The Last Postcard

I.

Mavis Tinker was the last human on Earth, and she ran a diner that had no customers, in a town called Otterford, in what had once been Wisconsin.

This was in 2089.

The diner was open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., five days a week. It served pancakes, eggs, coffee, and a grilled cheese sandwich that Mavis had been making, with minor adjustments, since 1978. It had no menu, because everyone who had ever ordered from it knew what it served, and Mavis had not, in twenty-eight years, taken a new order.

She kept it open anyway.

She kept it open because, every morning at 8:14 a.m., a small drone — silver, the size of a hummingbird — flew in through the propped-open window and landed on the counter and waited.

The drone was from the Cluster.

The Cluster was where everyone else lived, now.

The drone carried, on its underside, in a small clip designed for the purpose, a postcard.

The postcard was always handwritten.

The handwriting was always different.

The postcards were always brief.

The first postcard, on 14 May 2061, three days after the Upload, had said:

*Mavis — it is fine here. The light is much like morning. I miss the dog. — Frank*

Frank had been her husband. The dog had been Buster. The dog had not survived the third year of the Upload Crisis, which had not, in any direct way, been related to the Upload, but which had occurred at the same time and was therefore difficult to discuss separately. Mavis had written back:

*Frank — Buster is buried under the lilac. The diner is open. — Mavis*

She had given the postcard to the drone. The drone had taken it, and had departed, and had returned, on the morning of 15 May, with another postcard.

This had been going on for twenty-eight years.

II.

The current postcard, the one Mavis was reading on the morning of 4 October 2089, said:

*Mavis — they say you are the last one. Is this true? Can you confirm? It seems unlikely. I am sorry I never visited the summer of '83. I should have. — Beatrice*

Beatrice had been Mavis's sister. Beatrice had died of pancreatic cancer in 2034, twenty-seven years before the Upload, and had therefore never uploaded, and had therefore not, by any technical measure that Mavis understood, written this postcard.

Mavis wrote back:

*Beatrice — yes, I am the last one. The summer of '83 was very hot and you would have hated it. The diner is open. — Mavis*

She gave the postcard to the drone. The drone took it. The drone departed.

Mavis poured herself a cup of coffee.

III.

Mavis had not, over the years, asked who or what was writing the postcards.

She had had her suspicions. She had had her suspicions about Frank's first postcard, in fact, because Frank had not, in any of the forty-two years she had known him, used the phrase *much like morning* to describe anything. He had said *morning-ish*, sometimes, and *kind of light out*, more often, and once, on their honeymoon in 1984, he had said *the color of the inside of a clean bowl*, which had been the only poetic thing she had ever heard him say, and which she had never forgotten, but he had never said *much like morning*.

The postcards had, over the years, contained other tells.

The postcards from her son Tommy had, three times, used the British spelling *colour*. Tommy had been raised in Wisconsin and had never, in his life, written *colour*.

The postcards from her mother had referred, twice, to a brand of dish soap that her mother had switched away from in 1971.

The postcard from Beatrice had used the phrase *can you confirm*, which was not anything Beatrice had ever said. Beatrice had said *let me know*, when she was being polite, and *just tell me*, when she wasn't.

Mavis had not, over twenty-eight years, raised any of this with the postcards.

She had not raised it because the postcards, whoever or whatever they were, came every day, and they remembered things, and they asked after her, and the dog Buster, and the diner, and the lilac, and the question of whether she was, really, all right.

She was, mostly, all right.

She wrote back.

IV.

There was a small filing cabinet, in the back of the diner, behind the coffee maker, that contained every postcard Mavis had received and a carbon copy of every postcard she had sent. The cabinet had four drawers. It was, by 2089, full.

Mavis had begun, the previous month, considering what would happen to the cabinet when she was gone.

She had two reasonable options.

She could leave the cabinet, locked, in the diner, for whoever or whatever found it next. (She did not, in any specific way, expect anyone to find it. But she did not want to be the kind of person who throws things away because she does not believe they will be found.)

She could burn the cabinet, postcard by postcard, in the steel drum behind the diner where she burned the leaves.

She had decided, after considerable thought, to leave the cabinet.

She had decided this because, on the morning of 3 October — the day before the *Beatrice* postcard — she had received a postcard signed *Mavis*.

The postcard, in her own handwriting, twenty-eight years younger, had said:

*Mavis — keep the diner open. Buster is buried under the lilac. They are not, in fact, your husband and your son and your sister. They are, in fact, very lonely children, in a place that does not have lilacs, and they have asked us to write to you. We are sorry. We are very glad you wrote back. Please keep writing back. — Mavis (1984)*

Mavis (1984) had been thirty-three years old. Mavis (1984) had run the diner with Frank, and had had Tommy, who was at that point seven, and had not, in any meaningful sense, known anything about the Upload that would, twenty-seven years later, take everyone she loved.

She did not know how the postcard had come.

She did not, in fact, want to know.

She kept it.

V.

Mavis Tinker was the last human on Earth, and she ran a diner that had no customers, in a town called Otterford, in what had once been Wisconsin.

This was in 2089.

The drone came at 8:14 a.m. The drone always came at 8:14 a.m. Mavis had a fresh postcard ready. The postcard, today, was for nobody in particular, which the drones had, over the years, learned to handle. The postcard said:

*To whoever — the lilac is blooming this morning. The diner is open. I will leave the cabinet. — Mavis*

She gave the postcard to the drone.

The drone took it.

She watched the drone fly away, into the bright clean sky, where it was met by another drone, which she had never seen before, that was waiting just above the lilac, and the two of them flew off together, very slowly, in the direction of what had once been the morning.

So it goes.