Nobody chooses to be a Vessel or an Abacus, you are born like that. All people are tested at the age of five, only a few test positive.

I'm a Vessel. I keep tabs of everything you can't. From your daily errands to your darkest secrets. I will never forget, and my capacity to remember is infinite.

You come to me and tell me everything. I'll remember and I'll never break my vow to never tell another Regular but you.

If you need to figure out facts from what I know, we have Abacuses. They will ask me all the right questions, smoke those funny pipes they carry everywhere and give you the deepest insights only to forget about it a couple of hours later.

As we age, our capacities diminish and we all live our last days as Regulars, but not before serving people to the best of our capacities.

For centuries we have enjoyed prosperity and peace, thanks to us. Abacuses have guided us wisely based on all the Vessels' facts.

Then, something happened: less and less Vessels and Abacuses were being born. Countless experiments were done to find out how we came to be, what made us different, to breed us in a lab. But no answer was found. We are a random act of Nature.

Just ten generations ago, any family would have at least one Abacus or a Vessel. Then, five generations ago, the common thing was to have one of them per neighborhood. Then, one per city and now there are only a few of us left.

It is sad to see the dusk of civilization, the chaos of living without a Vessel, the uncertainty of not having an Abacus.

I see people trying to agree on scribbling symbols on stones to remember, using marbles to count. What kind of madness is this?

Soon our cities will be over, our memory erased, our knowledge forgotten. We will be living in caves, painting its walls, chasing animals like savages.

I'm telling all this to you, the youngest living Vessel, so at least you can remember before everything is gone.

My name is Adam and I used to be a Vessel.

#MicroFiction