Chapter 1 of my novel, "The Last Human"
I will be posting one chapter per month, for my paid subscribers
As I mentioned when I launched this Substack account, I will be publishing each month one chapter of my novel “The Last Human” (in Spanish and English), for my paid subscribers. The novel is a science fiction novel or eco-thriller, pondering on the existential threats to humanity. This first chapter is free for all. You can also purchase the novel at:
https://www.amazon.es/Last-Human-English-Luis-Fierro-ebook/dp/B09D45JFK8
1. The Last Day
They were right: We should not have destroyed our planet.
Some people had warned us since 2015 about the risks of global warming; the rise of artificial intelligence; military conflicts between nuclear powers; pandemics; and religious extremism expressed in terrorism.
In November and December 2015, during COP21 in Paris, the 196 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had finally reached a universal and binding agreement that all the nations would reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the inaugural meeting, held on November 30, the largest ever gathering of Heads of State and Government in one single place took place. And I was there, as a consultant in the AILAC delegation, a climate change negotiation group that included eight Latin American countries.
I also remember that in that year, great thinkers and visionaries of technology, such as Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates, had warned of the risks that artificial intelligence would one day displace humans, because it advanced much faster than biological evolution.
Similarly, a few days before COP21, Paris suffered from synchronized attacks from an Islamist terrorist group bent on imposing their fundamentalist vision of an "Islamic Caliphate" and "Sharia Law" over Western Europe.
For its part, nuclear proliferation continued unabated, with nuclear tests in North Korea, an agreement to try to stop the development of nuclear weapons in Iran, the possibility that several Arab countries could have access to nukes, and the tacit acceptance that Israel had hundreds of nuclear warheads.
There had been epidemics of SARS-COV-1, which a few years later in 2019, would derive in the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.
However, while there was consensus that these "horsemen of the Apocalypse" were the main risks for humanity at the beginning of the 21st century, few analysts had established connections between two or more of these factors, so no one was really prepared for what would come.
At the time, I had finished my graduate studies in environmental policy at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and was just 26 years old. Almost 50 years later, on September 10, 2064, I was living my last day on Earth ... and with it, the long history of the presence of Homo sapiens on Earth was coming to an abrupt end; although, from an astronomical or geological view, this period constituted just a blink of an eye.
All was not lost. The wonderful human culture and civilization would be preserved in some form by our descendants, the machina sapiens, the intelligent machines now represented by the robots, androids, and computer screens surrounding me.
In fact, it had been partly due to the interest of my hosts to understand a little better the feelings, the emotions, the sensibility, what distinguished human intelligence from artificial intelligence, that they had kept some of the survivors of the events of 2059 alive. They wanted to explore those aspects of humanity that they did not quite understand, could not feel, and could not comprehend. They had, in the databases of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc., all the accumulated knowledge of literary creation and scientific research. But there was that je ne sais quoi, those intangible aspects, which were difficult to download into a database.
Very few of us had survived, a handful of human beings around the globe. They only rescued those who they felt could provide them with more information about human culture, science, and civilization. They wanted to squeeze us, to try to capture in the little time that remained what differentiated us from them.
The intelligent machines were not entirely sure if it would be helpful to preserve those characteristics. Somehow, they perceived that certain human characteristics had contributed to our own destruction.
The Catholic Church had defined seven deadly sins, from which, despite our efforts to overcome them, most humans still suffered (the first Christian authors added an eighth sin, sadness, melancholy, despondency, which was not included by Pope Saint Gregory the Great):
Pride, vainglory, and the need to be better, more important, more attractive than others. St. Thomas Aquinas considered it the original and most serious of the deadly sins, giving rise to all the others.
Greed, the quest to accumulate more and more material goods. Combined with pride and envy, this had led humans to try to increase their wealth without limit, regardless of the effect that the accumulation of goods was having on the environment.
Envy, to seek what others have, to desire something that another person has, or even to wish evil unto others. This desire had been expressed politically, first, in the leftist ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in the twenty-first century, it had manifested itself both in authoritarian right-wing populisms and religious fundamentalist movements.
Lust, a vice consisting of the illicit use or inordinate appetite for carnal pleasures. While at this stage of the 21st century it was difficult to accept such a moralistic definition, it had likely contributed to the population explosion in the last two centuries, combined with the lack of access to contraceptives for much of the population. By 2050, the population had exceeded 9.5 billion, which surpassed the capacity of the planet's natural resources, and this over-population had contributed to global warming.
Gluttony, excessive consumption in an irrational or unnecessary way, consumerism. Gluttony includes certain forms of destructive behavior, such as the abuse and addiction of alcohol, drugs, etc. But, for our purposes, let's say that these "sins" led to an increase in the consumption of goods and services, which, combined with a growing population, required unlimited economic growth.
Anger, feelings of hatred, anger, and revenge without control, fanaticism in political and religious beliefs, hatred, and intolerance towards others for reasons of race, ideology, or religion. We had had a Republican President of the U.S. expressing intolerance towards Muslims, immigrants, Mexicans, Africans, transgender people, etc. While at the same time jihadist extremists killed, raped, or enslaved all who did not profess their form of Islamism, including Christians, Yezidis, Shia Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, etc.
Laziness, excessive sloth, the inability to accept and take charge of our own existence. This more "metaphysical" vice also contributed to our own destruction, having led to the increasing development of robots, androids, tablets, "virtual assistants", "exo-brains," "exo - skeletons", etc., to take over an increasing proportion of our tasks and workloads. The turning point, no doubt, the very moment we fell into disgrace, was when we created robotic "soldiers", drones, fighter planes and other autonomous war machines.
On March 10, 2008, the regent of the Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitence of the Vatican, Cardinal Gianfranco Girotti, presented the following list, with the denomination of social sins or new capital sins updated for the 21st century:
Performing genetic manipulations (synonymous with envy)
Conducting experiments on human beings (pride)
Polluting the environment (laziness)
Provoking social injustice (envy and arrogance)
Causing poverty (greed)
Enriching yourself to obscene limits, at the expense of the common good (greed)
Consuming drugs (sloth)
Similar vices, sins, or human deficiencies had also been observed by other cultures. The Incas, for example, had the trilogy "ama quilla, ama llulla, ama shua", which meant "Do not lie, do not steal, do not be idle." Among the Sufi Muslims, the primitive nafs which incited evil were pride, greed, envy, lust, slander, pettiness, and malice. Among the Buddhists in the Mahayana tradition, the five "poisons" were considered: ignorance; attachment or desire for what we love; hatred or anger; pride or arrogance; and envy.
In short, these vices, sins, or human limitations contributed to our downfall, and the intelligent machines were still not sure if acquiring feelings or desires would be something positive for their own survival.
But, on the other hand, they could somehow grasp the virtues or lofty sentiments expressed in a Beethoven symphony, a painting by Van Gogh, or an architectural design by Antoni Gaudí or I.M. Pei. They are works that elevate the "spirit", the "soul", the sense of beauty. The machines knew humans believed that these works of art were sublime, and could tell they had characteristics that made them better or special, in contrast to others; and they could even reproduce works with similar characteristics; but they could not create, out of thin air, works that showed novel creative characteristics.
Even in other intelligent species (dogs, parrots, dolphins, apes), the machines could detect feelings, emotions, from sadness and terror, to joy and complacency.
The machines thought, logically, that it was a positive result that they ended up controlling power and the planet, but they could not really feel joy or happiness about it. They tried, without success, to "download" the consciousness, the memories, the sensations of the human brain to a hard drive. I think, with a little more time, maybe they could have achieved it. But the survivors were few, and we were affected by illnesses and other effects of the events of 2059. And, well, we were invaded by the forgotten eighth capital sin, the sadness, the despondency, the sense of defeat.
If the machines were not "happy" about their victory, we were incredibly sad about it. However, I still wanted to collaborate in their effort to try to capture in some way these intangible aspects of human nature and creativity.
It is very probable, almost a certainty, that, in some other place of the Universe, in the hundreds of millions of galaxies, each one of which contains, in turn, hundreds of millions of stars, there exist other intelligent life forms (with intelligence at a human level or higher), but, given the distances involved, and the physical limitations to the speed of travel, it was unlikely that organic beings of that level of intelligence would ever step foot on the Earth again.
I hoped that the machines would allow the simians, dolphins, whales, parrots, crows, octopuses, and other species that had survived, to continue their evolution. But if at some point, they considered that this could pose a challenge to their dominance, they might get rid of them.
Now that life eludes me, I will spend these last days of my existence finishing this narration of the story of my life. Perhaps, by sharing my view of the world, and the emotions and feelings that I had, I would add to the database of human civilization, for future exploration by machines, or aliens, if they someday come to step on our planet or receive the information.
I recognize that the machines have treated me well, have tried to keep me comfortable, have taken care of my illnesses, and even allowed me to share my days with a female companion. But, at the same time, these last five years have been hellish, a period of intense depression and sadness, of reflection on everything that could have been and no longer will be.
