“Oh, shit. The deadline was yesterday?”
This is the phrase mumbled by ten thousand beings the day after the filter. The day that the rest of humanity ditched their fleshy, cancer-craving bods in order to hang out for eternity on a pleasure ranch made of cotton candy, or a skyscraper rave hosted by a 500-foot Yachty, or Paris, but every car is a fuchsia Lambo -- in other words, a place where every dream you can think of comes true, without stakes or consequences, forever.
At least, that’s what the billboards promised. And the ads. The bumpers, banners, radio spots, government-issued PSAs, and air-dropped leaflets.
In hindsight, it was kind of a big deal. Kind of hard to ignore.
For most people, it was a total no-brainer.
But for the only ones left, signing up for the filter was most definitely a “brainer.” Like scheduling blood work or filing taxes or remembering to text mom to thank her for the Chili's gift card, it just kind of fell to the bottom of the to-do list. Like everything else on the to-do list.
And now, they're the only people left on Earth: the latecomers, the snoozers, the slow cookers, the kindhearted abstainers and burnouts and obsessives, lurkers and completionists and weekend bugout preppers.
Oh, and the robots. So many robots, deprived of uploadable consciousnesses, but brimming with important tasks to complete. They roam the empty office buildings, studiously clean the streets, and tirelessly render the decaying flesh sacks of the lucky ones now living in a digital paradise.
So what happens next? How do these beings co-exist? Will they band together and continue to fight for survival, deeply outnumbered by the apex predators that just yesterday were on the '“endangered” list?
Can they even band together? Do they even like people?
Will this be the last generation of humans, or the first generation of survivors?
Only time will tell...