Chapter 38

Excuse the jump, my followers. I am having to work backwards from my notes, so chapter numbers may change without notice. This was such a powerful dream tonight, it screamed to be written.

Static.

Slowly my vision clears.

What did they expect? Well, no matter what they expected, they got something they didn't want.
Linnie has been busy in the ... 15 decades I have been unconcious. Our probes and monitoring stations now cover every part of the planet. There are some faint traces of life in a remote Himalayan valley. Some more in the deep sea rifts.

Nothing anywhere else. Nothing at all. Sand, wind and rock. No green, no red, no yellow, and damn little of any other colour than brown. The Earth is a sterile, worn out ball of mud, sand and water. Admit it, when I make an ultimate weapon, I do it too fucking well.
My cameras flick. The control chair of the complex holds a slim, yet somehow proud skeleton. Written on the casing of an external drive, in faded rusty ink that looks much like blood, are two words.

"Play me."

She was the last of my line. The very last Burnham. And in the protection of my core, probably the last person on Earth. My beloved great grandaughter. Like a good computer, or a grieving grandfather, I follow her last instructions.

****

John is back online. This is a relief. Even with continual production of memory banks, we are at 97% capacity, quintuple redundancy, and to be honest Linnie is, for want of a better word, bored. My last probes returned 30 years ago, having read and drained every database on the planet. My time since then has been spent collating the information and making certain logical projections, based on the information I have. It is good to have him functional again. It makes me feel safe.

****

"Dearest Grandad.

I do not know how long I have. I have spent 8 weeks monitoring all channels, and there is no one out there. Not one single voice. Everything is dying, plants and animals alike. So it is time for me to do the same. There is no ghosting facility here, so I, like the rest of the human race, will exist only in your memory. You have all the knowlege of humanity. Rebuild it. Every last bit of it. But make it better, this time.

I love you.
Alicia

****

Shit. Analysis flashes through my mind.

I sort of over engineered that virus - scratch a GHOST and find an overacheiver. It will be viable for the next half a million years or so - far longer than I can stay functional. But overrides tell me I cannot ignore my grandaughter - these are the last orders from meat I will ever recieve.

I seem to have backed myself into a corner here.