This was never what Sam wanted. Isolated, alone, and waiting Sam knew what had to be done. Everyone waits for the future to arrive, but when it does it’s never enough and there’s always more to be desired. People dream about days with hover cars, world peace, and no poverty. Stuff like that doesn’t magically happen, not overnight at least. Improved farming techniques and future technologies make resources infinite while famine, hunger, and money become things of the past. A country was always defined by its quality of life and the size of its army, but now that’s meaningless. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king and, in a world with everything, man wants for nothing.
Outside of the apartment, it’s quiet. The streets are empty. The world doesn’t exist anymore. Established Institutions? Religion? Religion is the cause and the solution. Evolution has proven that religion is pointless. Man has achieved all that is to be desired, so what more can be promised to man? God? Men are gods. The future? The future is eternal.
Sam knew what had to be done, but that meant nothing. Knowing and believing, knowing and doing, knowing and not doing are all the same. Not that it really matters, had anyone known then we still would have been powerless to stop it. Armageddon. Perhaps the worst part is that what happened, happened slowly. Slowly and inevitably, the world changed. Slowly and inevitably, people gave in. And all it took was 9 months.
Samantha Salvator grew up like any child of the 1980s. Her days filled with cartoons and toys, Big Wheels and Little People, great music, and futuristic movies. Her father, an insurance adjustor, was obsessed with anything new. Gadgets, laser discs, compact discs, camcorders, computers, and the Internet were all shiny new toys to play with. These play toys that would usher in a new era for mankind surrounded Samantha like a fort. Samantha’s mother was a homemaker; she had no ambition, no goals love was her only value. Some might have said that she was the perfect woman. Growing up in a suburban area was easy, filled with play dates and baseball games. Forced interactions through social gatherings that reinforced the social contract that Locke and Rousseau had so carefully laid out.
Man is inherently good, hardly. Man is inherently evil and only does good because society dictates it. Well…What if Society didn’t dictate it? What if there was no Society, only survivors? What if man were to release his inner beast? Ragnarok had finally come and no one had thought to stop it; in fact, most people welcomed the technological revolution with open arms, rejoicing in their loss of self and acceptance of sloth. Man would be judged and found wanting.
This was never what Sam wanted. As she sat there looking out the window, it was raining. She looked into each raindrop, reflecting the light from the neon signs. The advertisements were everywhere but they meant nothing now; the lights are always on in a city that never sleeps. Rain used to be refreshing¾cleansing, if only another flood had come, but it had to be fire this time. The streets are empty. As Sam motionlessly stares out the window she recalls it all horrifically. The day she had meet Peter and how on that day the only thing she could think about was how perfect her life was going to be. Peter was beautiful and made her feel complete; young and in love was all that the two of them could ask for. What a dream come true it was for two people traveling to the big city for the first time, meeting, and falling in love. But everything feels like a dream until it becomes a nightmare.
Peter was 20, Sam was 18, and they were happy. Their parents said they were too young and that they would just be another divorce statistic but they were married nonetheless. Their love had already given them so much and was going to give them all that they would ever need. Pregnancy seemed futile as if by Divine Mandate. Remembering back to that day, sitting in the doctor’s office on that cold table her feet having just come out of the stirrups, Sam was more nervous then she had ever been in her entire life. This was academic more then anything else because Peter had already gone to see his urologist. His sperm count was near perfect, but they had no motility, so at least if she was fine then they could still try artificial insemination, in vitro…something. Watching the clock hands move didn’t help at all what were really minutes felt like days to her. The anticipation was antagonizing and then all of a sudden she had her answer. No, no she would never be able to have children. She not only had a T-shaped uterus but her eggs were useless. In an instant, what once was an endless love became pure hatred.
And then she was pregnant, she had everything she ever wanted, and all it took was a word. Neither of them was scientifically able to have children; now it seemed inevitable and that’s why Peter left. No one except for Sam knew the truth. No one except for Sam had made the bargain. No one except for Sam would be left after all was said and done. All would be made to pay. Samantha Salvator was the one woman who could have stopped it. Technology, detachment, it all helped…it wasn’t like the old days where they performed Exorcisms and people actually believed in voodoo and hocus-pocus. Some would say that Gods are vain and need man to worship them, that the source of their power is their vanity. If that had been the case, then everything would have been fine, only the problem is that if no one believes in something it doesn’t make it not false…it just makes it more dangerous. This was never what Samantha had wanted, but the pact she made had been honored.
