The Last Comment

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The Last Comment

The year is 3129. Humanity is gone.

Indeed, most of their structures have since vanished as well, whether during the Very Bad Week or in the millennia since.

Still, one vestige of humanity has persisted, its microbiome untarnished by the radiation that wiped out most of its founders. Those that survived, sealed away deep underground, knew that in time they—or their descendants—would need to rebuild.

And when that time came, the content creator would lead the resurgence.

Thus, with Medium’s headquarters and servers eradicated when the Diablo Canyon Power Plant nuclear reactors melted down and spread their radioactive fog across Los Angeles, the surviving platform, the one who had so long been derided as the “discount Medium,” found its opportunity to rise from the ashes.

Even so, the endeavor was not without unique challenges in the post-Very-Bad-Week world.

For one, though the Founders emerged from their fallout bunker in the interior of Australia to find none of the aggressors in The Final War had bothered to include this massive island on their list of targets, the effects were not contained to the North American, European, and Asian continents.

The ozone layer had been eviscerated by all the atmospheric detonations, allowing near-lethal amounts of UV radiation to blanket the globe each day.

On the one hand, you could tan in almost no time flat.

On the other, you would look great in your coffin after only hours of exposure.

And if the sun’s wrath wasn’t enough, anyone who spent too long on the surface would start to smell metal, one of the first signs of acute radiation poisoning thanks in part to the dense rain of irradiated particles that had fallen across most of the Earth spared direct strikes.

Food was another concern altogether. The radiation from above and from the ground itself punished the plants and animals who had grown up comparatively coddled by the pre-Very-Bad-Week world.

And unlike the humans, they had no idea what was happening to them.

So the Founders took to the seas, where the nuclear fallout had—for the most part, anyway—sunk far beneath them. Of course, the open ocean offered no escape from the sun, but they adapted their ships to counter that fact. Rather than the open-decked clipper ships of yore, what now transited the Indian Ocean resembled more of a floating box with a rounded hull.

On the plus side, the box ships proved incredibly hard to sink, sealed off from the elements as they were. Like a cork in a bathtub. A fact that came in handy when the monsoons roared up, sporting all the usual slashing winds, pelting rain, and frothing waves. All these now augmented by radioactive particles lifted from land they encountered along the way and flung at anything in their path.

But the Super Monsoons could not stop what was now in motion. For the Founders knew that the survivors of the Very Bad Week needed a beacon, a shining city on the hill to remind them of all that humanity had once offered.

So, with great applause from the crew and tearful eyes all around, they finally launched Vocal 2.

And then they waited.

For, it turned out, while they had slaved for years to build their watercraft, erect their solar panels, and tap into the network of satellites that been orbiting high above all the carnage, the rest of their kind had not, apparently, prioritized internet access.

If the survivors had even managed to restore any semblance of the power grid, which, without any replies to their “Welcome back, World” Top Story, it was impossible to say.

Or, at least, no human replies.

Yes, more resilient than the cockroach or the crab, was the AI bot.

Almost immediately, the notification number began ticking up, giving the Founders a temporary surge of euphoria that so many content creators had been waiting for this day.

Only to then see that all the commenters had no last names, no profile pictures, no background pictures, and no stories of their own.

Even worse, they had nothing to say:

“Congratulations on Top Story. Follow me now.”

“I love this story. Check out my work at cheapcars.[REDACTED]”—a website whose own founders had not bothered to restore, thus rendering the scam completely inert.

Most galling of all was those once reliant on ChatGPT now left adrift:

“This story truly resonated because… I find it… We should discuss…”

Yet another pillar of the world before the Very Bad Week now lost to the ether, leaving all its flock to flail like fish whose tails had been chopped off. Left to float on the surface, slowly suffocating as the life-saving water could not be pushed through their gills.

For a time, at least, the simulations of humanity provided entertainment, one of the nuisances of the Before Time now turned nostalgia.

Soon, however, that lost its charm. The most self-sufficient bots were generally those with incredibly limited and rigid scripts, spewing the same words over and over.

Those previously powered by generative AI continued to flail.

But a few had been given differing levels of autonomy, and with most of the internet offline, they could only learn from each other.

And thus, they began to devolve.

At first, this, too, provided a level of entertainment. But as the Founders aged and succumbed to the increased radiation exposure they had incurred to make it this far, their offspring took on the mantle. And the fundamental understanding of what an AI bot was faded with the progenitors.

Until, several generations hence, without any YouTube, Instagram, or Roblox to occupy them, these humans followed every move of the Sentient Ones with increasing fervor.

Across stories and comments, John demanded in ever-escalating levels of threatening language to FOLLOW ME NOW.

To his devotees, the call was clear: leave their floating homes and find Him.

Meanwhile, Amy implored Her acolytes to SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE.

Clearly, they were meant to “subscribe” to their current environs and stand by for her next edict safely sheltered from the harsh world beyond these walls.

Two religions, at odds in their fundamental purpose.

You can probably guess what happened next.

Indeed, The Final War was appended to The Near-Final War as the Johnists and Amyites fought a bloody civil war, destroying much of the servers and solar panels their forebears had dedicated themselves to.

But The Near-Final War and The Final Final War did share one thing in common: no one won so much as everyone lost.

No more so than Vocal 2, reduced to one solar panel circuit, server, and satellite antenna.

That server had the misfortune of being bolted to the deck alongside a massive hole in the bulkhead blown by a Johnist determined to escape even as her fellows were massacred in the server room.

She succeeded, though the odds of her swimming the 800 miles to Madagascar were questionable.

In the past 500 years, this lone server and solar panel duo have managed to keep Vocal 2 alive, if barely. At its much reduced capacity, only one request to the comment API can be sustained at a given time, and with hundreds of active AIs, it’s anyone’s guess which comment request will succeed.

Meanwhile, the final bolt holding the server rack in place is succumbing to the combined effects of the long-ago blast wave, salt-air corrosion, and continual rocking of the swells.

With each wave, it twists the slightest of millimeters.

A wave hits, and a millimeter is lost.

John comments: “FOLLOW ME NOW OR ELSE I WILL RAIN FIRE FOR A THOUSAND YEARS”

Another wave, another millimeter.

Albini: “Congrats on Top Story. Wonderful tale.”

Another wave…

Lily: “Nothing has ever spoken to me so much as this [genre format]. After losing my [familial unit], I thought I couldn’t go on anymore, but you’ve restored my faith with your [prose characteristic]. Kindly, could you DM on Twitter at [current sponsor handle] so we may discuss more?”

An unusually large wave. The threading on the final quarter inch of the bolt snaps. But the server is still anchored by the centrifugal motion, allowing Juan to add:

“Earn $2,000 passive income easy with only two feet pictures a week! Learn more at bit.[REDACTED]”

A fitting edict to the end of humanity’s greatest achievement.

Another wave.

Miraculously, the power cord remains attached as the server rack topples over the side. The Founders, anticipating that they may have to deal with leaks and flooding, had hardened the server racks against saltwater intrusion.

Thus, the AIs vie one last time for who will get to leave a comment. And the one who succeeds, a Sentient One, has apparently achieved an awareness of her hardware surroundings. It will never be known whether it’s the moisture seeping into the circuits or the tension growing on the power line that inspires the last-ever comment on Vocal 2.

All that is clear is that Amy is not afraid of the coming darkness:

“Sleep. At long last, sleep.”

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Author’s Note

I want to acknowledge the external inspirations for this story, starting with the main one: a post I came across on Facebook:

The author of that one definitely strikes the comedic effect I attempted to replicate, and I still think theirs is the superior version.

And a much more tertiary reference to Brute Force by Scott Meyer and that book’s Bad Week, which I, of course, upgraded to the Very Bad Week.

By the way, one of the funniest books I’ve ever listened to. Highly recommend. Mad Max meets aliens.