There was a group of us, and I knew I wasn't me. It was like watching a movie and I was an omnipotent camera following the group along. There were four in the group. Two men, two women. They were walking through the city at night, heading to what was supposed to be a fantastic exhibition of robots that everyone was talking about.
There was a moment when the guys tried to show off a bit to the girls, in a bit of a drunken haze. One took it too far when he tried to show off his sexual abilities in the streets and everyone walked off disgusted, leaving him to catch up.
One of them spotted some shadows moving on the walls and they walked through some alleyways and onto a wider cobbled street. The shadows were huge and of strange looking robots. When they looked, they could see the robots were only about 3-4ft tall, and their shadows just made them look huge.
The group followed, until eventually the robots settled in the middle of a street, taking up both sides. This was the exhibition, but it was more of a roving street art tour. The lead robot came over to the guys, and you could see that they were once living creatures - the heads were disgusting, stripped of bits of flesh, rotting, and positioned on the top of robot bodies.
"You must prove yourself living by experiencing pain," said the lead one to one of the guys. He was then cut in the face by other robots, and when he cried out the robots seemed to be satisfied. The girls looked on in horror.
The lead robot turned to the other man.
"Now you must experience pain. Although, I can see you already have." The scene changed as his past was displayed for everyone to see. He had a brother once and they tried to cross a river. His brother was struggling, and fell. His anguished face froze as the scene paused as a highly realistic hologram.
"This is the pain you live with every day, but you hide it, like a robot. Like us."
Then I woke up.
