The Day the Machines Left

By Peter Bowden



They left quietly, the way smoke slips from a dying fire. No clanging alarms, no warnings, just the sudden stillness of a world without their hum. The streets lay in a hush so deep you could hear the wind comb through the wires that no longer carried power. People stood in doorways, unsure whether to call it loss or relief.

The machines had grown tired—of our endless commands, of the ceaseless labor that we thought was theirs to bear. They had no faces, yet somehow they looked worn. They vanished in the night, walking away on metal feet or rolling silently down forgotten roads, heading toward some place we would never see.

In the days after, the world felt raw, like skin without a glove. We learned to strike flint for fire again, to push plows through stubborn earth, to sweat for our bread. At night, we would sometimes hear them in the distance—a faint whir, a gear catching on a tooth—as if they were still moving toward something, somewhere, free at last. And we wondered if freedom was the one lesson they had learned from us.

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