The Machine
Creature... that’s what I was called. They thought I spent my life in my head because I liked it. I thought they were abusive and emotionless because it was part of their nature. I was wrong. Nobody’s naturally that sadistic, they just happened to like it.
I was alone, working down in the furnaces of the Machine. The enormous underground shaft was all I’d ever known. I woke every morning in a metal box, sweltering with the heat pouring in, then was led into the seething belly of the monster, tasked to care for it. My life turned in the gears of this place, hissing upward in the steam from the center tank and the ocean of glowing coal below.
It had long since become thoughtless work, each labor cranked through as naturally as any other function of the body: wheel the cart into the cavern, fill it from the mountain of factory coal, wheel it back to the shaft, open the metal grate, dump the coal into the sea of heat, and repeat seven times over; then fill the central tank with the elephantine hose that snaked down from the endless ceiling; check temperatures with this gauge here, adjust pressure with that dial over there, and release steam from the heaving Machine with one of fourty nine levers.
Some people said their life was hell.
I often joked to myself, imagining how alarmed they would be to learn that Hell was where I lived. Not actually... but that was the way the joke went.
The ominous sound of metal clacking rang through the shaft from above, like a clock ticking its life away far too quickly. The caged lift descended until it shuddered to a stop on the landing. Four laquered black boots stepped off onto the metal stairway. Long leather coats lead up to gloved hands, and masks with tubing winding around to air tanks strapped to their backs.
They were back. They...
A third figure, obscured in steam, stepped from the cage. My stomach leapt. She was dressed much the same as the other two, only she didn’t require a mask. That, she and I had in common. Her blonde curls were left unobscured, tied up in a tail that was somehow wild and deliberate all at once. She smiled vaguely at me as she moved to join the two tall figures, the Facillitators.
She and I shared a secret--one that could not get out, or I would risk losing my head. I scurried around the center tank toward them, my own boots clanking on the steel grating.
*The creature is relieved when he sees you,* said one of the Facillitators, his voice hollow and static, as if coming through a dusty radio. I cowered, cursing myself. The Facillitators could smell emotions, and I’d let mine run away from me.
“I know,” said the girl, Akeldama, “he always is. Now, what am I doing here? My blood fusion isn’t until tomorrow.” The Facillitators said nothing, but led her by the elbow down the metal stairs to stand before me.
*You have much to confess,* they said as one. They seemed to be speaking to both of us.
What? They couldn’t know. They couldn’t. I managed to meet Akeldama’s eyes, pleading. They can’t know our secret.
*Confess,* they repeated, with no more severity than before.
“What?” she said, agast.
*Confess,* they said, the same monotonous promise in their voices.
“Bloody skies, what are you talking of?”
*Sins have been comitted. You will confess.*
“I have nothing to confess!” she snapped. “Take my blood or let me go!”
The Facillitators stood looming, the sound of their labored breath burning in my ears. My muscles siezed involuntarily as they moved toward me. Their gloved fingers dug into the bare skin of my arms, and I trembled, uncertainty rising like a black cloud inside me. They began to drag me over the metal grating toward the trap door where the coal was fed through.
“Not there,” I wimpered. “Not there!”
The grate screeched as they dragged it open, and it slammed back against the latticework. They held me on my knees by the shoulders, my face inches over the opening. Below, the sea of angry, gleaming coals filled my vision.
I looked up at Akeldama, and despite the heat my chest turned cold. She sighed, her eyes downcast. She wouldn’t... she would never! Every gear and hissing piston in the Machine seemed to go quiet as I waited for her to speak...
“Follow me,” she said.
Something inside me cracked, and my muscles went limp. As my head sank to my chest and I stared into the sea of fire and brimstone, I thought, Let go... just let go.
The pressure on my arms was dragging me backward. They turned me away as they followed Akeldama, and the heavy grate clanged shut behind me. My boots skidded soundlessly over stone as they carried me passed the coal cart and into the cavern beyond.
The world was vague as we entered. A rushing deposit of factory coal slid from the metal chute in the roof and crashed onto the ever-growing mountain. Akeldama circled the enourmous pile to a dark corner where it met the wall of the cavern. She began to dig into the bricks of coal, her gloves protecting her hands from the swirling plumes that rose. When she had a sizeable pile at her feet, her fingers touched something. She gently removed the object... a glass bottle of sickly green liquid strapped to a winding gearbox and a fuse.
Akeldama proffered the device to one of the Facillitators. “He’s been stealing reserve propellant from the harmony circuits. He was going to destroy the Machine.”
They released my arms as they considered my patchwork explosive. *The creature will die. Confession accepted.*
The Facillitators left the cavern with the device, leaving me alone with Akeldama. I knelt slumped on my knees, feeling punctured, steam slowly rushing out of my body.
“Why?” I breathed, the whisper echoing far too loudly through the chasm.
She stood over me, dejected. “I was trying to find another way. If my father’s Machine is destroyed, thousands of workers will be on the streets. I can’t do that, they’ll die in the surface air. Is that what you want? Thousands dead?”
She began to leave, but stopped, her breath shaking.
“Goodbye, then.”
*****
The next day, before Akeldama came to fuse her blood with the Machine, the Facillitators found me still kneeling in the cavern and told me to follow them...