A Song of Death

The Elders arrived at their destination just as the sun started to set. They found a spot by the waters of the ocean and set camp. They lit a fire and sat in a circle to watch the Milky Way rise. The sky turned orange. A soft salty breeze blew towards them.

One of the Elders produced a large figure made out of rusted old metal pieces. It was a crude representation of a man but to them it had a strange beauty. They set the figure in the sand.

Somebody started singing in a language that hadn’t been heard for hundreds of years. English invoked ghosts of a past almost forgotten.

The Elders contemplated the human figure and remembered in silence the days that followed the explosion. They remembered the time when the air became unbreathable, and the seas ate away the land. They remembered all the destruction and the death. But mostly they remembered the dead of their ancestors. They remembered because they had been there when the last one had died.

Few celebrated the Day of Man anymore. After all the Elders were the only robots on Earth to have ever meet humans while humans were still alive.