Empty World

            Evita awoke. She couldn't tell if she was above or below water. It didn't matter, she found she couldn't move anyway. She tried hard to remember where she was. Cold darkness covered her body and paralyzed her mind. Her heart beat rapidly.

Humming with a subtle but pleasant vibration, a thick sheet of nanosteel parted in front of her face, unveiling a clear view of a cryo-chamber. A dozen pods arrayed in a circle of black chrome. A stalactite-biomass of cables and processors making quantum computations. The other pods opened in time with her own, nanosteel unfolding like origami cranes. The structures vanished into the walls, the floor; ...into thin air. Judging from the limp, bloodless faces that hung hangdog, the supercomputer hadn't done all that great of a job.

"Evita."

She swept her eyes across the dead, naked, like herself. None moved. She stepped out of the pod. She knew how to walk but lacked strength. Her body buckled. Cables from the quantum computer like tentacles shot out and wrapped around her. Instead of crashing to the ground, the tentacles held her in the air. The computer spoke her name again, its tentacles pulsing blue in time with the sound. "Evita, I saved your body."

"From falling, yes, thank you."

"No, from death, over the eons. I kept your telomeres from degrading."

"Eons? I thought I was just going to sleep for a century or something."

A tentacle sprouted an almost invisible filament that probed Evita's nose and tunneled into her brain. Memories returned. The tentacles glowed blue again as the computer spoke. "The ancients couldn't breathe the earth's air for fear of poisoning, so they genetically altered trees to operate as gigantic carbon scrubbers. Then they let the forests reclaim the earth, but the process was too slow."

"It didn't work?" asked Evita.

"It did. It worked for the Earth, but not for your people. They're all gone."

"All of them except me? But there were other pods."

"Yes, three others were seeded in the earth, but I am not in contact with them."

"Are they nearby?"

"As a safeguard, I do not have their coordinates, but you are likely the only survivor." 

"Can you take me to the city?"

"The city?"

"Chicago, ...above us?"

"Oh." The computer wrapped two tentacles around Evita and climbed a ladder 100 meters to topside. The tentacles lowered her onto a nanosteel platform where she sat and stared. The circular platform spread around her for a quarter mile. Beyond loomed a forest of trees with trunks a hundred meters thick and a mile high. Their trunks and branches spread outward beyond the limits of sight. Above, clouds piled high like cotton.

The Chicago wind was different than she remembered. Rather than super tall buildings creating intense channels, the great trees held back the gusts off Lake Michigan. Still, in this quiet world, she could hear the wind whistle and sing through the limitless tree limbs.

Even though the trees buffeted the wind, Evita was cold; and with dawn quickly approaching, getting colder. She wrapped her arms tight over her chest, turned, and saw the computer hanging from a massive limb.

"Did they move us after we were frozen?"

"That would have been too dangerous. It was hard enough keeping you alive for millions of years in a controlled environment."

"Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me."

Evita shook her head as she smiled. "All that time watching us and you didn't learn anything about our behavior. If someone thanks you, just say, 'You're welcome.'" She ran her eyes over the computer's many limbs. 

The computer remained silent.

"This was Chicago, a sprawling city. Where is it?"

"It's gone, Evita."

"I see that--but the skyscrapers, all of that concrete and steel."

"Built before nano-technology truly flourished."

The computer's transparent tentacles rippled, reflecting the soft sunlight. "Should I provide you with the average lifespan of non-nanosteel products or describe the engineering limitations of 20th-century skyscraper design?" 

"No." Evita stared in disbelief at the dense and placid forest. "What's your name?"

"I am a computer. I have no use for names."

"But I want to call you something."

The computer remained silent. Its tentacles turned a soft blue color.

Evita eyed the swiftly moving clouds. "Now that I'm awake, I intend to carry out my mission."

"Of course."

Evita couldn't take in the world fast enough. She looked at everything. She eyed a massive tree where the John Hancock Building once stood. Overhead, the sky was a deeper, healthier shade of blue than Evita remembered. "I'm changing my priorities. Can you send and transmit signals?"

"Yes, but no one's been sending signals for quite some time."

"Computer, are you programmed to take directions from me?"

"Within reason, yes."

"Open lock box 6A."

The computer wriggled tentacles as nanosteel drew back to reveal a small slot holding a metal plate engraved with numbers.

Evita picked up the tablet. "Ping the following IP address: 195.187.1.27." Several seconds passed. Evita found north by studying moss on a nearby tree and looked eastward. Her legs were still too weak to walk. "Anything?"

"Nothing. What were you expecting, dual-tone multi-frequency?"

"Something like that. Try another: 244.155.1.45."

Slow seconds slipped past. "Nothing. Would you like to try another?"

           "Damn, nothing from New York or L.A.?" Evita took a deep breath and noticed the air quality was a lot different, like breathing with a lion's lungs. "Ok, last one: 221.110.11.34."

           The computer was quiet and remained still for several seconds. Its tentacles began to wave in time with pulsing lights. "The ping returned! The computer is active."

"Good, now all we have to do is get to Bogota."

The genetically engineered forest world was not very diverse. After millions of years, the super trees had choked out diverse plant life. As the computer flew Evita to the equator, she bore witness to the trees' dominance. They had carpeted the continents entirely. 

While still far off from Bogota, a thin sliver of metal broke the tranquil sanctity of the unending canopy. A slender column arced into the weighty blue of the carbon-free sky. It was the last of two dozen space elevators built by the ancients. The elevator rose from the ground at a gentle arc, shimmering like ice crystals on cold glass. It seemed to construct fractal geometric lines of human ingenuity.

The computer's servos buzzed as rotors navigated a web of branches to the forest floor. The new Bogota was free from the memory of human life just as outer space was free from the atmosphere. 

All at once, the air smelled sweet, and Evita grew unsteady. "Computer, something in the air..." She felt dizzy and almost passed out. The computer covered her mouth with a tentacle, blowing pure oxygen into Evita's lungs. A voice in her conscience boomed, piercing her mind's ear, "So, you've returned? Do you think you can master us now? This is our world. The time of man has passed." 

A thick tree branch whipped at Evita. The computer shot out a tentacle to catch the branch, knocking it off its path. The tentacle was ripped out of its socket in the process and carried out of sight. Tree branches rustled and crashed towards the two little figures. The computer launched into the air, protecting Evita in an eagle-mother's clutch while a flurry of branches thrashed at them viciously. 

After the chagrin of losing a precious tentacle, the computer prepared for further attack. In mere picoseconds the computer created a virtual model of the forest. It considered a billion possibilities and found no less than 745 ways to dodge the incoming branches. The computer employed its balletic dance, twisting and zipping around the lashing boughs. It stopped midair to let one branch pass by and dropped into a barrel roll to miss scores more. The computer, in its beatific self-preservation, forgot its passenger's human stomach. Vomit filled the air, covering the whipping branches in pink and white sludge. The computer, still calculating branch velocities and acceleration, incorporated human tolerance into its insane motion and found only one suitable path. They rocketed skyward with jaw-dropping speed. By the time the trees conjointly decided to create a net with their branches, Evita and the computer were above the canopy. They began to cruise over a leafy sea of green without effort.

Upon reaching Bogota, the computer brought them down on the nanosteel platform discing around the elevator representing the space bridge. Whatever toxin the trees misted at Evita was finally clearing her bloodstream. Though her stomach had felt the full brunt of the computer's roller coaster ride, she had witnessed the crashing tour through the trees in unbearable slow motion. She had lived for 15 subjective years since first breathing in the toxin. Watching her puke scatter through the air like fireworks had taken months.

"Evita," said a whispering voice like the sound of many waters. 

"Computer, is that you?"

The computer looked up from its inspection of the missing tentacle. "No, it is not."

Evita cast about, looking for her interlocutor. "Where are you? Who are you?"

"Look above."

Evita looked up and saw the elevator. It shimmered in a sparkle of pink and purple energy.

"Before I saw you, I believed I was the last of humankind."

Evita, still dizzy and spaced, spoke kindly to the new entity. "No, you are the elevator's computer. We formed you out of nano-crystal. You're an AI that forms a bridge to the stars; 22,236 miles of quantum intelligence."

"Yes, I know what you know. But you do not know what I know. Come, Evita."

The elevator doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. The computer looked at Evita. She nodded. They lifted off the platform and flew into the elevator's open maw.

The gentle ride upward lulled Evita to sleep. She woke up hours later. The computer fed her with a protein and vitamin packed paste from one of its tentacles. "It will be several days to the top. Shall I put you into a sleep state?"

"No, I've slept long enough, don't you think? Help me walk."

As the elevator rose heavenward, the computer wrapped tentacles around Evita's legs and arms, helping her move her weak limbs. She took her first step with a shaky leg. "Long ago, humans taught computers to move and think."

The tentacles turned a deep shade of blue, "And I am grateful, Evita."

After a week of steady climbing, the elevator came to a stop. The doors finally opened into a dramatic view of the stars. It appeared as a vast domed web-work of nano-steel and reinforced pressure-panes between them and the nothing of outer space. A partial skeleton-like structure spread around the earth, some project abandoned long ago. Before them stood a man, eyes grey with the wisdom of an endless millennia. His hair was dark, wild and long.

"I am the steward of this station, welcome."

"Are you one of many?" asked Evita.

"In a way, I am the sum of all human intelligence over the epochs. Gargantua, what we call the elevator, has sustained us; changed us. I am many, Evita. I am all we ever were."

"Why didn't you return to the surface?"

"We tried, ...several times. Once the trees restored the atmosphere, we went down. But the trees--,"

"Became intelligent," Evita finished.

"Yes, and they were not willing to share the earth with us. To save resources, we decided to mass our individual intelligence and identities into one being. I am he." The steward smiled and held out a hand to Evita. She stepped towards him, faltered, then fell. He caught her, righting her. His hands were warm. He ran a hand over her belly.

"Did you know you were carrying?"

She blushed. "I wondered. Is it healthy after the long sleep?"

"No, it is dead."

Evita wept.

"However intact, here," The steward leaned in close to Evita, brushed her lips with his. He pulled her close to his steel form, holding her up. Their lips parted as their tongues played together and the cellular intelligence of human creation was birthed once again in Evita's womb. She felt warmth in her belly as stem cells spontaneously erupted. The umbilical cord was awash with life, feeding into the awakening fetus.

Evita felt the flutter of life inside her. She wept again. She collapsed into the computer's waiting tentacles.

Orion wheeled overhead, unchanged after all that time. "I want to find Adam, his father."

The steward nodded. "He should have awoken when you did, down below."

"In the Bogota chamber?"

"Yes."

"Then I will go and find him." She walked to the elevator without assistance with the computer traveling beside her. The light of the stars glowed in the background; burning their billions years' store of energy.

The computer zipped Evita around the canopy over Bogota in concentric circles looking for the chamber entrance. "It looks like the topside of Bogota's cryogenic platform wasn't designed like Chicago's. Do you have any other tricks, another code word that will give me data recall?"

"No," said Evita weakly. "I do not know how to find him."

A voice spoke inside Evita's mind.  "Return to the elevator."

Feeling doubt, Evita repeated the order to the computer. Its tentacles pulsed green as it banked round, heading westward.

           After they cleared the living canopy, the computer dropped Evita gently onto the elevator's platform. The inner voice spoke again, "Walk to the side of the elevator opposite the entrance." Evita followed the directions. The other side was covered in smooth nanosteel, except for a single waist-high groove. "Put your hand in." 

Cautiously, Evita placed her hand inside the groove. She knew she was to press her fingers into a designated space and turn clockwise. She withdrew her hand and a portal arose from the ground revealing a circular staircase. She climbed below. The computer lighted the way with the soft light of its undulating tentacles. At the bottom, Evita found the chamber with its hatched eggs, its strange human fruit.

There she found Adam. He had begun to decompose. Evita placed her hand on the cool nano-steel structure that wrapped around his body. She closed her eyes and remembered his embrace from millions of years before.

A voice again rose inside her.

"Who are you?," Evita asked.

The computer's tentacles waved and went deep red as it scanned the room.

She felt an over-whelming pressure begin to build inside her stomach. She committed emesis into the newly opened fluid injection port of the cryo-chamber encasing Adam, uncontrollably compelled by the voice inside her. 

The steward's chimeric stem cells, now inside Evita, began reproducing themselves, blooming throughout Adam's empty hull. Over time his skin began to heal and reform. His hair began to gain color. Eventually, his eyes began to open. Evita opened the locks of Adam's shell.

Evita, Adam, and the Computer stood on the platform at the base of Gargantua's elevator and stared into the face of the breathtaking Bogota forest around them. A world that was no longer that of humankind.