The end

“I will always love you.” He looked at the note card, reminiscing her emerald green eyes. He continued walking, straightening his posture to hide his limp.

“Psh,” the door closed as he entered the dimly lit store.

“ID please,” the cashier said, wearing an all-white uniform.

“Here.”

The cashier paused for a moment. “Okay have a good one.”

He walked out onto the sidewalk where people were slumped over empty bottles.  

The door shut as he walked into his empty house, cobwebs on his doors, and dust on the floor. He looked at the hazy pictures, the family that once was. He glanced at the fluorescent chamber where he slept, glowing in the darkness. “Why me,” he thought. 

Why him? Who knows, but if he doesn’t sleep in this chamber, he may not wake up till next week, next month, or never. There is no special DNA, no family history, no magic. Nothing. It just chooses who it wants when it wants—natural selection at its finest.

“We can help you,” the same commercial with its same promise. He turned off the TV, for he’d already tried. All it left him with was a limp and just angry at it all, at everything. What is peace you ask? He tried to find it. He met Gandhi, had marched with Martin Luther King, had watched the world change..had watched the world fall, and slowly digress to what it will always be: nothing more than a damn ideal.   

He sat on the couch, staring at his reflection from the TV. His hair was unkempt. His beard was wooly. Yet, his eyes still looked young, mysteriously young, impossibly young. Not a gray hair in sight for a man as old as him. He sat there for a few more minutes knowing he couldn’t fall asleep on the couch, not again..or he may never be able to adjust to the world. He thought about Sarah. She was his everything. His why. His true love. Up until the day it happened…

“When I get my job, we’ll move up out of here and start a family and we’ll truly be a team.”

“Ron, you don’t have to say that y’know?”

“Why?”

“Cause, we’ll always be a team… you and I.” Her brown eyes lit up before kissing him.

Ron finished watching TV and dozed off, waking up 60 years later in a hospital bed. 

“He’s awake,” a doctor said, running off.

Visibly confused, Ron had asked where Sarah was.

Gulping, he saw the year: 1960.

Ron was shocked. What type of prank was this?

But it wasn’t a prank. Sarah was dead, had long died. And now she was just a memory. He tried to move on; he did move on. Yet, just like Sarah, his next would eventually perish. 

He presently sat there sitting on the couch. He was drunk now and making it to the chamber would be even harder. His thoughts fluttered, and his legs felt numb. He was falling asleep. A small voice tried to urge him forward. Yet even this was to no avail. He slumped over the couch, dozing off. 

His life spanned before him: a fragrant of dreams. He saw himself being born. He saw his previous family. Everything leading up to this moment. He usually woke up. Except, this time nothing happened. There was no earth. There was no world. Emptiness. Clarity. 

“I don’t know what to make of it,” Alex looked at the screen, seeing yet another simulation come to an end, “Of all lives to choose, he chose to seek love and continue to seek it even when he knew the result. A shame it led to his turmoil. But, It’s beautiful.”

Standing beside him in his white button-down, Marc replied, “Beautiful? Nothing is beautiful about this, he was supposed to be the answer.”

“You're one to talk.” 

“Session 267890, Ron Roberts born 1805, terminate this file,” Marc walked away, they’d have to wait another day.

Marc drove home, past the empty neighborhoods with little light. It had been 10 years since they’d started this project. Yet nothing worked. Every AI sought love..even when they weren’t trained on it. All it led to was heartbreak, depression, and death. What stipulations were missing, and how could they make it work? He didn’t know. 

“Growing divide over earth's condition: one nation announces we must leave earth by 2150,” his radio blared. 

“How was work,” his wife asked as he entered the house.

“Same result- the AI fails the mission.”

“Y’know I’ve been thinking about it. And what if it isn’t a failure? What if love is the answer.”

“Love,” Marc scoffed. “If love was the damn answer, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Jane hugged him, knowing what he meant, and how he felt. “I know.”

Marc’s phone chimed. The text read, “Get here ASAP, we have the answer.”

He glanced at his watch. He shouldn’t..but he must….

“Please come back in time,” Jane looked at him teary-eyed. 

15 minutes later

Alex stood there amazed. One simulation had stuck the course, had made it to their current year, and was making countless discoveries.

“We did it.”

Marc was confused, watching the screen, “What’s so special about this? To me, it looks like they're a driven workhorse with no life.

“Marc, don't you see what this one has that the others don’t?

“Clearly, I don’t.”

“It’s acceptance Marc, to let go of what one can’t control.” 

“That would have to mean that they can feel..have developed a conscience, that can’t be true.” Mark chimed.

“Yet it is.”

Marc stood there in silence, tears streaking his face. 

30 minutes later

Marc kissed his wife goodnight, whispering, “I’m alive. I always have been.”

“Click,” the chamber sounded as it closed.

Marc couldn’t know this was the 7 billionth time this scene took place. After all, this was another simulation trapped in a void of simulations. The real world had long been destroyed by the creatures of tomorrow.

But why was this the only simulation the creatures preserved? Because it told them everything they needed to know about humanity.