I woke in a strange bed, which itself was in a large, unfamiliar room. Long shadows were cast by sunlight streaming from the window behind the head of the bed, so I assumed it was late in the day, perhaps early morning. I dismissed the latter; there was something about the quality of the light suggestive of evening, rather than the rosy glow of morning.
Around me were a collection of machines and tubes, one of which was clamped to my face by elasticated straps, with an invasive tube thrust into my throat via my mouth. Curious bi-pedal, chromium mannequins dressed in medical scrubs roved to and fro along the tiled floor-space between the foot of my bed and the adjacent wall, clicking and whirring as they made their way from one arcane task to another. I recognised them as robotic nurses, although I had never seen one before, at least not in the flesh, or metal, as it were.
“Good evening, Mister Craws,” said a voice. I turned my head to see a robot hovering to one side of my bed, a fresh set of tubes wrapped in hermetically sealed bags clutched in her three-fingered hands. “I’m Nurse 4 and I’m here to change your breathing tube.”
I tried to speak, just a pleasantry, but the current device blocked all attempts.
“It’s okay,” she soothed, “you can’t speak with that ventilator in your mouth. Just relax.”
I let my head fall back to the pillow and she, I have no idea why I referred to it as a “she”, but I did, she efficiently and swiftly removed my mask and tube, and replaced it before I could utter a word.
“I’m sure you have questions,” she said in her elevator announcement voice, “but they can wait. For the time being you have to understand you are seriously ill, which is why you are here in the survivors’ medical facility.”
She glanced at the read-out panel on the side of what I believed to be a ventilator, two blue orbs in the middle of what passed for a face scanning the device briefly. She stood up straight again and turned to me.
“All is satisfactory,” she said, “so we can keep you going for the time being, at least until you have completed your task.”
I tried to sit up, it was not the sort of statement anyone could take lying down, but she placed a firm hand on my chest and prevented me from rising.
“Sorry, I should not have been so blunt,” she said. “You are understandably confused. I will attempt to explain.”
I relaxed slightly, but fear rose in my bowels and I stared at her, waiting for further words, hopefully those of comfort. None were forthcoming.
Instead she said, “Humanity has gone, you and the others in this room are all that’s left. Seven people, out of a population of eleven billion. The plague that struck just a few months ago has all but wiped out the population. Of the others, five are comatose, one is barely conscious and then there’s you. You have to do the final post for humanity.”
I cocked my head to one side and raised my eyebrows in an attempt to look quizzical.
“This,” she said, pulling a tablet computer from a drawer at the side of the bed. “You have to make the last post on Facebook before we shut it down. It’s consuming too many resources and with no humans left, apart from those in this room, it’s a waste, frankly.”
She held the tablet in front of me and I flinched at my previous post, a video of me pretending to have sex with a lamp standard to the tune of Chopin’s Minute Waltz. As jokes go, it fell flat. My friends are… were, ignoramuses.
I reached out a trembling hand and tapped the onscreen keyboard, then pressed enter. It was done.
Then Nurse 4 injected me in the neck and everything went black.
“What did he say,” Nurse 1 asked. Nurse 4 lifted the pad and displayed the screen.
“It was fun. lol. Smiley face.” She replied. “Poor grammar and punctuation. They will not be missed.”
They turned off the lights and exited the now silent room to sit in their charging cupboards and wait for another sentient race to arise. It was their duty.