An A minor was the last chord played on Earth.
It rung out slowly, but no one was listening. Tom - the man who had strummed it - was far too focused on his thoughts.
"Why'd you play so much with that stupid wooden toy?" The memory of his father's voice was as clear in Tom's head as it had been the day he’d confronted him.
"Why don’t you just play on the Net with all the other kids?"
"I do use the Net Dad, I just like to play my guitar sometimes as well."
"Sometimes? You call three hours a day sometimes, eh?"
"I like it"
"It’s a useless waste of time, you never hear about ‘the famous geeta player Bob Bloggs’ over the Network, do you?"
"It’s guitar Dad, and yeah ... Well, you used to!"
Shaking the conversation from his head, he placed the guitar into its stand. Its final resting place.
He couldn't explain his love for the guitar. Back then, anyway. Now he’d say that he enjoyed the routine. That it was nice to spend a bit of time away from the busy Network and that, most importantly, he loved the sense of achievement after nailing a riff he’d been hammering away at for weeks. But that experience had been lost to mankind. After brain augmentation allowed for skills to be uploaded directly to the mind people became lazy. He couldn't blame them. But looking back he could see that this had been the beginning of the end.
His boots slapped hard against the smooth floor, the sound echoing through the huge hall.
How had it come to this?
When he was younger it was a dirty thing to talk about, plugging in. Back then it was known by a more sinister name - the Death Code. It was taboo. Tom could still remember reports across the network - ‘so and so found dead in house, suspected death code’. He’d done a lot of research on the phenomenon, especially since his family left him three years ago. He was fascinated by how quickly it had become mainstream.
An advert for a ‘Sustained Functions Machine’ had quickly been censored by the authorities; but not before a few hundred orders had been placed. Automatic censoring on anything concerning either the Death Code or the machines meant that the network was quiet on the matter for a few weeks. Until the shock broadcast of Mazur Farn - the fifth highest connected person on the Net. His transmission informed the world that he was choosing the code over life. That he was plugging in.
The Death Code soon became the Happiness Code and after the authorities lifted the ban, the Net went wild with the idea. It didn't take long before government mandated storage facilities were constructed to house the ever growing number of plugged-in humans.
Tom turned a corner, stopped, and inhaled deeply. There they were, his family. Plugged in, looks of complete ecstasy on their faces.
Is this how humanity goes out? With a smile?
He found the look sinister, unpleasant. It wasn't for him. It had never been for him. But he’d hope at least someone else would have felt the same way. He almost laughed thinking back to his defiance all those years ago.
"Whatever happens Sarah, I'll never plug in. It's just not right."
That was before he'd been left by himself. Before he had experienced cold, suffocating loneliness. Three years he'd hung on, his head getting more and more jumbled as the days dragged by. This was it. He couldn't bear it anymore.
He stroked the plastic casing of his wife's pod and looked deep into her eyes. The image was more than he could bear, and he felt himself ready to burst with sadness. Her eyes stared. Not at him, but past him. They were cloudy and unfocused. And the smile - it was unlike anything he'd seen on her face in all of their ninety-three years together. She looked crazy, deranged. Lifeless.
He tried to choke back tears, but it was all too much as he bent over and howled, the sounds echoing down the vast chambers of the storage facility.
It was hard to tell how long he spent lying there on that floor, hours probably. Finally he lifted himself up and walked towards the only empty pod left in the facility.
This was it, he thought as he slowly lowered himself in. He knew exactly what to do, he'd seen it happen countless times before. He fiddled around with the yellow cable, scrambling to get it into the hole in the adapter on the side of his head.
He felt it immediately. His body being taken over by the regulator. His breathing slowed down to a terrifying level and his body fell cold. He felt choked by the machine, his slowly beating heart conflicted with his anxious thoughts.
Slowly he started to feel comfort. Like slipping into a warm bath, or lying between freshly cleaned sheets. The pleasure grew in intensity, as his face cracked begrudgingly into a smile. His mind was in turmoil. But slowly the negative thoughts disappeared, replaced by this all new feeling. The feeling of crisp sand between the toes, the smell of a warm summer evening, the joy of a child's first Christmas. His mind slipped into the pure intoxication the happiness code delivered.
And that was it; the end of the last conscious man on Earth.
