J.S. Morin - Extinction Reversed

T here shouldnt have been anything after the apocalypse. The works of mankind should have fallen to ruin and decayed into the memory of the universe along with their creators. But Notre Dame Cathedral echoed with dozens of voices in perfectly attuned, if not beautiful, harmony .

As Charlie7 sang along in chorus, he gazed up at the restored stained glass frescoes and wondered why. Why did they all sing in praise of a god that had not created them? Sunlight streamed through the colored glass, and not one image depicted robotkind. Saints and saviors abounded but not a single scientist. At best, Charlie7 and his kind were Gods grandchildren, made in the image of their own creators: humans .

If any of the other worshipers in attendance entertained such blasphemous thoughts, none let it show. By Charlie7s headcount, there were Johns and Freds, Sandras and Marys. No fewer than a dozen Elizabeths were present, as if no force in Western Europe could restrain them from attending the grand rededication .

Charlie7 had only come out of idleness and the fact that it was within walking distance of home. He had learned the hymns and rituals hastily after receiving an invitation from Paul208, foreman of the restoration. If anyone would have asked what Charlie7 was doing attending services, he had the excuse that he was 10 percent John. Usually, such a minor personality slice wouldnt be enough to turn a robotic personality into a believer, but heroes got away with bolder lies .

John316 led the service. That wasnt even his official designation. But if a robot had the ambition or hubris to ordain himself, a change of name wasnt so great a stretch .

Charlie7 lost himself in examining the architectural details of the stonework as John316 blathered on about the buildings history and religious significance. The living, breathing Charles Truman had never set foot inside Notre Dame, so Charlie7 had no stored memory of the place to draw from. If the original was anything like Paul208s version, the ancient humans who built it had done a bang- up job .

A shift in John316s tone drew Charlie7s attention back to the sermon .

I would like us all to pause in remembrance of the eighth Adam, John316 said. No robot claimed the designation Adam. There were only twenty-seven scientists digitized for posterity before humanitys demise. Each robot had a mind stitched together from those neural imprints and carried the name of the majority personality. None of the Twenty-Seven was named Adam .

John316 continued after a somber pause. The Sanctuary for Scientific Sins reported this morning that he passed away at the age of eleven. Cause of death: organ failure due to advanced cellular decay .

All around the cathedral, robots muttered prayers and expressions of grief. The robotic preacher in his pompous black robe delved once more into platitudes .

Charlie7 fumed. The sermon struck Charlie7s acoustic sensors unrecorded as a wave of indignant error messages scrolled through his field of vision .

What right had these madmen to play at rebirthing humanity? For decades, glory-seeking geneticists raced in secret to be the first to reveal a reborn human. The sanctuary to which John316 referred was a remote island where the castoff results of cloning experiments lived out their often short, painful lives. Most robots just referred to the refuge as the Scrapyard .

The Genetic Ethics Committee had only recently allowed sanctioned research on lower primates. The poor wretches at the Scrapyard were the result of hubris. If Charlie7 ever caught one of the perpetrators, he would do far worse than strip them of their credentials .

Charlie7 had not waited more than a thousand years to watch humanity be reborn in agony .

At length, the service played itself out. The parishioners exited the cavernous Gothic structure in neat rows. They chatted reverently beneath the echoing vaulted ceiling .

Charlie7 loitered amid the pews, waiting for everyone to vacate. The message he had received on the Social had been brief. Toby22 had asked whether hed be attending services today, and when Charlie7 had replied that he would, Toby22s follow-up had been simply: outside. afterward .

Mostly, Charlie7 ignored the Social. He liked keeping the cold, calculating computer in his chest separate from the crystalline matrix of thought, memory, and emotion within his skull .

Efficiency was hell. The only joy to be found in life came from the chaotic, the unplanned, and the unexpected. Toby22s message certainly qualified as the latter .

Unexpected or not, Charlie7 would probably have met with Toby22 anyway. Tobys got things done. Society would have been all the poorer without their willingness to roll up their sleeves and work. Toby and his brethren straddled the line between menial laborers and automatons .

Charlie7 listened until he could no longer hear the faint buzz of conversation outside. His synthetic leather soles scuffed on the stone floors. The echoes showcased the cathedrals magnificent acoustics. Charlie7 imagined the chorus of voices that had risen when the world was filled with real humans .

As Charlie7 stepped into a beautiful spring morning, he let his shoulders rise and fall in memory of a sigh .

Paris had changed in the centuries since the invasion. When Charlie7 had settled there, it had been bleak, barren, and dotted with rubble and ruins. Now the landscape exploded in wildflowers and tall grasses. The debris had been cleared away, the radioactive fallout neutralized. A few modern buildings stabbed up from the soil like spikes of steel and glass. Ancient relics like Notre Dame hinted at the citys former old-world charm. The rest was left to the mercy of natures newborn grasp .

Charlie7 watched the ascent of a mining transorbital, one of the gigaton vessels that ran relays to the Kuiper Belt. Hamburg was 748 kilometers away, but he could make out the engines clear as fiber optics at just 4x magnification .

Maybe it was time for Charlie7 to take a break from retirement and life on Earth. Much as he wished otherwise, he couldnt escape the reminders of the tormented humans trapped in clandestine labs across the globe. He knew there would be no stopping the geneticists until someone succeeded .