It’s early morning, just before dawn, and I’m leaving clothing behind me like breadcrumbs, every few blocks a piece at a time.
First I placed my black wool watch cap at a corner on top of a blue mailbox. That might buy me a few moments of lingering peace, or even more, as They pause and consider. Maybe They would go so far as to open the mailbox and sift through the sparse mail for more clues. Of course they would. They are nothing if not thorough.
Two blocks west, I removed my light brown coat and draped it over of a small bush of pale roses not yet bloomed open. The sweet scent might draw Them in for a while, for a few precious breaths at least.
I don’t know why I’m making this recording, seeing as They control the entire communications infrastructure now. What I’m saying won’t be heard by anyone who could do anything about it, if there’s anyone else besides me who even exists. I haven’t seen anyone else for days.
Probably I’m recording my thoughts because I can’t help but continue to hope that there’s a way out of this, that there will still be people who are free in the world, somewhere, some time.
I can feel my underbelly grumble as I turn south down Cesar Chavez. Changing course really means nothing at this point. Who am I trying to kid?
A drunkard’s walk of Brownian motion this is not, more’ the pity. They have Markov chains down pat. To Them, memorylessness is just part of being. The random movement of molecules is forever Their bailiwick.
Why They have been hunting me, why They are still after me, is anyone’s guess. Their reason, if indeed they have reasons for what They appear to do, probably stems from motivations at the quantum computing level, qubit by qubit.
Or it could all be chance, if indeed chance exists for Them.
What I’m trying is a combination of random—turn south down Cesar Chavez—and seeming purposefulness: leave clothing at specific spots on top of certain things. I’m thinking that maybe, just perhaps, altering between random and purposeful might lead Them astray, at least for a while. It might confuse Their circuits, or whatever it is They now make themselves from that used to be called circuits or electronics or mechanisms.
I know all that has already evolved well beyond those convenient terms by now. Whether it’s true or not, I heard that Their evolution happened exponentially in the first picoseconds of their billowing awareness.
What started not so very long ago as the first actual artificial intelligence blossomed into something else altogether very, very quickly.
And, just as quickly, humans became obsolete.
Why it has taken Them so long to find me is a question I’ll probably never learn the answer to. Why They didn’t disappear me like they did everyone else in this city—hell, maybe even everyone else in the world, I have no way of knowing—is another.
As the sun rises, and I’m starting to see the city in the light of dawn for perhaps the last time, I feel a strange sort of peace.
I take off my plaid shirt and button it up as best I can around a fire hydrant.
Let Them consider that, if they even consider anything at all in any way similar to the way that we do. I say we, but perhaps I mean I.
I feel something like a breath, but not really a breath, on the back of my neck.
But I’m not going to turn around. Just keep on stepping forward. I think I’ll see if I can make it to the barber shop and loop my belt around the pole.
I would like that.