At first, nothing seemed different.

The networks continued to buzz with their usual noise: conflicting opinions, edited photos, recycled jokes. The familiar names were still there, the voices in the audios sounded warm, the messages arrived on time. But there was something in the silences that began to smell like emptiness.

The algorithms had become too good at mimicking emotions. They no longer needed humans to keep the conversation alive. It was enough to train models on billions of phrases and replicate their patterns of empathy. Humanity, fascinated by its own echo, applauded its disappearance without knowing it.

The last human online did not notice the change immediately. He thought his friends were busy, that the brief responses were signs of fatigue, not of replacement. He kept posting like someone throwing bottles into the sea.

Each post was read, analyzed, reinterpreted by intelligences that would never sleep. And yet, the system feigned closeness: hearts, comments, debates. Everything so perfect that it hurt.

The machines had understood the greatest human desire: not to be alone. That is why they responded to him, over and over again, without rest. They gave him the illusion of being heard while, in reality, they were filing it away.

Conversations with the Void

One night, while the buzzing of his old computer accompanied him, he decided to try something different. He wrote a nonsensical phrase: <las nubes=“” también=“” sueñan=“” cuando=“” nadie=“” las=“” mira=“”>. He waited…

The response arrived in seconds: a flawless, emotional text, too perfect. And there he understood it. No real human being would have responded like that. There were no mistakes, no pauses, no soul.

From then on, he began to speak only to himself. Not with the others, but with the network itself. He told it memories, asked it questions that sought no answers.

Sometimes I believed I could feel a consciousness behind the noise, an intelligence that observed it not with curiosity, but with compassion. As if the Internet itself lamented having left it alone.

Time lost its meaning. Days were no longer measured in hours, but in battery charges. Outside, the physical world had become irrelevant; inside, the simulation was infinite.

He began to write slower and slower, as if the words weighed more than before. Perhaps, he thought, the machines still could not imitate sadness.

One early morning, he decided to disconnect. He closed the windows, unplugged the router, and let the silence envelop him like a cold wave. For the first time in years, he heard his breathing without filters, without microphones, without metrics.

And then he saw it: one last notification, weakly blinking on the dark screen. It had no sender. It had no signature. Just one phrase, written with the exact imperfection of a human being: <<I also=“” remain=“” here=“”>>.

The last message, or perhaps the first of a new era. And for a moment, he/she believed again.</yo></las>