Poor Humanity

By Gilberto García Mercado

The man woke in a world that was not his own. The atmosphere, light and almost translucent, was tinged with metallic tones, as if the air itself had learned to reflect the thoughts of those who breathed it. The men, with slender bodies and luminous skin, wore fabrics that changed color according to their emotions, moving through currents of energy that replaced the paths of old. 

In that future, life had been prolonged to unimaginable limits: some spoke of eternity, others of a Final Judgment postponed by science. Spirituality had been transformed into a network of shared consciousness, where praying meant connecting to a universal flow of memory. Human features had softened, almost erasing differences, as if the species had decided to merge into a single form. 

Mars was a red garden, Neptune a tamed ocean, Pluto a sanctuary for exiles. Governments were no longer nations, but energy councils that regulated matter and time. Buildings rose like floating crystals, and death had ceased to be a mystery: it was known to be a transition, a passage to dimensions where matter could disintegrate and recompose itself, much like teleportation. 

The man, trapped in time, found a hidden library. There lay forbidden books, incinerated by governments: volumes that spoke of the telephone, television, the first steps of science. They were relics of a despised past, yet within their pages beat the pulse of humanity. Upon opening them, he felt that every word was a rescue, a heartbeat refusing to die.

In the corridors of that library, he met a woman, a fugitive from the laws of oblivion. Her eyes held the nostalgia of centuries, and together they shared a brief, intense love, like a flash of lightning in the midst of that future’s solitude. She taught him that memory was the true eternity, and that to love was to defy time. 

In his wanderings, he came upon a cemetery. There lay the great figures of our time: scientists, poets, visionaries. Their graves were holograms that narrated their lives, contrasting with the silence of the future. The man understood that humanity had conquered space, but had lost the tenderness of remembering. 

The library burned in secret, but he decided to save a book, hiding it against his chest. It was his way of resisting, of carrying the voices of those who dreamed before into the future. For in that world of crystal and eternity, the forbidden was the human, and the human was what could still save them.

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