TEN, NINE, EIGHT, ...

“Shh! The robots are counting!”

SEVEN, SIX, ...

“What are they counting?”

“Shh!”

FIVE, FOUR, THREE, ...

“What is it, mom? What is it?”

“Us, they’re counting us, shh!”

TWO, ONE, ...

“Where did you g…”

ZERO.

“The last human on Earth did not complete her last word,” said the slime in the well, “the last human on Earth did not complete her first decade on Earth.” When asked who the killer was, the slime turned into foam with no further comment, eternally refusing to elaborate on the matter.

This could be a science fiction story, but instead of lasers and spaceships, let’s rewind to the day when a flower first bloomed in the desert.

THREE HUNDRED FIFTEEN MILLION FIVE HUNDRED SIXTY-NINE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY

It was a miracle. People from all over the world, all united in one place, jumping over each other in an attempt to contemplate the intricate bloom of the flower, but in the end all they could see were other people’s heads and shoulders. It was in this wild sea of broken lines of sight that a particularly familiar pair of shoulders caught a man’s attention.

On this particular day, the density of people around the blooming flower made it almost impossible for anyone to walk. However, as a photographer, sailing people was not only this man’s talent, but also his profession, and through a series of sophisticated manoeuvres he soon found himself standing right behind those shoulders.

Those shoulders, they were familiar indeed. It took her no time at all to recognize him when she felt his hand tap gently on her shoulder. The moment their eyes met, they were transported back to the old sepia days of their youth, when they used to meet at the downtown café after work.

“There used to be cafés on every street,” the woman shouted, trying to get her words out over the din, “now all that’s left are those stupid self-service machines, they’re everywhere you look.”

It was said that nostalgia was the feeling among those who longed for the romance of reading a newspaper with a cup of coffee in a place where other people around did the same, then putting the newspaper down only to find a long-awaited face approach in heels.

“Nothing is romantic anymore, nothing is human,” lamented the man, “we’re losing our humanity every day, and once it’s all gone, what’s left from us?”

More than a conversation, it was an intellectual exchange that seemed to have come out of nowhere, as if taken out of an empty book on existentialism. Soon enough, romance was the feeling among the two, a feeling so warm and abstract in nature that it could never have place in any cold and lifeless realm.

In a chain of events, history repeated.

TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-TWO MILLION FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY-FIVE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED SIXTEEN

In the middle of the desert, another flower bloomed: a glimmer of humanity in a world that was otherwise quickly losing it to robots and machines. She was to be the hope of the analog way of life, a fighter for the romance of things that once were, but would soon no longer be.

Shortly after she was born, her parents became briefly famous for running the world’s only human café, before closing it down a few months later due to a severe shortage of newspapers and heels. Empty chairs, empty streets, and empty benches were no strangers to Analogue, as she was known at school, for they had all been deserted for as long as she could remember.

SIXTY-THREE MILLION ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED FOUR

“Nostalgia is the feeling among those who long for the romance of reading a newspaper with a cup of coffee in a place where other people around do the same, then putting the newspaper down only to find a long-awaited face approach in heels.”

—read Analogue, as soon as she could read, the last thing her father wrote before he disappeared: the fossilized remains of an almost extinct feeling, now hanging on the wall in a picture frame. But what did the coffee taste like? What did the newspapers look like? What was the sound those heels made on the floor? Only few could tell, and only those who could, could feel the true romance and nostalgia.

“They used to walk among people, now we walk among machines.”

—wrote Analogue as soon as she could write, having learned more about the past than any other person alive who was born thereafter. Such a concise and simplistic sentence was the beginning of a story, a story that was to be left forever unfinished the moment her pencil was stopped.

“WRITING IS NOT ALLOWED,” said the machine.

Before she knew it, the house was burning down.

“They used to walk among people, now we walk among ashes,” thought Analogue to herself, as her illusion of a human world began to fade, right there before the flames. One day, in a desperation to find a new home, her mother came across the wisdom slime, an eyeless, mouthless liquid creature from another world that lived in an abandoned well.

“The robots are counting,” said the slime in subtitles.

“What are they counting?” asked the mother.

“They are counting humans,” it replied.