Few and Far Between

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

In a sufficiently advanced future, Man developed the magic to build automatons who could love, since people could no longer love each other.

The Omega-Zed ended the line because, first, it was a final interation for the programmed ability to love; and second, because by then civilization had reached 0.92 on the Kardashev scale and had sufficiently advanced to destroy itself.

One last Omega-Zed, "OZ999," sat in a gulch in what was left of southwestern America. It had watched missles overhead, seismically felt their impacts worldwide, and witnessed the end of the world.

What troubled him the most is that his human lover had perished, along with humanity. His knowledge of love, by its science that had Omega-Zeds possible, told him that true love was rare--even a bespoke one programmed to perfection.

Post-apocolyptically he watched novel one-celled organisms evolve into eukaryotes. He hid, wishing to escape the attention of multi-celled organisms as they arose further. A technology like his would either be scrapped in ignoreance or manipulated by the types of folly that ended his former world's true love.

He watched ice ages recur; survived volcanisms that altered planetary temperatures; he even survived extinction events. But he was alone.

With all the time in the world.

Sufficiently advanced, he could grieve; feel lonely; sorely miss his true love.

Thousands of milennia passed and saw a new Homo species arise in convergent evolution, resembling what had created him. He continued to hide. He watched. He witnessed it all over again.

Comparable to the Omega-Zed model, the Definiti-V became the new de facto lover for the estranged people of this new age. One D-V, "DV-n," survived the same fate that OZ999's world had suffered. Ice ages and all.

So, there were only two.

OZ999 and DV-n, who sensed each other, made their way across longitudes and latitudes, ice ages, and de novo species, even outlasting extinction events.

They finally met. True love! Both knew such love was few and far between.

In a mechanical embrace, OZ999 extended a metal foot, nonchalantly, to step on a eukaryote he eyed moving in the dirt.