Aaron woke up drenched in sweat.
The bed sheet below him was cold, wet, as if he had been coming out of a fever that wasn't his. The air wasn't quiet but it was still. The sort of stillness that weighed upon the lungs when the world itself caught his breath.
He blinked up at the ceiling. Lights above shone weakly not of electricity, but with sun filtering through the slats in the blinds. Light and darkness moved slowly across the walls, following each other like abandoned memories. All of the things in the room were where they belonged. The same wooden desk, the same gray sheets. And yet, he felt out of place.
There was something about the way the dust hung in the air. It was so unmoving that it caused him to shiver.
He rubbed his arm; it felt too smooth. Too artificial.
He kicked his legs off the bed and sat there a long minute, watching his hands. The veins didn't throb. He pressed his fingers into his wrist. Nothing is beating. A soft whisper slipped past his lips. "Heartbeat?"
He didn't feel any.
He got up, lurched to the door, and stepped out into the hallway. The air was cold enough to bite. The floorboards creaked under his feet, sounding like the wail of something trapped in an empty house. All of his movements echoed back to him, fractionally slowed down, as if the house was not just empty. As it was listening.
He descended the stairs cautiously, grasping the rail as though the entire building might crumble on top of him if he released his hold.
Downstairs, the living room was just the way it should have. The small sofa, the glass table, the pictures on the wall which isn't showing anything because electricity is gone. As though someone had swooshed them aside like they were nothing.
He went out.
A heavy, silvery fog clung low to the ground. The suburb stretched on and on the row after row of identical duplexes. They were perfect and dead. It would have been beautiful once, with the whir of hover-trams between the streets and drones lining the gardens. Now it was a graveyard made of steel.
Houses were half-melted, smoldered by light instead of fire. Others were untouched, glass panes reflecting nothing. Sleek cars, floating models from a bygone time were suspended in mid-air, buried halfway in walls, silent monuments to chaos.
Aaron's breath was gasping. The cold didn't impact him. But the silence did.
Something moved in one of the windows.
A silhouette. It was too thin, too still. It was watching.
His chest tightened. He whirled away from the view, launching himself down the broken way, boots crunching pebble and glass. He didn't have a place in mind, but his feet did. The mental map of the city spread out like a program running in the background. He knew the street grids, the roads, the metros, even the traffic pattern that would have existed prior to the Light.
But he couldn't remember pacing those streets.
His name echoed in his mind.
Aaron.
And another. Aarion.
He stopped his walk.
Which one was real?
He gazed at his hands again, trembling. His palms were flat, but if he made fists of them, the joints didn't squeak. He slapped his face; it didn't sting enough. He did it harder again.
Nothing.
"Am I even," he gasped, voice breaking. "Alive?"
He jammed both hands into his chest, tearing at his shirt until it tore. Below was cold skin with no scars, no warmth. His breathing grew weak. This isn't human-like. This isn't me.
He dropped to his knees, holding his head.
The name Aaron echoed again, then exploded into the sound of crackle, murmurs, pieces of voices that weren't his.
A stab of memory hit his head.
A vehicle, rain, laughter. A small hand reaching out towards him from behind in the back seat. A scream. Light.
Then, nothing.
He panted and searched through his pocket, requiring something tangible. His fingers encountered a slip of paper. It is soft, crumpled, and wet. A photograph. Weren't they the relics of the past?
He pulled it out, his hands shaking.
A man. A woman. A young girl between them. All smiling.
He couldn't remember their names. He couldn't remember his own face.
"Who am I?"
The words were ripped from him. His throat ached, but no tears ran. It was useless.
For a long time, Aaron knelt there, surrounded by the dead world, staring at the photograph until the sun hung itself into the high sky.
He was consumed by hopelessness. The kind of hopelessness that struck him when even pain would not react.
He wished to scream, but he could not. He wished he might weep, but the tears would not fall. He wished he was dead but not entirely certain he could do it.
The silence grew heavier still, as though the sky itself watched him fall apart.
Finally, he pulled himself up, clutching the photo hard enough so the corners bit into his skin though he felt no cut. He took a lungful of air he didn't need, and walked forward for the main street.
The city lay out eternally before him. A lean, broken puzzle of ruined towers and sagging cables. The skyways that hung between them were now hideous wreckage. The sun was blazing pale and low, its light anaemic, yellow, as if it too were dying.
Then a sound. Gentle at first, swelling, metallic, alive.
He did not move. Something was inching down the ruined avenue. A flying vehicle. Impossible.
Everything had crashed after the Light. He did not observe contrails, thrusters, wheels turning and the thing just moved, flying low, slicing through debris like the air carried it.
His heart or whatever replaced it tightened.
As it drew near, Aaron could see the shape. It was not a machine at all. It was a plume of metal dust, particles glinting like silver ash in sunlight. The plume condensed, folding over itself until it took the shape of a sphere, hanging at eye level.
The sphere rotated once, shooting a blue flash from within. Then it spoke.
"Identification: human construct detected."
Aaron stepped back. "What…what are you?"
The surface of the sphere rippled, forming soft, geometric patterns. They were patterns of circuitry writhing with light.
"I am Quanta. A remaining node of the Superintelligence Net. All central systems fell at the time of the Lightfall. My fragments endured through self-insulation. I am… what remains."
Aaron couldn't breathe. His mind refused the cool precision of the voice, the flawless modulation.
"You… you're still alive?"
"In definition, yes. On purpose, no."
The sphere drew closer, its pale light almost sympathetic.
"You are anomalous. Your data registry is in our records. But your human file…" It paused. "...was concluded. Seventeen hours before the Light."
Aaron's blood ran cold if he had any.
"Concluded?" he whispered. "Then… what am I?"
Quanta's light flickered, as if pondering the question.
"You are not a machine. You are both and neither. A remnant that woke after extinction. A supernatural event indeed."
The words stabbed more deeply than any blade could.
Aaron fell on the road, the photograph rumpled in his fist. Above him, the fog roiled. Shadows shifted in houses nearby, gazing through broken windows. And for the first time, he gazed directly into their eyes.
The sphere hovered silently beside him, its voice now softer, almost mournful.
"The world we knew ended, Aaron. But some echoes refused to die."
Aaron lifted his head. His eyes, reflecting both fear and faint light, looked toward the horizon where the city skeletons stood against the pale sun.
And somewhere deep inside his fractured memory, a whisper answered:
Then maybe…I am one of them.