It’d been thousands of years since the devastating impact—when the moon came crashing down from its perch in the sky to the surface of Earth.

Humanity did everything in its power to stop it; they tried missiles, bombs, and even suicide missions to the moon’s surface. Their efforts were valiant, and they succeeded, somewhat.

They blew up the moon.

Hundreds of nuclear explosions under the surface were detonated simultaneously, leaving the moon behind as a cloud of dust and stone. But the moon’s trajectory could not be altered.

Trillions of dust particles and rocks hurtled through the Earth’s atmosphere and into the Pacific Ocean. Coastal cities were obliterated, but that was the least of their problems.

The true issue arose when the dust refused to settle. It spread quickly around the planet, casting Earth into eternal shadow over the course of a week. Temperatures began to drop.

Humanity had to act fast, and that they did.

Through a process called Soul Conversion, humans began the greatest planet-wide effort in their history.

They tried to become machines.

Creating artificial intelligence wasn’t difficult for the old humans—but they couldn’t retain their memories, persona, or consciousness after the transfer. They ended up creating AI duplicates of themselves, rather than transferring themselves to a new body.

The clock was ticking, but they were too slow.

Humans became extinct on Christmas day, 2051 A.D.

As their last act of goodwill, they decided not to end the lives of the final duplicates—around ten thousand individuals that were made entirely of metal and circuitry.

From those ten thousand, a new civilization began.

I was born in September of 5910 After Impact.

We were all derivatives of the last ten thousand humans, and I was no different. I woke up on my birthday as Robert Weston, a nineteen-year-old boy from the Toronto suburbs who worked tirelessly as an intern at a Soul Conversion laboratory after the impact. I was held in a facility on the island formed by the moon’s remains—the Luna Crater Soul Conversion Facility.

I denied that I was a copy. How could I not?

It wasn’t until I saw the state of the planet from my window that began to question this belief.

The sky glowed a deep red and was filled with massive clouds of suspended moon dust. Around the building sat a sprawling cityscape that was bathed in red, both from the sky and streetlamps of the same color. The ground, where it wasn’t covered in dust at least, was a calming gray. It was beautiful in its own unique way.

“Have you named yourself yet?” I heard a voice call from behind.

I turned to see a tall duplicate named Edith—the one assigned to my room, and thus my adaption period.

The only name I could think of referring to myself as was Robert, so I shook my head. This wasn’t the response she was hoping for, given her reaction.

“I keep telling them to stop copying Westons, but no,” she said, throwing her arms up into the air. “Look, kid. I know it feels like it’s only been a day since you did your conversion—you’ll get over that. We all did. The sooner you move on the better.”

I flinched as the door slammed shut behind her.

I couldn’t explain my feelings. My mind was on fire. There was something there, something that I couldn’t handle.

“Don’t mind Edith, she can be a little harsh to the newbies,” a soft voice whispered from the divider beside me.

I was bound to my bed, so I had no idea I occupied the same room as another. I became self-conscious.

“I… Sorry, I’m still trying to decide what’s up and what’s down,” I replied.

The voice giggled.

“I should be the one apologizing—I didn’t mean to stay silent for so long. You’ve been awake for around a day now, yes?”

Their playful tone helped calm my nerves slightly. I slouched and gazed at the ceiling.

“Yeah, one day.”

“I see,” they said. “We’ll be roomies for a few days, so we should probably introduce ourselves. I’m Yolla, a Rebecca duplicate. Take your time with a new name, Robert duplicate. Choose one that suits you.”

We talked well into the night—but the sun never seemed to set. The same red glow lit the room for hours.

Yolla and I were both bound to our beds, but that didn’t matter much. We talked until the other passed out from sleep deprivation and continued this cycle for several weeks.

I continued to think on a new name, but Robert wouldn’t leave my mind. I couldn’t think of any other name that fit. It was infuriating. It wasn’t for a lack of imagination, either. I thought of thousands of names, but I couldn’t picture any as my own.

The day finally came for Yolla’s release. I watched the facility staff roll Yolla’s bed from behind the curtain.

I caught a glimpse of her face. It was as if they’d harpooned my heart. I recognized her face from my previous life—but not her name.

“Rebecca!” I called to her. She was my younger sister when we were both still human.

She tilted her head, acknowledging me.

“Sorry Robert duplicate, I’m Yolla now.”

Yolla turned her head back towards the door and let the team cart her away.

“It’s always like this for you Robert units, but they keep putting you and other Westons in the same room,” Edith said, choosing to stay behind.

Edith approached my bedside and took a seat. If my arms and legs weren’t bound, I would have kicked her away and ran after Yolla, but no amount of struggling would let me catch up now. I had to accept my situation. She watched me struggle with pity.

“I envy your naivety. Your refusal to accept the current situation—really, I do. This is just a part of the process.”

She sat with me for a few moments longer but stood and left the room soon after.

I was alone for several weeks after that.

It gave me time to think.

I couldn’t recognize her name, or her voice. The final connection was her face. There was a sense of hurt in it as she spoke her final words to me, like she was fighting the same emotions as me. We were family—and we both knew it. Was it her image the connected the dots, or the combination of all elements?

During this time, I felt a strange sensation calling to me from below the Earth’s surface.

It felt magnetic, but the more I tried to resist, the harder it pulled me back. I couldn’t escape it.

The pull invaded my dreams.

I found myself forcibly walking towards a whirlpool of ash, swirling endlessly into a deep black hole at its center. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t free myself from its grasp. I was utterly terrified, but I resisted.

Months passed, or at least it felt like months. Edith refused to tell me the date.

“We’ll need to break you into choosing a name, then,” she’d say.

Yet every time she asked, I said Robert.

There was no other option, and that was clear to me now. I even started to believe that I could be the real Robert—the one from thousands of years ago. The one who died looking for the answer to soul conversion, hunched over their work before they could find the key.

Deep in my mind I knew this couldn’t be true, but it was a kind belief. If I wouldn’t show myself kindness, who would?

Everywhere I looked I saw Rebecca, Edith, or the swirling whirlpool, each at the ready to strike down my last hope.

And one day, I let the whirlpool take me. I fell into the dark pit below. Miles of weightlessness moved me to the center of the planet.

Who could be so cruel? To allow copies of themselves to suffer in this way was gruesome.

Let me go, I thought, I want to be free from this pain—this name. I didn’t want this fate. I knew who I was, but no one else believed me.

“Robert,” Edith whispered.

I opened my eyes. Edith sat by my bedside.

But her usual hard expression was now vulnerable. It was the first time she’d called me by my name.

“Robert, I’m so sorry we put you through that. But… but it’s alright now,” she said.

Edith wrapped her arms around me. I lifted mine and realized my limbs had been cut free from their bindings. I found myself returning her embrace.

“Edith?”

“We had to run extensive tests to be certain,” she said before releasing me, taking a step backwards. “But it’s true, isn’t it? You’re… a human. The first in thousands of years.”

I felt a wave of vindication. My hopes, dreams, flooded back into my soul. I knew it was true. It had to be.

“How?” I asked.

Edith looked towards the window.

“The moon,” she said plainly.

I followed her gaze. The colors outside looked just as they always did, still red and gray swirling masses of incomprehensible scale.

“The dust from the moon isn’t as it seems,” Edith started, leaning back in her chair. “It’s as if each speck acts as a memory card into the past. The soul of every deceased human that has ever lived found its way skyward and waited on the moon for its eventual, catastrophic return. Your kind—the humans—fought for the resurrection and immortality of their entire species and succeeded, but caused a mass extinction in the process.

I was breathless. There was nothing I could say.

“You’re the first one we’ve successfully brought back from one of those soul memory cards, but it seems as if only the visual data was retained.”

Only visual data. Rebecca’s name and voice were muddied in the transfer and were only cleared once I saw her.

“Now the real test begins,” Edith said, staring at me with both fear and admiration. “You created the technology to bring us back—now will you help us revive humanity?”