What We Left Behind

Someone once told me that you cannot describe things by what they lack.

My entire camera roll is filled with evidence to the contrary.

I sit here in an empty bar on the edge of everything, swiping through my holo-cam rolls at all the holographic pictures I've taken since everyone vanished, my fingers touching nothing but air yet scrolling through miles of recorded images. I wonder if they would still feel the same way after seeing what I have, after seeing all my holograms of the world humanity left behind.

Empty cars stacked haphazardly across freeways, veered off into ditches, or just slowly idling away all the remaining gas in their tank until the car fell silent.

Mirrors without faces to peer into them. There is something to be said for the power of empty reflections, in that they say a lot all on their own. Damned to encapture the same isolated image with me as the only interruption. I wonder if they feel the same disappointment I do, seeing my reflection instead of a person’s.

Houses with no one home. Doors swung open as if inviting you in, but inside you will find only eerie silence and more of that same emptiness that plagues the rest of this hollow world.

Dead fields with no farmers. No cows or pigs or horses either. Just empty stalls and bales of hay, and that particular smell that my camera can’t capture.

Fires raging unchecked, cities ravaged by nature’s wrath, and entire coasts swallowed. The remnants of a world I used to recognize.

Over the ages, all these things have changed. Except me.

I have this one photo of a prosthetic leg lingering in the middle of a forest trail where its owner had vanished; almost as if it was still waiting for them to come back and pick up where they had left off, ready whenever! One of my favorites.

Plenty of bikes and water bottles still clutter those same trails.

Running and biking were becoming popular again before that day. Things were getting better. Cleaner air. Better living. Cooler heads prevailing. The whole world woke up one day and decided enough was enough.

They all came together and just... started fixing everything. It was incredible to watch, being on the outside of whatever utopian signal was getting everyone to set aside their old differences and work together towards a common good. Amazing, truly, but also kind of frightening. Everyone else seemed to be preparing for something important. But when I asked, no one could remember what it was.

Guess they found out. Not me though. They left me here all alone.

This world is full of evidence that you can define things by what they lack. In this case, the world lacks life. All life. Not just humans. No birds in the sky singing with joy, and probably no fish either but I haven't checked. Water and I do not get along very well.

All the trees and most plants seem fine. For a while I wondered if perhaps they were behind it, to be honest. Doesn't really matter, after all, it is not like I can save the world. It's already lost. There’s no one left to save.

But I still glare into the woods suspiciously on occasion. Just in case.

All I have that I consider my own is this camera. An old Holoprint Series V, 9,000N1 model. Memorized from all the times I have seen it printed on the side while snapping holos. Like an old polaroid except it projects holograms right on the spot, instead of pictures. They aren't visible without these special goggles, so the world seems empty unless you put them on. Probably why I never take mine off. Mostly I just wander around taking holos and leaving behind holo-prints to continue projecting, after I’ve moved on.

My home town is full of little holograms now. Of all the people I managed to snap before that day. They are posed around doing whatever it was they were doing when I snapped the hollow. Like little electronic ghosts reliving the same moment endlessly.

It helped me feel less alone at first... but then it just hurt to imagine them stuck like that forever, unable to move, unable to do anything. I would not wish that on anyone. So now I only holograph things that remind me of people. Little statements that suggest people were here.

I used to spend a lot of time wondering why I'm the only one left. My best guess about what happened is as good as anyones. Except, with nobody else left, mine is the only one I get to hear.

I have a theory. But I don't like it.

Everyone who vanished was human. Or other animals, I guess. They were all flesh and blood. Not me. Not for a while anyway. I gave all that up when I became the world's first and only (and now last) android.

I think people with souls got taken somewhere else. Just them though. Nothing else.

I was human, once. Born a little girl. Had all my fingers and toes. I used to love the water. It was a spinal injury that put an end to that. Night surfing accident. I don't remember anything about what happened. Only what I was told after...

I wiped out and hit my back on an unfortunately placed rock or reef, I don’t know but it was something sharp and suitably unforgiving. My body was broken and needed to be replaced. ‘Like a limb that needs amputation,’ was how it was described to me. But my mind was unharmed. So, whole-body prosthesis. Naturally.

Now I am this. Human mind. Metal body. Powered by an immortal battery. All alone.

Just like that prosthetic leg in the forest trail, all alone with no humans around, but it’s still waiting. Like me.

Guess that means I don't have a soul? And I guess that means neither do the trees. I would like to argue with both of those premises, but it’s the only theory I have. Well, that or aliens of course, but that brings me back to the same questions.

Why am I still here? Not just in this bar, but in the world. Am I to be its sole keeper? Tasked with documenting all the things humans left behind when they disappeared? Was this some kind of mistake and I don’t have any purpose at all? Did some powerful being take all the sentient creatures and leave me behind because I am encased not in flesh but by metal? What kind of chauvinistic asshole does that?

I don't have answers to these questions. All I have is this camera, and all the hollow memories of this great empty world, to keep me company.

My fingertips pause mid-reverie as they brush past an older holo. One of my earliest, but one I’ve been avoiding. It's just a simple image. An open locket lying in a garden, projecting an old-timey holograph of a girl who was once me.

She's smiling, in this hologram of a hologram; clutching a baby doll, running towards the camera with a mischievous grin on her tiny face. There's a child's love in her eyes. A child's trust that everything will be okay, back when they were still young enough not to know better.

The locket rests on a soft blanket of grass, with a lone flower growing practically on top of it, facing up towards my camera. A dahlia, if you're wondering. My parents' favorite. They vanished in the garden where I found this. Where I stole this holographic memory from the empty world that used to be mine and made it my own.

Out of all the holos I've printed in the 500-odd years since it happened, (I stopped counting after 500 anyway) this one is my new favorite. The lighting, the serenity of youth, the nostalgia it invokes.

It speaks to me. About how it all started, about how it all felt, about how it all ended.

A small, perfect moment in a vast, imperfect world.

After a while, I turn to look at the cracked and anxious mirror behind the bar and take a good look. I have avoided seeing this reflection for many decades, as best I can. Might have taken out a few hundred mirrors in my efforts to flee from this hollow reflection.

What stares back through me is a chrome husk of a human, though it lacks the freckles, wrinkles, laugh lines, and colorful eyes I once expected. Instead what blinks back at me are two dull, empty lenses. Its artificial features are distinguished, its fake curves rendered to perfection. A beautiful, metallic face; except for when it’s busy echoing my sneer. A figure full of appeal… not that there was a human left around to appreciate it.

Its ageless perfection haunts me and me alone… well, almost.

After all the years this mirror has gone without seeing a real human, I cannot blame it for being so unkind. Mirrors are like that I guess, never showing who we are, just a distorted reflection. It is not a mirror's fault it cannot show the true beauty that lies within, they are but innocent bystanders in our internal wars.

Or they were, anyway.

I raise the camera to my hollow, mechanical chest. My empty hand holds up the frills of my sundress, something beautiful, something human. I pose like a dancer and snap the last photo I’ll ever take. It turns out alright.

Good.

Could not have hoped for a better sendoff.

I sit down atop the bartop and remove the immortal battery from my wrist. A small icon in my peripheral starts counting down from 60.

I let the battery clatter to the floor behind the bar, so I cannot reach it when I'm halfway down, but so that it is still within reach when the time comes.

When and if humans ever come back, (or aliens, or even more androids really, I’m not picky) one of them could simply replace the battery and it would be like nothing happened. Not suicide, not really. More like hibernation. I am preserving myself here and now so that when I am rescued, it will be like waking from a sad dream.

Like that leg in the forest. We will still be waiting, ready whenever! For what, I do not know.

I look into the mirror and metal stares back. Her face holds a cold serenity I do not share.

This moment, slowly powering down, I’m not going to lie… this is hard. And lonely, too. But after all this time, loneliness is nothing new, and who knows? Maybe I'll get to see real people again now, and share some of my hollow remembrances with them. Or with anyone really.

Someone told me that it was impossible to describe things by what they lack.

As I stare at myself in the cracked mirror, surrounded by my empty echoes of a world without people, I cannot help but laugh. It is a hollow sound, mirthless and carefree, that echoes on unto eternity.

Earth is empty now. All the humans, gone. All that remains are what they… no... what we left behind.