The Last Smile

I wake before the sun.

Not out of discipline. The woods simply don’t allow you to sleep late. The birds start first — the jittery ones with wings like flicked paper — then the wind follows, slipping through the pines in long, steady breaths. The forest stretches awake, and my body wakes with it, stiff in all the places age has claimed.

For a moment I lie still in my nest of branches, letting the world settle into focus. Twenty years I’ve slept in this tree, ten feet off the ground in a cradle I wove myself.

I climb down, careful on the last few rungs — carved by my own hands, worn smooth by my own feet. Cold moss greets my toes. The air smells of cedar and damp earth.

The sky is the last thing I look at. This morning a white streak cuts across — a fresh scar, still glowing. Another launch. Another craft that slipped out of the atmosphere before dawn, bound for whatever world they’re colonizing or chasing or claiming. They rise every day now, silver needles vanishing into the dark.

Somewhere, I'm sure people watch them with awe.

I look up just long enough to remember I still don’t care.

Whatever future humanity is chasing, they can keep it.

I walk over to the place I call home. A raised den of woven branches, clay-packed walls, and pine-sap sealant.

Inside, it smells like smoke and dried herbs. And cats.

Seven of them today — descendants of a feral, pregnant, orange female that I brought with me on my journey. I named her Lira. She’s long gone, but her line remains, slipping out of the shadows to weave around my ankles.

“Morning,” I say.

I’ve known life with humans and life without them. At this point, I prefer the version where every smile isn’t pre-programmed.

Another ordinary morning. Another day unseen, untouched by the world beyond the treeline.

Down here among the pines, I move slowly, breathe deeply. When the branches creak just right, when the light hits the moss in that particular way, I find myself smiling too — crooked, weathered, but entirely my own.

***

People like to tell stories about catastrophes, Armageddon, end of days.

The day everything changed. The blast, the plague, the meteor. But that’s not how it happened here.

Nothing exploded. The world didn’t end; it just smoothed itself out.

Before I was born, the groundwork was already there. In the 2020s, artificial intelligence was small and eager, a polite assistant for people who still thought they were in charge.

By the 2030s, machines had taken half the world’s jobs, not with rebellion but with efficiency. Governments rolled out basic income to keep people calm. Most families relaxed into it. My parents didn’t. They saw what was coming: a world drifting away from effort, discomfort, and the parts of ourselves that only grow when life is challenging.

Then came the chips. They started as care, not control — or that’s how they sold them.

• 2040s: tracking implants so no child would ever be lost again.

• 2050s: health chips to monitor vitals, flag disease before symptoms.

• 2060s: cognitive boosts — perfect memory, bottomless focus.

• 2070s: tone regulators, smoothing harsh words before they left your mouth.

• 2080s: emotional governance. Implants that dialed down fear, anger, despair.

• 2090s: SmileSync™ — the final tweak. An implant that corrected your facial expressions to match the approved global standard: pleasant, calm, open, neutral.

• By 2100, implantation was mandatory. Who wants to be unsafe, unstable, unwell – uncompliant?

By 2110, the world was peaceful. Efficient. Predictable. Streets full of identical, empty smiles.

***

I was born in 2045, when opting out of chipping was still technically legal, though the paperwork came with threats written between the lines. My parents refused to implant me. Doctors lectured. Schools hinted at intervention.

They called the chips “soft chains.” They didn’t want metal in my nervous system, or an invisible hand on my moods.

We held out as long as we could on the grid.

There was a narrow window when I really tried to live among them. I loved a man once. I was going to have a daughter. She didn’t survive the second trimester, and neither did the relationship. Even now, I wonder—if she’d lived, would I have stayed? Tried harder? Let myself be part of humanity a little longer? Sometimes I picture her grown, moving through these woods beside me, as if she belongs here too, at the edge of the earth.

Before I vanished, I lived in the seams of cities — under bridges, in abandoned stations, in camps that formed and dissolved beneath overpasses. Back when addiction and untreated illness still existed, I learned that if you mumbled to yourself and kept your eyes wild, people looked away. Drones classified you as “non-threatening anomaly” and rolled past.

I never had a bank account. Never held a chipped ID. No workplace badge. No phone. No data trail worth mining.

So when my parents died and I chose to sneak deep into the Pine Barrens, nothing on any server registered my absence.

The system forgot me, or simply never tracked me in the first place.

Whatever is left of humanity is busy flinging itself into the stars. No nuclear winter. No alien invasion. No righteous asteroid.

Just a long series of small, reasonable choices.

The world didn’t die.

But, I sometimes catch myself thinking: I would have preferred the meteor.

***

Routine keeps me alive.

Refill water before noon, kill every ember before dark. Twenty years alone teaches you that even small carelessness has teeth.

Last night, I was careless.

I’d been mending a fence on the west ridge after a buck tore through it. By the time I finished, the sky was already black and my little campfire felt like company.

I let it burn.

When I wake, the light was wrong — too sharp, too orange. The air is hot in my lungs.

I climb down fast.

A wall of flame is crawling up the ridge where my coals should have gone to sleep hours ago. One shift of wind — that’s all it took. Fire races from crown to crown, turning trees I’ve known for decades into torches.

For a heartbeat I stand there, barefoot in the moss, watching the forest burn.

Drones will see this. Satellites. Automated suppression systems. Someone’s or something’s version of “help” is on the way.

Ash drifts over my skin like gray snow.

***

I move.

Shotgun. Knives. Water filter. Rations. Rope. Three of the cats — Liberty, Solace, Red — scooped into carriers. The others bolt into the underbrush. I hope instinct keeps them smarter than I’ve been.

After what feels like forever, I drop into a low grove and set the cats in the shade. My hands tremble.

For a moment there’s only the roar of the fire.

Then a new sound rises — a mechanical vibration, layered and precise.

Dozens of drones streak overhead in a perfect grid. They release blue suppressant mist in even sheets. Within minutes, the blaze that should have chewed through the forest all day is a smoking scar on the ridge.

They reform their pattern, and sweep away toward the coast.

All but one.

A single drone drops out of formation and hovers in front of me. It lingers for a beat, as if thinking.

Then it shoots upward and disappears.

Something has seen me.

***

I don’t sleep that night.

By sunrise the forest feels wrong — listening.

Footsteps break the silence.

Human footsteps.

I crouch behind a fallen trunk, shotgun ready. Two figures move through the trees: tall, clean, clothed in a light blue uniform. Their faces are ageless. Their smiles are identical — wide, placid.

I haven’t seen another person in twenty years.

“Hello,” the woman says. Her voice is bright and flat at once. “You can come with us.”

The man beside her tilts his head at the exact same angle. “We’ll take you to safety. New York City is secure. You’ll be welcomed.”

They don’t ask if I’m hurt or hungry. They just stand there smiling and gesture toward a sleek silver craft hovering between the pines.

“I’m fine where I am, thank you” I say.

The woman’s smile doesn’t change.

“You have been identified as unimplanted,” she replies. “The first we’ve encountered in over a decade. Remaining here is not an option. We are here to help you and bring you to safety.”

They step toward me together, synchronized.

My finger squeezes the trigger. The blast cracks the air.

The man drops, blood blooming from the center of his forehead, his body hitting the forest floor with finality.

The woman’s smile flickers, then resets.

She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t blink. Doesn't look to revive her partner or call for help. She advances, arms extended in a mock-gentle reach.

I fire again. Once. Twice. Three times.

Her chest fractures, spraying shards of synthetic bone and wiring. She takes another step before her legs fold, dropping her face-first beside the man. Her smile stays printed on her ruined mouth.

Human and machine lie side by side in the pine needles.

“Is this it?” I whisper to nobody.

***

Hours crawl by.

No more footsteps. No more drones. I bury the bodies in shallow graves and wipe my hands on the dirt.

What does a civilization that hasn’t seen a murder in decades do with the first murderer it’s found? I don’t care to find out.

Part of me believes maybe that’s the end of it. Systems glitch. Signals fail. I could still vanish deeper in.

But at dusk the ground starts to shake.

Birds explode out of the trees in panicked swarms.

Something massive lowers through the canopy: a circular hull wider than my whole camp, jointed arms unfolding like an insect, pale lights sweeping the forest in slow arcs.

I run.

An arm snaps out with shocking speed, clamps around my waist, and lifts me off my feet. I scream and shove the cat carriers away. They tumble, open, then vanish into brush.

“Run,” I shout, uselessly.

I’m pulled into a hanging glass pod barely wider than my shoulders.

The hatch seals with a soft hiss. I slam my fists into the transparent wall until my knuckles split. The pod doesn’t so much as shiver.

Below, my forest shrinks to a dark patchwork.

We rise over miles of pine before the green gives way to shining grids: solar fields, automated farms, irrigation channels glowing faint blue. Highways curve across the landscape, empty of cars.

Newark Airport appears on the horizon, but it isn’t an airport anymore. The runways are still there—but nothing lands on them. Instead, a forest of launch spires rises from the old tarmac: thin, gleaming towers lined in perfect rows. As we pass overhead, one of them activates. A craft shoots upward so fast the air barely ripples, a silver needle flicking into the sky and vanishing as if erased. Another waits. Another lifts. They launch in quiet succession, disappearing into the upper atmosphere without flame, without roar, without return. I scan the horizon for inbound traffic, contrails, anything coming home.

There’s nothing.

Only departures.

And I find myself thinking, where are they going—and why does nothing ever come back?

We leave the launch fields behind, as the machine carries me east. Water unfurls beneath us—the dark sheet of the Hudson—and then, rising from it like a memory carved into bedrock, she appears.

The Statue of Liberty.

But she is not the statue I remember.

The stone-green copper is gone, replaced by some reflective alloy that catches the sun and throws it outward in blinding arcs. The torch blazes with a concentrated beam of light—white, impossibly bright. It pulses every few seconds, a signal meant not for ships on water, but for eyes in orbit. A lighthouse for off-world colonies? A reminder of where humanity began? Or a warning?

As we pass her shoulder, the beam sweeps across the pod, bleaching the world to white before fading again. I’m both inspired and terrified.

Then New York City rises.

Half the skyline is gone, replaced by curving towers grown from seamless metal like the bones of some enormous creature.

The streets below are immaculate, eerily quiet.

No rush

No chaos.

Silver trams glide along invisible tracks. People move in coordinated flows on the sidewalks—heads straight, shoulders relaxed, all of them wearing the same soft, placid smile. Their steps match in rhythm, as if synced to a pulse I cannot hear.

Workers stand at kiosks with identical expressions.

From above, the whole city looks choreographed.

Like a single organism. Smiling in unity.

The pod tilts, angling toward a tower whose upper floors bloom open like a metal flower. Panels unfurl, revealing a landing nest bathed in pale blue light. The machine descends. Mechanical arms reach out.

Two humanoids wait.

Their smiles are identical to the ones I shot in the woods.

“Rose,” one says — my name landing wrong in its mouth. “You’re safe now.”

The rooftop tilts. The sky smears into violet streaks. The last thing I see is that perfect, empty smile leaning closer.

Then the world shuts off.

***

When I wake, the world is white.

White walls.

White light.

White coats.

And the smiles—every one of them identical.

My vision swims, still blurred at the edges from whatever they injected into me. Two technicians stand at my bedside, hands folded, smiles fixed. When they see my eyes open, they lean in with rehearsed relief.

“You’re safe now,” one murmurs.

“Where am I?” My throat is raw. “What city is this? Who brought me here?”

They exchange a glance — perfect mirroring, like two screens refreshing at the same time.

“You are in a stabilization facility,” the woman says. “Your wellbeing is our priority.”

They guide me out of the bed before I can resist, their hands light but firm on my elbows. I try to pull back; they don’t tighten, they simply adjust, redirecting my body with the ease of people trained not to allow struggle.

“Why am I here?” I ask. “What do you want from me?”

Neither looks at me. They just smile.

“You were living in a condition of unmanaged emotion,” the man answers. “We are here to correct that.”

They lead me down a corridor so bright it hurts, into a chamber shaped like a perfect circle. No corners to hide in. No shadows to disappear into. A single reclined chair waits in the center, gleaming under the lights.

I dig my heels into the floor. “I’m not sitting in that.”

They continue smiling.

“You will be comfortable,” the woman assures me. “Correction is painless.”

“I don’t want correction.”

This time they do look at me—both at once, both with the same mild curiosity one gives an unusual insect.

“Wanting is an outdated cognitive framework,” the man says gently. “It causes suffering.”

Before I can move, they guide me into the chair with terrifying softness and begin fastening the restraints. Wrists. Ankles. Forehead brace.

My heart pounds.

“What happened to choice?” I whisper.

The woman smooths a strap across my arm as if tucking in a child.

“Preference was the first casualty of peace.”

I swallow against the rising panic. “If I refuse this—if I don’t want to live this way—just kill me—or let me end my own existence.”

“Homicide is illegal,” the man says, tone steady and warm. “Death is unnecessary. You will feel joy.”

They say it like comfort.

And in that moment—strapped, helpless, surrounded by flawless, empty faces—I understand with a clarity that aches:

I am the last person alive who remembers what a real smile feels like.

Crooked.

Weathered.

Chosen.

A robotic arm unfolds from the ceiling, descending toward the base of my skull — a thin silver needle meant to pierce the brainstem.

I turn my head toward the nearest technician — a young woman with soft brown hair, dimples carved in exactly the right places, and eyes that have never held a single feeling of her own.

And I give her a smile. My human smile.

Her synthetic grin falters.

For a heartbeat, something flickers across her face — confusion, maybe fear.

Then the needle slips into the base of my skull.

A burst of white tears across my vision.

The last true human smile disappears from the earth.

***

They release me into society the next day.

I have an apartment — a clean, soft-lit cube with a window that displays whatever sky the system chooses and a cleaning drone that zips around my feet.

Each morning, a floating panel wakes and displays my assignment:

PARK MAINTENANCE — 0800 HOURS

Sweep paths. Trim shrubs.

I do as instructed with calm efficiency.

Everyone does.

I walk the park’s smooth paths with the same perfect expression worn by every passerby — children, elders, workers, maintenance machines. We all smile, all the time.

At night I dream of pine needles and cold moss, of branches creaking under my weight, of cats purring against my ankles. Of the parents I lost. Of the daughter I never met. Of my own face lifting in a crooked grin no one programmed.

When I wake, I’m always turned toward the city’s edge, where the trees begin — dark, still, patient.

And beneath the curated joy, beneath the obedient muscles and layered directives, something in me is still mine. Maybe all those years unchipped made my mind harder to overwrite. Maybe one technician hesitated. Maybe the system simply glitched.

Whatever the reason, a welcome uneasiness, an endless spark, lives on inside me — faint, stubborn, waiting for wind.

A forest, waiting for a survivor to return.

Maybe someday I’ll follow that pull.

Maybe someday — even in a world that forbids it —

I’ll smile, genuinely, again.