IT WAS A CHILLY, gray Saturday morning in Cambridge. Peter was suddenly rocked from his sleep by the sound of distant explosions. He curled up beneath the comforter, wishing it was not true.

“Got to pee badly. I’ll dig a hole.”

Jumping from his cot, he picked up a small shovel in a storage bucket by the water heater. Walking into the basement at the back door of the house, he started digging a two-foot deep hole in the hard dirt.

“I can’t figure out why they never concreted this basement,” he grunted. “I bet the builder never envisioned one of the last humans on Earth would be holed-up in this house, digging a self-made toilet. This place may get raunchy. Thank heaven there’s a door to the basement.”

Once his business was done, he peeked out the front, back, and side windows. It was quiet, and there was no evidence of additional traffic on the street beyond his visitor encounter the prior day. After ensuring his immediate safety in the surrounds, he returned to his garage and logged-on.

The few headlines he found were surreal: ‘Billions Dead from Plague and Variants.’ ‘Nuclear Weapons and Nerve Toxins Deployed Overseas.’ ‘Nuclear Plant Meltdowns Imminent.’ ‘Geedee Jumping Blamed for Worldwide Crisis.’ ‘Armageddons at Micron Scale.’ ‘Global Mech Revolt Continues – Nobody’s Safe.’

Peter shut his eyes and pondered, “Why are the mechs still alive? They shouldn’t be immune to these agents, right? Unless, of course, they were the creators. But that would take massive, secretive efforts – and it’s only been two months since the obelisk hit. Of course, they may have been planning it all beforehand. The obelisk might be a convenient ploy to advance their cause and wreak havoc, fear, and confusion among the other competing factions. Stu’s theory.”

He looked away from the headlines. “No, no, I’m thinking too much. Mechs are usually not the sharpest tacks in the box unless they’re doing chip augments. But I could see that, too – chipper mechs, armed with total knowledge, instant brilliance. Interconnected to their quantum computers, like BioEthel indicated. Locked-in to a mandate, unable to stop what was being broadcast and repeated within their AI-driven code. Tech gone evil.”

Plunking away again at the keyboard, he found more recent articles on the obelisk and its origins.

“Postulates here,” he mouthed, “the carvings might have been constructed with technology only a few years advanced from known capabilities. I wonder if a chipper mech could have developed a machine or lasers or another tech to do this? I mean, why can’t you carve or print a platinum-gold alloy to the nano level if you currently do that with silicon? It’s just a minor shift. What the hell? I can’t resolve that question.”

As the morning wore on, he continued to sift through the remaining news feeds, scanning for new posts of pictures from international sources since most of the English-speaking media had quieted substantially.

Death was everywhere, and it didn’t stop at humans. Birds, fish, and virtually any large-scale animal life form were in jeopardy.

“Plants?” he wondered while reading aloud. “There’s no evidence yet of geedee tech jumping to plants, though that could be a matter of time given the interplay of geedee variables across many species.”

The weight of the news and recent days finally pressed down on him. He fell onto his cot and sobbed into the comforter.

“I shall be next,” he lamented, “from a dead bird that falls on the roof, a drop of water, or a breath of air.”

Suddenly it dawned on him. At this rate of death and disruption, nobody might hear the podcasts if played on their planned dates: Brokers on Wednesday, Hats on Friday, then Stoicholic the following Wednesday.

“Change of plan. I’ll run them now,” he spoke aloud. “I’ll place them all in sequence today and just keep re-playing them as long as the servers are up. What was I thinking – that this nightmare stops, and everything goes back to normal? That’s impossible. The new normal is the extinction of humankind. I’ll play these out now or never.”

Peter got to work queueing-up Brokers, Hats, and Stoicholic. He didn’t care that they weren’t perfectly edited since perfection no longer mattered.

“I can’t believe this network host is still working. Must be tied into the schools and staying alive by a miracle. But who’d be on campus managing the networks? Inconceivable. Unless like me, they’re stuck in their locations, relying on food and soda from machines in the lounge, hoping and praying the power stays on, or feeding their own power plants with what’s left of their physical plant reserves. Maybe it’s the mystical crap that Stoicholic touched on, as if someone is trying to rectify things or provide recompense. You can’t rectify or recompense the annihilation of a species. Or is it Kingdom? Phylum? Whatever?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Logging-in to his podcast from outside his account, he spun-up the interviews starting with Brokers. Hearing Molli’s voice reminded him of how much he missed her. Without glancing again at the laptop, he leaned back in his chair and listened intently as the three remaining podcasts streamed in succession.

At the end of the podcasts, Peter thought he should check his email and messaging apps once again.

He couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Jennifer?” he shouted. “Alive? Why an email?”

Jennifer: “Listening to podcasts now, we must be on the same networks between the schools. They’re doing something DoD related, I guess, and need to keep the intercampus links and power going. Most feeds are dead. I’m going stir crazy without them. Not sick yet and no symptoms, thank God. Meet halfway? Stay away from bodies, birds, rats. Bugs even. Who knows? Spray shoes with ammonia. Kills Toxo and plague, I hear. Touch nothing, not even me. Okay?”

His hands shook.

Peter: “Where’s halfway?”

He waited anxiously for a reply. One arrived a few minutes later.

Jennifer: “Central Square. Wear brown clothes. Nothing shiny. Use a dark hat, even brown shoe polish on face. Blend-in to buildings and shrubs. Infected mechs see movement, bright colors, shiny, and they attack.”

Peter: “Why?”

Jennifer: “Toxo mixed with trout DNA.”

Peter: “No, why meet?”

Jennifer: “Two are stronger than one. I’ll bring my food in backpack. Scavenge the rest.”

Peter: “When?”

Jennifer: “Now. Not safe at my house. Exposed, broken windows. Yours better?”

Peter: “Yes. But we could die. Mechs and death everywhere. High risk.”

Jennifer: “We’ll likely die regardless, only a matter of time. Prefer to die together. Good?”

Peter estimated Central Square was six blocks of travel for him in broad daylight. For her, it was eight. Either way, it was risky. On the other hand, two might be better off surviving this tragedy than one.

Peter: “Leaving in five. Grabbing a bottle of cleaner I’ll place outside for shoes.”

Jennifer: “Great. Antibacterial spray also. When close, hide at bushes or cars. Wait for clearing and no mechs visible. I’ll come from southwest, you’ll be from northeast. Stand out visible for a few seconds. Move very slowly, then go back to hide. I’ll do the same until we spot each other. I’ll run to you, and we’ll keep running to your place. See you in a few.”

Peter sprang up from his seat, his heart beating wildly. He shed his clothes and donned his black, cold weather cycling jacket and pants. Snatching a bottle of spray cleaner from beneath his bathroom sink, he took a quick scan from his porch window. No sign of movement.

Then he ran. It was only a day since he had come from West Cambridge, and now he was running west again.

“Is this a stupid plan?” he wondered. “No signs of life here other than me. If anyone is alive, they could be watching from windows, but would they care? She’s in trouble. Don’t doubt yourself.”

Dodging the bodies of birds, squirrels, dogs, and people, he made it to the northeast edge of Central Square within minutes. Although her southwest approach had convenient bushes in which she could hide, his northeast corner was devoid of plant life. Worse yet, the subway entrances were on both sides of Massachusetts Avenue – convenient hangouts for any mechs in the area.

He crouched in waiting behind the trunk of the only tree on Prospect Avenue, then slowly stepped for a moment into the open and returned. Peeking out from his hiding place, he nervously waited for Jennifer to show herself.

A minute passed, then he heard her scream, “Peter!”

Jumping out from his crouched position, he scanned the square.

“No sign. Where is she?” he fretted.

In stepping out onto the road, he was now exposed to anyone at the intersection. He watched as three mechs emerged from the bushes at Western Avenue. They, no doubt, had found Jennifer.

“She’s dead,” he thought. “Get the hell out of here!”

Peter turned and began to run back home, knowing it was futile. Many mechs used integrated machine tech in their legs. They would likely catch up with him, despite his lead. He was surprised he made it out alive from the Harvard Square chase, and he knew this would be his final moments on Earth.

Spotting an abandoned bike across the street, he hopped on and started peddling as fast as he could while changing gears.

“Thirty mph, at least,” he thought.

He felt a rock hit the bike’s frame, and another large one slammed into the ground in front of him.

“Throwing rocks again! Good sign. I’m outrunning them!”

Not daring to turn his head, Peter raced through the streets, weaving through an obstacle course of cars and bodies. He took a circuitous route home, away from major intersections, then dumped the bicycle near his house on Washington Street.

“Short concentration spans. Pursued only a few blocks. Must be the trout DNA,” he considered, out of breath and sweating profusely from the chase.

Sneaking to his front porch, he sprayed his hands with the cleaner, then his shoes. Fearful the bike seat might be infected, he shed his cycling pants on the front porch, setting his bare butt on the porch’s freezing concrete. Half-naked, he entered his house and toweled-off his sweat before donning clean clothes.

Once in the silence of his home, Peter closed his eyes and cried out loud, “Jennifer, lovely Jennifer. My God, what have we done?”

Peter was dazed, knowing that this one little instance of life or death was a microcosm of so many similar events happening across the globe. Jennifer and he were just two of the billions trying to survive a few days longer in a world of technological convergence. Predictable but unpredicted.

He could only imagine Jennifer’s face, marked by her temple chips and those big blue eyes he got to see twice.

“The waning of humanity is near,” he grieved. “But, I can’t go out this way. Ears and Molli. They’d expect more. I’ll do one for posterity. My final podcast."