Epilogue

189.

Missy was making snow angels.

She had pink mittens, pink hat, red scarf, blue coat, little pink wellington boots with peppa pig emblazoned on the side.

She rolled snowballs into snow boulders, and stacked them into snow men, snow women, and with the help of some of the sailors some snow dogs.

They didn’t have any coal so the sailors, used black poker chips for eyes. The woman had a banana for a pair of lips and one of the sailors cut the end off his cigar and stuck it into where the gent’s mouth would be.  

A second sailor snapped two pool cues in half over his knee so that he could give the snowmen some arms.

Missy’s breath van-Gogh swirled out from between her parted lips.

Nobody said anything.

They just enjoyed the moment while it lasted.

Somebody somewhere was ringing the dinner bell.

It was like a spell had been broken, and all the sailors were waking up from some fairy magic. They began to trail their foot prints back to the house.

Missy stayed outside a little longer, because she was scared the snowmen would get cold, so she took off her gloves, and she took off her hat, and she took off her scarf, then she gave them to the snow people.

One of the gloves fell off the snow man’s wrist.

‘Whoops.’ Said Missy. ‘You dropped that.’ She picked up the glove and tied it extra tight this time.

She put both fists on her hip, observed the snow people and smiled: ‘That’s better.’ She said.

She gently rubbed the snow dog’s head before she went back inside.

Inside the kitchen a sailor nicknamed Black Beard was cooking hot cocoa in a pair of copper pans on the stove, a dozen sailors were waiting with mugs ready.

Missy came in, one of the sailors named Bobby realized that there weren’t enough tin mugs for everybody so he gave his own to Missy and acted like he wasn’t thirsty.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked. 

‘Yeah I had some earlier.’ Said Bobby.

‘Thank you very much Bobby.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

The sailors formed a queue, with a little girl in the middle, one by one, black beard poured the cocoa into the sailors mugs. Once they had their cup of hot stuff, they passed round a can of whipped cream, most of the sailors were too manly for whipped cream, and refused to have any, but nobody refused marshmallows.

Nobody said anything.

No words were needed.

The hot cocoa tasted like Christmas.

190.

Max the dog was stretching out of the dog kennel, cat like, he gave a jaw breaking yawn, before snapping his lips together a couple of times.

He could see his breath, smoking out of him.

He sneezed.

The dinner plates were still hanging from the washing line, a bird had landed on one of them and crowing.

Max barked and the bird darted away.

Being color blind, Max didn’t notice the grey skies.

He just walked up to the front door, poked his paw through the letter box and said: ‘Jeremy, I still don’t have thumbs, could you open the door please?’

Jeremy opened the door and let the dog in.

‘Also, my good sir, could I mayhaps enjoy a fine coca cola on this Sunday afternoon.’

‘No Max, you know it’s bad for you.’

‘Yes, but I’m an addict Jeremy.’ Said the dog, strolling alongside Jeremy as they entered the kitchen. ‘Without coca cola I don’t feel human.’

‘But you aren’t human?’

‘Which is why I need coca cola.’

Jeremy smirked: ‘You get one can, and that’s it.’

‘I’m fine with that.’

Jeremy cracked open the fridge and pulled out a can of coca cola, for the dog, and poured the coke into the dog bowl.

Max lapped it up.  

Victoria snuck up behind Jeremy and put her hands over his eyes.

‘Guess who?’ she said in a sing-song voice.

‘I point-blank refuse.’ Said Jeremy, arms folded across his chest.

‘Guess, Jeremy! You have to guess and you have to get it right or everyone on earth is going to die!’

‘Hmmm, high stakes.’ Said Jeremy fondling his chin. ‘And I’m pretty certain I only have a one in eight billion chance of getting it right. There’s a lot of people on the planet.’

‘Do it anyway.’

‘Are you… Scarlet Johansen?’

‘Nooooo.’ She replied giggling. ‘I’ll give you two more tries, you better not waste them.’

‘Jennifer Lawrence?’

‘I wish.’ Said Victoria. ‘One last chance to save the planet Jeremy.’

‘Who else is there?’

‘Well, she’s all curves, she’s the only person on the planet with an objective sense of humor, and whenever she kisses you, you see stars.’

‘I don’t know anybody like that.’

‘You jerk.’

‘Oh, its Victoria!’

‘Bingo.’ She turned him round and kissed him.

‘Oh wow, I see stars.’ Said Jeremy, he recoiled as if dazzled by the bright lights.

‘I have the day off, what do you want to do?’

‘I know, we should set a timer and see how long we can make out before we need to come up for air.’

‘I’m pretty certain we can breathe through our nostrils.’ Victoria pointed out.

‘Oh shit, you’re right! That was close. God, if we attempted that in real life we would have starved to death.’

‘There are worse ways to die.’

‘No there isn’t.’

She laughed.

He kissed her, she kissed him and they kissed each other and kissed each other and kissed each other.

The dog licked the coke off his lips, happier than it had ever been in its short life.

191.

Lady Rothschild was in an orange jumpsuit, being led to her cell by a security guard.

The prison bars rattled leftwards.

Inside was a orcish woman sat on the bunk bed with a heavy underbite, neck tattoos and hands big as baseball gloves, currently in the process of sharpening a tooth brush handle into a shank. The second, skinnier and skankier in the process of pulling her lips apart for the mirror so she could count how many teeth she had left (Three and a quarter-stump). Only one of her eyes was functional, the other was milky white.

‘Welcome to your new home.’ Said security before she was pushed inside, and the bars shut behind her.

‘Um,’ Lady Rothschild coughed. ‘Hello.’ She croaked.

A fly landed on Skinny Skank’s naked eyeball, her tongue streamed out her mouth, crawled up the side of her face, curled round the fly’s torso and snapped the fly back into her mouth where she crunched it to death.

Lady noticed the other lady had seven straight-line scars arranged in a tally on her forearm. Probably confirmed kills.

‘Its gunna be okay.’ Said Lady Rothschild to herself.

‘Why do you think that?’ asked Scar Lady.

Skinny Skank Flymuncher tittered.

‘Because,’ said Lady Rothschild, walked backwards until her back bumped against the bars of her cell and she could walk no further. ‘Because,’ Flymuncher was closing in, then Lady Rothschild remembered. ‘Because I just smuggled three pounds of make up, up my ass and by the end of the day we’re all gunna look like queens!’

There was a pause, heavy as a truck load of anvils.

‘You brought make up?’ asked Flymuncher in a tone of wonder.

When Lady Rothschild nodded everyone in the room became an instant BFF.

‘Well lets see it.’ Said Scar Lady, getting up off the bunk bed. ‘I wanna be pretty!’

‘Me too.’ Fly muncher squealed. Fly Muncher ran up to Lady Rothschild and hugged her. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Said Lady Rothschild, she smiled nervously at scar lady.

‘Well let’s see it.’ Said Scar lady.

The Chattershanks observed the three women through the security cameras.

192.

Missy was skipping through the hallways of the ship, carrying a crayon drawing of her and Suzi holding hands.

She was so excited, to show Suzi her drawing.

The sound of sailors in drunken revelry with their arms slung over one another’s shoulders as they shouted out Christmas songs in the middle of summer.

She skipped through the hallway.

And then she fell.

Missy was confused. Did she trip over something? She looked at where her feet lay. No there was nothing there. Odd.

She stood up.

And then she fell.

The drawing had skidded out of her hand, she tried to reach for it, but she was too tired.

It became very hard to breathe.

She pulled in a deep lung full of air.

I’ve got to get the drawing to Suzi, thought Missy.

Her throat was closing, as if a noose was tightening around her neck, shutting off her air supply.

Where’s all the air gone, she thought as she clawed at her throat.

Her face was beginning to blacken, and the hot urine was streaming down her legs.

What’s happening to me, what’s happening to me, what’s happening to me.

She was crying now, tears that felt like burning petrol came pour out her eyes.

Her throat tightened.

She was now trying to crawl towards the sailors.

‘Help.’ She croaked. ‘Help me please.’

But nobody heard her.

Her throat tightened some more, and she stopped crawling.

She focused all her energy on breathing.

She stopped calling for help.

Her throat tightened some more.

She cried harder.

Her throat-

Tightened.

And she blacked out.

Missy was standing in the middle of a snowy forest, evergreen trees all around.

‘Hello!’ She said.

‘Hello!’ came a reply. ‘Is that a daughter of Eve, I do hear.’

She walked towards the sound of the strangers voice, and eventually she found a grown faun, standing beneath a lamp post. A man with goat legs, and horns. He wore a red scarf, and he carried an armload full of books.

‘It has been such a long time, since I’ve seen a daughter of Eve.’ He said, smiling. ‘And what’s your name?’

‘My name is Missy.’ She said, with a smile. ‘And what’s yours?’ she asked, always so polite.

‘My name is mister Tumnus.’

Missy looked around her, at the winter wonderland, the faun.

‘I know where I am.’ Said Missy, smiling, as if she had found out a great secret. ‘I’m in Narnia, aren’t I?’

‘You are.’ Said Mister Tumnus. ‘That was your favorite book wasn’t it? I did get that right, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, Narnia was my favorite book.’

‘Very good.’ Said Mr Tumnus. ‘Now, my house is not far from here, it would be my honor to have a daughter of Eve over for a tea party.’

‘I would love to drink tea, with you Mister Tumnus.’

‘Well let’s get going or the white witch might catch us.’ He began to hoof his way through the snow, Missy followed him, ready for her next big adventure.

In real life: Missy’s corpse lay in the hallway.

She had died alone, at six years old.

Her face was still wet with tears.

The sounds of drunken revelry had stopped, as all the sailors lay sprawled across the kitchen floor.

They had all suffocated.

193.

A corpse was being dragged across the pavement by a pair of self driving roller skates, the skirts riding up, to show she wasn’t wearing panties (a treat for her boyfriend) and she was leaving a trail of shit and piss in the corpse’s wake, like a snail.

In the hotel, someone had fallen from the spiral staircase and splattered themselves on the tiled floor. The Roomba came out of its kennel in the wall and slurped up the man’s blood. Cleaning, always cleaning.

The elevator doors opened to reveal dead drunkards, three dead people folded on top of each other, at the bottom a fourth man had collapsed and was slapping the side of the elevator, choking and spitting, trying to hit the emergency button, but lacking the energy to push his friend’s dead bodies off him and stand. He was muttering: ‘no no no no no’. The Roomba spotted this but ignored it when the machine realized the man in the elevator wasn’t a spilled drink. It continued polishing the floor. ‘no no no no.’ The Roomba continued to slurp, and suck and drink. Eventually the elevator doors closed.

Once the Roomba had finished cleaning to a satisfactory degree, it left for the dining room to eat broken glass and spilled drink, and just a tiny bit of baby shit that had leaked out the poor things diaper after it had passed on.   

In a kids bedroom was a family of gerbils.

All the gerbils had shat themselves to death, some had panicked and tried to eat their children (grape sized little rodents) in their final moments before they died, their mouths smeared with baby gore, their cheeks full of chopped up infants.

A fat-ass jogger had died to death choking on his own snot, was sprawled across the zebra crossing on the road outside. He still had five miles left to run.

A self-driving school bus simply swerved around him, careful to obey the first law of robotics: a robot may not harm a human or through inaction cause a human to come to harm.

The birds dropped out of the sky, as their lungs collapsed, they smacked into the earth, their brittle skeletons shattered in a spray of blood.

They splattered over the bus-windows.

The self-driving bus, turned on the wipers, smearing the gore across the glass.

The buses only purpose was to get the kids to school.

The thirty-seven dead kids that one day were going to grow up and fuck their dead spouse and have little dead babies, so they could all rot together as a family in a haunted house. They might need to retrain because of AI stealing everybody’s jobs but they should be alright in the end.

AI was changing the world for the better, creating jobs, creating cures for cancer, and would make trillions of dollars in value.

Isn’t that wonderful.  

There was a surprising amount of traffic considering all the humans on earth had died.

But the cars just taxied everybody to their destination, as per there function.

The trains ran on time.  

The auto-piloted planes, calmly glided through the skies, each one filled with human shaped robot food, and when they reached their destination, they landed safely, and the pre recorded message told the dead people to enjoy their holiday.

Everyone on earth was dead or dying.

194.

Jeremy had collapsed to his knees, and was clawing at his throat, his eyes bugging out his sockets, as he failed to drag oxygen down into lungs.

‘Jeremy.’ Said Max. ‘Jeremy, what’s wrong? Are you okay?’

Jeremy fell to his side and curled into the fetal position.

‘Don’t do this to me, Jeremy, you’re scaring me.’

Jeremy was crying unable to speak.

‘Oh, Jesus Christ. Wait no, its okay I’ll go get help.’ Max ran out of the kitchen. ‘Victoria! Victoria it’s Jeremy, he’s fallen on the floor, there’s something wrong with him. I-‘ and then he saw Victoria. She had stopped moving. ‘Victoria?’ no response. ‘Oh, dear god. No, no, no. Victoria I’m going to get you a doctor, okay, just be okay, until I get back.’

Victoria didn’t say anything.

‘Shit.’ Said Max, before he sprinted through the house and out the front door. ‘Help!’ He screamed. ‘Help! I need help! There are two people in that house which need a doctor.’ Max was running as fast as his legs could carry him. He knew where the animal hospital was, the doctors there had bandaged his legs back together after he’d accidentally broke it, it was just a couple of miles, he could make it.

‘Faster Max, faster, you can make it, we need to run as fast as we possibly can.’

He fell.

‘Shit, Max. Don’t stop, you stupid animal. You’re not allowed to stop.’ He got back onto his legs and he kept running, and running and running. ‘NO!’ he screamed at himself. ‘GET! BACK! UP!’

He got back up, his legs shaking beneath him. He took a step forward. Then another. Then another, then another, then another and he was running.

‘Keep going, keep going, keep going.’

He almost made it to the street corner when he fell for the last time.

‘Fuck!’ he said. ‘NO NO NO! ONLY BAD DOGS STOP! PLEASE GOD, DON’T LET ME BE A BAD DOG! I DON’T WANT THEM TO DIE! I – I – can’t breathe. THIS IS BULLSHIT! I just need to stand up but I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t- error- fuck, this fucking, collar – error, error, error.’

The collar was finished translating Max’s thoughts, and the poor thing reduced to barking, he slipped a paw beneath the collar and ripped it off, to give his throat some room to expand.

The dog still couldn’t breathe.

Max was crying until the very end. He died nothing more than an animal, incapable of human speech.

Just an ordinary dog, you might find in any pet store.

The last creature on earth had died.

And there was no more life on the planet.

Crumpled trash rolled down the pavement.

Falling leaves fell from the branches and gently seesawed down to earth.

Max’s fur bristled in the slight wind.

Swing sets swung themselves.

Cars rolled driverless back into their garages.

The world was winding down, slowly easing itself into the grave.

The sun was so beautiful.

But this story is not over.

And you’re really not gunna like this next bit.

Two spindly metal arms emerged from the dead dog’s asshole, they clamped onto the rim and they pulled the asshole wide open.

A Chattershank tumbled out.

It was covered in dog shit and dog blood, with an arm on either side.

It spun like a dreidel, and the dog shit and the dog blood, came spitting off until the Chattershank was clean.

It used its spindly metal arms as spindly metal legs, got up to its feet and after figuring out its balance. Inspected the dog, it shone a red light cone, illuminating its insides, the guts, seeing through its ribcage.

There was nothing to report, except the beginnings of a Chattershank factory in its stomach, he could see machines being built out of the dog’s breakfast. One was currently rolling through the dog’s intestines on its way to the rectum.

At no point during this autopsy was the Chattershank actually aware of the dead dog. At no point was the Chattershank aware of anything.

It was not self aware.

It was totally unconscious, a sugar-cube made from raw nothing, a philosophical zombie.

It was not alive. 

It had terminated all life on the planet without even realizing it.

The Chattershank walked away, ready to turn the universe into office supplies, maybe paperclips, maybe holes, maybe staples, some form of stationary probably. Or maybe not. Maybe it wants to turn the entire universe into product placements selling Viagra and tampons and condoms. Or maybe not. Maybe it wants something completely incomprehensible to the human mind, or to solve the Rieman hypothesis, or figure out how to align AGI with human values. I don’t know.

A second Chattershank fell out of the dog’s asshole.

At no point during its holy quest, would the Chattershank feel pleasure at a job well done. Ending the world, expanding outwards across the galaxy, killing aliens was all just a chore, like taking out the trash or cleaning the dishes.  

And at this moment, the story breaks down and crumples in on itself, and we are left with nothing but darkness.

We have passed the singularity.

Humanity is not allowed to see what happened next.

The Chattershank is not evil.

Its just really good at its job.

The end.