Last One Standing

Aliens have arrived and here I am, last of our species. I’m present to greet the spaceship hoping, at least, for someone to have lunch with. After the usual small talk about our respective planets and what went wrong with ours, I ask what took them so long. The pilot apologizes because they’ve been monitoring our decline and fall for many moons, alarmed at our recent descent into planetary suicide but he says they just didn’t make the lights.

The three-eyed android who more resembles an androgynous Greek statue with marbleized flesh, speaks remarkedly perfect English. It had been a while since I’d spoken at all and find myself fluent, at first, only in gibberish till I regain use of my tongue.

He then observes a stash of what we used to call technology, inquiring how all the gadgetry works. I dread the moment and plead total ignorance. Fearful of raising his hackles I try to explain that we earthlings used a lot of things but most of us had no idea how anything worked. His hackles did indeed rise. I worry that some form of inter-galactic enhanced interrogation was coming, in which I might find myself impaled on one of his hackles.

He seems to accept my ignorance since, after all, we had convincingly demonstrated our collective stupidity by electing an infantile despot to lead our nation. The visitors further regret their delayed arrival, having now to deal with such a poor specimen as me to enlighten them on our human progress. 

I could only assure them that there used to live among us some who could explain how the loom with its punch cards led to player pianos and eventually to programming the computer. When I brought up AI, they threatened to make a U-turn. I told them there were a few of us undaunted by hot wires or hard drives who could fiddle with links and algorithms along with blue teeth, white noise and black holes. If one of those had survived, they could build it all over again from a handful of dust. However, I was not the guy.

All I have to offer is the paper clip, coat hanger and orange juice squeezer none of which he had ever seen before. We agree to call it a start and besides it will take a lot more than things to get it right next time.