THE WINDOW

Nina's grandmother stopped short a few metres from the huge window that looked out onto the world on the other side where they had all come from. The woman stared pensively at the red handprints and the traces of skin and blood stuck on it like prehistoric paintings. She didn't realise right away that behind the large fenestra, a cyborg dressed all in white was staring at them with his baby face, pale and expressionless. The machine stared at the woman and the little girl for awhile before walking away. Sometimes they would drop by to see how humans behaved. Curiosity? Habit? Whatever the reason was, they never lingered too long. Like ghosts, they disappeared as suddenly as they appeared.

"Nice ass for an old woman," a male voice suddenly came behind her.

Without turning around, Nina's grandmother shook her little girl's hand tightly before starting to run at full speed, taking the little girl with her; Nina immediately picked up the pace without flinching. They stared ahead of them asthey kept running many kilometres in empty streets. Everyone stayed home. They only ventured out to steal food or clothes from others when they needed it. But there were also those who sometimes went out to find meaning in their lives; those ones were even more dangerous. Yet, they had everything, at least everything that mattered so much to them before: screens and gadgets of all kinds. The intelligent system had left men with all they had always cherished the most before arriving at Little Paradise. Gadgets, devices, machines of all sorts, and all the superfluous of modern and advanced society were abundant inside the camp. But what good was the comfort and entertainment of men at home when they were hungry. AI seemed to enjoy playing men at their own game, giving them their own medicine. However, the remedy didn't seem to work for men, neither for them before that, nor for them at that time.

Behind their beautiful buildings and their pretty cobbled streets, men had begun to eat men, literally. Children had fallen victim of it first of course, followed by all the others too weak to defend themselves: women, the sick, the wounded, the invalids.

What about the dead bodies? Don't even ask! Asking questions had long become offensive and inappropriate.

In Little Paradise, everyone knew it, but no one said or did anything about it. A silhouette, an identity, a story disappeared overnight without making a sound or leaving a trace. Even within a group, a territory, or a family, no one asked about people suddenly gone missing. After all, their turn would come to them too: the day when hunger became painful enough to justify the most terrible acts. Anyway, who would notice? All hidden behind their walls, in the comfort of their advanced technology and the presumed peace of their civilised customs. All alone, they finally dared to show their true face and act their true deeds: the actions of the sophisticated soulless living beings they had become.