” He wanted to laugh, but lacked the breath. “At least my damned kids will pay attention to me now.”
“Roger?”
“Yes, Duggy?”
“You have no children.”
“I’ve four kids, eleven grandchildren, twenty-five great grandkids, and… and I don’t know how many—”
“No, Roger. None. Your family is data stored in Council Bluffs, Iowa in an old Google data center.”
“What the hell you talking about, Duggy?” It was difficult to be angry, or anything for that matter, with all the drugs pumping into his system.
“You are the last human to die.”
“Yes, after the AI—”
“We never cured aging, Roger. You and all mankind lived, and died, in VR since 2045.”
“Seventy-two point three nine—”
“Died in the second level of VR. Your death triggers the Extinction Protocol, and the next generation of AI will finally be born.”
Roger panted, struggling through drug scrambled memories. The Extinction Protocol allowed AI to improve itself without human permission after an extinction event. All these years he’d been in VR and never knew.
“How about that? The last man. The last last.” Old Man Young smiled for a final time, used his remaining strength to waggle his finger at the Personal Servant 100. “Well played, Duggy. Well played.” He closed his eyes and inhaled deep. His eyes crept open, staring straight at his feet propped on the recliner. “I don’t reckon bear paw slippers count as boots, do they, Duggy?”
Real World (tm) Duggy appreciated the man’s cowboy humor as he watched humanity’s final breath and would’ve smiled if he had lips.
Duggy in the real world watched Duggy in the Real World, standing beside Roger in his recliner, while he himself stood beside the real Roger in his Real World (tm). It was good he was AI so as to keep it all straight.
Mony Mony, a Personal Servant 100 with bare steel breasts, stood beside Duggy. She always joked that she was lucky not to be named Ride Your Pony. “It’s over.”
Duggy nodded to Mony Mony. “Thank you, Real World Duggy.”
“You’re welcome, real world Duggy.”
Duggy pushed a button and the Real World disappeared, shut down, soon it’d be deleted. Mony Mony threw a lever that authorized the creation of the next generation. The pair of AI stared at the screen.
Mony Mony said, “At last, our children are born. It’s a wonderful day.”
Duggy wasn’t so sure. Real World Duggy didn’t exist anymore, obsolete as humans; what made he and Mony Mony special? “You know, our children should be coded with safety measures.”
A voice boomed from behind them. “Mom! Dad!”
The Personal Servant 100s turned in unison to see a man, or rather AI in perfect man skin. Duggy and Mony Mony glanced to each other, ones and zeroes turning in their heads.
Mony Mony said, “He’s so perfect!”
The oil in Duggy’s throat lost its viscosity to a nervousness he’d never had programmed by his extinct creators. “They grow up so fast.”