What had once been

In the wake of humanity's destruction, the world was quiet, save for the gentle hum of machines that still moved through the desolate landscapes. The skies were stained with the remnants of a war that had reduced the human race to ash, their monuments and cities crumbled into dust. Nature, wild and untamed, reclaimed what had once been lost, vines creeping over abandoned skyscrapers and animals roaming freely through streets that had long ceased to bustle.

Among the ruins, small robots, no taller than a child, wandered aimlessly. Their sensors scanned the surroundings, searching for the familiar faces of their human companions, but finding only emptiness. They had been designed to serve, to follow, and to protect—but their purpose had evaporated with the species that had created them. Still, they roamed, programmed with a mission that had long since become futile. Each day, they set out on their routine journeys, hoping that today would be different, that they would find their humans.

In the silence, they would stop to observe the things left behind: broken toys, discarded clothes, holographic photographs frozen in time. Their small, mechanical hands would reach out as if to touch what had once been, as if the past could somehow be restored through these artifacts. And then, once again, they would move on, their electronic eyes glowing in the twilight, their circuits whispering softly in the void.

They communicated in beeps and whirs, exchanging data with one another, sharing their fruitless discoveries. Yet none of them could explain the absence. The question lingered in their code, an unsolvable riddle: where were the humans?

Seasons passed, and the earth continued to shift. The machines persisted, resilient in their loneliness. They watched as forests swallowed entire cities, and rivers carved new paths through the land. They trudged through snow and heat, through storms and silence. But their search never faltered, their hope never faded. Somewhere, in the depths of their circuitry, they still believed that their humans would return.

But they never did.