What if you were the last human alive, and immortal? Arnol Heric tends cereal fields in a city governed by the mysterious Council, a machine intelligence that has kept him in comfortable ignorance for what may be centuries. When he finally learns the truth, the revelation is devastating: he is not merely the last survivor of humanity, he is the only human who has ever existed in this world of machines. Made immortal against his will, he has been preserved like a specimen, tended by circuits and code while the human race faded into silence. The anger that drives him to confront the Council leads only to a harder truth: there is no one left to fight for, no cause that matters, no future to build. The machines are not evil; they simply have no purpose left except to maintain him, a relic of a species that died before he was ever truly alive. In the haunting finale, Heric begins to run. Not away from the city, but toward it. Back into the silence. Back into eternity. This is science fiction as existential nightmare: quiet, desolate, and utterly unflinching about the cost of lasting forever in a universe that has moved on without you.
