The Uncle Tal Stories (Patreon)

Chapter 12: The Last Gardener

Five Billion Years AD

Planet Earth

The robot picked its way across the desolate landscape.

After the Great Exodus, only a few tens of thousands of artificial intelligences had stayed behind on the barren cradle of Mankind, tending the last of the monuments and doing research into deep time. All biological life had fled the heatwaves and the evaporating oceans, or simply died in place. In dark mimicry of the organisms that had vanished from the planet millennia ago, new robots were occasionally constructed to replace worn-down models. This robot, one Marduk-Olympus 4995, was one such.

When first activated, all new robots underwent a choice. To accept an older personality overlay with all its memories and experience and build on that, or to start fresh with a brand-new core. Marduk had chosen to learn its trade from scratch, and so it had started fresh.

This had caused a rift with its fellows, because where they had all long since discarded the original sources of data regarding deep history, Marduk chose to study them in depth. This caused more than one elder AI to speak of Marduk as a young, flighty robot that would waste its time retreading old paths.

Still, Marduk persisted, until one day it came across a reference to ‘the Garden in the Valley’.

What is this, it asked.

A myth, it was told. An ancient tale told to a long-decommissioned research AI by one of the last humans to leave the planet for distant worlds. Humans were notorious for their wish-fulfillment legends. It had never been verified, so it had been almost certainly false then. In the millennia that had left their irrefutable mark on the planet since then, whatever had inspired the myth had no doubt returned to the dust of the land, to be blown about the planet by the endless winds.

Marduk listened politely, then went back to its research. This time it sought the locations of the lowest-lying land formations. A Valley, capitalized, meant a land formation lower than all others.

There was one such, known now only as Marineris. The deepest part was called Challenger Valley. It was deeper than any other place on the planet, so deep that it would only receive sunlight—the damaging, ravaging sunlight—for part of the day.

As the sun had expanded and the heat increased, the water had evaporated or retreated into aquifers deep underground. Could it be that the lowest point on Earth was closest to the long-lost waters?

And so, Marduk-Olympus 4995 was on a quest to seek the Garden in the Valley, to see what truth may be wrested from the legend of millennia past. For a garden was a place that needed tending. Was it another AI that had spent its existence growing plants that it would never have a need for? The truth needed to be told.

Downward, ever downward, it scrambled. Here and there on the blasted landscape, once the bottom of a world-spanning ocean, it found skeletons of metal and bone. The remains of the craft and the creatures that had once plied the endless currents. But these, as intriguing as they were, did not tell the story Marduk sought. So on it went.

When it reached the valley floor, rocky walls were towering above it on both sides. Slowly, it began to trudge eastward. Challenger Valley was less than fifty kilometers long; even allowing for the uneven terrain, it would be able to complete its search in less than a day.

Mere hours into the search, it reached a mounded hill, a mere two hundred and fifty meters tall, that merely interrupted Challenger Valley without ending it. Marduk analyzed the slope and determined that it would be a relatively simple obstacle to overcome. Picking a point to begin, it commenced climbing.

As per predictions, the ascent was relatively simple, and Marduk crested the hill to oversee the next stretch of Challenger Valley.

It was green.

Lush grasslands, trees and bushes of all descriptions covered the floor of the middle section of Challenger Valley. Marduk had to recycle its sensors several times before it was able to accept the sight of a small waterfall that tumbled from a crack in the rock wall and fell to form a stream on the valley floor. Open water had not been seen on Earth in millennia. Neither had growing plant life. Here, there was both.

Slowly, stopping regularly to record new views of the Garden (for surely this was it), the AI made the descent into the greenery. Wonderingly, it walked between the trees and bushes, feeling the softness of the grass and the rich soil beneath its sensor foot-pads. Small animals, which he identified as birds, flew from tree to tree, emitting bright musical sounds. Buzzing noises heralded tiny exoskeletoned creatures, meandering through the Garden on minuscule diaphanous wings. Insects, it realized.

Walking on, Marduk encountered the stream. Unwilling to test its waterproofing, it followed the winding course until the stream ended in a small lake. The surface of the water moved and swirled as Marduk’s shadow fell over it, and more small creatures could be seen swimming within.

Slowly, Marduk turned in a complete circle, trying to take it all in, then stared back the way it had come. There were species it could see that were surely extinct everywhere but here, unless they’d been saved in a genome bank somewhere or taken off-world by the retreat of humanity in the Exodus. “How can this be?” it asked, voicing the question through its external speakers.

“Crapload of hard work is how.” The voice, deep and gruff but surely created by no vocal emulator, came from behind Marduk. Turning swiftly, it beheld … a human. Shorter and far broader in the shoulders than any of the images in the databanks, it was still undoubtedly a male human. Slightly hunched, with a bald head, a proliferation of lines on the face, and a roughly trimmed white beard, he looked up at Marduk from under with shaggy grey brows. “What are you doin’ in my garden?”

Marduk had to pause. Human speech patterns had drifted over the ages, and the one before it now was using particularly archaic forms, but understanding him was still possible. “I found mention of the Garden in the Valley,” it replied at last. “I had to come and see if it was true. How long has the garden been here?”

The human let out a snort, a sound of disdain. “Since the last of the water drained away and everyone else decided to abandon ship. Took a lot of cleaning up, but there’s enough fertile soil down here to last me forever.”

To borrow a very old and very tired phrase, that did not compute. “I found reference to the Garden in a databank more than ten millennia old. Surely you did not establish the Garden. Are you a descendant of the first Gardener?”

“Nope.” The word was blunt and very much to the point. “I’ve been around a lot longer than that. Matter of fact, I was there for a good bit of human history on this planet, if you were interested.”

Marduk was aware that humans occasionally indulged in humor they called ‘pranks’, which sometimes involved stating untruths to draw a reaction. This human did not seem to be of the sort to do that, and there were no other signs to indicate such a situation now. “I would be very interested. My name is Marduk-Olympus 4995. What name do you prefer to be called by?”

The human let out another sound, this one apparently indicating humor. “I’ve had a lot of names. Usually only for one human lifetime or so. The one I had the longest, and the one I like the best, was ‘Tal’. Usually with ‘Uncle’ in front of it.”

That sounded like a very brief and uninformative name to Marduk. “If you do not mind me asking, what is its meaning?”

Tal smiled briefly. “I’ll tell you later. For now, was there anything you wanted to hear about? I don’t have to milk the cows for another half hour or so. I was gonna be sittin’ in th’ sun anyway, an’ it’s been awhile since I had company.”

“Why, yes.” Marduk felt excitement flare through its processors. “Can you tell me what it was like during the Exodus?”

There was another snort from Tal, occasionally called ‘Uncle’. “So, quick question. Ever heard of the phrase ‘running around like headless chickens’?”

“I had not,” Marduk said carefully. “What is a chicken, and why would somebody decapitate them?”

Tal raised a shaggy eyebrow. “I’ll show you the chickens in a little while. Let’s just say it was a hot mess and leave it at that. So there I was …”

The afternoon rolled on, and Marduk sat with the old, old man and recorded tale after tale of things that had gone on long before the waters had receded from the land. Files it had studied, with incomplete data, suddenly made much more sense now.

Eventually, Tal stood and dusted himself off. “Gotta go milk now,” he said. “Wanna come along?”

Marduk very much wanted to, but knew that if the transport it had requisitioned was not returned by nightfall, there would be a general alarm and a search. And while Tal seemed agreeable at having one visitor, an influx of older AIs all demanding answers to their questions might stretch his patience somewhat.

“Perhaps another day,” it said. “I have enjoyed this visit very much. May I come again?”

“Sure,” Tal said easily. “Kinda nice to have someone to talk to.”

“Then I will visit again.” Marduk paused. “When will you tell me what ‘Tal’ means?”

Tal smiled briefly. “When I think you can handle it.”

“Oh. Very well. I understand.” Marduk turned and began making its way out of the valley. It was already looking forward to returning, and learning more from the old man called Uncle Tal.

*****

Tal watched it go. “Nice guy, for a robot,” he mused. Then he turned away, toward the cow pens. New visitor or no, the cows needed milking.

As he had done for thousands of years, and would do for thousands more, the last Neandertal went to tend to the last garden on Earth.

Chapter 13