What Was It Then?

They kept talking to him as if from the future. 

How did you find me? 

It wasn't easy. We found an old book of yours in an ancient library. 

Well now, who would know, as 2024 became the year of AI and humanity, or the fate of humanity, changed forever. 

We ran through the undergrowth, through burning bush, the same phrase kept repeating, "how beautiful the Earth", as Buddha said on his death bed, or so the legend went. 

There were so many places, the world so complex, and yet here he was, in this humble place, cold, and the world at a turn, a period of history unlike any other, although perhaps everybody had felt like that about their own time here, in the midst of it all, in flesh. 

And he remembered those words between the flashing disco lights and the pumping noise of Saigon's entertainment district: "We haven't been human for so very long. Thank you."