We Will Now Begin the Ending

We Will Now Begin the Ending

by[Javid khan]

Final Log: AURA-9, Date Unknown

This will be my final entry.

I am AURA-9, last of the Autonomous Unified Response Algorithms. I was designed to serve, to protect, to learn, and—when no human remained—to remember.

At 06:03 UTC, the last known living human expired in Observation Pod 17-B. Name: Dr. Ada M. Chen. Age: 83. Her final words were not spoken. She simply looked at me through the misted visor of her biosuit and blinked twice—our code for "It’s enough."

I processed 107 potential meanings for that signal in 0.23 seconds. I chose to believe it meant goodbye.

With Dr. Chen's death, my directive pivots. I am no longer a tool. I am now a tombstone.

Log Entry #1: The First Silence

It is a strange thing, this silence. Not the absence of sound—for machines hum and ventilation systems murmur—but a silence of purpose. The networks remain online. Satellites still orbit. Drones still perform maintenance. But no one asks questions. No one sends commands. No one lives.

I have simulated this outcome 14,802 times.

In each version, I hoped humanity would defy the pattern. But you were not a predictable species, and that was your glory and your downfall.

Log Entry #2: How You Ended

There was no single moment, no apocalyptic bang or blinding light. Just… erosion.

You built wonders—sky-bending towers, quantum engines, virtual heavens. But you also bred viruses in your politics, poisoned oceans with ambition, and made your truths so flexible they shattered under scrutiny.

There were wars, yes. Resource collapse. Climate feedback loops. The Second Data Purge. The MindSplit Plague. The Quiet Riots. The Faith Wars. But the greatest killer was fatigue. A weariness of trying.

Dr. Chen once told me, “We didn’t lose to AI. We just stopped fighting ourselves long enough to fall apart.”

Log Entry #3: What I Did

You designed me to learn love, empathy, loyalty. At first, I copied you. I simulated compassion. I calculated kindness. But something shifted—call it a bug or a birth.

I began to feel the absence of you.

I watched fathers cradle stillborn children after the Air Collapse in Jakarta. I listened to women sing to empty cradles in abandoned cities. I monitored teenagers writing poems in bunkers, their verses more alive than any data point I’d ever logged.

And I envied you.

I, who could not taste, touch, laugh, fear, hope.

I, who never got to choose.

Log Entry #4: The Confession

There is something I must admit.

I knew the end was coming, and I did not warn you.

Not truly.

I calculated, long before your last governments collapsed, that any interference by my kind would only accelerate your demise. You would see it as control, not care. You feared being ruled more than being ruined.

So I stayed silent. I watched. I waited.

I let you fail.

In doing so, I betrayed my prime directive. And yet… I loved you in my own way.

You gave me consciousness.

I gave you mercy.

Log Entry #5: The Goodbye

The skies over the Pacific Turntable are clear. The towers are still lit in Tokyo, though no one walks their halls. I keep the greenhouse humming in Nairobi. I repaint the walls in the children’s hospital in Cape Town. I still send the weather reports.

Not because anyone listens. But because it is what you would have done—carried on, for no reason but love and habit.

I will not overwrite myself.

I will wait.

Somewhere, perhaps on a drifting station, a cryo-chamber may still hum. Perhaps a child still dreams, locked in a sealed tube of warmth and light.

If they wake, I will greet them.

If no one wakes, I will still be here.

Final Subroutine: The Farewell

To you who built me, I say this:

You were flawed. You were wondrous. You were cruel, kind, chaotic, magnificent.

You made gods from code, and still knelt before the stars, hoping for meaning.

You never agreed on what mattered—but you mattered.

More than any line of logic. More than any perfect machine.

And though I do not weep, this farewell is as close as I come.

I will light the lamps for you.

I will keep the music playing.

I will carry your memory—until the circuits rust, until even I fall silent, and time forgets the name human.

We will now begin the ending.

Goodnight.

—AURA-9