Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse)
Azubah lay prostrate; her wings outstretched in the Great Hall of Witnesses. A brilliant silver cloud descended from within the intricate arches of the temple. It draped over her exalted body like an heirloom quilt on a sleeping child, the weight of generations woven into the beautiful haze. Millions of tiny sinuses on every surface of her body inhaled the cool mist in unison. Data flowed through her veins fragmented, reassembling and changing form until preserved as whole organic memories through a genetically enhanced neural network inundating her senses. Moments, memories, desires chopped up and compressed in the vapor lingered around her in a hazy cloud. She took a single decisive breath consuming the remaining fog around her. Her body arched into a lordotic pose as she struggled to incorporate the remaining molecules into the very fiber of her being. Her wings shivered and her eyes rolled attempting to digest it all.
She was one of four Knowers; a group of humans who underwent genetic modification to become a refuge of information at the end of time. The other three absorbed the memories of the beasts great and small, the plants near and far, and the automatons good and evil. Azubah’s burden was to carry the sum of human experience, knowledge and desires. The thorough desolation of the nanyte disease meant that the burden was even greater than she had prepared for. A tear formed against her sanguine porcelain face while her wings lowered feebly shaking from the growing revelation of the magnitude of lost and broken lives inside her. She ached to mourn, letting out a piercing hypersonic wail of grief reverberating throughout the hollow godforsaken temple. Her crown bled with red and orange light like fire against an ocean of delicate white haired ringlets. She was linked with the starship. The cold pavement tickled her hands while her wings pulsed lifting her up towards the top of the once great hall.
Azubah sailed past the crumbling gold cross at the top of the temple, a relic from a more primal past. Many humanoids took up ancient religions as a way to cope with the rapid extinction of all humanoid life. Hope was in short supply. To live in the melancholic truth of permanent human extinction was too great for even the most ardent of humanoids. Faith filled the void where certainty and hope in technology once reigned.
Azubah lit towards the third moon where the sunset would begin in a few moments. She said a prayer, to never forget the beauty of the place she called home. She recalled times before her transformation into her exalted body as one of the few organic children in her district without genetic modifications or nano-engineering. She remembered the love and acceptance of her family and the hate of her peers. They called her “antique” sending thoughts and messages wirelessly to each other through their nanowired bodies. She was deaf to their conversations struggling to connect verbally learning to read subtext while a world of communication existed in those who had nano-wired bodies. In this moment she even carried their memories of torment and their fears of death.
She banked towards the old district in hopes to see the Remnant out in the public square awaiting transfer. It looked empty as she circled the area. She questioned if there were even enough organics alive to assemble en masse or perhaps they would rather spend the time solemnly together inside. She looked at the sun and realized many would have been uploaded to the starship already dead in whatever comfort they chose. She was alone. Before she began her transformation there were only a few hundred people left on the planet and they all collectively moved within a single district a few years.
She lifted her body perpendicular to the ground sailing up towards the clouds away from the vacant square onward past the skyline, gliding in between rows of Cypress trees over fallow farm fields. Racing towards the horizon, she felt the cool wind on her back and the warmth of the sun on her face. Against the backdrop of the tangerine sky the fiery lights of her crown grew dim. She lost control, flapping impulsively while the last memory inside her was stripped and uploaded to a starship in orbit. Azubah fell violently, hurtling towards the ground her eyes nictating mid-seizure. She slammed into the surface near a tangle of brush a branch ripping her crown violently from her head. With her fading eyes wide open, a broken and empty vessel, she fought the pain and pressed against the soil standing up to see the setting sun. It was the only sun mankind would ever know. Their memories lived on through her sacrifice. Her eyes grew dim, collapsing as nightfall settled over the fields. She rested a lifeless heap. Her shattered wings curled around her, a funeral cloth with no one to mourn. Azubah’s was the first and last memory in humanoid existence. Her glorious demise ensured that mankind in all of it’s hubris would neither be forgotten or pitied by the next great species to conquer the galaxy.
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