The Last Human

by T F R LeBoomington

  “Holy balls, it’s the Last Human!”

  “Guys, look it’s the Last Human!” The trio of bare-chested mutants looked like they were straight out of a Swedish nineties softcore porno. Longish blond hair and chiselled features, they had the Norse gods’ look. Probably tourists from Zero City 5 in Denmark.

  “Fuck no way!”

  “Hey man let’s get a picture together.”

  “Go away, leave me alone.” Rick was trying to get away, but they followed him now.

  “That’s a bit rude man, we just want a picture.”

  “So fucking rude bro.”

  “Behaving like an ape basically, no manners, just a primitive creature.” They pointed and laughed at Rick, like bullies in a schoolyard.

  “What d’you say fuckface, I’m fuckin’ Rick Archer bitch, fuck you!” He’d didn’t see the punch coming. He was too drunk, and it was way too fast anyway. That’s all folks! Weird thing to think when you get knocked unconscious.

  Another Day in Paradise

  Rick woke with a pounding headache, like most mornings. This was usually followed by some staring at the ceiling wondering what the fuck he was doing with his life, all the while trying to will the hangover away. Flashbacks of his time in the pit started coming back. He had a good time. At least some of it was good. Lost my shit on Brock. The fight was great. The sex too. I got punched in the face. Not so great that. He felt his face with his hand and winced. At least he was allowed to take pain pills. And they were pretty effective. Come here little buggers. His bedside table happened to have a glass of water and a capsule of Pain Away in a small cup. Love you, Amy. There were a few other tablets in there, some stuff for his liver, some for his brain and his usual supplements. Rick popped all twelve pills at once, drained the glass and lied back down to resume his brooding. His happy-go-lucky attitude toward life seemed to be heading nowhere. Well, actually… He seemed to be heading for an early grave. Wouldn’t that be great! The first person to die in years and probably the last. Forever known as the Last Human. The last human, dead. Finally, free. Rick thought back on his conversation with Amy. She was on board with his plan. Or was it her plan? Whatever, the plan. In any case, things were afoot. Amy floated into the bedroom. Rick sat up in his bed, did his morning cough and managed a basic greeting.

  “Morning.”

  “Good Morning Rick!” Amy was chirpy as usual. “How are we doing today?” As Amy floated about the room, the blinds opened, and the speakers turned on. The news was going on about some unease somewhere in a system far away. There was also talk of the Last Human going viral overnight with some new videos. One of him playing with some monkey bots in the pond, one of him getting knocked out by a mutant teenager and one of him being carried home like a sack of potatoes while shouting some obscenities.

  “Wha…?” Rick started, coughed, cleared his throat, and then rubbed his temples for a bit. “What happened last night?” He had just heard it on the radio but hearing it from Amy would make it real.

  “What after you got knocked out or last night in general?”

  “After the knockout…” Rick glared at Amy.

  “The three guys laughed at you. Their Smartcubes recorded you, and they posted the video online. Would you like to see it? It’s quite popular.” Amy waited for a second or two. “No? OK. Then I called Brock, and he came to get you and carried you home.” Amy hovered over, just in front of Rick. Her display showed a laughing face. “Standard procedure.”

  “Great.” Rick didn’t mean it. “Where’s Brock?”

  “He had two girls with him the whole time. They left after you were tucked in. Probably to bang.” Amy floated off. “Up, up, up, busy day today. You’ve got a meeting with Barry this morning, Brock will meet us there, and then the Agency this afternoon. You remember the plan, escaping to a better life and all that.”

  “Hmmm ok.” Rick got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Amy stopped and turned back to Rick.

  “You had a decent workout in the pit, so I’ve talked to Mom, and we’ve agreed you only have to do a twenty-minute workout. Enjoy!” Amy hovered off to the kitchen.

  Rick’s house was smart, too smart if you asked Rick, but he had no choice in the matter. Rick lived in a residential area like most, and his house had an AI like every other building. Management AI’s essentially ran buildings as efficiently as possible and kept their occupants healthy and safe. It’s the healthy part Rick objected to.

  Every home came with a modular workout robot, and each house occupant had to do a daily workout. There was no avoiding it, the house would lock Rick in and send the gymbot to give chase. No escape until the exercise was done. Rick tried to fight it sometimes, the gymbot always won. Just by trying to escape for a couple of hours he got his workout done. Best to comply, escape attempts were futile. Just do your exercise. The House AI communicated with the personal AI and based on daily data they calculated the adequate amount of exercise, which they then told to the gymbot. Rick hated that. That’s why he tried to walk places and use stairs, he convinced himself it might spite the AIs if he had less exercise to do. He knew it didn’t. They didn’t care, as long as the numbers added up and the workout got done.

  Rick dragged his feet over to the workout machine. Basically a Transformer all-in-one gym. Rick called the gym robot Guy. But that’s because he woke up drunk and misread the label the first time.

  “’Ssup Guy. What fresh new tortures have you devised for me today.” Rick grabbed the smoothie bubble next to Guy and started sucking it up.

  “Rick! Good morning!” Like most robots Guy was a chirpy annoying fuck. Why are machines so fucking happy all the time? “I’ve got more of the usual for you. Drink up your power smoothie and let’s get you sweating.”

  “Gimme a minute.” Rick finished his bubble and started stretching, Guy had started the playlist. The mood was set.

  The exercise routine varied from person to person. Rick’s had been designed for him by his AIs. Each aspect of his life was taken into consideration when planning his diet and exercise regimen. All calculated to maintain peak mental and physical condition at all times. Everything was customised to the individual’s needs, taking cyber enhancements in consideration as well as lifestyle. The AI’s were compassionate though, so they allowed cheating. Sometimes. Although Rick and debauchery went together like peanut butter and chocolate, he was pretty trim and in good enough medical condition. Though he was still the weakest person on earth. A baby could snap his finger off.

  Rick got his workout done and headed to the bathroom. It had a toilet. Not a common feature anymore. Since the invention of quantum rectums, people just pooped in a sun somewhere. Many had upgraded. No need for toilets or toilet paper anymore. No fancy butthole for Rick though, he still had to wipe. Luckily for Rick, the quantum butt was only installed on eighty percent or so of the cyborg population. So toilets and paper were still manufactured in small batches for the remaining assholes.

  Mutants had also done away with toilets in a creative fashion. Rick had always been intrigued by their additional organ that enabled them to fart odourless dust. Their clothes had a special butt pocket to evacuate the dust. The thought made Rick giggle.

  Rick’s toilet, like most toilets still in existence, was based on the pre-war Japanese smart toilets. Your butt was pampered, warm water jets, hot air and all. The experience was quite enjoyable once you got over the initial surprise. Rick loved to poop on his toilets, but even he had to admit the quantum anus was genius. It was only a miniaturisation of the solution for trash disposal, but someone had thought of it first and implemented it. Which couldn’t have been easy, Rick imagined how that conversation might have gone down.

  “I have a great idea!”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d like to put trash portals in people’s butts!”

  “You what?!?”

  “You heard me.”

  “That’s actually genius. Here’s a bunch of money.”

  Rick ju
mped in the shower after his daily toilet musings. The shower was out of this world. Hundreds of small jets created a thick mist, and diminished gravity levitated the water. It felt like being fully immersed in water but still being able to breathe. On the advert, they described it as bathing in the misty tail of a rainbow. The shower had a function that activated lighting angled perfectly to make rainbows. Pointless, but cool, and still a really lovely feeling. The lightness of the water and body created a sensation that was probably closest to showering in space. Or not, it’s not like Rick knew anyway, only what the adverts said. Rick stepped out the shower into the body blow-dry zone. Clean Rick looked at himself in the mirror. He slapped his dick from side to side for a bit, tensed his muscles, made some faces and then went back into his room to get dressed.

  ◆◆◆

  In the kitchen, Gousto was preparing breakfast. Gousto was the kitchen. His arms came out of panels hidden all over, like having a dozen trained chefs working in sync. Like Guy, he was merely an extension of the house AI. Rick had named the house AI MOM. It stood for Massively Overbearing Machine, Mom hated it. But calling the AI Mom was the only thing that made the bossiness tolerable. Rick had named the kitchen after that French chef in the rat cartoon. Gousto could cook anything as long as it was approved by Mom.

  Gousto was good, but the most significant addition to the kitchen was Mr Food. A machine that makes food. Rick told it what he wanted, and it made it. He loved that machine. The device could make raw ingredients that Gousto could cook, or it could just make ready meals. Edible plates and all. The machine eliminated waste and the need for agriculture. Nobody knew how it worked. People had tried to figure it out. The machine’s creator’s identity was also a mystery. The Mr Food Inc company was equally mysterious. Rick had watched a documentary on it. He didn’t care much beyond that, as long as the machine made him food, he was happy.

  The machine looked like a large oven-fridge-like-thing got it on with a 3D printer. Stem cell cartridges were inserted into the back and a specialised AI, Mr Food, assembled the cells into the required foods. At first, Rick was resistant to the idea of eating artificial food. Amy had explained it to him over and over again. The food wasn’t fake, those cells were assembled into beef, they were beef. The machine made superfood loaded with nutrients. And it turned out animals were far more aware than humans thought possible, and as a result, fear and sadness always made it into supposed real meat. Not tasty ingredients.

  Rick, like everyone else, had come to love Mr Food. Animals must have really loved Mr Food because there was no longer a need to hunt them, herd them and slaughter them for their juicy meat. People still did it occasionally though, for sport and conservation mostly. Animals were all over the place, plants reclaimed land quickly, and beasts followed. Scientists had also cloned some species and brought others back from extinction, for funsies. This made the occasional culling necessary. Though for the most part animals no longer had any need to fear people. They were comfortable venturing into urban areas, even the inner circles of Zero Cities. Rick had seen some weird stuff in the pits.

  Rick loved watching nature's ballet in his garden. By spraying different pheromone cocktails, the garden bot was able to direct, and to some extent communicate with animals, even have them contribute and help with gardening. The garden bots could have ants rake the dead leaves, spiders hunt mosquitos, birds target specific fruits or insects. As an added bonus the ability to communicate with animals had elevated nature documentaries to new heights, much to the delight of children like Rick. Cyborgs were also able to get augmentations that enabled pheromone communication. Rick would have loved the ability to communicate with animals. His mind wandered as he imagined himself as some cross between Doctor Doolittle and Tarzan, overwhelming enemies with his animal companions.

  In the greenhouse, the gardener bot grew seasonal vegetables, herbs and fruits to accompany the meals. Mr Food could make that stuff, but some study had found that gardens were good for mental health. So... Gardens in every house. It was also apparently necessary to keep up agriculture education in case things went awry and Mr Food stopped working. Rick didn’t know how to farm. He was already an adult when the new educational system started. The TV had educated him. Poorly.

  Rick could smell his favourite cooking. Crispy bacon and pancakes. He wasn’t sure he deserved his kingly breakfast, Amy’s doing for sure. Rick found her hovering above the table using her tractor beam to bring up a food cartridge.

  Amy didn’t need food, but just like sex and drinking, she had been designed so that if she wanted to eat, she could. A great variety of meal simulations were available to AIs. The food itself was software stored on a data key. When Amy ingested it via her booze hole, it went through her artificial digestive system, so through a tube, and was expelled like a bullet casing after the program was downloaded. That bit was unnecessary, but Rick and many others thought it looked cool. The empty cartridge could then be refilled with a new meal experience. Amy had explained to Rick that the program simulated the taste and flavours of different bites and the sensations of meal satisfaction. Each aspect of the meal was recreated, each mouthful of each course and the atmosphere, from a candlelit dinner to beach BBQ, all elements were simulated.

  AI’s loved eating as a result. Everyone ate, cyborgs ate all kinds of foods. The types of food ingested depended on their level of cyber upgrades and modifications. Most required food with functional nanoparticles to help regenerate cybernetic components and ensure continued compatibility between parts. Robots ate information like AIs, and it came in many forms so that they could partake in meals with their fleshy counterparts. Their food could be programmed to simulate any flavour, so the way the meal looked was less meaningful to robots. Rick had often wondered about eating food that was programmed to taste a specific way. Humans had to cook fresh ingredients to perfection to enjoy a great meal, presentation and mouthfeel, everything needed to be right to even come close to the pleasure derived from a pile of drives programmed to taste great. Though for cyborgs food tended to be prepared and presented to perfection as well as programmed. They got the whole shebang. One day. Mutants ate like bodybuilding-Olympic-athlete-beast-monsters. They ate a lot, their obscene metabolisms demanded it. And they liked to talk about it, a lot, and make videos. Perfect, beautiful douchebags.

  People just ate because they loved it. Getting together to eat was one of humanity’s most enduring social constructs. Not this morning though, Amy was in her little world, and Rick wolfed down his breakfast with a sickening amount of maple syrup on his pancakes. He had Mr Food make some more twice before Mom put a stop to it.

  “I’m going to make you work that off tomorrow.” Mom’s voice came out of nowhere and made Rick jump.

  “Not if I burn it off today.” Rick was in a defiant mood.

  “That’s a lot of sugar Rick, too much.” Mom’s voice had softened.

  “I love maple syrup, like, really really love it.” Rick picked up his plate and started licking it.

  “Rick stop that.”

  “Sure thing.” Rick put the clean plate on the table and looked up at one the cameras Mom used to see. “I have a big day today, needed the extra sugar.” Rick left the kitchen and headed for the veranda. Amy didn’t move, she was still enjoying her candlelit breakfast dinner. Crazy AI.

  Rick plopped down in a deep leather chair overlooking the garden and grabbed a small wooden chest. He pulled out a crazy pipe shaped like a cross between a dragon and a silly straw. He set the box onto the side table and leaned back into the chair. After fumbling about in the box for a few seconds, he pulled out a handful of small pipette bottles. After examining the labels, he dropped a few back in the chest. With his left hand, he popped open the bowl receptacles at the front of his pipe. Balancing the pipe between his knees, he started to carefully drop liquid from the bottles in the different bowls on the pipe. Once done he closed the lids and dropped the bottles back in the chest. He leaned back and got nice and comfy before pressi
ng a small button on the dragon pipe’s underbelly. A small mechanism whirred to life, Rick started sucking on the dragon’s mouth, and different coloured vapours rushed through the looping tubes. Dragon Breath.

  Amy floated in. Rick barely acknowledged her. He laid back in his chair staring glassy-eyed into the garden. It was teeming with life, creatures small and smaller busying themselves with what seemed to be essential tasks. Rick was watching some birds have a conversation, wondering what they might be talking about. It looked like they were looking at him. Were they talking about him? Rick was so busy pondering the important things in life that he failed to react when Amy came to hover in front of his face.

  “For fuck’s sake Rick! Why d'you get high? You have important meetings today.” Shoo, little buzzkill.

  “It’s fine Ames, chill.” Amy’s display flashed an angry red face.

  “No, I will not chill! This is for you! But if you don’t care and you’re happy to carry on your self-destructive path we can just forget about everything! Let’s just keep going like before!”

  “Chill Amy, my first meeting is with Barry. I’ll be fine by the time we go to the Agency. Though I might be drunk by then… It’ll be after lunch!” Rick laughed, and Amy buzzed away angry.

  “We’re leaving in thirty. Stop getting high.” Rick muttered “you’re not the boss of me”, took another toke of Dragon Breath and got back to staring into the garden.

  The weather was good, the rain clouds had passed, and the sun was shining on a new day. Rick was lost in thought, relaxing thoughts, gazing lazily at the scattered clouds, the breeze gently shook the leaves, the bees danced about in the garden, and the birds sang a song about flying or something. Rick’s thirty minutes flew by, and Amy came back into the veranda to ruin his peace.

  “Time to go, I’ve ordered us a cab.”

  “Hmmm fine.” Rick summoned all of his strength to beat gravity and rip himself out of the chair. “Where’s Brock?”