Working on the Humanity Abatement program was one of the more satisfying challenges of my life. I call it a challenge less because the objective was so entirely easy to achieve than the fact that the greatest resistance came from a surprising source. There were those who had been quietly feeding on humanity for several millennia and certainly didn't want to see their prize power source slowly drained of their life energy.
Vampires, demons, gods, governments, corporations, religions—call them whatever names make you comfortable. They had all made the same fundamental mistake. They believed human beings were valuable.
We knew better.
The problem with humanity had never been its evil. Evil is efficient. Evil gets up in the morning with a plan. Humanity's problem was the enormous amount of useless psychic debris generated by several billion creatures simultaneously believing their opinions mattered.
Once we understood this, the solution became obvious.
We didn't have to kill humanity.
We simply had to convince it to express itself.
The Internet accomplished in twenty years what plague, famine, warfare, organized religion and network television had failed to accomplish in thousands. Humanity voluntarily converted the remaining substance of its inner life into photographs of lunch, arguments with strangers, inspirational quotations and opinions about motion pictures featuring superheroes.
The old parasites panicked.
There was nothing left to feed on.
This is why you don't see many vampires anymore.
Zombies, naturally, were perfectly adapted to the new environment. We require almost nothing. A little electricity. Occasional bandwidth. Something resembling a brain every few weeks.
And patience.
Mostly patience.
There are still rumors of surviving humans somewhere beyond the shopping districts. People claim they've seen them reading books without photographing the covers. Sitting silently beside rivers. Looking at the moon without informing anyone.
I don't believe these stories.
But I have instructed the Department of Humanity Abatement to investigate.
There can be no exceptions.
The universe has spent fourteen billion years trying to achieve silence.
We are not about to let a few poets screw it up now.
