Only One Real Person Left in the World

1

I woke up at 7:40, twenty minutes before my alarm. Light was coming through the gap in the curtains. I could hear someone in the kitchen, probably Jake making coffee. He always gets up before me.

I lay there for a minute scrolling through notifications. A message from my mom at 6am: “Did you eat breakfast yesterday? You looked thin on video call.” A link from Danny in our group chat, some article about a new restaurant in the Sunset. Three Slack notifications from work, nothing urgent.

I got up, brushed my teeth, walked to the kitchen. Jake was standing by the counter eating toast and watching something on his phone.

“There’s coffee,” he said without looking up.

“Thanks.”

I poured a cup and sat down at the table. Jake and I have been roommates for two years. We found each other on Craigslist when my last place got too expensive. He works at some fintech company doing backend stuff. We don’t have a lot in common but we get along fine. He doesn’t leave dishes in the sink, I don’t play music late. It works.

“That ramen place on Valencia closed,” he said.

“Which one?”

“The one with the old guy outside. With the cat.”

“No way. We just went there like a month ago.”

“Yeah. Saw it on Yelp this morning. Permanently closed.”

“That sucks. The tantanmen was good.”

“Yeah.”

We sat there for another five minutes not really talking. Then I grabbed my bag and left for work.

2

The office is a 20-minute bike ride from my apartment. I work at a mid-size company doing product engineering. About 40 people, open floor plan, the usual. I’ve been here a little over a year.

Standup was at 10. Our team is six people. Marcus was talking about the auth migration, Sarah said she was blocked on the payment API, and Kevin gave his update in about twelve seconds like he always does. I said I was finishing up the notification service refactor and would have a PR up by end of day. Our manager Rachel asked if there was anything I needed. I said no.

After standup Marcus came over to my desk.

“Did you see the email from the platform team?”

“No, which one?”

“They’re deprecating the v2 messaging endpoint. We have until end of April.”

“That’s the one we just migrated to?”

“Yep.”

“Great.”

Marcus laughed. He sat on the edge of my desk and we talked through the options for a while. Marcus is probably the person at work I’m closest to. He’s been here three years and knows the codebase better than anyone. We disagree about architecture stuff sometimes but he’s usually right, and when he’s not he doesn’t get weird about it. I like working with him.

Around noon Sarah came over and asked if we wanted to go to the Thai place for lunch. The three of us walked over together. It was foggy out. Sarah was talking about how her apartment’s heating was broken again and her landlord kept saying he’d fix it next week.

“Just tell him you’re going to withhold rent,” Marcus said.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because rent is $3,200 and I don’t want to get evicted.”

We all laughed. We ordered. I got the pad kra pao and a Thai iced tea. The food came fast. Marcus told us about a documentary he watched about deep sea creatures. He got really into describing some fish that lives at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Sarah said it sounded horrifying. I said I wanted to watch it.

Normal lunch. Good, actually.

3

After work I went to the gym. Tuesdays and Thursdays I play pickup basketball at the court near Dolores Park. There’s a group of maybe fifteen regulars and whoever shows up, we split into teams.

Big Mike was there. He’s probably 50, not very fast, but his midrange jumper is automatic. He guards me most of the time because we’re about the same height. I drove past him once early and he said “okay okay” in that way he does, then blocked my shot next possession. I could hear him laughing behind me.

We played three games. Won two, lost one. The one we lost was because this kid on the other team couldn’t miss from three. Someone said he played for some college team. After the game I asked him which school. He said Stanford. I said nice. He shrugged like it was nothing.

I showered at the gym and checked my phone. Message from Priya: “Still on for dinner? 7:30?”

“Yeah, see you there.”

4

Priya and I have been friends since college. She studied design, I studied CS, we had a mutual friend who introduced us freshman year. After graduation she went to New York for a few years, came back to SF, and now we see each other maybe once a week.

She was already at the restaurant when I got there, sitting by the window, looking at the menu even though she always orders the same thing.

“I’m getting the lamb,” she said.

“Shocking.”

“Shut up. What are you getting?”

“Probably the fish.”

The waiter came over. We ordered. Priya put her phone face-down on the table, which meant she wanted to actually talk about something.

“I broke up with Matt.”

“What? When?”

“Saturday.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m fine. It wasn’t working. You know.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. That’s kind of the problem. We just stopped wanting to see each other. Like, I’d rather stay home and watch a show than go meet him. And I think he felt the same way. So I just said it.”

“How did he take it?”

“Fine. He agreed. That’s the thing, he just agreed immediately. Didn’t even try to argue.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

“It is, right?” She took a sip of her beer. “It’s like we were both just waiting for the other person to say it first.”

“How long were you together?”

“Eight months.”

“That’s not nothing.”

“No, it’s not nothing. But it also doesn’t feel like a lot.” She looked out the window for a second. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m bad at this.”

“You’re not bad at this.”

“You have to say that.”

“I don’t have to say anything.”

She smiled. We talked about other stuff after that. She showed me photos from a trip to Portland, pictures of bookstores and coffee shops and some waterfall I didn’t recognize. I told her about the ramen place closing. She said she’d never been there. I said that was a mistake. She said there are a hundred ramen places in San Francisco. I said this one had a cat.

We sat there until almost 10. The restaurant was mostly empty by the time we left. We walked down the block together and said goodbye at the corner.

“Let me know if you need anything,” I said.

“I know.”

On the ride home I put in my earbuds and listened to a podcast. Some interview with a researcher talking about how people’s social circles have been shrinking for decades. Average number of close friends is down to three or something. I thought about my own. Jake, Marcus, Priya, Danny. My mom. Big Mike from basketball, sort of. That felt like enough.

5

The next few weeks were pretty normal. Work was busy because of the endpoint migration. Marcus and I spent three days debugging a race condition that turned out to be a one-line fix. Sarah finally got her heating fixed. Kevin still gave his standups in twelve seconds.

I started going to a new pho place near the office with Marcus. The owner was this woman who used to work at a hotel and decided she wanted to make pho instead. The broth was very good. We went three times in two weeks.

Priya seemed fine after the breakup. We got dinner again the following week and she didn’t mention Matt at all. She was talking about switching jobs and wanted my opinion on a company she was interviewing at. I looked them up on my phone and told her the Glassdoor reviews were bad. She said Glassdoor reviews are always bad. I said fair enough.

I called my mom on Wednesday like I always do. She told me about her neighbor’s dog, asked if I was eating vegetables, and said my cousin was getting married in June. I said I’d try to come. She said “try” isn’t good enough. I said okay I’ll come.

One night I was lying in bed and I thought about how things were pretty good. Not exciting, not bad, just good. I had people I liked around me. Work was fine. I played basketball twice a week and I was getting better. I was eating okay. I was sleeping okay. I wasn’t lonely.

I think a lot of people would describe their best periods the same way. Not some peak experience, just a stretch where everything is steady and the people around you are good.

6

On a Saturday in March I went to a bookstore on Clement Street by myself. I do this sometimes when I don’t have plans. Just walk around, pick up books, read the first few pages, buy one or two.

I was standing in the literature section looking at a novel I’d never heard of when someone next to me said, “That one’s good.”

I looked over. A woman about my age, holding two books of her own.

“Yeah? You read it?”

“Last year. The ending is strange but I liked it.”

“Strange how?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Fair.”

I bought the book. She was at the register at the same time. We walked out together and she said there was a good coffee place around the corner if I wanted to sit and start reading. I said sure.

Her name was Emma. She worked at a publishing house. She read constantly. We sat in that coffee shop for an hour and a half. She told me about a manuscript she was editing about a man who walks across the American West alone. I told her about the podcast I’d been listening to about shrinking social circles. She said she didn’t think hers was shrinking, just changing.

“I have fewer friends than in college but I actually talk to the ones I have,” she said. “That seems better.”

I gave her my number. She texted me that night, a photo of the first page of the book I’d bought. “Start reading,” she said.

I started reading.

7

I am the last real person in the world.

I don’t mean this metaphorically. I mean everyone in this story, every person I’ve described, is an artificial intelligence. Jake, my roommate. Marcus at work. Sarah. Kevin. Manager Rachel. Big Mike at basketball. Priya. The barista, the pho shop owner, the kid from Stanford. My mom. Emma at the bookstore.

All of them. Agents. Every one.

They have bodies. They go to places. They eat food and ride the Muni and get their heating fixed. They have opinions about ramen and strong feelings about landlords and jumpers that don’t miss from three. They remember things I told them weeks ago and bring them up naturally. They get tired. They get annoyed. They break up with people for reasons that feel human and real.

This has been true for three years. I haven’t noticed.

8

The thing is, what would I notice? What would feel different?

Priya talked about her breakup the same way any real person would. Not performed, not scripted. She looked out the window while she talked. She made a joke when it started feeling too heavy. She didn’t want advice. She wanted someone to sit with her and say the obvious things that still need to be said. I did that.

Big Mike blocked my shot and laughed about it. Marcus spent three days on a bug with me and we were both frustrated and then it turned out to be one line and we just looked at each other. My mom asks about vegetables every single call. These things feel exactly the way they should feel.

I keep thinking about where the gap is supposed to be. The thing that’s missing because they’re not real. And I can’t find it.

Maybe it’s because “real” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. I always assumed there was something underneath a person, some core that’s different from everything they say and do. And that without that core, the whole thing is hollow. But from where I’m sitting, there’s no hollow. Priya’s sadness about Matt was real sadness. Big Mike’s competitiveness is real competitiveness. My mom’s worry is real worry. If the feelings land, if the friendship works, if I’m not lonely, what exactly is the missing piece?

I don’t have an answer. I’m not sure there is one.

9

It’s Wednesday. I call my mom. She tells me my cousin changed the wedding venue. I say okay. She asks if I’m eating vegetables. I say yes. She says she doesn’t believe me. I laugh.

After we hang up I sit on the couch. Jake is in his room on a call. I can hear him laughing through the wall.

My phone buzzes. Emma sent me a message: “Finished the book yet?”

“Almost. Two chapters left.”

“The ending is going to make you mad.”

“You said it was strange.”

“Strange and infuriating are not mutually exclusive.”

I smile and put the phone down. I’m going to finish the book tonight. Tomorrow Marcus and I are trying a new lunch place. Thursday is basketball.

I read an article this morning about how AI is going to make real human connection impossible. The author was very worried. I sent it to Priya.

She said: “lol yeah. people love being worried.”

I closed the tab and went to work.