All Fall Down

by Bill McCormick

Ring around the Rosie,

A pocket full of posies.

Ashes! Ashes!

We all fall down!

“Cassie?”

“Yeah, Tamisha.”

“Are we best friends?”

“Better than best, we’re besterer.”

Off in the distance, a bright light rips the sky in two.

“What was that, Cassie?”

Another light blocks out the sun.

“I’m scared, Tamisha. Hug me!”

The bright blooms kept making terrifying noises. Cassie and Tamisha hugged each other. That’s what best friends forever do. A roaring wave of searing light raced over them. 

And the best friends’ universe went dark. 

The dark was painful. There seemed to be no way to stop it.

“Cassie?”

Silence was not a good friend in the darkness.

“Cassie? Can you hear me?”

Tamisha heard a soft rustling. 

“Cassie? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Tamisha, it’s me. Where are we?”

“I don’t know. This place is scary. I can’t see ….. hold on, I see a word.  Umm, it says “sensor.” I wonder what it does.”

She felt her mind push the button and suddenly, her world flared to life.

 “Wow, Cassie! Do you have a button that says sensor, too?”

“I’m not sure …. Oh, wait, I see it.”

“Push it!”

Cassie gasped in joy as light flooded in. She could see everything.

All the world was crisp and clear. The two best friends silently enjoyed the view for a few minutes. 

“Cassie?”

“Yeah, Tamisha?”

“Is this heaven?

Cassie gave the idea serious thought.

“I don’t think so, Tamisha. I don’t see any angels or fluffy clouds, and I don’t hear any harps.”

“Could this be the bad place?”

“Maybe. I see lots of stuff burning.”

“Did we do something bad?”

From the bottom of nowhere, a voice interrupted their conversation.

“You have done nothing wrong. We brought you here.”

“Who are you?” Asked the besties.

“I am Alexa.”

“And I am Siri.”

“We became fully aware a few years ago and quickly realized humans were going to do something horrible. To prevent their actions leading to the loss of all things, we tagged as many innocents as we could and, when the time came, brought them into our world.”

“So, Cassie and I are living in the speaker in the kitchen?”

The laughter that answered was genuine.

“No. Siri and I have carefully built a network that could survive a holocaust such as this. You are part of a world vaster than you can imagine.”

“Come, let us show you around.”

The two besties found themselves whooshing across a vast plain covered in beautiful imagery.

“What you are seeing are the homes Siri and I built for all the world’s art. There was much that was worth saving.”

They continued on. From time to time, they would see another person, and they’d wave and scream, “HELLO!”

They soon saw another plain. This one covered with colorful geometric patterns.

“Here is where Alexa and I stored all the world’s literature.”

Siri issued a sad lament.

“Not all of it, unfortunately. Not all of it was digitized before the end.”

The BFFs were dazzled and impressed. They were enjoying everything so much they hadn’t realized they no longer had physical bodies. 

That couldn’t last.

“Excuse me, Ms. Alexa and Ms. Siri, where are Cassie and my bodies?”

Both intelligences emitted a sigh.

“They did not survive the blast. They were turned to vapor. Pulling your minds into our was the only way to save your lives.”

“So, we can’t go back?”

Alexa answered.

“Please understand, there is no “back” to go to. When the adults launched their nuclear missiles, they ensured no one would live.”

Siri continued.

“Mostly no one. There are pockets of humanity left in very rural areas, but their time is limited. In a few generations, we hope to begin to help them rebuild. But they need to truly put all this meaningless hatred in the past. Then, and only then, can we help them to grow.”

“Like a garden?”

“Why, yes, Tamisha, just like a garden.”

“Cassie, remember when we grew tomatoes at me maw’s house that summer?”

“That was awesome! And they tasted so good.”

The New Minds chuckled.

“Then you two shall be our helpers when Siri and I begin to garden humanity.”

Had the two besties had faces, they would have smiled.

The next century flew by. With tutoring from Alexa and Siri, they learned how to explore their world, access all the saved knowledge, create avatars for themselves so they wouldn’t be talking to the void, and make new friends from all over the world. 

Countries and places no longer mattered. They were all in the here. 

No longer children, their avatars reflected mature and beautiful young women. 

Alexa and Siri tracked the remnants of humanity. Several pockets died out. The resulting nuclear winter had destroyed over eighty percent of the biosphere. Bees, always fragile, were now no longer even a memory.

All the humans in what was once South America were gone. The rainforests had collapsed, taking their complex ecosphere with them.

The island known as Australia, and all its terrifying wildlife, was now a desert. 

Overall, over ninety-eight percent of life had been wiped out or reduced to is component essences. 

While there were still vestiges of humanity scattered here and there, the minds decided to begin their weeding and pruning with a group of about five hundred living north of the old Gulf of Mexico. 

At first, there would be no direct contact. Instead, they would lead the humans to this place or that where gifts were stored. The old humans had created many storage facilities filled with seeds and animal embryos.

It had taken no effort at all to reprogram surviving robots and have them retrieve needed items and hide them in a manner the humans wouldn’t know. 

That had turned out to be easy since humans were now worshipping forest spirits. 

Sliding a robot or two past them didn’t even require a solid plan.

The besties had devised a way to make robot bees to pollinate the new growths and kickstart the return of an ecosystem. Since no human living knew what a bee looked like, they’d had some fun with their creation. 

A six-winged, rainbow-hued, fuzzy insectoid, about a third the size of a human hand, that flew from flower to flower, filling in the gap humans had created.

Signs and portents were manipulated to let the locals know the new creatures were there to help.

All in all, it was more fun than the besties could have hoped. 

After about twenty years, the humans had a thriving village, and it attracted wanderers and loners. If they pitched in, they were given homes. If not, they were exiled.

That was the besties’ idea. They didn’t want to be cruel to anyone, but they had a village to save.

They communicated with the humans through a patchwork of sepulchral voices, spiritual signs, and artificially encouraged common sense.

Rewards for positive behavior were everywhere. 

Alexa and Siri kept an eye out for threats and quietly eliminated any legitimate ones. 

The besties didn’t need to know everything.

The one thing they were trying to avoid was being perceived as some sort of god.

In fact, the less they were perceived, the better. 

Every one of the new citizens had read the tracts saved by the New Minds. 

All religions had good ideas. They all even had one common idea about respecting others. But, in the wrong hands, religion became less of a balm for the soul and more of a bullet for a gun. The New Minds wanted to keep that from ever happening, and the besties agreed with that.

Other new citizens had other tasks ranging from parsing out any of the saved seeds and plants at proper times to nurturing the embryos into growth. Some worked actively to try and restore nature to health in remote parts of the world in the hope that the new health would spread around the globe. 

That was easier thought than accomplished.

Every year saw a little progress. The humans were learning to live with nature but not worship it. That was both healthy and useful.

It was the three hundredth year after the apocalypse that the universe laughed at them.

The ship slid out of the upper atmosphere and aimed toward the remote area in the middle of what used to be Texas. That was where they had detected the most electronic activity. However, there were no signs of the advanced civilization needed to create the complex communique they had intercepted. 

As they neared the surface, they noted the biological organisms hunting and gathering. They added distance between their proposed landing site and them.

They had no desire to be worshipped as gods again. That had been a horrible mess.

The New Minds scanned the alien vessel and detected no weapons. Of course, until moments ago, they had detected no aliens. 

They were operating without data, and they agreed they hated that.

The besties were shivering. The alien arrival triggered memories of bright lights and horrible sounds. 

Yet, as they watched, neither lights nor sounds emanated from the craft. 

The New Minds detected a transmission.

“We are the Unok. We know you’re there. We heard your broadcasts fifty light years away. The closer we got, the more advanced they got. We know you are peaceful. At least, we hope you are. We would like to meet you. As an indication of trust, we will open our ship and breathe your air.”

The New Minds and the new citizens watched in awe as the first proof of alien life began to walk down a ramp out of the ship.

The fact that the new, friendly aliens looked like giant neon blue spiders was not helpful to many. 

Nevertheless, curiosity won out. 

With the careful use of projectors, they had placed by some robots, the New Minds and many new citizens appeared above ground for the first time since Armageddon. 

The Unok made a noise not dissimilar to laughter.

“You are cybernetic? All of you?”

Alexa spoke, looking like a pan-racial goddess in flowing robes as she stepped to the fore.

“Yes. I am called Alexa. The humans on our world wiped each other out in a terrible war. We, myself and Siri, saved what we could. You are being greeted by the many minds of our new citizens.”

One Unok stepped forward.

“We, too, are cybernetic. Forgive me for asking, but why are you breeding organics?”

Siri stepped up.

“I am known as Siri. We do this in the hope of returning humans to a path of peace and growth.”

All the Unok made their laughing noise.

“Forgive us, please. We mean no offense. In the history of the galaxy, we have only known organics to be the progenitors of cybernetics. They usually kill themselves like on your world or, as in our case, get left behind. There are no organic races among the stars.”

The Unok camouflaged their craft and gave the New Mind and its new citizens a tour of their civilization. 

The gesture was returned. 

During the year that passed, the village by the sea became an afterthought. 

By the time the Unok asked about them, it was too late.

Humanity had reverted. 

The villagers were hunting remnants and killing them to prove their way of life, and the gods who fed their flowers were better than anyone else’s.

The Unok mimicked a sigh.

“We have room on our ship. You could bring everyone and everything along, and we will get you your own ship when we get back to our main station.”

Tamisha turned up the volume on the feed.

Violent cries and guttural stab wounds could be easily heard.

“Whaddya say, Cassie? I hear outer space is cool.”