This model still had a full steering wheel and a driver’s seat, an oddity nowadays; in fact, one of the last models that did that. But few would know because no one could see inside. The privacy settings had the windows set to full mirror mode.
Had anyone noticed this car among all the others, they would probably not have realized it had pulled into the same gas station three months before, and three months before that. Had a traffic analysis program taken a good look, it would have spotted that this car was looping the highways. North on 405, South on I5. Pulling off only to refill.
The car showed no sign of wear. It probably wouldn’t for a hundred years.
The driver had known exactly what he was doing. The pattern he had programmed took several hours to complete. His account held plenty of money to keep the fuel going for some time.
He was in the driver’s seat, in what looked like quiet contemplation. He loved his car, he loved to drive. Well he loved to ride nowadays. He could think of no better way than this. Laid off. Another job lost to the robots. He had at first spent a lot of time just going around the loop, wondering what to do.
He hoped no one would notice for a couple of years. If he was lucky, he and his car might make it ten.
When he had drunk the tea he had prepared there was no pain, and he had kept his eyes on the road and wide open.
•
The Doll
Hattie worked on the doll.
She had everything she needed. She had pulled the hairs from his hairbrush when he let her use his bathroom and had found a piece of toilet paper with a red spot of blood on it, probably from shaving. She smiled at that, it made this so much easier to have some blood.
He was leaving her. She knew that he had met someone else but wasn’t sure who yet. She’d make a doll for her too, later. It wasn’t nice to play with her affections. This was payback time.
Hattie came from a family with a tradition of knowing what to do about these things, knowledge passed down mother to daughter, aunt to niece, for hundreds of years. Midwives. Wise women. She had a network, and they came through for her. Her sisters were legion.
She hummed to herself as she opened up his doll. Peeling off and setting aside the false outer skin to reveal the real doll underneath. She had scanned a photo of him into her computer and his face was now printed directly onto the vinyl skin which now sagged in a wad. Sad. And helpless. She smiled while she looked at it. And then pushed his head in with one finger, hard, until his face couldn’t be seen anymore.
Nobody left her. Nobody.
She tapped his doll and said in a whisper, “Hocus pocus!”
It began to glow.
These dolls were a marvel. Secret of course. No talk about them online. No images. No written directions anywhere. No doll was mailed. Hand delivered every time. Sisters only. Made with ritual and rite. The old ways were best.
His blood had been extracted into a special saline solution where it was coaxed into growing again until she had the right amount. Just a drop or two was all she needed, but she had ten times that now just to be sure.
She dribbled two drops onto the doll’s chest, splatting into the microchannel grooves that she had prepared. Capillary action sucked it into patterns and deposited it into a the complex framework. Little lines radiated from the splatter into dozens of tiny chambers, scattered across the surface of the doll’s arms and legs and head. Chakra points. Acupuncture spots. Each treated with a reactor and a sensor. The lines followed old patterns taken from ancient rituals.
She continued to hum as she opened the head to feed his hair sample into the doll. Once the head was closed back up, all the air was evacuated, then the contents remaining were flashburned by a laser in a tiny chamber, the resulting gas then deposited onto a prepared surface, and spectroscopically analyzed. A lot can be learned from a hair.
The microchannels in the doll had moved the blood to the various stations, chemical analysis began on all points.
The sisters had been working on the systems in these dolls for some time. They had evolved a bit over the years. One must keep up with the times. And the sisters had been doing this for centuries. They were proud that they were always were just a bit ahead of the curve.
She tapped her computer display and began to read the analysis. She knew quite a bit about his diet already, but his mild diabetes was a surprise. That might be handy.
The DNA records were compared to other databases she had uploaded into the doll already. EEG records had been delivered by sisters who worked in hospitals who always kept a spare before uploading to the “Private” folders. Details on the electrical activity and patterns of his neural network were a piece of cake.
She had hidden a sensor on his bed. A sensitive thing measuring his heart beat, breathing patterns, and even his subvocals while he dreamed. Hattie also had hidden a camera watching from a second sensor she had stuck to the ceiling fan originally not intended for this purpose. She sighed, oh so briefly, then got back to it. But the camera was one that also mapped and monitored his thermal patterns while he slept, among other, well, things.
She had his DNA now. Haplogroups were well mapped and checked against a vast database to determine precisely what he was likely to respond to. The chemical traces in the hair sample added even more information like what he had responded to in the past, sometimes it could tell what he had liked as a kid.
Subsonics and radio frequencies generated by the doll could resonate exactly to his own specific patterns. Tailor made chemicals could be released. Even viruses could be created to react with him alone.
Having the doll in the same room as him for a few minutes was all she’d need. To start.
The doll already could allow for sudden temporary effects, it was able to remotely disrupt the nervous system in his arms, legs, and head, causing pain in the spots on the doll she would touch with the stylus. Well, for a couple seconds anyway, then his body would compensate.
His neural map was tuned as well. She could induce a strong pheromone response when he was close to the doll. Fear. Lust. Anger. Confusion. All with a button press. The sisters had dealing with this kind of thing down.
Except love was harder. She’d have to work at that, day by day, using the doll slowly over time. Fine tuning the effects, and mapping and analyzing the feedback. Love was more of an art than a skill. She had to be careful not to overplay her hand. She’d make him love her, and leave that other one wondering what the hell had happened. She’d make him her boy toy. And when she was done? She’d use the doll one last time.
She could make every one of his dreams, a dream of her. A wash of endorphins whenever he whispered her name.
Her computer dinged. The doll had a report ready.
As it continued its analysis programs, she poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and read through the record. A heart murmur. Well, now she had the final button to program for her doll.
It wasn’t nice to play with someone’s emotions, Hattie thought. She took a long sip of her wine, thought about all the pleasure she was going to have with him, then smiled long and slow and cold at the doll. He shouldn’t be playing games, not when he was so far, so very far, out of his league.
•
Third Time’s the Charm
They had been watching for a long time, debating on whether or not to do it. Factions argued and debated, pondering the flaws compared to the merits. Every point carefully sifted and measured. The reasons were many, as were the reasons not to. This was taken seriously.
At the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the process sped up. The luxury of millennia was over. A decision was imminent.
Less than a hundred years passed before judgment was rendered.
In sixty places a small cylinder was dropped into the sky, places where the wind was strong. The cylinders sublimated quickly, dissolving into what appeared to be nothingness.
<
br /> Not exactly nothingness.
Just particles smaller than the eye could see. Particles that multiplied, again and again. Tiny constructs that launched themselves into the wind, dived into water, and burrowed into the earth. It took all those years to make a decision that was irrevocable in two days.
At the stroke of the forty-eighth hour, the particles could be found within any cubic inch of soil on earth, in the deepest ocean trenches, and at the top of the highest mountains. No island was spared, no mine-shaft, no secret hidden place. Anywhere on earth, everywhere on earth, the constructs could be found. If anyone had known to look.
At the stroke of the seventy-second hour, the constructs did their job, and crumbled. They dissolved into polymers that warped into compounds that melted into individual carbon atoms and a few trace elements, and vanished without a hint of their origin or purpose.
It took three months before anybody noticed something was different.
Hospitals weren’t as busy as they should be. Most of the usual things continued. People were still treated for cancer, for drug overdoses, for prostate troubles, obesity and face lifts, but something was missing.
Two more months went by before the hospitals knew for sure, and they were the first to realize.
Children.
They were still being born, at seemingly normal rates, nothing exciting or unusual. And yet, no one was coming in for the first time. Nobody who panicked and ran for a blood test because their protection failed. No one went berserk because their test came back with a positive result. No newlyweds who were trying were successful. No matter how many fertility shots were administered, they just wouldn’t take. Strange. But there was no way to evaluate it. It wasn’t medical. It wasn’t science. The hospitals kept quiet about it.
No viruses were discovered, no chemical imbalances were detected. Hormones were normal, menstruation was fine, sperm counts were average, but nowhere was there a first-trimester pregnancy. Two more months went by before the story broke outside the hospital rope line.
No one believed the headlines at first. Why that’s silly! they would say, silently demanding that their voices not crack at the mere thought it might be true. Just last week that young lady in apartment 4a had a healthy baby girl. They simply regarded this as another attempt to sell news through scare tactics.
On April 14th, at 7:53 AM, after a simple delivery, David Pinkham was born at the Sacred Heart Hospital in Shreveport, Illinois. A healthy six-pound four-ounce baby boy.
He was the last child born on earth.
At first people joked about it. Today is nobody’s birthday. No buns in the oven. Things like that. But the jokes didn’t last long. Scientists began to look for the cause in earnest. Every nation had their best people on the job. No research was hidden, all cooperated. Sperm banks were set up everywhere, in the hopes that one man or woman was spared, or that a particular combination would work. Vast and detailed information on human reproduction was gathered, stymied only by the inability to watch it in action. All that international effort, but not even zygotes would form.
Nothing.
Well, they found part of the problem: people had been altered genetically. Something basic had been changed. What that something was? The scientists didn’t know and could not figure out. How it happened? They had no clue. How to fix it? Well, they did not shout this from the rooftops, but they said it among themselves that this was beyond them. Nothing they knew helped. No pattern, no medical advance, nada.
Animals were not affected. As far as man could tell, the wild creatures were spared. Insane, desperate attempts to merge animal and human DNA were completely unsuccessful.
David Pinkham was kidnapped when he was two years old. A young woman was apprehended, frantic, wild-eyed, and tearful. “It’s not fair!” she screamed over and over. “Why do they have one and I can’t!” David was returned to his parents. They did not want to press charges.
The woman took her own life a few days later.
Many articles were written about her, and about why. Half the world forgave her, and half condemned. But everyone understood why.
Kidnapping became a common problem among the last children, as they came to be called. More and more, people (couples mostly) grew resentful and jealous of the parents of the last children. Until the last ones had to be isolated from the world at large. When David Pinkham was spotted? Everything would stop. People simply stared at him, enraptured. Whenever his security was breached, hordes of paparazzi would converge.
Entire magazines were devoted to his every childhood utterance and action. The world watched him grow up. All the last children were treated this way. But David, by far, was the most affected.
More years went by and no more children were born. Some took it as a sign from God, and made peace with themselves, and their neighbors, and awaited the end. Others raged. There was screaming and demanding Why? Never getting an answer, they took their hatred and frustration out on others. Ending their lives in a frenzy of denial, taking many with them.
A few trusted in science and human resourcefulness and patiently waited for them to make things right. Scientists and the technological elite quietly gathered the knowledge and wisdom of all mankind together. They looked for any clue as to what had happened.
As time went on, the last children came of age. David Pinkham married Susan Alvarez. She was born four days earlier than he was. The worldwide celebrations of their wedding lasted for days. A false era of hope dawned on humanity, despite the warnings of the scientists. It crumbled a year or two later. They were infertile as well.
Not even David Pinkham, whose name was known in every house and village, in every empty maternity ward, and every abandoned school–not even he could create a child.
That was the turning point. The moment the world truly understood. That it was over.
The people of earth at first despaired, then denied, and raged. And then despaired again. Whole religions sprang up where people knew in their hearts and souls, if they were good and pure enough, they would be given a child. Or maybe an explanation.
Some went the opposite extreme, reasoning that nothing mattered, so take what you want, there’s no reason to leave anything behind.
Empires crumbled. Concepts like destiny, legacy, and history no longer had any meaning. Who cared what you accomplished, when no one would be around to remember?
In some places, monuments were erected, in hopes that other races, perhaps evolved apes or alien visitors, would know and remember Humanity. The wisdom and lore of the whole of mankind was sealed away in time vaults, hopefully designed to last millennia.
When David was forty, people had mostly grown accustomed to their fate. Genetics was the only science people were interested in. A few desperate people still tried to discover why and how.
The vast empires were gone. There was little interest in politics. What was the point? Suicides were commonplace, spoken of in passing resignation. Few holidays were noticed, let alone celebrated.
People stayed in touch for a long time, but slowly communications decayed. The satellites stopped working, the phone lines went down, even the Ham radios began to fail as parts became impossible to replace.
Animals were becoming common again. Dogs had begun to go feral more and more, as had cats. The wild things reclaimed the cities. People rarely lived there. The vast empty canyons of abandoned buildings were too big for the population, And their steel swingsets and wheel-a-rounds too much of a reminder.
The ones that were left preferred to gather in smaller places. A storm would break a dam, an earthquake ruin a once cherished landmark and no one would repair the damage. The forests and jungles were returning.
David Pinkham died at sixty eight. There weren’t enough people interested in running a newspaper for it to be common knowledge. Nobody did an autopsy or examination to find out what he died of. Friends buried him
, a few old men and women who wondered who would be the ones to bury them when their time came.
Nobody knew who was the last person to die, nobody was there to remember. No one knew what country he or she came from, what was the cause, how old he or she was. It didn’t matter.
The judges of mankind began to arrive when there were no humans left. This time would be different. Mammals weren’t the ones. Neither had been the reptiles. This was not the first time the judgment had been made on earth. The decision against reptiles had taken much longer than the ruling against mammals. Now they would try insects. The decision was reached quickly, only one hundred years of debate.
Cylinders were released, and the process begun again. Seventy two hours later, the tiny nano-constructs did their job.
All over the world, in anthills, beehives, and termite mounds, the droning sounds changed. The beings grew aware. Became thoughtful.
A new day was dawning.
Maybe this time, the judges conferred. This time. This time they’d do things the right way.
Third time’s the charm.
Y
Copy Me: & Other Science Fiction Stories Page 9