110
STARTLING STORIES
Jeri Patton.”
“How many on Earth?”
“One.”
“How many in the solar system?”
“One.”
I turned and paced around the room once, twice, stopping in the third circuit to face Magarian again. “I’m the only human being?”
“In the eyes of the law,” they said, “artifi-cials count as human. In the sense you mean, yes, you are the last of homo sapiens.”
I couldn’t grasp this, so I changed per-spective. “I’ve been investigating cases for six years. Arresting felons, murderers, white-collar criminals. Were any of them naturals?”
“No.”
“All my colleagues, all my friends and schoolmates—they were all artificials, AIs, robots, holograms?”
“Two classmates were naturals, but one died along with his parents in the destruction of the trans-lunar shuttle twenty years ago. The oth
