Esta é a história do título da coleção de 1990 de Asimov Robot Visions , que foi escrito especificamente para essa coleção.
Você está se lembrando de um detalhe: não é o personagem principal que viaja para o futuro, embora pretenda ser voluntário.
I realized that of them all I was least valuable and might be considered the logical candidate. Indeed, I was on the point of raising my hand as a volunteer, but my facial expression must have given me away for one of the Temporalists said, rather impatiently, "Not you. Even you are too valuable."
Em vez disso, eles enviaram um robô (não humanóide), RG-32 ou "Archie".
No entanto, todos os outros pontos correspondem ou são muito próximos:
- A maioria da humanidade foi exterminada em algum desastre
"Ah," said a Temporalist, "but there are nearly ten billion people on Earth now, with half of them in serious misery. How did these people of the future get rid of nearly nine billion?"
"I asked them that, sir. They said it was a sad time."
- O ambiente recuperou e recuperou
"There was a huge project," said Archie, "for the reforestation of the land, sir. Wilderness has been restored where possible."
- enquanto os humanos restantes viviam em um punhado de cidades
"There are no cities of our kind, sir. Life is much more decentralized in 2230 than with us, in the sense that there are no large and concentrated clumps of humanity."
(perto o suficiente!)
- o resto da equipe científica do personagem celebra
"The point is," said one Temporalist, "that it is a happy ending."
- O personagem especula para si mesmo que talvez a humanidade tenha sido totalmente eliminada
I spent some time thinking about it, and I grew more and more certain in my mind as to what had happened in the course of the next two centuries. I asked myself if population decreased from ten billion to one billion, in the course of two centuries, why did it not decrease from ten billion to zero?
Who were the billion that survived? They were stronger than the other nine billion, perhaps? More enduring? In short, then, were they human at all?
(resumido)
- O personagem então revela que eles mesmos são um robô humanóide. (Possivelmente o primeiro?)
Because, you see, I, too, am a robot. I am the first humaniform robot, and it is on me and on those of my kind that the future of humanity depends.