Peace & Quiet

Journal Entry 1 – Where is Everybody?

I could start off by simply stating the obvious. I am currently thoroughly confused.

Everyone besides me seems to have disappeared. It has been days since I have seen another living soul, just how many days, I am not sure. My concept of time seems to have been altered, although I have no idea how that could be done. My surroundings are familiar, yet so many things seem strange to me now. My emotional responses don’t seem to always be appropriate. I try to examine one odd feeling, and another manages to come along before I can even begin to focus on the first. My memories of family and friends, of workdays and holidays, are all there and vivid in my mind as occurrences, though I couldn’t say with any confidence level whether the events I am remembering happened last week or last year. 

I was taught from an early age that information was vitally important, that you could solve any problem if you analyzed it thoroughly. I have been told many times that I have an exceptionally analytical mind. Data analysis, after all, is my job, so I am starting this journal in an effort to collect information that I can hopefully use to determine just what has happened.

I am a product of my generation, so I don’t have anything as exotic as a leather-bound booklet of stark white pages to fill with my thoughts and observations. This electronic version will have to suffice.

To start, I shall state what I believe that I know.

My name is Sharon, born July 29, 2005. I am a twenty-nine year old data analyst living in Columbus, Ohio. I am single, renting an apartment on the second floor of a four story complex, where I have a second bedroom converted to an office, which I work out of primarily. I have little free time, as I have been described as a workaholic, though I do, or did, have friends I would occasionally go out with on a somewhat infrequent basis.

Other than the complete absence of my fellow man, the world is generally as I remember it, my apartment is still my apartment. Earlier today, I went outside for the first time since this all started. Strolling down the short hallway to the parking garage and exit door, all registered as familiar. The brown, swirl designed carpet, so obviously selected as to not show dirt tracked in by the tenants, the plastic potted plants and fire extinguishers, mass market artwork, all the normal amenities one would expect in the common areas of a moderately priced apartment complex.

Emerging out onto the sidewalk, the drugstore remained just across the street, and even appeared to be open for business, though who might patronize it now was anyone’s guess. 

Venturing further into the neighborhood, all the shops and businesses were right where they should be, the park that I like to jog through still just a couple blocks down, everything in its place except for my fellow citizens.

But as I stood at the entrance to the park, I realized that wasn’t entirely true. There were other things missing, and other oddities if I believed that everyone else had simply vanished.

The world wasn’t completely quiet, a gentle breeze rustling the tree branches above me being the most prominent sound, but there were no animal noises joining in. Not a single tweet, coo or squawk came from the trees, no squirrels running across the grass, not even a stray dog or cat crossed my path. Did they disappear with all the people?

I returned to my apartment with more questions than when I had left hours before, and no answers at all.

With no other people, I am anxious for something to happen. When I am not actively searching for answers, I am frustrated at the dullness of the day. I know I should feel lonely. Maybe that will come in time.

Journal Entry 4 - Experiments

The last few days have not been productive at all. My few journals so far are repetitious, with no new meaningful observations or information to log. I seemed to have been waiting for something to happen rather than taking the initiative and further exploring my surroundings or examining my situation. Today has been marginally more productive, though my minor revelation seems to have been purely by accident.

My apartment never really changes, or does so only if I make a conscious effort to make it different. If I turn on a light or open a door in the room I am in, it stays on or open. But other items that should change over the course of a normal day don’t always appear to follow the same pattern. My bed, for example, is always made. Not perfectly, but always in the same manner and with the same sheets and duvet hanging identically, the pillows piled just so. I can remember making this bed a multitude of times since moving here, but I can’t say that I can remember having made it today.

When I open the refrigerator, it is stocked full of food, from fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, cheese, to leftovers stacked up in Tupperware. But it always looks the same. And though my concept of time is still skewed, it feels like some fairly significant amount of time has elapsed since I last went shopping, yet nothing has spoiled, and even though I am sure I am eating, my fridge stays nearly overflowing.

With this thought in mind, I devised a few experiments which I have initiated.

I moved a pillow from my bed to the couch in the living room. I pulled the duvet off and left it crumpled on the floor, and folded the sheet down so it only covered half the bed.

In the kitchen, I found a couple apples and took a single bite out of each, placing one back in the refrigerator and the other one on the counter.

So that my experiments weren’t limited to just inside my apartment, I went back outside and walked to a bakery on the next block. I remembered on my original walk to the park entrance that the bakery had been open, with what had appeared to be well stocked shelves from what I had seen through the window.

A sweet and cinnamony aroma assaulted my senses as I stepped through the door, like one would expect in such a bakery, if it was still actively in use. A tray of what were presumably four day plus old cinnamon rolls sat behind the glass counter. Moving around and removing the tray, I pulled a roll loose, and could tell even before I bit into it that it was no more than an hour old, still warm, flakey and delicious.

I purposely left the tray setting on the counter before heading back to my apartment, doing my best to ignore the rest of the bakery as I left.

I am not positive, but have an idea what I will find tomorrow.

Journal Entry 5 - Observations

The apples are where I left them, the one on the counter having started to turn brown where I bit into it.

The pillow and bed are also as I left them, most significantly, the sheet is still covering only half the bed. There is no evidence that I have slept in it, and no indication of any attempt to remake the bed properly.

The bakery further supports my theory. The rack of cinnamon rolls I moved are room temperature and beginning to harden, particularly on the exposed edges. They now taste like what I would expect day old rolls to taste like, but still better than nearly a week old.

A final corroborating observation came out of the bakery, though I couldn’t set it up as I had done the others. I found a whole rack of similar cinnamon rolls in the back. Since I had not seen them the day before, they were still fresh and slightly warm.

Somehow, the objects in my world don’t age, don’t move or change in the slightest, until I recognize and interact with them. And normal everyday actions that I should be doing as part of a day-to-day life don’t seem to happen unless I specifically focus on them, yet I remember them, if only vaguely.

I have to be sleeping, I sort of recall sleeping, and yet my bed shows no signs of anyone having slept in it.

I have to be eating, which I also kind of remember doing, but I can’t recall specifically what I ate last for an actual meal, and food only shows signs of aging or consumption when I consciously do something with it.

I am proud of myself, if only just a tad, for my cool and scientific approach to this bizarre situation, even though it has not led to any substantial insights into what is happening. I still don’t know the fate of everyone in the world except for me.

I have, of course, endlessly run the possibilities and probabilities through my mind.

It couldn’t have been a virus: there are no dead bodies.

If everyone but me simply disappeared, why are all the cars neatly parked off the street? Why aren’t there airplanes littering the ground that fell from the sky? I live only a couple miles from the Columbus Airport, and would surely have seen evidence of such crashes. The few businesses I walked through looked open, but there was no evidence that people had recently been inside them.

There is the incredibly farfetched. I could be in a state of suspended animation, aboard a spaceship speeding through the galaxy on a mission to the nearest star, and all that I am perceiving as real, nothing but sensory deprivation nightmares.

I can’t bring myself to believe that, but the remaining possibilities go down not completely dissimilar routes. 

Perhaps life on Earth has remained as it was, and I am the one affected. Either I have been moved to someplace that duplicates my world, or at least my little corner of it, or what I am perceiving as my normal world is in fact not real at all, but is a dream. Could I be in a coma?

I suppose there is one other possibility, but I am not religious enough to believe that this is Hell.

Journal Entry 7 – Utilities

The live internet is gone, or I am unable to access it, or not fully. All indications from my computer show I am connected, I don’t receive any error messages, but the information I bring up doesn’t change. It is almost as if a copy of all the information on the internet were stored, captured and frozen at some point in time, excluding any new data or live streamed information.

This observation leads me to another significant conundrum.

The power is on, but who is keeping it on? By my journals, I am at least a week into whatever events have transpired, though I still believe it to be longer, and my lights haven’t so much as flickered once. Less impressive, but still noteworthy, I still have clean, running water. How are utilities still operating without people to maintain them? And possibly just as important, how long will they stay working?

I considered venturing out to explore further, possibly even trying to find a power plant or water treatment facility, but the fear of not making it back to my apartment has kept me from risking anything beyond walking distance. My car was still fully charged down in the garage last time I checked, but what if the recharging stations aren’t working?

When you are all alone with what appears to be an infinite amount of time to dispel, strange thoughts come inevitably into your head.

My concerns have been shifting lately, away from the observations of the material world I inhabit and more inward to introspection. In short, I am beginning to worry about my sanity, and how long it can be sustained.

My emotions are a jumbled mess, and I find myself bothered as much for what I am not feeling strongly as for the clear emotions that I express.

Am I actually lonely, or only feeling lonely because that’s the way I’m supposed to feel when there is no one else around? Do I even really understand what feeling lonely is like, or actually means?

The circumstances that are creating my loneliness are about as obvious as they could be. But why do I feel it? I could chalk it up to existential pondering I suppose, to be closely followed by madness, but that does not seem accurate. 

My final observation for today seems to partially bridge the gap between my concern for the change in the material world and my emotional response to those changes.

When I started this journal, I jokingly commented that it was not to be the old fashioned pen and paper type, but would reflect my generation and be strictly digital, my entries faithfully typed into my computer at some frequency commensurate to my current understanding of time progressing.

Even though I remember, or believe that I remember, typing these thoughts and observations into my laptop, I have just realized that I am making this journal entry without typing at all. I am not even in my office. My thoughts are being transferred and recorded, as I think them. How I know this to be true, I can’t explain.

I feel this latest observation may hold the key to everything, but its significance has so far eluded me.

I wish there was someone here to ask what is happening, someone to discuss and decipher pros and cons of beliefs with, but I am alone, even if I don’t feel lonely as I should.

There is such a thing as too much peace and quiet.

***********************************************

“Earlier on the tour,” said the Android Museum guide, “after I explained how HumanKind Inc. essentially followed the lead of the famous science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, and created governing programming laws for our androids to protect mankind above all else, someone asked about preventing accidental harm. After all, our androids are much stronger than humans. How do we assure that one of our androids can’t just accidently get carried away and crush a person’s hand by shaking it too hard, assist an elderly lady a bit too vigorously when helping her get dressed, or even get carried away and be a bit too, shall we say amorous, when providing one of their more intimate functions?”

That got a few chuckles, and even a slight blush or two from the tour group.

“I asked you then to hold that thought to later in the tour, and now is the time to circle back to it. And so, esteemed guests and those of you who simply had nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon, may I present the Sharon system.”

The tour group’s reaction was anticlimactic, as expected.

“Now I know she doesn’t look like much,” continued the guide, indicating the rather obsolete looking computer system displayed along the museum wall, its lights flashing, a steady low hum emanating from its cabinets. “But let me assure you, Sharon played an invaluable role in history, with her results and memories still used today.”

“So what is she? And why is she a she?” inquired a young lady near the front.

“Excellent questions. I do love an inquisitive group. If I can answer the last part first, and likely make a few of you blush again ... it’s OK, you know who you are, I won’t point you out … Sharon’s first iteration came out of the sexbot craze of the late 2020’s. And since the primary demand at that time was for female sexbots, the original version was given a female name. So Sharon, in layman’s terms, is an AI. And yes, the original need for Sharon was to address the concerns, or safety, of a person having sex with an android that could severely hurt them.”

“But why is Sharon important to the larger android business, and what did she do that was so beneficial, you might wonder. Well, what she did was simply live a virtual life, millions of times over, and ‘remember’, in a digital sense, all the good, bad, inappropriate, sometimes horrific or even just emotional events of those lives. HumanKind programmed random input events for those lives, and measured and adjusted her responses in those different lives.”

“So all the androids you build only have a woman’s point of view of the world,” joked a man from the back of the group. The guide chuckled along with the group, if a bit exasperatedly, knowing the underlying prejudice likely hidden behind the comment. There was always at least one in every tour, it seemed.

“No, within her many simulated lives, Sharon has been a man, woman, transgender, non-binary, gay, etcetera. HumanKind has endeavored to be as inclusive as possible, we just didn’t feel the need to change the name constantly. What the company did do, was to take all the results of all those life experiences, and develop the Sharon platform, which is an integral part of each and every one of the thousands of androids made to date by the company.”

“Is that really the actual computer they used?” asked the inquisitive young lady from before.

“Yes, I can assure you, this is the actual Sharon system. And I can tell you something else. I have it on good authority that it is still intact and functional today. The data is no longer extracted, but Sharon herself is still in there. Retired if you will. And with no one feeding her random life inputs any longer, we like to think she is just enjoying the well deserved peace and quiet for a change.”