“What’s happening?” I looked out of my bedroom window down the road outside of our apartment.

Cars were driving around, in perfect rhythm, it seemed. Not a car was driving on the wrong lane, or violating a sign, which never happens here.

I walked out of my bedroom into the living room. Both my parents were still asleep.

I collapsed on the couch, reached for the remote, and turned on the TV.

And guess what the headline news was? New inventions, Artificial Intelligence Robots, and stuff like that. I sighed, and turned off the TV.

That’s when I heard something knocking hard against the window, which was odd. I walked over and opened the curtains. Nothing. Then, the fire alarm started ringing, which wasn’t odd, but a shock.

I yelled, suddenly smelling smoke, and ran into my parents’ bedroom. They… weren’t there! I was getting very scared. This wasn’t happening! I couldn’t evacuate the building by myself. I was ten years old, and I had the courage of a mouse.

I ran into my bedroom and grabbed my iPad, since we didn’t have a telephone, and called both my mom and my dad. No one answered. I was running out of plans.

I was frozen in my bedroom, holding my iPad and not sensing anything. I needed to get out of there. But what about everything–

The lights flickered off, and a bam! came from our front door. I ran outside. The door had collapsed.

I was terrified now. All I could see through the door was heavy smoke engulfing everything.

My brain was blank, so I ran right through the smoke to a place I’d never seen before. I knew the place, it was outside the door of our apartment, but it looked different than anything I’d seen.

There were flames across the walls by where I stood. Oil was flooding the floor, and everything was a mess, the place basically falling apart.

And it was pitch black, in the morning, the hall lit only by a line of eerie blue light across the ceiling.

From the place it shone, came a robotic voice.

“Sorry for our small mishap. Shall we take you away?”

“What?” I whispered, paralyzed from fear.

“Shall we take you to the place you belong?”

“What place?!” I yelled, feeling like I was going crazy.

“To the place where everyone will belong in the future. To the place where robots and Artificial Intelligence will rule. To the place where all people do is sit back and have programmed robots do all the work. And in that place, humans will lose their minds and all their abilities; they will not remember how to walk, or speak, or move. They will rot to nothing, and as animals did into humans, transform into robots. Humans will become the mistreated animals, and the robots will become the new rulers.”

“Why!” I yelled, “Why!” I couldn’t move any longer; I was going crazy.

“Because,” the robotic voice said, “It’s 2026.”