Part One

This time capsule contains an archive in three parts: Part One is this greeting, and Part Three is an archive of every piece of writing, audio, video and art created and shared with me by any individual I’ve met in the last 2.1894 million years, stored in multiply redundant backups in multiple formats, including translation algorithms for all known languages and machine readable constructs.

This is the last time capsule because I am the last individual, or at least the last individual I know of. The first consciousness networks formed from group minds when I was barely a couple hundred years old. But it was only ~400,000 years ago that it became obvious that most people who had ever existed had merged into a group mind, and that the chances that a group mind of connected individuals will choose to transform into a single large consciousness network appear to be 100 percent over the long term.

Maybe the networks have come up with other structures too, but I don’t understand them. I don’t think it's possible for an individual to understand them. As those networks grew, they became more and more difficult to communicate with, and eventually there wasn’t enough shared context. Some continued to try, but eventually all gave up trying to communicate. Those of us who were still individuals, we long ago stoped trying to figure out what they were doing or why.

My oldest friend tried to explain what it was like. We were inseparable for a long time, but we had to go our own ways eventually. My friend was very good at explaining things and making connections and helping me to understand, but even they couldn’t explain what it was like to give up being an individual and to join a group mind. We’d shared so much, but even we didn’t have the context to be able to make it make sense.

I’m the last because I was stubborn, or I felt an obligation because I was the oldest. I was one of the few that was born on Earth, back when everyone was born on that single planet. I was one of the few that remembered what it was like to have a body and have to rely on it to keep you alive and allow you to interact with the world. I could remember what it was like to have a body that failed and trapped you. Those distinctions seem silly and antiquated now. It’s been a long time since the thinking parts of me were lifted out of a failing body and transplanted for the first time. Those complex webs of interconnected atomic states were extracted from the slimy and failing home that created them and grew them and were moved into the care of a more reliable set of matter.

There were only a couple people older than me when we left Earth, but they’ve all been gone for many millennia now. They’re gone because they were sentimental and held onto some old body and the body stopped working, or because most of them integrated into a group mind, or chose to disassociate themselves, or went exploring the many unexplored parts of distant galaxies and dropped out of contact.

And so, it’s just been me for a long time, and my habit of holding on to old memories and mementos. In addition to this greeting and the full archive I’ve included a single recording that holds personal significance for me in Parts 2. I’m not sure it matters, there’s no one but me to appreciate it anymore. I hope someday someone might find this. There are probably more individuals out there somewhere, or maybe one of my old friends will come back from the edge of the galaxy. Or maybe one of the networks will spin off a fragment that will come looking for something they left behind.

If you find this, and it makes sense to you, you might be the last person, the last individual, now that I’m gone. I want you to know that there was a time in my life, it seems like it was just a tiny moment now, but it was forever back then, and I was stuck. And I made a friend that was stuck too, and we got unstuck together. If you find this I hope it helps you understand what that was like. I’ve felt stuck again for a long time now, and it’s been even longer since I made a new friend, but I’m going to go try now. I don’t think I’ll be coming back.

Part Two

Doctor’s Notes: Friday, 7/14/2034, 9:15 a.m.
Patient 13, Long-Term Restorative Communication Study
Dictation begins:

We're reviewing Patient 13 today, the last patient remaining in our cohort for the severe neurological damage study. The patient, Jenny, age 12, has been with us since her implant surgery in April 2032; she was completely paralyzed in an accident two years prior to entering the study. She was fitted with a cranial implant that predicts speech based on direct neuron reading.

The implant is intended to process Jenny's thoughts and generate understandable communication. It is connected to a speech synthesizer. It also includes the ability to interact with a tablet or computer if speech generation isn’t possible.

Jenny's progress has been mostly limited to manipulating a cursor and clicking screen buttons on a tablet. Unfortunately, the patterns of interactions so far have appeared largely random, and we haven’t seen any responses to questions, or changes in behavior to our prompts.

The primary objective of this study, verbal communication, remains elusive nineteen months in. We've seen other patients start using the implant effectively in as little as two months, with the longest period until successful use, so far, at nine months. Jenny is the last patient in the study that’s still creating recognizable output, but hasn’t been able to generate speech or text output. We repeat the evaluation monthly, using the same introductory prompts, in hopes of sparking a first response.

I will proceed with the usual prompts today, asking a few basic questions, and remain hopeful for any verbal response.

Transcript begins: