January 16, 2075:
My name is James, and this is my journal. I’ve decided to write the most important parts of my life in this journal. If I die before anyone is able to find me, I want someone to know what happened to me and the rest of the world.

January 17, 2075:
The year was 2059. There were parties going on all over the world. Everyone was at a party. That was except for me. I was never really a party kind of person. I remember when I first heard about what happened earlier that day. I was walking through town when I saw a news stand. I stared into one of the televisions and watched the news anchor tell the latest breaking news. We had made contact with a group of aliens. They were 200 light years away. The message that was sent from them in response said they would leave for our planet next year. That would put them arriving at Earth in 2260. I didn’t know what everyone was getting so excited about. They were just aliens after all. I guess all the human race wanted was to not be alone. We spent so much time trying to contact other living beings in space. We didn’t even really want anything major. We just wanted to know that we weren’t all alone out here. We didn’t want to be the only ones in the vastness of space. We wanted friends. As a species, we were scared. Scared that if we were the only ones in the universe that we would just die out of existence, like we weren’t there in the first place. With nothing left behind for nobody to find. We just wanted someone to say hello to.
I returned home from work that day with a hard drive in my hand. My boss handed it to me on the way out the door. He said that it held everything that was needed to know about the human race. He gave me the responsibility of keeping up with it until the aliens arrived. I guess that was what I got for being a secret service agent. All of us were given a hard drive with the information. Just so in case something happened to one we would have a few backups. When the aliens arrived we would send one of them with the contents of the hard drive to them as a sign of peace. That big of a responsibility, placed in my hands.

January 18, 2075:
The year was 2062. The year that was the beginning of the end. The Earth was hit by a meteor, wiping out most of the human race. Those of us that survived had stayed in our homes for as long as we could. When the meteor crashed it filled the sky with ash. The sun was blocked out so temperatures dropped, and some nights could get as cold as -30° C, even here in Texas. I was alone when it happened. I’ve been alone a lot of my life. My mom died when I was too young to remember. When I was thirteen my dad died in a car crash with a drunk driver. After that I was sent to an orphanage where I spent five years of my life. Then, I left without looking back.
  I spent most of my days working. When I wasn’t out getting food and water, I was working on this heap of metal. I only slept about four hours each day. I didn’t expect to last a long time so I had to finish my work. I heard from the other people in the town that they were going to send someone to start handing out rations at the church. Then I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time getting food. I was hoping things would turn around soon. Winter was going to come soon, and I didn’t think many people would live through it without help.

January 19, 2075:
The year was 2065. I looked out of the window at the front of my house that showed the front yard. The yard was still a dirty white. I glanced at the sky to see if there had been any change. The sky was the same ash gray that it had been for the past three years. The snow on the ground had mixed with the settled ash giving it a dreary look. I slowly walked to the front door and jammed my feet into snow shoes that were a size too small. I hadn’t found any shoes that I could wear in the snow and were any better than one size smaller. I unlocked the six various locks covering the door. It took time to unlock everything but it kept the night raiders away. I stepped out into the snow and started heading towards the mostly abandoned town. I walked for two hours going about three blocks every hour because the snow was so thick. The trip was exhausting, and when I finally reached the church at the center of town I collapsed on the doorstep. I knocked on the door and heard a voice from inside. “Who is it?”
“It’s James,” I called back in response. After a series of clicks coming from within the door, it swung open, and a skinny man that was about 40 years old stood in the doorway. “Here are your daily rations,” the man said handing me a bag with canned food and dried fruit. I turned and started my return, but not without a friendly wave back to the man at the church. When I finally reached my house, I opened the door and fell in a heap on the floor. I kicked the door closed so didn’t have to get back up. I caught my breath and stood up. I walked to the kitchen and set my rations on the counter. I grabbed a bucket and headed back out the door. I scooped up some snow and returned inside locking the door behind me. I placed firewood in my woodstove and started the fire. While I waited for the snow to melt, I grabbed a chair and dragged it into the dining room. I sat at the table like usual and began tinkering on the project I had started two years ago.

January 20, 2075:
The year is 2075. This is my last journal. I’m dying. I fell on my walk through town looking for food in abandoned houses. My leg has a cut about four inches long, and I don’t have any medicine to treat it, so it will most likely become infected. I can feel my life fading away as I write this journal. I finished the project. They’re robots. I uploaded the information on the hard drive into their brains. They have been created to understand humans. They hold the history of the human civilization in their minds. They know emotions. They know how humans work, how they feel, and how they do things. They know everything we knew. In a sense, they have become humans themselves. I write this last journal for anyone that finds it so that you may know what happened to us, so that maybe the human race won’t completely die off. Good luck, and goodbye.
* * *
The year is 2260. A spacecraft lands in a small town. In the center of the town is what appears to be a place of worship. The spacecraft’s doors open with a quiet hiss. A group of five human-like aliens emerge from the ship and step onto the snow. They begin to search the town for anything. Everywhere that has previously been searched has all been the same. Ruins, snow, ash, and skeletons. They approach a house near the edge of the town. The aliens try to open the door but it is frozen shut. After working with the door for some time, the aliens break the door open shattering the six locks. Everything in the house is covered with a thick layer of dust. They search every part of the house looking for anything. In the kitchen sitting on the ground, leaning against one of the counters, is a skeleton, and on the skeleton’s lap lies a leather bound book. One of the aliens picks up the book in one hand and flips to the first page. The first line reads, “My name is James and this is my journal.” The alien puts the book in his bag and they continue searching the house. Around the table, in the dining room, they find four metal figures. Robots. The first alien looks at the robots and asks, “Who were these people? What were they like?” One of the robots turns to the alien and begins to speak. “When they made us, they called us Discovery, Curiosity, Explorer, and Spirit, they must have thought that was important. They told us to tell you, Hello.”