Entry 26 - Cogs

The jacket looms there, hanging on the door, a reminder that today is the last day. Tomorrow, the world of youth and happiness ends forever. Tomorrow he becomes another cog in the machine, and that will be his life for as long as he is expected to live : a cog. A piece of machinery that no one really cares for as long as it works. And if it stops working, well. There are more cogs everywhere. The days will move by, one after the other, all the same. His sadness will not be cured, his depressions and fears won't disappear, but they won't matter anymore. Everyday, from 9am to 7pm, his life will be meaningless. And from 7pm to 9am he will have his free time, to do the chores at home, to sleep, to take care of his body's needs, to tend to his pets, poor pets, now with the house all for themselves all day long, to keep up with the news from the world. Day after day of always the same, a endless hoard of pointless work and pointless talk and pointless existence. He misses it already, the carefree days of youth that end today. He misses the days spent in bed, the holosystem playing concerts and knowing that doing nothing is all he had to do that day. He misses the random call of a friend, a chance meeting on his morning walk that turns into a great day. Now the calls will remain unanswered until he returns from work. Now random chance encounters will last 5 minutes or less, because he can't be late : being late is anti-patriotic. Being late is wrong and God will punish you, if the machine doesn't get you first. He knows today it all ends. No more free passes. He misses studying already, and to think a few years back he'd kill to never have to listen to teachers and tutors and the ever present machine, yammering at his ears for him to study, for him to apply all his effort, for him to enjoy. Only now, the last day before it all ends, did he understand that what he had thought to be sarcasm from the machine was actually a well meant advice. There would be no more to enjoy, starting tomorrow. He lay there in bed, tears dry in his eyes, and a feeling of dread and doom hanging over his head. He signaled the sensor and the mechanical voice beeped once, to confirm it was ready for a command.
 "call her" - he said, knowing the machine to know who she was. She wouldn't pick up the phone, but if it rang long enough he could listen to her voicemail and in it the sound of her words. "I can't pick up the phone right now" had never sounded so good as in that moment when he lay in bed, Waiting to die by is own hand. He knew how to do it without the machine noticing it, thanks to the classes he'd taken on machine maintenance. The machine emptied the surveillance RAM every five days, and so he'd have to take one step at a time, slowly. The final step would simply be, to drink the water in the cup resting on his desk and wait. And now he waited for death to come, and free him from his future. His last words, coughed between blood, were a shaky "I will never be a cog."