MAN V MACHINE

Dear Jenny

I’ve always had a fear of big mechanical type machines, war tanks or even large, massive robotic things that can move. Why? Eliana, 39, Edinburgh

Assemblyline

It’s 25 January 1979, and your surname is Williams. You leave home to go to work at Fords. You’ve no idea it’s the last morning you’ll ever see.

This factory is state-ofthe-art, but you hate the robots on the assembly lines because they’ve taken men’s jobs and one day, maybe yours.

Malfunction

You’re relieved when you’re told the robot has malfunctioned. Maybe they’re not so perfect after all! You’re instructed to do its job and fetch some parts it should have collected from the shelves. You climb up into the shelves, thinking that at least your job’s safe if they go wrong like this. A man wouldn’t have made this mistake of picking the wrong parts, or messed the paperwork!

Suddendeath

You’re not even looking at the robot arm, and don’t see it when it raises into the air just behind you. You do get a very brief instinctive warning from your subconscious at the feel of the air as it moves behind you. Your dying thought is, ‘The damn thing got me after all!’ You don’t even feel the blow when it slams into your head, and it suddenly all goes dark.