The Last Human

"Ready to begin checklist 401." My cockpit AI announced in a natural, yet monotone voice.

"Alright, let's begin." I replied, shuffling through a holographic chart. The AI systems were highly reliable, but the monumental importance of what was about to happen required a human to carry out the final checks. I would myself of course be checked again by a different set of AIs, and the ship itself was isolated to yet another circuit for even more redundancy. I began reading the checklist.

"Main reactor?"

"Stable at 10%."

"Auxiliary power?"

"Nominal standby."

"Battery?"

"99% and charging, temperature 300 kelvin. Nominal."

"Life support?"

"Go."

"Navigation?"

"Go."

"Scanner?"

"Go."

"Screendome?"

"Go."

"Storage?"

"Go. 99.9% of 8192 kiloyotts free."

"MCPS?"

"Go."

"Suit life support?"

"Go."

"Atmosphere?"

"O2 nine-eight percent. Pressure one-six-zero millimeters mercury. Humidity nominal."

"Utility fog?"

"Secured. 99.8% consensus go."

"Final checks?"

"All systems GO. AI polling votes GO. Do you concur?"

"I concur. Switch to suit life support and initiate scan phase standby and arm."

"Initiating scan phase standby. Suit life support initialized and nominal."

At the AI's declaration, the helmet of my suit locked into place with a metallic click, and a low breeze rumbled across my face as the suit began circulating air through the helmet. The white elastic fabric of the mechanical counterpressure suit squeezed tightly against my body, but immediately loosened in response to the external air pressure from the cockpit life support.

Around me, a faint gray light illuminated the cockpit space from hexagonal tiles arranged in a hemispheric dome. Suddenly the wall tiles dimmed completely to pitch black and an image slowly faded in to replace it. Above me, a pitch-black sky was dotted with pinpricks of light, below, a vast blue field mottled with white stretched to a curved horizon.

It was the Earth, and this was the last time it would ever be seen. For a moment I let myself be engrossed in the beautiful sight and silently reflected on the task that lay ahead as my ship orbited above.

"Initialization complete. Scan phase in standby. System armed."

The AI's nonchalant voice interrupted. I envied her unwavering resolve.

"Begin active scan phase."

"This action is final. Do you wish to commit?"

"Commit and fire."

"Understood. Active scan phase has begun. Completion in 30 seconds."


Beside me various holographic readouts materialized, and the hexagonal lines between the tiles of the screen dome pulsed a dim red to warn the active scan had begun. A deep whirring of machinery stirred around me as the ship prepared for its grim, yet necessary task.

In front of me a single translucent progress bar appeared, a gross, almost mocking simplification of the profound event that was occurring. Below, a shining grid stretched across the face of the Earth, expanding until blue was replaced with a white glow. Soon the glowing orb shrank to a point of light and disappeared completely.

"Deconstruction complete. Scanner secured. Storage stable, 28% of 8192 terrayotts free. Reactor systems declining from maximum usage of 105% rated maximum. Temperatures at upper limit of acceptable, decreasing."

In less than a minute, the entirety of humanity, as well as the world which had birthed and borne it for one million years, had disappeared in a flash. The Earth, and all that had been upon it, was now gone.

This is necessary for our evolution...

Our species was doomed anyway...

They aren't really gone...

I tried to rationalize it in my head, but the truth was 7 billion lives had just unequivocally ended, four and a half billion years of life was now extinct, and an entire world had been converted to energy. It was a world in anguish, a dying world, and so it was decided that we would start over. The whole planet had been scanned in quantum detail, and the entirety of the Earth's mass-energy would now be used to analyze where we had gone wrong and recreate everything as a perfect utopia. It was a last-ditch gambit to ensure our survival and evolution, and a slim majority of the people had supported the decision. With zealous fervor, they had placed their blind faith in a science that had become more of a religion, complete with its own eschatological promise of resurrection. Those who opposed were merely viewed as ignorant luddites and deemed irrelevant. As such, tensions had grown high, and even as I carried out the deconstruction, the entire world was roiled with riots and violence, and civilization was on the verge of collapse. Things were too far gone for there to even be ground support for my mission; I had to carry it out from orbit, alone in the vastness of space. However, all was quiet now...