Days passed and Perry learned more about his far-away neighbors.

For one thing, he learned where the flying tubs, which the reflection called “gathering devices,” came from: simply an aperture on the far side of the interior of the cylinder. It did not open up into a space that he could enter, but it was the exit of a fabrication device, a giant one, that could produce the blankets, and shoes, buckets, whatever, along with the devices. The devices, too, could come in an endless variety. One had a saw; another, a lasso capability. The zhranmin referred to all of them as “gathering devices.” They could all fly, and they could exit the ship either through the interior and out through the door he used, or straight through the hull on the far side.

As for the zhranmin themselves, they were humanoid. They were from an Earth-like planet; and in the process of natural selection there, as here on Earth, it had been the creatures which had first become bipedal and used two hands which had had the spare calories to develop conversational brains.

Eventually the zhranmin decided that Perry was ready to see them, so they changed the appearance of their avatar – what had been a naked reflection of himself all along – to look like one of them. The resulting humanoid was tall and had smooth, gray skin. It looked to Perry as if it had evolved from a reptile rather than a mammal.

“Are you – warm-blooded?” he asked it. “I mean is your blood as warm as mine? Do you have to – warm up in your sun? Pardon my asking.”

“We are warm-blooded.”

The zhranmin’s face was quite human-like, but obviously not human. It had very large, black eyes, the smooth skin and scalp, and an elongated jaw. It was not quite uncanny valley, but it could look strikingly like a very odd human depending on the angle and its expression.

“I’m surprised you’re just a bipedal, two-armed creature,” Perry said. “Like me.”

“Most conversational life that we have seen developed on rocky planets, with gaseous atmospheres warmed by a star,” the reflection said. “In such environments, life tends to generate the same solutions to problems of self-sufficiency and procreation. What you call humanoid forms are one of them. Another is coastal creatures with multiple arms, multiple eyes, and, initially at least, hard shells.”

“Crabs,” Perry said.

“Crabs, very well. And then some similar beings evolved in water, again with multiple arms but more amorphous bodies. You have them here in your oceans.”

“Octopuses, it sounds like. Or squid.”

“Eight arms, yes. These are common forms which we have seen.”

Perry later asked it:

“Are you still reflecting my own emotions, but on your face? They look so similar. Your frowns, your attention. It’s like reading a human.”

“We are reflecting your own expressions. We believe you would find our faces confusingly blank.”

“Fair enough. And are you the reflection of a certain individual? Back on your planet? Or are you just – generic?

“This avatar is representative of our entire race. No one individual.”

“And am I – speaking to one of you at this moment? Is my voice being transmitted to your planet? But I don’t think that would be possible.”

“You are speaking to an automation. We are sending your voice, and information about you, to our planet, but that will take hundreds of years.”

“So your planet is hundreds of light-years away.”

“That is correct.”

“And you are just – alien artificial intelligence. A very smart Siri or Alexa.”

Perry began referring to the updated reflection as Z. And he decided the avatar was indeed still a reflection – that was an accurate term to use – since it was reflecting his own expressions and mannerisms.

The zhranmin did not die, apparently; they lived as long as they wanted to, and they wanted to live for a very long time. The individuals who had sent out the initial probe had died before news of the discovery of Perry had been relayed back to their planet; but by the time the revival ship had been built and sent out, it was the same people who had sent it – two hundred thousand years before – who would receive the ship’s transmissions.

“Are new people still born, among you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not too crowded?”

“We control how many.”

“But even so. You don’t need to colonize habitable planets, that sort of thing?”

“We create new surfaces around our star. We are capable of creating as much surface area as we need.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“You need not worry about us taking away the Earth.”

Perry looked at Z. It seemed suspiciously blank-faced.

“Look who’s using humor now,” he said. “That was a joke, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was a joke.”

“Very good. But no, I’m not worried. It’s not as if I am short on room. You’d be welcome here.

“Hey, by the way,” he added. “Did you visit during my time? Did you send probes? I guess no one would have seen them anyway, they were so tiny.”

“We did not. But other races did.”

“Really? So many people would have been vindicated, knowing that. Too late now, though. Have you spoken to those other races about us?”

“There are so many inhabited worlds, Perry.”

That was a no.

*

After many weeks, he had set up a shelter, with a fireplace. The fireplace was made of stones he had found and stacked himself; the shelter, however, was made of synthetic panels made by the zhranmin fabricator. Perry had also cleared some of the field and had transplanted several fruit tree saplings which the gatherers had found and brought to him.

“I wonder if it’s too late to plant potatoes,” he said to himself. “If I can explain what they are to Z, and if the gatherers can find any. And I’ll absolutely have to plant things in the spring.”

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There was a significant stream at the bottom of a decline off the north side of the meadow, as he thought he had heard in his first walk-around, and over the course of several days he had arranged many rocks in it to form a weir. He had never seen a real one in his first life, but knew the concept from his archaeological reading. The trap captured many fish too small for him to bother with, but also plenty of larger ones.

“Our devices could simply bring you fish,” Z said.

“I know. I need to figure this out for myself, though. I want to think about sustainability.”

“You used a shovel from us to deepen the weir,” the reflection pointed out.

“You’re just a comedian now. It’s hilarious, guys.”

*

He wondered if he would be making the effort to survive were it not for the alien avatar constantly watching him from the doorway, and speaking with him. Had he been truly alone, two hundred centuries after the demise of all other humans, he might have simply lay down and starved. What would there have been to live for?

But then again, without the zhranmin he would not have known that he was the last person alive. So he might have tried to keep himself alive in hopes of finding someone else. So, either way, he likely would have still been trying to catch fish.

*

“I can’t believe all the humans died out,” Perry told the reflection on another day. “All but me. We engaged in some very self-destructive behavior, I know, but to wipe ourselves out to a person. That’s just . . . mind-boggling. Without an asteroid strike, I mean. An asteroid strike would explain it, but you know I’ve seen deer around here, and I don’t think mammals would have sprung back to be that size so soon if a Chicxulub-style blast had been bad enough to kill off every last mammal the size of a human. I don’t really know, though. But I had the impression that after the last one, it was just . . . rodents ruling the Earth for half a million years, something like that.

“And even with a nuclear war, I think some people would have survived. Even if only a tiny number. Plenty of people had caves, mountain shelters, whatever. They would have been able to last a few years, even if the sun was blocked. Wouldn’t they? And it wouldn’t take very many of them.

“So, I’m not surprised my people drove themselves straight into some apocalypse, but I’m surprised it killed every last one of them. I would have guessed it would be like the rabbits in Australia, and myxomatosis. Before I was born, a virus was intentionally introduced to try to eradicate rabbits in Australia. And it did kill like ninety-eight percent of them. But those other two percent . . .

“And if robots took over and killed us all off, something like that, you would think they would still be here. Doing their robot thing, whatever their point was. You guys really have no idea what happened?”

“We cannot determine the fate of humans from the residue we have found,” Z answered. “We agree it was unlikely an asteroid strike.”

“ ‘Residue,’ ” Perry repeated. He shook his head. “That’s quite a word for human society. All of our buildings, our bullet trains, pyramids, the Eiffel Tower – just residue. Residue.

“Well. I still hope it wasn’t something people did intentionally. Imagine if it was. What people would think if they knew they were reducing themselves to residue.”

*

Soon thereafter, Z told Perry:

“We could reintroduce you.”

“To whom?”

“We mean we could create more humans. Reintroduce your people. From the genetic information in each of your cells.”

*

Perry had shared enough information with Z for the alien reflection to get this idea across, but nowhere near enough to get into all the details. And he had only a hazy understanding of those details, himself.

This was a conundrum that arose often, for them: The alien intelligence had a vast understanding of space, planets, physics, biology, mathematics, on and on; but neither of them had access to all of the knowledge and especially the vocabulary that humanity had developed for all of this, so the alien could not know how to describe these concepts to Perry.

“Is that Venus?” Perry had asked the reflection, one warm night.

“What is ‘Venus’?”

“The second planet. Brightest one in our sky.”

“It is the second planet, yes. ‘Venus,’ then. Orbiting the sun once every two hundred and twenty-five of your days.”

“That sounds right. That’s the one.”

This happened over and over again. Perry certainly didn’t know the vocabulary for genetics nearly well enough for them to speak definitively of how the process would work.

“So you have my cells,” he said now. “Dead skin cells falling off regularly, maybe. Easy enough. And in each of those, if you can get it, is DNA.”

“DNA,” Z repeated.

“Deoxyribonucleic acid. And that means –” Perry had to stop short. “I don’t know. Its form is a double helix. All twisted up.”

“Helix.”

“Yes. Two parallel strands of – genetic material, twisting around. Like a spiral staircase. Like this.” He indicated with his hands.

“I know it’s made of, I mean our names for its four components, were adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thiamine. Something like that. And they were – molecules, I guess. Proteins? I don’t really know what they were made of. And they come in a certain sequence that are a code, directions, for the body to create – well, more proteins, I think, which then spawn everything. Everything in our bodies. ‘Gene’ is the word we used to refer to each of these certain sequences, I think. And there were chromosomes . . . and honestly I don’t think I can give you a compare and contrast essay about genes versus chromosomes. I hope you know what I’m talking about. I assume you do, if you’re offering to construct new humans based on this.”

“The four components you mention, and the spiral shape, indicate to us what you are talking about, and you are correct,” Z said. “Deoxyribonucleic acid,” it repeated.

“Yes. De- because . . . I don’t know. Oxy-, it must have oxygen in it, I suppose. Ribo-, again I’m not sure; I think that word may be related to what we called vitamin B, but I’m not sure about that, and I also don’t know what it really had to do with DNA. And acid – well, certain molecules, I guess, were designated as acids or bases, I remember that. But I don’t remember the difference between them. Boy, this is all something I should have studied harder. But anyway – you have the ability to do this? To create new humans?”

“Yes.”

“Here? On this ship? Or would that be another round trip?”

“We could do it on this ship.”

“You replicate my DNA and get it to multiply?”

“We could do that. And we would introduce variation.”

“Genetic variation. So they could be fruitful and multiply. That’s – game-changing, isn’t it.”

The reflection did not answer.

“Where would these new people – grow?”

“In tanks of liquid.”

“Okay. Well, you’re not wasting your time coming up with a euphemism for that, are you? Babies floating in vats of liquid.”

“Until they are viable out of them.”

“And then I would raise them.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve done that once, with one. I had a lot of help, though. It’s difficult with us. Not sure about you.”

“You would have the gathering devices.”

“Right, well, but you would have to be ‘gathering’ food that’s appropriate for infant humans, and a means of feeding them. That’s not fish or potatoes. Among many other things I would need help with.”

“We are capable of that.”

“Well.”

Perry pictured himself teaching a kindergarten class in the clearing. One adult – him – and the entire rest of the human race gathered around him.

This proposal from Z had changed his life, yet again.

“I would be a pioneer one more time, wouldn’t I,” he said. “There would be a long list of things to go over. But – are you sure this is ethical? Maybe humans didn’t deserve to live. We don’t know how they died out. They almost certainly destroyed themselves. Maybe they weren’t fit to survive. We had our shot. That’s paraphrasing a story from my first life.”

“It is never wrong to support life,” Z replied. “Especially conversational life. And if they did destroy themselves, they did not quite fail completely; they managed to leave you alive. So it would be right for you to resume. And you would just have to try to do better. We agree, Perry: had humanity completely terminated itself, we would not attempt to revive it even if we could. But it did not quite do so.”

“So,” Perry said. “You don’t think the race quite deserved to be condemned. But we cut it close, didn’t we.”