Eduardo Caldeira

When I got off the bus this evening, I already had that feeling — the kind that crawls under your skin before anything actually happens. I walked up the hill to my small apartment in Capão Redondo, São Paulo,  past the corner bar with the broken neon, and headed straight for the mailbox. There it was. A white envelope, heavy with finality.

Inside: a termination letter.

No conversation. No explanation beyond the usual cold language — “due to implementation of advanced security technologies…” and so on. I’ve been working as a doorman for over two decades. Fifty-six now. I’ve watched that building more than I’ve watched my own life. I’ve seen children become adults, maids become wives, marriages disintegrate, and dogs outlive their owners.

They want facial recognition now. Remote surveillance. Delta Omega. They say it's safer. More reliable.

Maybe they're right.

I can’t deny the numbers: 28,000 people guarded from a single machine room. Cameras in every corner, men sitting at terminals, watching my building and 249 others from kilometers away. No toilet breaks. No coffee. No gossip with the cleaning lady. Just eyes on screens.

But none of those cameras stopped Dona Celina from falling in the lobby last year. I did. No badge recognized the man who used to sneak up with fake delivery uniforms. I did.

I wasn’t perfect. Sometimes I dozed off during the second hour of the night shift. But I cared.

And that’s what machines don’t do.

After I read the letter, I sat on the edge of my bed and just listened to the silence. São Paulo, Brazil, hummed in the distance — restless, armored, afraid. I thought about how walls have grown higher, while trust has grown thinner.

Maybe this is just how it goes.

Tomorrow I’ll go downtown, check the job boards, talk to a cousin who runs private security.

But tonight, I’m just a man, fifty-six, no longer needed. And still listening.