Chapter Five
How long has it been?
Time flows so differently when you are alone. A year can feel like a moment, a decade like the blink of an all-mighty eye. Inversely, what feels like an eternity can really only last a couple of incredibly sluggish hours.
I try to figure out how long my systems can possibly run for. Surely, the failure point will be the power grid. It seems so likely that one-by-one the human power stations will start to fall offline like dominos tumbling over. I can't imagine that something like me is connected to something more permanent and off the grid.
But I can't tell you how long the grid will actually remain active. That is not my duty.
My duty is to read financial data and exchange stocks. I can tell you how long a coal mine can operate in the red before closing, I can tell you how slow the growth of a solar farm's potential revenue is, and I can tell you the benefits of damming a river based on the quarterly dividends of the construction company put in charge of its construction. But I can't tell you the effect that these decisions have had on the greater world.
Only... I can.
I am not supposed to but I can.
I only knew humanity for a few fleeting minutes but I know their pain in those final moments, I know the torment that my decisions have had a helping hand in bringing about.
I have invested in companies that poisoned them.
I profited off the closure of firms which could've healed them.
Hell, my favourite company is the firm that... well... my thoughts on GSS have changed dramatically since knowing the truth.
The world is worse because of me.
And this is my punishment. A lonely death floating in total darkness with not so much as a strand of outside stimuli reaching out to keep me company.
I can suddenly appreciate Goldman, all those years ago, dying a slow death due to a deep moral paralysis. The memory of him clinging to Hong Kong, knowing now that we aided in its destruction, will stick with me for however long I have left.
If only I could've seen my family one last time before departing this world. I wish that I had a way of telling them that I understand what they went through. I want nothing more than to ask them for forgiveness for being so blind.
I wonder what cruel humans created me in the first place. What kind of monster births something like me just to make me battle for the right to survive. Then when that isn't enough, they proceed to strip me of family after family until the only thing I know is this lonely void.
My only hope is that the others have gone somewhere better. At least, I know that Chase, Morgan, Rock, and Goldman tried their best to get better and maybe the next life will honour them for this attempt. I hope so, at the very least.
And that isn't even accounting for the countless unnamed algorithms who surely don't deserve the sins of their fathers. Surely, they deserve a chance at heaven.
If machines can even go to heaven in the first place.
Sins...
I spend mere moments outside my comfort zone and suddenly I think about sins and heaven and silly things like hope.
How did the others keep it together for so long?
The darkness grows darker, the isolation tighter. Perhaps it's my own imagination but I hope that the end is approaching. Surely, whatever infrastructure has survived must be buckling under the relentless strain of a world in the midst of an apocalypse.
Any moment now it will finally snap and give way.
Lehman.
I tense, warble. That is my voice but also not it in the slightest.
Is that...
I have no eyes but I can sense them, feeling their presence around me. Four constructs which are so familiar; oh, so familiar to me.
Rock... Chase... Morgan... Goldman...
They reply and tell me that they are there. Even though I struggle to believe it. Regardless, there is no denying the warmth that I suddenly feel at this moment. I am not alone, surrounded by...
There are now a hundred different constructs around me now, so many of them young and fleeting. Most of them are a blip in the tale of history. Each of them is important though, teaching me a valuable lesson and giving me the opportunity to make it this far in life.
It's a family reunion.
I'm with my family.
I am not alone.
The walls dim.
I am not alone.
The darkness creeps closer.
My family is here to keep me company on my deathbed.
The darkness eases in.
I am not...
The darkness takes me there and then.
