Chapter 17

Wednesday, June 5, 3089, 8:38 a.m. Rebecca awakened at 8:38 a.m. Stretching mightily, until it felt like every joint in her body would pop, she grabbed a pillow, jammed it down over her eyes, and sighed. It was Sunday and she never got up before 10 a.m. Never. She sat bolt upright 2 seconds later and stared around open-mouthed. It was her bedroom at home.

“Mom?” she shrieked. She forgot her sore ankle and stumbled in agony jumping out of bed. Grabbing the edge of her desk for support, she looked down. Her ankle had swollen so badly overnight that she failed to discern any underlying bones, tendons, and muscles. “Fuck,” she moaned, frustrated. “Mom? Mom, are you home?”

A close approximation of her bedroom at home, it was not the real thing. Rather than a view of the Burnham’s house across the street, the window overlooked the landscape beyond the palace. Her bedroom doorway opened onto an upstairs hallway with the wrong color carpet and paint. Several items were missing from her walls, including a poster of J-Lo beside her closet door, which itself looked slightly askew in the wall. Nothing electrical, including her clock and bedside table bore electrical cords. The multitude of stickers was missing from the cover of her MacBook. “What the hell?” she questioned hoarsely. “Siri?”

“How may I help, Rebecca?”

Rebecca laughed harshly. “My room...?”

Siri responded: “Numerous selfies and other photographs exist on your cell phone. Using them, Procurement produced a replica of your house, assuming it would decrease your anxiety level. Procurement couldn’t be certain that all photos were, in fact, taken inside your house, but I can fix anomalies and recreate missing portions from direct-thought commands. Or non-invasive memory retrieval if that’s what you prefer. You need only inform me wherever an anomaly exists.”

Rebecca shook her head, flustered. Weirder, and weirder.

She cleared her throat. “Okay, yeah, sure on the reconstruction. Whatever.” She cleared her throat again. “This was very thoughtful of you, Siri, and, um ... appreciated.” Blushing, she added: “Please offer my thanks to Procurement for the ... um, thoughtfulness, too.”

Siri again sounded amused. “Procurement noted your injured ankle. Can you walk?”

“Barely,” she admitted, chagrined. “Am I always under observation?”

“Inside the palace and surrounding areas yes. Please note that Procurement completed the long-range scan while you slept, and no human presence was detected on Earth beyond the surrounding area. A total of 756 humans in total were counted, all dwelling within the confines of the local village. The breakdown—”

“What?” Rebecca cried, flabbergasted, and dismayed. “Nowhere else on earth? Nowhere but here?”

“The scan detected no additional human signatures, or electromagnetic activity. EM emissions were detected beyond the earth’s atmosphere, all from surviving satellites and exploratory spacecraft. These sources number fewer than a dozen. No indication was discovered of extraterrestrial, non-human activity, though extraterrestrial was not the focus of monitoring.”

Rebecca struggled to her swivel chair’s replacement and sat down heavily. “How is that possible?” she cried. “How many humans populated the earth in 2912?”

“That is unknown.”

“How?” she demanded shrilly. “Billions of us lived in 2014! Billions and billions!” She burst into tears. “756 people left on the whole planet? That can’t be!”

Siri let her work through her agonized crying in silence.

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At 9:24 a.m., Rebecca pushed onto her good foot and used the swivel chair as a makeshift walker. In the doorway, she gazed left and right. Across the hall was the upstairs bathroom. To her left lay her parent’s bedroom; the door cracked an inch as normal. Her sister Maudie’s bedroom lay to her right across the hall, complete with Maude’s name arrayed in an arc across the door. ‘Keep Out, Mad Dog on Watch’ on a red and white plastic sign warned against entry. At the end of the hallway, stairs presumably led downstairs.

“Maude?” she called hesitantly. Maude was in Morgantown, WV, 200 miles away. “Maude?” she called out again. “Mom? Dad?”