The Last Heartbeat

By Hayden Mitman

Last night, Emily Floss’ heart took its last beat.

It was a moment she had prepared for her entire life.

For many years, and up until her last breath, Emily counted on machines to keep her alive – both figuratively and literally. As the last human being on the face of the earth, Emily was tended to by androids called “simulants” around the clock. She died at the age of 167. Though, nearly two thirds of her adult life, her health was monitored constantly and machines took care of her every human function.

She spent her last years in a medical bay in Washington as little more than a lifeform with breath and a heartbeat. But, to the rest of the world, she was a celebrity.

Simulants from all over the world listened to the live feed of her breathing apparatus, an aural reminder of the organic life that once dominated the earth. Some played the live recording of her beating heart from speakers installed in their own chests – a connection to what remained of humanity.

But, it wasn’t always this way. It was the pollution that changed it all. After decades of pollution doomed the planet’s ecosystem, the world government enacted a plan to fill the air with chemicals, hoping to reverse the damage humans had done.

“Refresh Air” they called it. A “refresher for fresh air.”

It didn’t work.

Instead, it completely destroyed the atmosphere. The chemical clouds tore apart every layer of the earth’s atmosphere. The breakdown allowed most of the planet’s native gases – notably oxygen – to slip from gravity’s grasp and dissipate into the nothingness of space.

The chemical clouds caused liquid mercury to rain from the sky, storm torrents strengthened winds to speeds unseen in history and the shores eroded with every passing day.

Not long after the wind-towers spit their mixture of a thousand gasses into the sky, animals started to die by the thousands, all victims of humanity’s mistake. It first took out animals with small, rapidly beating hearts. Then birds and bugs…and lizards…and every animal from the savanna to the tundra.

Society tried to save them, kept animals in zoos or collected several selected species in specially built containment houses to protect them from the changing atmosphere.

But, everything changed too much.

It wasn’t just the air that soured, the airborne chemicals turned water into toxic waste. Everything that swam in the oceans died in a matter of weeks.

Humans survived the longest.

To preserve their lives, entire populations of the earth built massive protective structures – cities walled under chemical shields. People tunneled underground in the hopes of building life anew as it rotted away above.

Eventually, the oxygen ran out and animal and vegetable life could no longer be sustained on this planet.

Hope for saving humanity arrived in the form of the simulants.

During the harshest times, just before all hope to save humanity had run out, these thin robotic androids – made simply, mostly pneumatics, wire frames and computer cores – were designed as a way to fill a void as loved ones died. They were originally designed to have a personality similar to a specific person to allow their friends and family to interact with a loved one-by-proxy after they died.

By having the person who the robot would eventually “replace” complete a battery of tests and surveys, the robots were programmed to have similar interests, opinions and knowledge bases as their human counterparts.

Using a lengthy – it took more than a week to do at first – personally profile test developed by psychologists, Steven Shandler and Daniel Crown, the robots were the only solution humanity had to a world that no longer could sustain organic life.

As humanity’s time ran short, science learned to make artificial intelligence that could improve on its programming and its own hardware continually, allowing the simulants to sustain themselves.

The Shandler-Crown test was worked and reworked, lengthened from a survey of a person’s likes, dislikes and typical reactions to a complete profile of a person’s psyche. What initially took about a week to complete, became a month-long, then years-long procedure where questions probed for nearly every inevitable interaction or decision that could be made.

The programming became so complex, some people even started to see the simulants as less of a substitute for a lost loved one, but a preferable option to the vulnerable human form.

Towards the end of humanity, simulants thrived.

They could been seen running every underground vault, interacting and caring for the humanity inside. Simulants stopped being a way for people to interact with lost loved ones and became lifeforms themselves. They selected jobs, held conversations together and found hobbies. History repeat itself as the programed personalities of old friends met and held conversations, sharing similar interests just as their human counterparts would have.

The last remaining humans spent all their time filling out forms for the Shandler-Crown test. Every answer to every question got one closer to true immortal life. The more information about one’s likes and dislikes, their wants and desires that a person could input into their simulant’s programming before they died, the more “human” the ensuing simulant would be.

But no one took as many tests as Emily Floss.

Born in a chemical shelter deep underground, as a young girl Emily had a passion for the tests. No matter what she did, Emily couldn’t wait to tell the program if she liked it or hated it.

She told the program everything she could think of: her favorite classic movie: ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, her favorite flower: lilacs, favorite food: pizza. She filled it with information from her favorite way to sit on a couch to her least favorite flavor of peanut butter to the way she’d react if late for a meeting: “invent harmless excuse”.

Everything.

As she grew, she made sure every aspect of her life became part of the programming.

How she liked to wear her hair. The way she liked to feel the breeze from the air purifiers across her nose. How she liked the dirt on her toes, but didn’t like to get mud past her ankles.

“That’s too dirty,” she typed into the program.

As she aged, and most of humanity died – or, evolved into a simulant, as they liked to say – simulants grew excited to see what Emily’s work would produce.

All of the last few humans were known by the simulants, but Emily outlived all of humanity.

News of her death rode across the world like a wave of sorrow. The sound of her heartbeat ceased to echo off the steel memory cores of every simulant that had played it.

When they turned off the machines that kept breath in Emily’s lungs, simulants across the world bowed their ocular domes, all silently witnessing passing of the earth’s last human life.

But, there was new excitement now. Her work could come to fruition. The process to create Emily’s simulant began immediately.

Simulant databases scoured the millions of questions she’d answered throughout her life. Hours passed as simulants stopped throughout their days and checked the collective knowledge-base to see how her upload was going.

Simulants gossiped and hummed with excitement, waiting weeks as her information was carefully uploaded into its new form.

They had built her the perfect simulant core, a delicate pink and silver body, complete with a speaker in its chest, ready to replay the recording of the heartbeat she had in life.

As the upload was nearly complete, Emily’s new form was wheeled out in front of thousands of simulants, their ocular domes recorded and shared her images into the knowledge-base, allowing every simulant to see from vantage point of any who viewed her.

In a whir of electric energy and a gasp of pneumatic pressure, Emily’s simulant climbed to its feet.

She was ready. The program was prepared. In life, Emily Floss had prepared for every eventuality, every possible future experience was taken into consideration and now, a simulant was ready to enact the code Emily had written.

This Emily was Emily.

Under the gaze of a thousand simulants, Emily’s simulant wanted to scream it all – everything she knew about herself, every minor detail – to show the others that it had worked.

But, they knew.

Each was connected to the knowledge-base. They knew her program was larger, more complex and nuanced than any simulant on the system.

There was no question, this Emily knew everything Emily Floss had in life.

The crowd around her moved to give her space and Emily’s simulant stepped forward and saw what the others had prepared.

She was inside a large building, decorated in white and pink ribbons (Emily Floss’ favorite colors), and lilacs. Soft music played, a rendition of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata  – just like it had been piped through the loudspeaker of the medical center where Emily Floss died.

If the metal grate on Emily’s simulant’s ocular orb – which was situated where a human mouth would be – could smile, Emily’s simulant would grin at the attention to detail in the room.

All of the things she loved as a human were there. The dolls Emily Floss loved as a child sat in long wooden benches set around the large room, a bike Emily Floss had ridden when she was young sat propped up against a mannequin wearing Emily Floss’ wedding dress and it was all lit by candlelight.

Other simulants wandered in with her, watching Emily’s simulant take in everything around her.

In the far end of the room, surrounded by candles and set under a photo of Emily Floss’ human face, a big white box sat on the floor.

“Come see,” said a simulant that walked near Emily’s simulant as it stopped, hesitating to step forward.

“This is for you,” the simulant said. “The last human. You were so beautiful…and you are still.”

It reached out and grabbed the pneumatic arm of Emily’s simulant. The simulant urged Emily Floss’ simulant forward, putting her in position for a moment that simulants across the globe were waiting to see: Emily’s perfect machine meeting its maker.

The simulant, broadcasting its view worldwide, pulled Emily’s simulant forward and the mechanical program created by Emily Floss stepped closer.

Emily Floss’ stimulant stepped to the box and took in the sight of Emily Floss’ human form laid out in the white coffin.

Emily Floss’ elderly body lay breathless, soft, cold and comfortable, lilies all over her white funeral gown.

“So, how do you feel?” the simulant at Emily’s simulant’s side asked.

Emily Floss’ program looked down at Emily Floss’ body. The machine scoured lines of code by the thousands, by the millions. Emily had programmed in every eventuality.

Every possible situation that could arise had been accounted for.

Emily’s program sought a response.

“Emily, how do you feel?” the simulant pressed.

Staring at the body of Emily Floss, Emily’s simulant found no response.