The Reveal

It is official—I am the last human in the US of A. "How would you possibly know that, Carl?" you would ask. You see, I work twelve hours a day as a Senior DevOps, supporting a critically crucial, constantly breaking, poorly designed, and completely undocumented legacy system platform that services all US government agencies, without which our government would supposedly collapse—or so I'm told. Alone. And I've yet to see a single cent of paid overtime that Uncle Sam owes me. For the purposes of catching software bugs and cleaning up their consequences, I have passwords for most of the government databases. I store them in passwords.txt on my desktop. Russian hackers may take a look for all I care.

You see, a decade ago, just as a meager Junior DevOps, I noticed that there was now a new field in a citizen database called "taxonomic_name." At the beginning, 347,275,807 records read Homo sapiens. Now? One. Me. I can even look up the recruiter who called me yesterday. New query. Name = "Melinda", Surname = "Monroe", Employer = "Visa". Waiting five seconds... There. "Daemon succuba." Whatever that means.

You may ask, "Carl, probably some another disgruntled contractor is playing with the database, filling it up with nonsense. It is not reasonable to make far-reaching conclusions because you saw a column in the database!" But you would be dead wrong! The proof is waiting for me at home, probably in the upper left corner of the living room.

You see, I was trying to learn how to paint by attending painting classes over the weekends as a way to refill my sanity. There, I met a girl, Myra, a microbiology postdoc with Agricultural Research Services. Myra was exceptional at drawing realistic botany with oils. Roses, irises, mallows—you name it! No one could understand how she did it. Our teacher liked to say that this was what separated a master from a genius. She also liked licking the oil brushes, which is a big no-no, but she didn't care.

My drawing skills, however, were nonexistent. I could barely draw a straight line. I'm usually very awkward with women; it's very hard for me to maintain eye contact, hard to keep up the discussion, hard to come up with new topics to talk about, because I'm not a very interesting person, and outside of work, I usually don't talk with girls at all. I've never been in a relationship. It took me some courage to ask for help. That time, she was drawing a gladiolus and talking to some other girl she was helping about how David Hockney was the most important contemporary pop-culture artist. Then, it just happened. I don't know why such a great girl like her would be even interested in a guy like me, but we are in a relationship now.

A few months into the relationship, however, something terrible happened. I messed up. I messed up so bad. She confessed to me that she was not human, and asked what kind of mythological being I was. And I lied. I lied that I was just not comfortable showing my true self just yet, and I just needed time to become more intimate with her, and I would reveal myself when the time was right. She told me that it was okay, that I could take all the time I needed, and that she would accept me for whatever kind of mythological being I was. That was several months ago.

This whole time, I was afraid that if she knew I was really just a human, she would just dump me. I didn't understand why she valued me so much, but if she thought I was some kind of mythological being when I actually wasn't... I have to confess right now. It wasn't right to deceive her like this. She deserves better.

I quietly opened the door and entered the living room. Myra was meditating in her usual spot, in the upper left corner, compressed into a ball.

"Hey Myra, can we have a serious talk?"

Myra didn't move for a few seconds, then before I could register anything, she was towering over me on her coil, looking down at me from above. I had to crane my neck back completely to meet her gaze, with my throat exposed. Myra was a long-haired... snakish thing? I'd never heard of a snake that had white and black shimmering thick fur. Her head was as big as that of a bear, and her body ran longer than an eighteen-wheeler. Her head had ears like the ones caracals had, with long tufts. The four upper snake fangs were in front of several rows of smaller, backward-pointing snake teeth. It was as if a baleen, but made from teeth...

The most notable detail, however, was the color of her eyes. I think the closest color humans know is vantablack. It was as if she had a void where her eyes should have been, but, as opposed to looking at vantablack, looking into her eyes made you feel an immense irrational terror. They could be compared to a cursed painting that is rumored to drive people insane, which is kept in a sealed section of a museum. You accidentally stumble upon it while mopping floors, take a quick glance, and you can't take your gaze away no matter how hard you try, and you know there is something in there that looks back at you...

Her true form was nightmare fuel, and if you didn't know what kind of a sweet potato she actually was, you would conclude that this was a flesh-and-soul-devouring monstrosity beyond human comprehension that had somehow escaped the confines of the darkest corners of literary fiction.

* * *

While Carl was standing in front of her, failing miserably at recalling the speech he had prepared, one should consider Myra's perspective as well.

One should know a few trivial facts about Myra. Myra was already thirty-eight, older than Carl. Myra did not have any children. She had some embryos frozen. And Myra had a habit of falling in love with unavailable men. Married men.

It wasn't intentional. After all, she didn't get to decide who she fell in love with or not! And it was so easy for her to fall in love. She just knew if a man was in a relationship or not. Without any rings on fingers, without any women in his Instagram. And it was enough to start her drooling with desire.

The problem was that those men did not see her as more than a side affair. "Extended casual sex," as one of them put it. The ones that she was able to pull out of relationships, after a few months with her, suddenly got very thoughtful and concluded that they didn't want any relationship at all.

She was tired of love failures, she was tired of being embarrassed, she was tired of "All normal people in their late thirties already..." She was tired of remolding her own personality to fit in with a new man, disrupting her own habits, and then inevitably ending up with a ruined, broken version of herself when the relationship fell apart. She had almost accepted the defeat that she would have to be with a man she didn't love when she accidentally stumbled upon Carl. He couldn't draw a cube in perspective that was laying in front of him. "Oh come on, a cube in perspective wouldn't have straight angles. Look, you just need to carefully observe angles, proportions, and imagine the line of horizon, and a point on it where all parallel lines would converge..." He couldn't figure it out that time, but he came again, and again... He was funny and adorable. And then it happened. This was the first man she had fallen in love with who was not in a relationship.

Myra was feeling a problem, however. He did not want to show her his true self. He did not want to open up to her. He did not feel intimate with her. And for the last few weeks, he had been restless. So when he came back, asking to have a "serious talk," she knew exactly where this was going. It had happened to her many times before. Suppressing her panic attack and slithering over the air, she was already thinking she didn't have enough money for the deposit to rent an apartment, and she was cycling through the names of her friends who she could ask to loan her some money...

* * *

I think I finally found the words.

"Hey Myra, do you remember that time when you first revealed yourself to me, and you were asking about what kind of mythological creature I was? And I told you I'm not open to reveal my true form just yet? I might not have been exactly completely open with you. And uhhh... Eehhhhh... You see, my true form... It's kinda... From some point of view, it's not exactly mythological. From some vantage point it might look like it's uhhh... a just a tiny bit ehhh... mortal."

Myra was sobbing. Okay, just say it already.

"Okay, I'm a human. I'm not a mythological creature."

Myra had an unreadable expression that I'd never seen her make before.

"Is that everything you wanted to share with me?" she asked.

"Myra, I'm really sorry that I didn't say it straight back then and wasted so much of your time. I just thought you would break up with me if you learned the truth and and and..." I started looking for more words that could somehow excuse my behavior, when I realized it was pointless. I should not have done it in the first place.

Her next words came to me totally unexpected.

"Honey, can I hug you?"

What?

"Are you not mad at me?"

She shook her head.

"Yes, sure..." I didn't finish speaking the words when she disappeared from where she was standing and reappeared coiled around me, with her head tucked near my left ear, still sobbing. Okay, she was actually crying now.

"Myra, there, there..."

She was sobbing, and I was hugging some part of her, and we stood like this for a while, until she suddenly snapped out of it.

"Wait, wait, wait! You are actually a human! A real human! In the flesh! Ohhhh, this is going to be so good! You probably have no idea what is going on, do you? Okay, okay, I'm actually curious. What do you think is going on?"

"You mean between us or...?" I still could not believe she didn't mind me being a human.

She was now looking me straight in the eyes, her head inches from mine. Averting my gaze was impossible when she did this. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she enjoyed it.

"No, you dum-dum, I told you already that I love you the way you are! I'm comfortable with you being a human. I meant in the world!"

"The right turn in the US, the upcoming right turn in Europe..." Her gaze was highly suggestive that this was not what she meant. "Okay, okay. Uhmm... The only rational explanation I have is that I have acute schizophrenia. WAIT. That would explain everything, actually. I went insane. You are just my hallucination. I was alone for so long that I've made myself an imaginary girlfriend." The realization dawned on me. Nothing is real. "None of this is real. You are merely a figment of my imagination. You do not exist. I'm going to a psychiatric ward. Hey, can you make me a tinfoil hat? No, you can't, because you are not real. You are just a voice in my head. A visual-auditory hallucinaaaAA..."

I heard my bones making cracking noises and air exiting my lungs with a wheeze, like when you squeeze a rubber chicken. I couldn't take a breath.

"Well, well, well, why are you so silent now? Must have seen a BREATHTAKING visual-auditory hallucination..." she cooed giddily in my open and gasping-for-air mouth. She lessened her grip, levitated my phone in front of my face, and made a selfie of us both. "Here I am in a photograph. You can't take a photo of a hallucination. Someone is wrooong!" She almost sang, "Wrong, wrong, wrooong!"

"Alright, alright! Shush! Shush! Let me try again. Hmmm... You know, I've heard that in European mythology there is a myth of the changeling—when a demon steals a human, he leaves a supernatural substitute that looks just like them. I think this is what might have happened, but with all humanity at once," I said.

"Oh, how easily we throw away our conviction to science when we encounter something we can't explain, and instead resort to explanations in myths and pseudoscientific ramble. Such lack of imagination!" she purred.

"Okay. I can't explain what is going on. Can you please explain?"

"Already giving up? Alrighty. A-P-O-C-A-L-Y-P-S-E. Epistemic apocalypse, enabled and driven by the internet architecture you lot have built."

"I don't know what epistemic means."

"It is when you can no longer tell what is true and what is not. Were the 2020 elections stolen or not? Was January 6, 2021, an insurrection or a peaceful protest? Are COVID vaccines effective? Is climate change happening or not? Is a political video trending on TikTok AI-generated or not? Is an audio recording of a man threatening another man with homicide AI-generated or not?"

"There is just one objective reality," I said. "Hence, there are scientific answers to every question you have outlined."

"Oh, you sweet summer child. Can you come up with a method to know what that objective reality of yours is that would work both for you and the other guy?"

"Not anymore, since apparently this 'epistemic' apocalypse happened and science doesn't work anymore, but there is still ONE objective reality, and the laws that we discovered before the apocalypse still hold."

"How do you know those aren't AI-generated fictional laws from fictional physicists published by AI agents with fake publication dates? How would you separate AI-generated physical laws from real ones?"

"Well, that's easy, come on. I will open Wikipedia to cross-che—" Myra was grinning from ear to ear now, her fangs fully exposed. "Oh. Ooooohhhhhhhh. Shiieeeeeeeeeet... But but how are you able to know anything?"

"Don't be silly. You are not forbidden from knowing. You just can't prove anything to anyone."

"This can't be happening..."

"As I saaaid, I might have been unscientific in pre-apocalypse objective reality, and you will never be able to prove iiiiiiiiiiiit~~~"

"This is ridiculous..."

"Neeveer, eveeer, eveeeerrrrrrrrrrrr~~~"

"Oh, look at you, so mighty..."

"Someone, someone shat so much on Twitter they caused an apocalyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyps~~~~"

"It's as if you weren't using Twitter, Reddit and YouTube!"

"I am forbidden from using the internet by the terms of my immigration visa, like the rest of us. We don't use ChatGPT, we don't polarize ourselves on Twitter and Reddit, and we have to use paper encyclopedias written by actual scientists. You are the only surviving Twitter and Reddit user, and you can shit and polarize yourself all you want now. The apocalypse is over, and science is back. Congratulations on surviving it."

"Immigration visa?..."

"Ohhh, right. We are all immigrants."

"IMMIGRANTS FROM WHERE?"

"Okay, okay, let me explain everything. When the apocalypse happened, one could no longer tell what was true and what was not. Your political elites recognized a golden opportunity. Mythological creatures come from a very disadvantaged position of nonexistence. A near-infinite cheap labor source to replace expensive domestic labor. So your elites implemented 'rational economic policies.' The immigrated mythological creatures are contractually obligated to keep up the human facade in public spaces though."

"But why wasn’t I repla— Ah. Because I'm irreplaceable.” But another horrible realization dawned on me. ”Myra, where did all the replaced humans go?"

"Oh, come on, cutie pie. You are sufficiently cognitively equipped to make that deduction."

"I don't unde... Oh. Oooohhhhhh." Oh no. If you can somehow conjure mythological beings from nonexistence by playing with words, you can probably deconjure alive humans into nonexistence as well... "But how in the world could the entrenched elites allow themselves to be replaced?"

"Oh, but it is very simple, you see. The elites use mathematics that lets them improve society according to the arbitrary metrics they have defined, but they don't fully understand the true implications of each percentage point improvement. They didn't see how the life of a real Joe changed behind each data-informed policy they passed. Can you see it now?"

"Uhm... Uhmmmm... Nope?"

"They've made a Faustian Bargain with Mathematics."

"You mean metaphorically?"

"Ha! Not to Mephistopheles."

I had a sinking feeling. Immigration authorities couldn't have possibly known if every mythological creature is who they claim to be. That means... "Mephistopheles?..."

"Mephistopheles, who is the CEO of UnitedHealth now. He could have been a bigger shot, but for his retirement he wants to live for himself a little bit and do what he enjoys most."

"So, I am the last human. Our healthcare is in good hands now. There is probably a zoo of biblical, Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Celtic, and SCP subjects running wild somewhere on the US soil. Did I miss anything?"

“Actually, yes, you’ve missed quite a lot. Think of every mythological creature that has ever been conceived in fiction, be it written, oral, imagination, and also the ones that were never conceived by anyone. ”

“Does me thinking about creatures not conceived by anyone conceives them or?…” I was so confused. “Any other shocking revelations you have in store for me?”

Her head moved closer, just maybe an inch now, her gaze still fixated on mine, with her voice was now a whisper. ”That cuckoo veteran next door? The one who Liza says was in Ukraine with Wagner Group?”

”Yes, I remember him.”

“That’s Noo-Noo from Teletubbies.”

"Oh no. Oh no. No No NO NOO~~”