The Machine that Never

The Machine that Never

S.H. Mecham

         Seeing the things I do really sobers a man to how things really go on running around here. There ain't a damn chance you can't see what I'm saying when I put up that sentence alone. If you can't, then you are already laid out flat and square and fixed and you wouldn't know what I'm talking about even if you were in my shoes.

         See, I was where you were about the same time last year and I was in the same shoes as you are in now. It all started with small stuff going on. You know, you think someone might be following you, but they turn the corner at the last minute, just before you're sure it's them following in your footsteps like they were your own shadow connected to your own two feet, clicking and clacking along to your every step, without missing a stride, speeding and whirring until you feel they are going to go straight on clicking and clacking through you, but they never do, clicking and clacking along as they go walking on their own good business away.

         Couldn't sleep, neither. Part to my roommates and part to the clicking and clacking of the men walking and going down the hall, most of them to stop by my door and try banging for a response. A few of them even came swinging on down on the brass handle so they could swing the door open. Imagine my surprise to see the door getting swung open and close in the dark of my room, the hallway light coming into the room in the cracks in yellow-light colored streaks. They're clicking and clacking and calling to my name all whispering and the like as if they didn't come stomping all the way up to my door and swing so hard on the handle that the chain lock almost cracked open it was being stressed, so much.

         It don't do a man like me no good to get so little sleep, but when I could sleep, I was getting woken up by the knocking and the roommates making their noises in the room by me. If you go on standing out so much being shut in like I do and going along all loud and hooting and hollering like I do when I ain't quiet in my room, no sir. No sir, no good is going to come of it. Soon enough some one higher up is going to come on down bringing the hammer down on such behavior. Al Jolsons are going to bring the hammer down. You've seen them go about his business, stalking about on those thin wispy black legs, trotting about with those big toothy grin and those peerless eyes, checking and maintaining on their fine little world to make sure everything is square and flat and congruent and settled.

         Well, I sure as hell am not, so they came over with those long hands, cast in immaculate black charcoal, so too are they all charcoal and all over and started working in on me. They pulled and pulled at me when ever I was out of my room moving about and they watched me from my third story window when I slept. They moved and they pulled and they watched and Jesus Christ did they watch and watch and watch and watch. Nothing is changing and I am not going to crack, so they turn up the heat. They point out with one of those hands and start swarms of mosquitoes and hands underneath my skin firing out on all cylinders and they're planting holes in my back that don't bleed until I'm out in public and I make a mess embarrassing myself in front of my friends and they make me piss myself waiting for food at the cafe and they put snakes out all over the ground they keep pulling and pulling and pulling.

         And pulling clean through until the end of the year, where I can go home and I don't have to worry about Al Jolsons out there at WSU no more. I can go home and relax and don't have to get pulled and watched no more. Funny thing about stuff like this. They follow you when they find out you are not going to work in this world of theirs. You knew this was their world, didn't you? Just like they followed me and gave me more mosquitoes and they pulled more.

         This time, though. I started seeing the cracks in the whole thing. They couldn't have done too good of a job. The Machine they got us on here has so many sloppy mistakes in it all, doesn't it? Most nights, you can go out and see the moon moving along on a tower made of gears and metal beams and the exposed wiring in the sky fizzing and popping and sparking when it has electricity running through it just like our own wiring does when we're sloppy with it. Oh, for God sake's, you can hear the Machine whirring and mechanically operating everywhere, all the time! I even saw one day where the Al Jolsons were marching out of the Machine, out of the underground, the ground moving and ebbing like a water bed covered in metal plates as the workers come out of the surface to work their work and ensure the whole Machine continues to work, work, and work!
You can see it out there at the farmers markets and the people with smiles made of metal teeth. You must have seen it going on with their skin all seamy and loose, not fitting the way it ought, exposing the steam and gears and metal pieces with a million different names like mouth goerring connections and forearm pump servum servicers. Walking around like fuming machines, like everybody can see through them walking along on their tracks, janky pieces of metal, moving along in a bunch of nothing at all that looks like a man walking along.

         The Machine never goes, stops, moves, stops, left, right, up, down, around, fixes, breaks, maintains, frowns, smiles, goes, stops or stops.

         Jesus, Lord in heaven, you had to have seen that. I need you to see that. I need you to see what I see. I need you to live in my shoes for only an instant to know how terrifying this world is for all of us who are here. I need you to listen before it's time for me to go take my meds again and I get all lost on this thought all over again. I need you to get me before the loonies go away and I need to pick it up where I was again. I need your understanding and I need your help - for the love of God how much I need your help.

         But I gotta not see, don't I? I gotta not go along thinking so much. Thinking does me no good and always gets me worked up on the Machine underground and the tracks and how close I think I can get to closing a part of the Machine - for however briefly - if I can just wedge something in the track that bends and breaks and reforms before I can get a good hold on it. I just need to not see.

         That's the fickle part about it all. Seeing don't cost anything and it's the only part of us that is free. We can't go around touching the machines or the Al Jolson charcoal men, but Jesus in heaven what we can see is always free. If seeing were drinking, I would be drunk on what I've seen. Drunk for a long time.

         Look, there's no way for me to convince you of what you need to know, but I need it so desperately. I need you, so desperately to know. I can't bottle it up inside, I simply must tell you. The truth is just so horrible. It's too horrible to imagine. It's the world we live in, this one.

         As impossible as it may seem, I saw another world down there. Red light fixtures are sprinkled about below me like stars as I stare down. There is metal. Everywhere. Expanding as far down as the eye could discern the gaps between them, until they all fade into the horrible red glow, unrelenting in bathing this other place. The metal is in so many forms. Catwalks, Machines, gears, wires, pulleys, arms, snakes, supports, trusses, railings, and many other metallic edifices I could not name. All working on different timings, forever changing the deafening audio to create harmonies that will never again form as they are replaced just as quickly by clanging of other components of this Machine deep underground, each piece serving a purpose beyond my comprehension. I saw metal snakes in the forms of sunflowers who's sole purpose was to stir and rattle in the ashy air. Gears spinning, getting their teeth cut off by a blade, only to have new teeth attached in their place, forever spinning and each tooth lasting only seconds before being replaced and discarded some miles below. The Machines with purpose, acting with purpose, beyond our understanding this all is going on.

         It was a very calm Summer night, the sun had set long ago and the darkness was already impregnable. I was tossing in bed, when I heard the typical noise of the Machine growing louder, signifying that another opening was surfacing. From the noise, I could tell it was close. How close, I could not determine.

         I sat up to look out my window to find the backyard ground moving, undulating onto itself, rocking. It was slowly growing thin, ever so thin. A pounding can be heard from underground and a screaming is beginning to overcome the increasing noise of the workings of the machine.

         Finally, a breaking point is reached as the ground moves apart to reveal a young woman, frantically sprinting up from the underground catwalks and stairs, bathed in the horrifying red light that only can exist underground, down there.

         The light is glaring, I have to cover my eyes from the intense scarlet shining off of the underground metal. It simply bathes the whole of the yard in it's grasp; the trees, the fence, the house, the inside of my room and the street all cannot resist the glow. If the machine is roaring, the scream is deafening. A hand reaches out, then another, as she pulls herself out of the hell that exists underground. She throws her hands out before her as fast as she can, crawling out of the hole. She is completely naked, her blonde hair is streaked with blood, motor grease, and ash. So much ash covers her body.

         Quickly, like hounds on the hunt, five Al Jolsons sprang out from underground, long and silver knives in hand. They are set upon her instantly, having followed her screams from the pit. Their joints crack and charcoal breaks off from their bodies as they articulated after her. They were slow and deliberate. There was no need to be quick. It was the dead of night, no one would hear of this. There would be no witnesses to drag back to the Machine that needed correcting or putting on tracks. Knowing the grave consequences of my witnessing this ritual, I stifle my own reservations at the sight. I simply could not go outside to help. I was as helpless as she, lest I am forced to the same grave underground.

Time to go to sleep.

Time to go away.