Fear Of Death In A Vision Of The Future

Eliza knew she was late, far too late. She'd been visiting her friend Jane, and time had passed faster than she'd ever imagine.1

Jane and Eliza had been friends since childhood, back before the Superiors came. They had always lived in the same town, and they visited each-other all the time. Almost every day, one of them went over to the other. Sometimes they watched a movie, sometimes they had tea and cookies and sometimes they just talked for hours upon hours. This time, they had just talked, and for the first time since the arrival of the Superiors, Eliza had forgot the time, and had left almost an hour after she was supposed to.2

She was jogging down the streets, she felt uneasy and scared now. She heard voices and sounds from all around, but she saw nothing but the empty streets around her. Never before in her life had she been so scared. She tried her best to make as little sound as humanly possible, though still trying to keep a certain speed. However, the noises in her head made it hard for her to actually determine how loud she was. And as the noises increased, so did her speed. In the end, she stopped caring if anyone heard her, she just wanted to get home.3

Eliza was a single street away from her house when she knew she had been spotted. She could see her house, and she could imagine her little son sleeping soundly upstairs, hopefully having gone to bed by 8 like she had asked. The noises in her head died abruptly, leaving her to the sounds of the empty streets.4

Eliza stood very still in the street, just staring at her house. She hadn't noticed, but it had started raining. Upon looking down at her white, now transparent shirt, she saw that it must have been raining for quite a while. She wished she could just keep on running down the street, and into her safe house. If she could get inside, she would never again make the same mistake, she could swear to that. But deep down inside, she knew that she would never again see her son, Jane, or anyone else.5

"What are you doing out so late?" asked a familiar voice from behind her. Eliza turned around in disbelief, staring into a face she dreamt of almost every night, but had only seen in pictures for the last few years. The man smiled at her as he saw her recognition.
"Jacob" she cried out, and her tears mixed with the rain as she embraced him.
"Welcome Eliza" he said, holding her tight.
"Welcome where?" she asked, trying gently to get out of his arms, to get a look at his face. But he didn't answer, and his grip around her only got stronger. She tried harder to get out, and now his arms were starting to hurt her. She cried out in fear and panic, when she suddenly realized that he was gone, and that she was still standing in the street leading down to her house. Jacob, her husband, was not there. He had disappeared years ago, along with all other men over 18. 6

The Superiors were behind the disappearance of the men, everyone knew that, but not a single one of the Superiors ever talked about it. A theory was that the Superiors were too weak to go against adult males, and therefore had them removed. Others theorized that the Superiors also were weak at evenings and nights, and that that was the reason they let their robotic minions keep the streets clean after ten. The clock was closing in on twelve now, and Eliza knew she had been spotted by a robotic minion. If she ran now, she would be stopped before she reached her house.7

After standing still for what she reckoned to be about a quarter of an hour, Eliza decided to start walking down the street. Her heart was beating faster than ever before, and even the rain seemed to slow down as she slowly put one foot in front of the other, beginning to walk down the seemingly deserted street. Until then, she hadn't seen any of the robots, just heard about them. It was a well know fact that they were out there, but no one she knew had ever seen them. But somehow, she just knew that she had been spotted, even before she saw the robot.8

As she saw it, her heartbeat slowed down some, and she stopped walking again. It slowly emerged into the open street from a side-street right before Elizas house. It was as she had expected, she wouldn't had been able to get to her house anyway. Some sort of peace filled her, even though she was sad thinking of her son waking up alone, it felt good to finally see the machine that would take her away, and quite possibly also take away her son when he turned 18.9

In the darkness, the machine had the distinct outline of a man. When it walked into the light however, it was easy to see that it was not. The torso of the thing was metallic, gray and cold, as Eliza had always imagined robots. However, the face of the machine had a rubber-like quality to it, and was the color of skin. Human features like eyes, ears, hair and a nose was present in the face, but it lacked a mouth. The hair was long and blond , and seemed strangely eerie and out of place on the big machine, that otherwise reminded so much more of a man than a woman. The hands also seemed human-like , even with nails colored pink. Under the torso there was nothing but a metal skeleton. The thing looked as if it had once been intended to look like a human being, but it seemed unfinished. Eliza had never seen such a strange thing before, and could only imagine how scared she would have been seeing more than one of these things.10

But one of them was quite scary enough, and Eliza felt like getting it all over with. She walked towards it, and it walked towards her. The metal feet seemed almost hesitant, and its walk was extremely slow. The rain bounced of its metal torso, and soaked the unnatural hair upon its head. Eliza shivered in fear when the machine reached her and put its right hand upon her shoulder.
"Just do it" she said, and realized that she would never be seen again.