The Machine

                                                        The Machine
                                                      by Billy Pilgrim

      Billy Pilgrim was a machinist.  He worked alongside metal and sparks.  No one could operate a machine of any kind like Mr. Pilgrim. No one.
      The machines Mr. Pilgrim worked on and has worked on for forty and five years were within a massive warehouse in ownership of a productive company called Moving Parts Incorporated.  MPI had a machine for everything, all stationary, and each machine had it's own operator.  The company built by hand and sold every tool you can imagine, and Mr. Pilgrim serviced these machines.  He also taught each new worker how to operate his new machine.
      Except that they never got new machines.  Every one in the warehouse was put there when the building was bought by MPI sixty years ago.
      Mr. Pilgrim adored his work.  So much so that he never took a sick day unless he had to, never took a vacation anywhere and had no social life whatsoever.
      In fact, he often 'vacationed' to the warehouse, on weekends, when no one was there but him, and he would make sure all his machines ran at their best.  Some would call him anal about his machines.  But you would never call a father anal about his children.

      So one fine day, a Wednesday, in August, Mr. Pilgrim was working on a machine that produced 'hand crafted' screwdrivers.  The air conditioning unit was the next thing on his to-do list.  As he always did, for forty and five years, when he stopped to take a breath, he glanced over at his favorite machine.  It was one that hadn't had an operator since just after the first year it was put in, and that year was the same one Mr. Pilgrim began working for MPI.  Mr. Pilgrim was that machine's operator for that first year, then the machine broke down and he couldn't fix it.  At the time, little, young Billy couldn't maintain the machines, and so since no one else could fix it, it went unfixed for years.  Billy grew an obsession with this machine, although he never, for one reason or another, found the time to fix that particular machine.
    The machine made steel calipers.
    Each time Mr. Pilgrim would look at that machine, especially in the heat, it would seem to shimmer and almost beckon to him.  He knew he was obsessed in some way with this machine, and brushed this beckoning off as a simple joke on him by his own mind.  This particular time, however, the machine looked a bit off, as though it were missing some piece or another.  He got up and lit a cigarette as he strode through the vast matrix of machines toward his object of intangible desire, which made steel calipers.
    There was a piece missing, he discovered, and it wasn't a loose piece.  Mr. Pilgrim's first thought was that management had decided to replace the machine, and simply hadn't finished the job yet.  This made him instantly furious.  For it was his machine, and so should be his decision to remove it.  His ferocity was quickly stifled, though, when he suddenly remembered that he has just been by the machine two hours ago, when the building closed, and all the other workers went home, and the machine was in perfect array.  Now his fury was replaced by befuddlement.  He was the only one in the warehouse, and had been for the last hour and forty and five minutes.
    He looked around for the piece, but when he looked back at the machine, the piece was there, bolted to the top of the rest of itself.  Grime crusted around each bolt head as though it'd been untouched for decades.  Mr. Pilgrim knew better though, because he cleaned the entire warehouse and every machine, including this one, twice a week.  He would do it everyday if he could, but one man cannot perform such a feat.
    Suddenly a bit scared (a feeling he mistook for sickness), he decided to take a step outside and get some air.
   
    Before he got too far away, the machine said "Hello."