If you'd asked me what it feels like to be the last human in the universe, I'd have told you it doesn't feel any different. Robots, cybernetics — the universe had already outpaced the simple perceptive limits of my human brain. So in this weird, wired cosmos, I couldn't bring myself to drown in some basic emotion like loneliness. At least, not yet…
Back when I was human I'd promised myself I'd wait and see whether I'd ever feel lonely in the ages to come. Sure, sometimes I wanted people around — but that wasn't exactly loneliness. It came from other, weirder needs.
I'll be honest: staying "human" forever wasn't a commitment I took seriously. The idea of synthetic brains yanked around by software creeped me out; that last so-called Neo-human we'd seen was rigid as a statue. But what's the harm in becoming a Gelişik? Besides, I wasn't thrilled with some of my body parts — I'd happily swap them for longer mechanical ones. You know the type.
Anyway — yes, I was the last human alive. I had plans: simple ones, heavy on cash, lots of fun, disco balls included. Poof — gone. Why? Because Mehmet, the official last human and Bioethics Inspector, was ambushed by a mad scientist named Lara with a syringe at the worst possible moment, shoved into an experiment field, and turned into one of the test creatures. That's right. Let me spell it out: that psycho Lara turned me into a Dermovox. Incredible, right? Hard to grasp and infuriating in equal measure.
When I first woke up on the sand inside the body of a Dermovox, all I could do was curl up on my knees. My human brain refused to accept living in a Dermovox body, so I sat on the sand for hours staring at the horizon, doing absolutely nothing. As if being human-turned-beast wasn't problem enough.
It was beyond belief. Even if I lived a million years I'd never expect this to happen simply because one night I'd staggered into some woman's room with a wine bottle. Right, I was supposedly the last human in the universe — pardon, last natural human; now I was a new Dermovox-human hybrid.
So what did it feel like to be turned into one of those Dermovox things? First off, my skin had become solid as stone. Because of that rock-like hide some limbs didn't move easily, but I'd never been extremely limber anyway, so I didn't complain much. In fact, I kind of liked the armor. Those pebbles that used to stab my human feet on the beach no longer bothered me — I could crush them beneath my Dermovox-foot and felt a small, vengeful joy. No lie.
My armor covered everything except the joints, my orifices, and my eye sockets. The skin was heavy, but my whole body had become absurdly strong. I could uproot a tree and hurl it, or skip a boulder across the water like a child flicking a coin.
Normal Dermovoxes have four arms, but I only had three. And my simple human brain just couldn't get the third arm to obey. I strained so hard trying to control it that I accidentally triggered my digestive system, soaking the sand with a vile-smelling liquid. Dermovox piss apparently burns sand like acid and vaporizes. Lovely.
After that spectacle, I sat for ages with cold seawater lapping my feet because I didn't know what to do or want. Then an idea came to me.
Thinking that Dr. Lara might be watching, I grabbed a stick and drew a giant "Little Mehmet" in the sand. I signed it and wrote: "For Dr. Lara!" At first I thought "Why? Please save me…" but I realized begging wouldn't change anything. So I signed off like a douche.
I wanted to shout, but this body barely had functional vocal cords. Trapped in the shell of some telepathic halfwit, I remembered I couldn't yell at Lara or curse her to her face — but I could write. So I took the stick and wrote a very long note she could understand.
"Dr. Lara! Read this carefully!
Because I will get out of here and!
You'll pay for doing this to me!
You'll see what it means to fk with an officer!
I will live 1000 years!
For 1000 years I will make you suffer!
I will f**k you so hard!
Dr. Lara, when I find you, I will—"
That was just a slice of what I scratched into the sand. I covered that corner of the beach until there was barely a blank patch left. If the stick hadn't snapped on a rock, I would've kept going. I'm an idiot; nothing clever occurred to me.
Then I felt a signal. A telepathic ping that vibrated into my mind, prodding and annoying me. It came from far away, maybe another Dermovox.
My brain, receiving that signal, acted weird — surprised, confused. It behaved like Ukar's brain had behaved: uncanny. Feeling my own brain act strange was bizarre in itself.
It was the first time I'd felt something like that. First a ridiculous tension — my nonexistent hairs stood on end. Then I remembered I don't have hairs, so what the hell was standing up? Describing human sensations when you no longer have a human body is weird.
Let me explain what receiving a signal felt like. Imagine you're at a bar, bladder bursting, but the gorgeous woman across from you is pouring out family drama. She's listing off deep, life-ruining things. You don't really believe her — maybe she was seeing someone else — but you want to look unruffled. So you clench and wait, because you don't want to give her another reason to walk away, and you suffer silently. That kind of cramped agony — but in your skull.
"Hey buddy!" I heard, a weird voice like a mash-up of Jose and Hulk. This wasn't the far-off signal; it sounded close. I shivered. I looked around. Nothing.
"Yeah?" I answered.
"Can you pick up the signal?" the voice asked. Odd question. "Signal…"
This signal, unlike the distant one, had something off about it. "Signal…" the voice repeated.
Was my mind talking to itself? The voice had shades of navy, brown, black stacked together, and it felt very near.
Let's rewind to that bar anecdote: you really need to pee. You're squirming at the table; she keeps talking. You'd rather look calm because you were dumped for being too needy once before and now you can't risk it. So you wait until she stops speaking, clench, and pray.
My head hurt. Distant signals weren't enough — my own internal voices were battering my fragile human brain.
"Signal, signal… bomb, bomb…" said a voice in my head.
"Are those disco beats?" said another.
"What are you talking about?" another voice inside me asked. "What a weird anecdote you're telling."
While trying to answer the distant signal, I started firing signals back at myself and couldn't stop. Yep — I'm that dumb.
"Did you go to the bathroom?" my inner voice asked telepathically.
"I did," answered another voice in my head.
"Did she get mad?"
"Oh, how she got mad."
"Hadn't she finished her sentence?"
"She had… then moved on to another topic."
"Did you apologize?"
"Apologize? Hell yes. I begged like a fool, but humiliation was unavoidable. You should've seen her look."
"You're a pathetic man who held in his piss at the bar!" my brain scolded.
"I'm sorry! I never wanted to be that kind of man. Who would?" I covered my face and wept buckets. The tears of these creatures tasted so bitter I had to clamp my mouth shut while crying.
All this madness came from the human brain — evolved for conversation — being suddenly forced into telepathic signal-talk. It was like a long-term smoker having an acute attack; my brain teetered on the brink of a collapse, and I didn't know how to pull it back.
I thrashed on the sand, punching myself to quiet the pain in my skull that felt like it was about to split open. The ringing in my head only grew worse as the distant signals kept hammering at me. My brain — the same one that used to live in a human body — could do nothing but respond to this new reality with pure agony. It was helpless.
I hauled myself up with a pounding headache. As the sun began to sink, I could feel the signal reaching out from the forest. I had to reach it before nightfall. I glanced back one last time toward the edge of the sea. I knew someone was watching me. I knew who had made me suffer like this, and I knew that when I got out of here I would make them feel a thousand times worse than they'd made me feel.