There was once a man who decided “I shall become bronze like a statue.” So the man sat down amidst the pastures and closed his eyes, feeling the wind on his skin, knowing that it was not made of flesh but of metal. 

After many days a friend approached the man in the middle of the golden field. “What are you doing?” The friend inquired.

“I have decided to become bronze.” The man said.

“Like a statue?” His friend asked.

“Yes.”

“Why…” His friend hesitated. “That’s impossible!”

“The only limit is the one I impose on myself. I am bronze now because I have decided so.”

The man’s friend sat down beside him. The man kept his eyes shut and the wind blew softly across their backs. 

“Why would you become like bronze? If you did so, you could no longer smell the flowers!”

“I’ve smelled enough flowers.” The man said.

“You could no longer eat!”

“I’ve eaten enough.” The man said.

“You could no longer love.” 

The man grew silent. After a long while he spoke softly “I have loved all I can.”

His friend resigned himself to silence as well, stripped of all arguments. “So you truly have decided.”

“Yes.”

“You no longer are a man like me.”

“I have decided and so it shall be.”

“Very well.” The friend got up to his feet once more. He walked a few steps forward on the grass before turning to the man. “I would have chosen marble. It is far more beautiful than bronze.” 

The man opened his eyes. “But not durable. It can easily break. It does not last.”

“Most beautiful things don’t.” His friend said with a soft smile etched across his face. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” The man muttered as he saw his friend disappear into the distance. He closed his eyes once more. 

For many days the man sat still in that exact spot. There was no doubt on his mind that he had become bronze. Wind and rain were no matter to him because they would only affect flesh. He was bronze and did not grow cold. 

Taunts and jokes made at his expense by passers-by did not concern him either. Their voices grew each day more distant. Only man’s feelings were hurt, not that of a statue. 

The day came when the man decided to open his eyes. He was not surprised to see his flesh was no longer flesh but made of metal. His skin was copper colored and made greenish in places by the passage of some undetermined amount of time.

The man got up to his feet very slowly. He no longer moved like a man but like bronze. Bronze should not move at all, he thought, so he decided to remain still.

Once he centered himself he observed a world he no longer recognized. The pastures had gone, replaced by buildings of stone and wood. Men and women surrounded him speaking a foreign tongue, dressed in foreign ways. Some of the people that passed him by took a moment to stand next to or in front of the man made of bronze. They seemed to be admiring him so he let them.

They spoke of him, that he knew, but as soon as he was starting to become familiar with their language it seemed to change completely. The other one with it’s unique sounds and musicality seemed to have vanished, as if it had never existed.

Everything grew more foreign all the time. The ways the people dressed, the ways they carried themselves, even the buildings surrounding him seemed to change as quickly as the languages appeared and evaporated. The ways of life seemed to be improving rather quickly. The buildings were no longer just stone and wood. They reflected now like mirrors. The people moved faster, their faces changed, becoming quite varied as their way of life improved. Sound escaped every corner of the world and left the inside of the bronze man’s head ringing in supplication. It became too much to bear so the man who became bronze shut his eyes once more. He shut them tight. In the darkness the noise became distant. 

When the man opened his eyes again he saw that there was nothing. Dust surrounded him like the wide pastures had the day he decided to become bronze. His eyes shifted towards the sky. It was no longer blue. It was now engulfed in fire by a sun that neared the Earth. 

The man felt his once stiff metal body becoming fluid. He slowly raised his hands and saw them dripping. His whole body slowly deformed itself into the ground. 

“So many souls.”

With the last vestiges of mankind’s expression the man looked up once again at the fiery red sky and shed a tear. It fell mute on the dusty ground and evaporated. 

A minute later there was nothing. Not even the man who became bronze.

---