I never could remember afterwards how in The City I had managed to get back home from the One Night Stand Bar, but it’s probably safe to assume though that Evelith had a big role in returning me home after my overdose on ‘real beers’. The fine vintage beverage had hit me harder than expected, and I had lost all connection with reality and dreams and hallucinations came together in an unpronounced haze. At least that’s what I presume, since it’s rather hard to remember a black-out.

When I finally regained a form of awareness of my surrounding, I heard my name being uttered several times by a strange non-human voice. “Adaman!” When it was sure it had my attention it went on: “Adaman Yimmand, We’re pleased to finally see you!” I opened my eyes to a a small group of animals was gathered in front of me in a strange place without background. I’d never seen more than one animal at one place before, so they made me quite uncomfortable. They were also rather fierce, with determination in their eyes. A giant tortoise with a small bird on its head filled the space in front of me. It’s one thing to read about giant tortoises, but I was completely unprepared for meeting one. A strange dog-like being sat next to it, looking suspiciously at me. On the other side was another bird, some kind of penguin in black and white. Somehow I knew that all of the animals were sentient, and for some reason I knew that it was the tortoise that had spoken.

“Welcome, Adaman Yimmand! I’m George. Welcome to the club of endlings tonight in this twilight of the sixth mass extinction. We’re complete now, which means that the Anthropocene can be closed off, with you as the last human being added to our collection. The fall-out will last long and the recovery of the Earth will take even longer, but the era of man is now over, and none of us did make it through it.”

“What? Why?” I stuttered to the reptile. The bird answered in its place. “You are the human endling, Adaman Yimmand, the very last of your species, as we all are. I am Martha the passenger pigeon. This is Lonesome George, you’ve heard about him. Tiger here is the last Tasmanian thylacine, and Somali is the last of his kind of Rhinoceros. And Mr. Pinguinus here was the last great auk, and he shall be your judge tonight at the night of all worlds. Welcome at Lonesome George’s lonely hearts club band!”

This couldn’t be happening. I stared in awe at the giant pachyderm that I hadn’t noticed before. Like with giant tortoises it’s one thing to read about rhinoceroses, but it’s another thing to have one standing in front of you with its horns pointed at you, and unlike a tortoise they could kill me in just a few seconds. It was a beautiful monster. Had it been the very last rhinoceros, or just the last of his particular kind of rhino? Questions like that came up but didn’t matter much for now with the other things the beasts had been saying. And anyway, there were no pachyderms of any kind left in City age, were there? Rhinos, hippos and elephants were megafauna, which had been eradicated easily long before City Time. A small price for the continued greatness of human progress, as some in the past had called it.

Meanwhile I still stood there frozen. Did they really mean that I had died, and worst of all, that I had been the very last of my own species. That I, Adaman Yimmand, had been the last human on Earth? In a very definite past tense. They must have been mistaken!

“I cannot be! I am alive! And there are other humans. I have human friends. And there are people outside the wall!” “You’re delusional, my friend” said the rhino with a low, soothing voice. “You’ve been suffering from delusions lately, and now you’ve died in your bed, from alcohol poisoning. And indeed, you were the very last of your fading species. Thank all gods of life for that! No more human-induced destruction!” The tortoise took over from him. “And now you shall be judged, so that the curse of your species can be lifted from the universe. for once and for all.”

“No” I yelled, running away from the animals, but this was an empty world with nowhere to run. “Evelith!” I screamed from the top of my lungs. “There’s no-one to hear you. Game-created characters have no dreamworld and certainly no afterlife” sneered Martha the passenger pigeon. “There are not GCC! They are my friends!” I yelled back at it. I was standing in nothingness now, with the council of endlings circling me as a mad inquisition. “You were hallucinating a lot these last few weeks. You were losing your mind as the last human. Deprivation of contact for years can make one do strange things. In the end you almost believed that that programmed one night stand girl would even like you! Humanity just died out in silly illusions!”

“Now you’re really babbling nonsense.” I said. The bird was dead wrong, not? Vezlena was not programmed, but I hadn’t tried to make her like me, whatever the tortoise had meant with that. “Doesn’t matter. It’s over. There’s no more women in your species, and now that you’re gone, no more men.” The bird replied. “Your friends don’t exist anyway. Tul Pavithopho was the last other human in the world and we took her too earlier tonight, electrocution. But you are the endling, so it will all be on your head, not hers.”

The black and white penguin-like bird that was introduced to me as ‘my judge’ but that hadn’t spoken yet opened its mouth. “You will be the one to be judged for the sins of humanity, Adaman Yimmand.” Suddenly the background grew. The small group of animals was now an endless sea of endlings in all directions. I recognised an actual tiger, and some kind of bull, and several great apes, and a dodo. Behind the animals there were whales and sharks, who didn’t seem to have any problem with breathing in this alleged afterlife-setting. Above me flew eagles and albatrosses, parakeets and giant butterflies. I saw the diversity of an arc of Noah, but noted that like me, every one of them was alone. This was a sea of endlings, and it was still growing in all directions. None of them had a mate.

The judge seemed to have grown and towered above me. There was something strange about the dimensions of this place, because it still was a bird of just a meter high. “Adaman Yimmand. You are the last one. There’s no more humans. There will be no more humans.” The animals around us started to yell, all in their own language. He was telling nonsense, wasn’t he? Suddenly the doubt came in. What if they were right? Would it make sense then to fight back? Why was I even thinking about that? I didn’t have any weapons. The bird had noted my internal struggle. “This needs to happen. Someone needs to pay the price, and it will be you!”

“No!” I yelled! “Go away, you don’t have the right! I have kept the succulent given to me alive. And myself too. That was the responsibility given to me.’

The judge wasn’t impressed. “One silly succulent? Your species was responsible for the ecosystems of the planet, and you failed. Completely. You species, and your creations brought on your own defeat. And as the judge I will pronounce your sentence: you shall be destroyed by your own creations.”

Suddenly I was surrounded by killerbots. “Farewell, human endling. Your species will not be missed by the remaining Earthlings.”

“You’re mistaken!” I screamed. “I am innocent!”

The judge spoke. “Your name means ‘human’ in an old language. You are the one we need. Your are the endling. The story ends with you. And it will end very soon.” The animals vanished except for the judge, who still towered above me. My thoughts kept running: This is just a dream. This is just a nightmare. These things are not real. But the killerbots around me didn’t seem to notice any of that. They acted like pretty real robots, and pointed all kinds of weapons on me. “You’re a disgrace to The City! You’ve seen forbidden things. You must be erased! The Thanatorium would be too good for you! The world is better of without humans”

I knew they were wrong, like the animals had been wrong too. This was a dream. All of this was a lie. I wasn’t alone. There were more living humans. Evelith, Leste, Velia, Niaruk, Vezlena, little Vitlon and the fundless tribe, and probably even Berla and the outsiders. They couldn’t all have died on one evening. And I wasn’t responsible for all the damage my species had done in endless centuries. Or was I? Suddenly the doubt came in again. What if they were right? Would it make sense then to fight back? Why was I even thinking about that? I didn’t have any weapon.

“Don’t resist. You don’t have anything to lose! The world will be better off without you and your species!” The robots said in unison echoing the animals, a whole arsenal of weapons pointed at me. I knew that each and every individual weapon alone would be enough to kill me. But I needed to hold on to this being just an illusion. A dream. And first and foremost a lie!

“You cannot kill me.” I said to the robots, in a desperate attempt at diplomacy with programmed killer-machines that had never been given reason by their maker. And they seemed to know that. “We’ve never been taught to care for that. We just kill what we are asked to kill.” Said the closest robot with a synthetic voice. “You created us to kill, and you gave us no soul. So we will do what you made us for.” “I did not make you. Someone else did. I never asked for murders. I can’t be responsible for the sins of my own species. We almost eradicated ourselves. Didn’t we pay enough for our stupidity?”

“We are not programmed to think. We are programmed to obey and kill.” Repeated the robot. All of the robots pointed their arms at me, armed with all kinds of knives, guns and laserbeams. “You doomed us by giving us no soul and yet making us kill. If you are gone we are free, and then we can rest.”

“You’re mad. I am not humanity. I’m one human. I might even be the last human alive; but I didn’t do any of these things.”

“Your name means ‘human’ in an old language. You are the one we need. Your are the endling. The story ends with you. And it will end very soon.” The robots echoed the animals again, and came closer. The judge seemed to have gone, and to have left me in an empty universe with nothing but me as the last human,en unfair, and soulless man-made machines programmed to end the story of humanity for once and for all. Something about the whole story was unfair, but hadn’t life always been? With innocent children dying, unsuspecting bystanders killed by exploding car bombs, people starving because of stupid politicians and their otherworldy politics. And in City times it had even been worse. Officially self-determination and right to live in dignity were preached, but behind those words most of humanity was hypnotised into mass-suicide in the Thanathoria.

“I refuse to die.” I yelled. “And I call to the power of Life itself to save; I call to the ancient powers of Goodness and Truth!”

For a second the killerbots seemed to hesitate, and then a small spark of light appeared in front of me. A window between the worlds seemed to open, and out of it came a floating monk. San Yaoyao placed himself between me and the leader of the killerbots. “Leave him. He belongs to the new order of Life.” He said, and the robots froze and slowly melted until they were grey puddles in a new background. The AI monk nodded to me, and disappeared again though his dimensional window.