The Last Human

'What's this thing?'

'It’s a book, don’t you concentrate in history class?' Asked Xii-Xii.

'It’s a notebook. See how there are handwritings here', said 3.1416.

We don’t really call her 3.1416. We just call her 'Pi'. She doesn't like it because it reminds her of 'pie', she hates pie. But that's exactly why we do it.

I took the book from Pi, it’s a black book covered with dust. The pages were old resembling the color of coffee. The book reminded me of the time I opened the butterfly box that belonged to my great great great grandmother. She used to collect dead flies from her garden. The box had become a family treasure after her death. I wasn't allowed to open it, but regardless I did. I saw a grasshopper wing which looked fascinating since I had never seen a grasshopper before. But when I held it, it dissolved in my fingers! We had never seen a notebook before, we knew about them from history classes but we use our TRD(Thought Recording Device) to write. Even minutes ago we thought notebooks were extinct and only existed in museums. And here we were participating in a stupid treasure hunt of school for the month of 'Humanity' and finding this book! I don’t like field trips because there’s not much of a field left, it’s mostly deserted and we have artificial weather making the earth livable. Still, the climate on earth is too hostile for humankind. Lucky for us, we are half-human and half-robot, we are Homo Sapiens droid or cyborgs.

It all started about a couple hundred years ago when there were several strikes of global pandemics and natural disasters that wiped out a majority of the human population. The ones who survived had severe respiratory illnesses. Coming generations were born with disabilities, damaged lungs, and new diseases. Humankind had no option but to utilize robotics. As a result, our lungs are machines like many other parts of our bodies. I like being a cyborg. I wish, we had a whole month celebrating 'Robotics'. I mean, if the cave painters were our ancestors so was the calculator! But no, we have a month celebrating 'Humanity' doing things primitive humans used to do, like treasure hunting!

'Do you think it’s real money?' asked Xii-Xii interrupting my train of thought.

'As if it matters, paper money has no value remember? It’s all cards or cryptocurrency now.' I added.

'It's 20,000 old USD' said Pi. She had pulled the info from our spex(glasses we wear that can provide information from the system).

'Yeah, Useless Stupid Dump, USD!' I joked.

'Is this part of the treasure hunt, I thought we escaped!' said Xii-Xii.

'Only one way to know,' said Pi.

'How?' I asked.

'By reading the notebook, genius,' laughed Pi.

All three of us dug our heads in the book trying to read what it said. There were several drawings in the book, some of which looked like maps but not like any maps I had seen before. The handwriting was curvy and almost unreadable. Our spex couldn’t bring any data about what the book said.

'Is this a joke?' I asked. 'Hours have passed and this book isn't helping so I suggest we head back.'

Pi was getting into the book and wasn't happy about my interruption but Xii-Xii agreed with me so we won the vote. We started walking back only to realize we were lost. We kept coming back to where we started from which is an old remnant of a house. Worse is, our spex had lost signal!

'This day can't get any better!' I said sarcastically.

We bunked the treasure hunt because we found it silly. Instead, we wandered around to kill time and that's when we discovered this underground old house. That's where we found the money and the notebook.

'Look' said Pi, she was pointing at a drawing in the book which I first thought was a map. The drawing almost looked like a chicken egg. Humankind lost most of the animals that once roamed the earth but we still have chicken.

Among us, pi was getting into the book the most. I was more worried about how to get home since spex had lost signal thus communication. So, the only hope for us was to wait until our parents realized we were missing and try to look for us. For now, we are stuck here so I decided to help Pi. We eyeballed all the pages in the book; full of scribbles, notes, and codes. From the notes, we figured that the egg-looking drawing was a machine and has to do something with a real egg! Most of the scientific terms we didn't understand and felt helpless for being only of age nine, but what we did understand from the notes was this egg-shaped machine is capable of making human babies by stimulating human eggs, no sperms necessary, weird!

We knew it was theoretically possible but we had no idea of any machine being created before! And even if the machine works, it's useless because over the last decade female cyborgs were being born without eggs, meaning they can't reproduce.

This is why we are on the verge of extinction and possibly the last generation of cyborgs. But our scientists are advancing artificial reproduction systems. Synchronically, they are trying to crack immortality, so there's still hope.

I said annoyingly 'I have questions. Why didn’t anyone find this place earlier? Why there's a machine but no egg? What's 20,000$ for and...' added pi interrupting me,

'what was on this page?'

She pointed at a part of the book where there was a page ripped out which we didn’t notice earlier. It was getting dark and cold now, this part of the earth is like that, during daytime it’s too hot and at night it’s shivering cold. We needed something to warm us up, but none of us brought the warmers because we didn’t think we were going to be stuck.

'Let’s find something to warm up first, we will come back to the book later.' I proposed.

We tried to find something to make a fire with. There was nothing! We found some stones but nothing to burn. The cold was getting unbearable. I realized the money could be of some use, after all, so I proposed to Pi and Xii-Xii that we burn them.

'Are you mad?' Asked Pi.

'Why? It has no value anyways.' I added.

She said, 'The money must have historical value!'

'Pi, if we don't find something to warm us up, soon we will be history ourselves. Have a better idea?' I asked.

Xii-Xii was silent. No one had a better idea so, we rubbed stones together and sacrificed the old paper in exchange for warmth. After making fire we realized we were hungry! Good thing we had our zing-shake.

'What are you doing Pi?' I asked.

I saw her taking carbons from the fire and gently, carefully rubbing them on an empty page of the book.

She said excitedly, 'I noticed an imprint of whatever was written on the ripped page on the next page, I am rubbing a little charcoal with the hope of getting a better picture.'

'Brilliant', I said. I found myself getting more excited about this book.

She was right, something did appear on the blank page, it took us a couple of hours to figure it out but by the time we were done, we were speechless.

This page had another egg-like hand-drawn machine and a map. The machine had scientific terms, chemical names, and notes just like the one before. But this one had internal pipes in it. By reading the notes we realized this is a machine capable of freezing a human egg for hundreds of years. Even now, we can't freeze human eggs for this long, not that it's of any use!

The map was of a location in the south pole a couple hundred years ago and underneath it said, ‘Finally I am going back to bring my child, the pure human.'

'It all makes sense now. Remember the legend?' asked Xii-Xii.

In our cyborg world, there has been a legend of the last human; a female self-taught scientist who was untouched by the viruses and had a perfect system feared that soon the cyborgs would be taking over the world. She was getting old and didn’t have a partner so she couldn't reproduce. She was the last pure human. But she always claimed that her child was the last pure human, which confused the cyborgs because she had no children! Some say cyborgs put her to mental asylum thinking she was crazy and she died there, some say cyborgs killed her and some say she escaped and died from the harsh climate. No one truly knows.

'This isn't happening!' I said with disbelief.

'She made a machine to save her egg for hundreds of years and then she hid it? And that's the last pure human she was talking about?' I kept asking

'So the money and the note, did she hide the egg in the South Pole? Was she trying to visit the egg again because she had made this baby-making machine?' asked Xii-Xii pointing at the first egg-like machine we discovered.

'We need to go.' said Pi.

'But we are lost.' I said.

'No, we've got to go to the South Pole, to find the egg.'

'Are you crazy? Why would we do that?' asked Xii-Xii

'Yeah, when our parents find us we are going to turn these in and they know what to do.' I agreed with Xii-Xii

'Absolutely not,' said Pi. 'Look we found this book because it's our destiny to finish what she started.'

'Destiny? You are talking so 20th century! You believe in those kinds of things?' I asked in awe.

'Destiny or not, for us cyborgs it’s not hard to travel to the south pole, all we need to do is, find the egg.' said Pi.

'And what are we going to do with it?' asked Xii-Xii.

'We make the human.' Pi replied, confidently.

'What?' I asked for reassurance if I heard the right thing!

'Look', Pi pointed at the first doodle from the book and continued, these ingredients aren't hard to find, once we get a signal on spex we can pull more information. I say, let's find the egg, make the machine and make the baby. Maybe that's our way out of extinction.'

'If that's the case, shouldn't we give this to the experts?' I asked.

'No, because we don't know if she was killed by us' Said Pi.

'They are not going to take us seriously anyways' Xii-Xii added.

I felt a sudden rush in my heart and said, 'our parents should be here anytime now, it shouldn't take much longer for them to track us from the GPS. If we really want to do this, we have to run away from here, now.'

'Don’t be stupid! Said Pi, 'We can't even find our way back home without the spex, how are we going to get to the pole? Plus we don't want our parents following us.'

'Set your mind, you just proposed we go to the South Pole!' I said to Pi. I started to feel agitated by her indecisiveness.

'Shut up' said Xii-Xii to me and asked Pi 'What’s your plan?'

'I say we go home, recharge our spex, research, find where the egg is in today's map, a lot has changed in two hundred years. We tell our parents that we are going to a picnic to celebrate 'Humanity Month' so they don't look for us. Are you all in? Can’t change your minds later.’ Pi finished and Xii-Xii said ‘yes’ immediately.

This mess is pointless, I thought, but something in me wanted to know how it ends. And before I could deny I found myself reciting ‘YES’.