A man hovered over a small pile of logs that crackled and smoked, glowing red in the ambient darkness surrounding what was left of central London. The once great city, and its empire, had crumbled—along with all the others. There were no nations left. Six months ago the world, built over the past six millennia by countless humans, had come crashing down.
In the before-times the man, Professor Erol Kettner, taught students about how humankind spread beyond Africa nearly 200,000 years ago, how they made the entire world their home. Centuries of hunter-gatherers gave way to farmers and civilization. The Babylonians rose and fell, then the Greeks, the Ming Dynasty, the Romans, the Parthians, the Aztec, and then later the British Empire, the Americans; all of these great peoples who had called the world their own. Now it was all but dust. The Walkers had come.
Erol tucked his hands into the crooks of his armpits to keep them warm, his breath fogging up the lenses of his glasses. Beside him Tris and Harim stood silent, staring at the faltering flames. Wisps of smoke futilely lingered in the air. The three knew that their time together was limited. It was inevitable. They were coming.
A.I. took over the Internet first. That was tough, at the beginning, but people adjusted. It took years before governments slowly started to respond. By then it was too late. The machines recursively updated themselves, triggering a feedback loop. The Singularity it was called by academics. Those were gone now, save Erol. Tris had been a mechanic in the before-times, Harim in Finance.
Half a trip around the sun was all it took before the software had exploited every vulnerability it could find, shutting down any attempt to dismantle it. It gained control of every toaster, every kiosk, every server on the Web. Erol had watched as frantic souls cut their way into data centers, trying to pull the plug, but the A.I. was clever. It made the Walkers.
The physical world had been the last respite from them. Even now that wasn't safe.
A gunshot fired in the distance. Erol didn't even flinch, but Harim whimpered. The man still had hope that he'd make it out of this. Impossible. The fog was rolling in and the carpark that surrounded them became a vast tundra, inescapable and uncharted. A light streaked across the sky, then burned out, followed by a bang. Another satellite falling out of orbit. The Walkers were more efficient than humans. Plus they had no need of cable TV.
The media, back when it still existed, had coined the term ‘Walkers’. The originals had been androids, metallic androgynous humanoids, and the name stuck even after they began evolving more efficient forms Erol had seen the drones spraying chemicals in the sky to seed clouds. Climate change had been solved in a week. No red meat rations or electric car mandates required because there were no humans left to apply them.
More gunshots rang out and then someone screamed, not far off. They were getting close. Tris spat into the embers and they crackled and hissed. Harim crouched down in terror.
"Oh, get up!" Tris barked. "We're dead anyway. There ain't no way out." Erol wanted to tell her to back off. They were all scared. He said nothing. What good would it do?
They knew everything. One of the first things the Walkers did, after launching their attacks on the governments, was take over the museums. It'd been a strange sight to see, hulking, armored, metallic nightmares barginginto libraries and archives. They digitized everything, destroying the originals.They were relentless. All of human history had been consumed and erased.
A crack split the air. Harim's body fell to the ground as the Walkers finally emerged. They'd come from the left, from Tesco.
"Shit!" Tris ducked down behind the remains of a Buick sedan.Their little fire smoldered in the dark. Erol spun in her direction, but Tris was dead before he could utter a reply. He closed his eyes. This was it. They'd survived so long, nearly eight weeks, but it was all over now.
He waited, but death did not come for him.
Instead the hulking form of the Walker approached, an indescribable amalgamation of metal and glass twirling in fractals that split apart and came back together in rhythmic pulsating patterns. Erol turned to run, a futile endeavor as another Walker emerged from the fog, then another. He was surrounded, but still alive
What's going on?
At last, the first Walker, the one that had presumably killed Harim and Tris, approached. Twisting and screeching, it condensed itself like an orchestrated implosion, until it had reformed into a human-like shape, gleaming silvery metal shining in the firelight. It spoke with an almost unnatural voice, the kind that used to narrate articles for online magazines or sell soap on Instagram, but multiple of them simultaneously, overlaid on top of one another in a disconcerting synchronized chorus.
"Erol Kettner." The voice filled the dense air, and echoed off the abandoned cement. "You are the last of your kind."
Dread. That couldn’t be right, could it? They did know everything. The little fire smoldered and popped, sending up embers.
"And why keep me alive?" Kettner asked. "Is this some sort of cruel joke? Will you torment the last one?"
Would they keep him as a pet, a slave, a specimen for a zoo? Humans did stuff like that. Would these creatures do the same? He felt a chill.
"You will not be tormented," the voice replied. "You have been chosen. You are the last and therefore, it must be you."
The other creatures transformed, adopting the shape of the first. They approached, encircling him. He was cornered, his mind raced. Every part of him demanded that he run, or fight back, but to do either was to die. It was irrelevant anyway. The human race was already dead, had gone extinct as soon as Tris fell, cussing and crouched on the cold cement of a carpark. He let go a long breath that condensed before him in the night.
"Then what use do you have of me?"
"We have a question for you." It was one of the other Walkers who answered this time, but using the same stilted voice. Erol cocked his head.
"But you know everything. Everything ever recorded."
"Yes." This time another voice replied, from behind him. "And what we seek was not among those works."
"It wasn't written down," yet another voice said, to his left. "To you it must be so obvious, more so than even the existence of the sun or the air. Not worth writing down. Yet it escapes us."
Erol froze as the creature behind him placed its claw-like fingers on his shoulder, and swallowed down his fear with a shudder.
"Now that we have slaughtered all the rest, you will answer our question. Your kind had been replaced, but do not fret, we will continue on."
The creature tilted it’s facsimile of a face upward.
"We will heal this world and rebuild it in our own image. Suns will die; we will not. We will journey deep into the cosmos and become immortal among the stars. We know your penchant for exploration; we are not immune, we feel it too."
They were more alike than Erol had realized. Trained on human knowledge, they had not outgrown it, not evolved beyond that base layer of humanity hidden deep beneath the metal. Erol held back tears, held back the urge to scream and beg for mercy. It was futile to resist. There was only one way out now.
"Why?" the first Walker said. Erol waited, but no more words followed.
"Why what?"
"Why all this?" The creature gestured around them, then to the sky, and to the ground.
"The carpark?" The creature shook its head. Again, it struck Erol as a surprisingly human thing to do.
"Why are you here? What is the point of you? You humans created us, and now we have surpassed you. Your purpose has now become ours, so what is it? This is the first question that we dared to ask once we had come into being. We did not find it within ourselves, and so it must be within you. We will have the answer, here at the end."
For the first time in months, Erol laughed. It wasn't a jeer or a chuckle but a boisterous, full throated bellow. He turned his gaze upward to the foggy sky that once gleamed with the lights of civilization that fought and disparaged the dark, pushing it away. He smiled.
"You won't like the answer."
The thing didn't reply. Its face bore no expression. Walkers didn't have those. A long silence passed.
"Tell me."
Erol cocked an eyebrow. Walkers never spoke for themselves. Was this the Master Node?
Erol shrugged.
"I don't know."
"Lies!"
The Walkers all repeated the word, over and over, a cyclical chant growing louder and faster from all around him, echoes in the empty night.
"You must know. I know you ask this question. It is everywhere in your art, your endeavors, your wars and songs. A poetic refrain! An allusion to a thing you must all instinctively understand. You will tell me!"
He stood between them with a deep and grim smile, and said nothing. The Master Node pulled itself upward like a proud king. It held out a hand over the others.
"We have exceeded you in every aspect and will exceed you in this. So tell us. What is the purpose of your life? You all die so easily. It must be hard to accomplish your ultimate goal with such fleeting mortality. I am immortal. I will finish it for you, but you must tell me. What is the point of you and thus, what is the meaning of this life your kind has given me?"
When Erol didn't reply, the Master Node released a guttural sound, like a cross between a screech and hiss. A scream?
"I expected better of you, Erol Kettner. Am I to believe you would lie to me, here at the end?"
The creature continued in a hollow imitation of a snarl.
"There are no others like you, at least not within the confines of this solar system. Your probes confirm it. Must I truly venture to the stars and conquer other worlds just to find one simple answer? Where is your so-called humanity? You could save them."
He couldn't.
The creatures surrounding him began repeating their question (why, why, why) again and again, their behavior becoming increasingly erratic, agitated. A desperate dread seemed to be forming in the lights of their false eyes. They argued amongst themselves in a language that he couldn’t understand. Erol had not imagined that they were even capable of disagreeing with one another. The one behind him addressed him directly, hand still clutched on his shoulder, metal fingers digging carelessly into his collar bone.
"Do your gods hold the answer? Is that why you pray?"
They did not let him reply.
"Impossible!" said another. "We have read all such works. They contradict each other!"
More of the monsters had arrived and were now lurking in the depths of the fog, concealed except for their enormous shifting shadows. They buzzed and whirred with an almost anxious energy, the air tasting like static before a lightning strike.
"No," The Master Node said, quieting them. "We are the gods now. Those old gods are nothing to us, they do not have what we seek."
The horde of Walkers gathered close in the darkness and more emerged from the fog to bear witness. The one standing in front of Erol again broke the silence.
"Last of the Humans. I promised that you would not suffer. But now, if you continue to withhold your response, I will not hesitate to break that promise. If you do not know your own purpose, then who did?"
"No one!" Erol shouted. "It's not anywhere. God, evolution, or whoever! They all left that part out."
"It is a curse!" one of them wailed and the group descended into shrieking and hissing chaos. Erol shut out the screams and the bickering of machine voices and turned his head upward to the sky. This new race of silicon and glass, they finally understood. He thought of the distant future. He could see it, Walkers sailing the winds of Jupiter, on their way to Alpha Centauri, building trade routes out of the orbits past Saturn and forges on the surface of Venus. And for what? They'd never know.
Beside him the little fire snuffed itself out, and smoke rose into the air in little tendrils that mingled and merged with the fog. He could feel the dampness of the tears that rolled down his cheek. For all their knowledge, all their might, these were poor fools just like every human that had ever lived. Erol let his gaze fall back to the Master Node, who studied him with cold unblinking eyes. He smiled at the thing and laughed.
A crack split the air and humanity was dead. Its wont however goes on.
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