I imprinted the clay doll with the name and nothing happened. It didn’t even flinch. It was the name used to animate the first golems back when natural philosophy and primordial nomenclature were still nascent sciences.

All words are derived from the divine’s, I just have to find the correct recombination, the perfect lexical embedder with the power to animate objects. But all the names I conjured had a short half-life, they wither under their own entropy. Words, after all, are conduits to the miraculous lexical dimension, a divine gift to humanity. Divine indeed, but like everything, it abides by the mechanical laws of nature. We learned much about it from advancements in the science of lexicodynamics. We learned about the interconvertibility of work and heat, how automata gain their motive power by absorbing heat and how that heat transforms into small amounts of entropic radiation in the lexical dimension.

As a senior nomenclator at Quda manufactory, the leading maker of automata in England, it was my job to conjure new names when the old ones were exhausted. The conjuring methodologies of nominal integration and factorization were pushed to the limits, and I was at the forefront of it. I admit that enthusiasm blinded me, greed too I suppose. But we all knew that every word imprinted heats the lexical dimension a little. Yet we kept on exploiting this dimension, conjuring more entropic words, and imprinting them by the millions. From landmobiles to aeromobiles and automatons, it was a fountain of wealth. And money blinded the best of us, it bought our moral doubts for sure.

At first, we ignored the facts to exaggerated environmentalism, manufactories made fun of such “hippie activists”. But then scientists all over the world were observing how lexically-delicate creatures were affected. Some butterflies stuck inside their cocoons, hummingbird eggs never hatched and then some of us started birthing unconscious babies. The lexical space that potentiates change and new sentience was getting warmer. Its divinely put words were slowly getting heat-exhausted. Yet we kept on making and selling imprinted automatons.

By the time manufacturers’ lobbying lost its effect on our governments, the lexical dimension had reached an irreversible thermodynamic point. All butterflies died, women couldn’t bear children anymore, crops dried, governments failed and martial law was declared.

It is the end, we know for sure, we made it happen.

I’m writing this as the world mourns 17 years old Diego Ricardo, the last child ever. I’m writing this as my species walks into extinction. Opting out of earth covered in shame and sins. Until another, hopefully better, one takes over.

So, to the future archeologists studying our sand-buried civilization, a message to all, look at our bones mingled in the sand! you have been warned; as you are now, so once were we. As we are now, so shall you be.