The Machine

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. Vivid green grass, the warm golden glow of the sun. Flowers of every color, purple, red, white. Trees that towered past the window until she had to strain to see their tips. Wispy white clouds that gently brushed across the face of a calm blue sky. A world of freedom. Infinite possibilities with a future you could hold in your own two hands.

These were my childhood bedtime stories. The way her face had lit up with longing and peace when she told me about the window made me want to believe. And I suppose I did believe, back when I was too young to know better. But that world is long dead. The Great Schism had torn us away from it in my great-great-great grandmother’s time and sent humanity burrowing down into the ground to scrabble out an existence in the dark. There are no trees or plants, not anymore. The Machine creates our air, our water, our food, powers everything. The Machine gives us life.

Sweat rolls down my nose from beneath my scratched goggles. Hand-me-downs from my mother. These had once been hers, as had my overalls, my tools, even this job. My entire life is thanks to her hard work and dedication. She was once the Machine’s Caretaker. As soon as my hands were large enough to hold a tool, she taught me everything she knew. How to recognize every sigh, every gasp, every mutter the Machine makes as it works itself to the bone keeping us alive.

The day drags on. I crawl over the Machine, tightening its bolts and dispensing the fluid that keeps it alive. Oil for its gears, anti-freeze to keep it from seizing, water to cool it down. My resentment burns like an inferno in my chest. The Machine needs near-constant tweaks and calibration to keep it alive. It’s ancient, older than anyone here, created in the days before the Great Schism. I hate it more with each passing day.

The fourth alarm rings out. A shrill klaxon that announces the end of the twelve hour work day. I tighten one last bolt then let myself slide down my tether toward the ground. Heat envelopes me as soon as my thick soled boots touch the grating. It’s hot in the belly of the Machine. I don’t know how the Menials stand it. Fires sometimes blaze to life in the lower levels, urged on by the oxygen rich atmosphere. I try to plug the holes in the rusted canisters but it’s becoming ever harder to keep up.

I unhook myself from the tether. Workers scurry around me and I look for one in particular. My eyes land on him and my heart leaps in my chest. Big for a Worker, brawny, with soulful brown eyes and sure hands. His face is smeared with oil and grit but I can still see the graceful sweeps of his high cheekbones and sturdy jawline, the full lips beneath a broad nose. I wait for him to brush his hand against mine as he passes. It’s been our ritual for four years now, the only way to communicate our longing. But this time he pauses, leans down to whisper into my ear.

“Be careful,” he says.

I turn to look at him but he’s gone. Swept up into the crowd of Workers heading toward the decontamination rooms. I don’t know his name. He looks my age, early twenties with frown lines carved in grease between his thick black eyebrows. It’s likely I’ll never know anything more.

Fraternization is…discouraged. We have protocols for everything and procreation is no different. Admin assigns Workers to one another for brief liaisons that will hopefully result in a child. Then the assignment ends and the child is raised by whichever parent is most suited for the job until it’s taken to the School at age six. Parental duty ends there.

I turn away from the Machine and push aside the man’s strange warning. My path leads me up toward a private elevator. No mingling with the Workers for me. Any space large enough for people to gather often erupts into sudden violence. One shiv, one solid blow to my head, and that’s it. I die and so does the Machine. I’ve been deemed too valuable for companionship.

I step into the decontamination room. Twin nozzles pop out of the walls and douse me with a stinging layer of foam. Gears clank as the nozzles switch functions then loose a stream of heated water. Steam rises as the water cleans me from head to foot, washing away the dirt and filth of the Machine. A minute passes before the water shuts off and I step forward into a blast of freezing air. Once I’m mostly dry, the room’s door slides open and I move into the elevator.

The elevator rattles its way up the shaft. Out of the cavernous depths of the Machine up to Floor 10. There were once more of us here, other Caretakers. Dozens of them had once walked this hall, chatted and mingled and shared meals. What happened to them all is murky. I’ve heard whispered rumors of a rebellion that took place when I was about four. A whirlwind storm of death that had clawed its way up to the topmost levels of the Home. When it ended, most of the Caretakers were dead or Reconditioned. My mother was the only one to survive intact.

She never liked to talk about it. When I asked why we were always alone, her lips would thin and her eyes would turn soft with grief. When I asked who my father was, she would send me to my corner of our room to stare at the wall. I learned that these questions were dangerous. Not only because of my mother’s wrath but that of the Admins and their Breakers. One wrong word, one longing glance, and I’d find myself strapped to a table in Reconditioning.

The elevator groans to a halt. Its doors peel open and I slip out, head down the hall and escape into my lonely room. My dubious title as Caretaker affords me a bit of extra space. I have enough room for a bed, a dresser, and a workbench. Rooms get smaller the further you go into the Home, from Admin to Breaker to Caretaker to Worker to Menial. Each floor a bit more crowded, save for mine, of course.

I toss my tools onto my workbench. The detritus of my mother’s life is still here, even though she died five years ago. I couldn’t bear to part with her drawings and carvings. Sketches of that glimpse through the window scribbled out on outdated manuals, pieces of coal carved into what I assume are flowers. They mean nothing without her. These mementos only stand as testament to my loneliness and infinite isolation.

I picture her face. Heart shaped with bright brown eyes, a pert nose, full mouth. Straight brown hair cut close to avoid being caught in the Machine's teeth and a short, muscular body. I’m the mirror image of who she’d been as a younger woman. Before the Machine drained her vitality, left her gnarled and frail. If there’s anything of my father in me, I’ve never been able to see it. I’m my mother’s daughter.

To keep the loneliness at bay, I throw myself into my chores. Clean my wrenches and drivers, update the lagging software on my ancient scanner. A knock on the door startles me. I set down the scanner and stand, stretching my stiff back before pulling the door open. A Menial waits for me in the hall with a tray of food in her hands. I glance out into the hall, then step back and hold the door open.

She steps in and I close the door. The stiffness in her shoulders slides away the instant we’re alone and she lets out a sigh. She’s young, younger than me, but there’s a solidity to her, a resilience I try to emulate. Menials have been bringing me my meals for years but she's the only one brave enough to risk a friendship with me. I don't know what I'd do without this bit of human connection. We embrace and I feel the knot in my chest uncoil a bit.

“How are you, Astra?” she asks as she pulls away from the hug to set my dinner down on my workbench.

“Tired,” I reply with a sigh. “Keep thinking about my mother’s stories.”

“The ones about the window?”

“Yeah. How are you, Colt?”

“Eh, I can’t complain. We’ve only had eleven deaths this week so I’d call that a rousing success.”

“How did they die?”

Her eyes skitter away from my face. “Fire. From the Machine.”

Guilt swells in my heart. “Colt, I’m…I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Astra. The Machine gets angry from time to time.”

“It’s not just that.” I flop down onto my bed. “It’s getting harder and harder to keep it running. I don’t think we have the resources to keep it going for much longer.”

Astra pulls the chair from my workbench and sits across from me. “How long?”

“Five years, maybe less.”

A little chuckle escapes her. “And then we all die? Suffocate, starve, die of thirst, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s for the best.” She motions around the room with one scarred hand. “What kind of life is this? Most of us never live to see forty. We can’t have lovers or friends or any sort of comfort. What’s the point of it all?”

“Colt!” I hiss with a panicked look at the door. “You shouldn’t say things like that!”

“Why?” she retorts with a scoff. “They can’t hear us in here. There’s something happening that they can’t stop. I came here to tell you that—”

A pounding knock at the door sends us both to our feet. Colt immediately sets about arranging my dinner on the cluttered workbench while I compose my face in serene lines before opening the door. A tall man in a severe black duty uniform waits for me in the hall. His narrow face is pinched into a scowl that creases around his cold blue eyes. Thin lips twist even tighter as he catches sight of Colt busying herself at the workbench.

“Caretaker 148,” he says in a voice as cold as ice. “You’re to report to Floor 1 tomorrow at First Alarm. Breaker 9249 will escort you there.”

“Understood,” I reply, even though my innards shake with terror.

He looks past my shoulder at the cringing Colt. “Menial 7582, you are five minutes behind schedule.”

“My apologies, Admin—” Colt begins but he raises his hand, cutting her off.

“Breaker 8725 will escort you to your next posting,” he announces.

My breath catches in my throat as the Breaker leans into the doorway. She’s massive in the way that all Breakers are, pumped full of hormones. Rolling mounds of muscle barely contained by the straining seams of her red jumpsuit and a face hidden beneath a glass shield. She motions at Colt with one crooked finger. Colt dutifully follows the Breaker from the room and I steal one last glimpse of her calm face. I try not to watch them leave but it’s hard once I realize that they’re going the wrong way.

“Something wrong, Caretaker 148?” the Admin asks in a mocking tone.

I meet his eyes and feel the resentment flare into rage. “Not at all,” I reply and I’m grateful that my voice is as cold as his. “You're impeding my work output, Admin.”

His piercing blue eyes bore into my soul for a long moment. I meet his gaze evenly, let my mind go still and calm beneath his clear disgust. I have nothing to hide. I’m a Caretaker and an essential member of the Home. He can’t kill me, not until I’ve birthed and raised a replacement. Or maybe he can. Either way, what’s the point? What do I have to lose?

The moment passes. He turns away with a single nod, striding back down the hall with sure steps. I close the door just before my shaking legs spill me onto the floor. Colt. Where did they take her? She should have headed left, back to the elevator and the Menial level. But the Breaker took her right, toward the upper levels. They couldn’t have heard her. Not through the door. She’s alright. She’s alive.

The dinner goes untouched. My tools sit on the work bench half cleaned. The scanner beeps from where I’ve left it halfway through its updates. And all I can do is sit on the floor and stare at the wall. The thought of standing is exhausting. The thought of going back down into the depths of the Machine makes me want to cry. It’s going to die anyway. Colt was right. What’s the point of it?

The last alarm goes off. I doze off in spite of it all and strange dreams flit behind my eyes. My mother’s face, screaming out from between the cogs of the Machine. Colt caught in the Breaker’s grip. Bodies twisting beneath the cruel fury of the Machine, immolated in the fires caused by my carelessness. Me, fixing the Machine over and over, until I'm as broken as my mother was at the end.

“What happened?”

It takes a minute before I realize that the voice is real and not just another dream. It startles me awake, sends a breath gasping from between my lips. I lean my ear against the cold metal of my door, straining to hear another word. Just when I think they’ve left, I hear a strangled gasp, then a cruel chuckle.

“She got away from me.” A hard voice, muffled. The Breaker. “Slipped into an empty Caretaker’s room and locked the door.”

Another whimper then a sigh. “I see. Well, it’s clearly not fit for Reconditioning. Take it for termination.”

“Understood.”

Boots in the hall. Something dragged along the ground. A thud as it hits my door and then a whisper that makes my blood run cold.

“Astra.”

I’m on my feet with my hand wrapped around the door knob before I realize what I’ve done. But the door is locked. All doors are locked after last alarm. I can’t get out, can’t help her, can’t do anything but listen as they drag her away. I can hear her whimpers, her muffled cries. She’s afraid. My hand trembles around the doorknob and I straighten my shoulders. There’s no time for grief.

I spend the next few short hours preparing. I’ll be taken to Floor 1 at first alarm, surely to face questions about the Machine’s recent difficulties. It didn’t happen often but my mother was occasionally brought to his office to give report and that’s where she saw the window. That’s where she saw the sun, the flowers, the sky. Colt was right, this is no way to live. I have to know the truth.

I’m packed and ready by the time the klaxon goes off. Heavy tools make for good weapons and I’m more than ready to make use of them. I’ve brought my spare overalls, the food poor Colt brought me last night, my updated scanner. One of my mother’s carved flowers calls out to me and I slip it into my pack just as a knock sounds on the door. I once more paint my face with a stoic mask and pull the door open.

“Caretaker 148?”

A Breaker, a man this time, with eyes that could almost be kind through the glass shield. Small for a Breaker. “Yes,” I tell him.

“I’m Breaker 9249. Follow me, please.”

He leads me down the hall to the right. The same path Colt took just last night. A door to a unit at the end of the hall hangs open on broken hinges and I can see the wreckage of the room within. Colt locked herself in here, backed herself into a corner with nowhere else to flee. Brave. I only knew her for about three months. But I loved her like a sister and I vow to live up to her example in the coming moments.

An elevator waits for us at the end of the hall. The Breaker lets me on first with a gracious sweep of his arm and I step inside. This is a nicer elevator, cleaner, without the chorus of complaining gears and twanging tension wires. I suppose it’s not used as often.

“Do you enjoy your work?”

I glance up at the Breaker in surprise. “Yes,” I say after a short pause. “Keeping the Machine alive brings me great pride.”

He looks down at me and the light glints off his face shield, hiding his eyes. “And you never want to let it die? Let all of this end?”

I recoil then stiffen my shoulders. “If you’re trying to get me to admit to some wrongdoing, you’re wasting your time. I have done nothing but care for the Machine for my entire life and you’ll not find a single black mark on my personnel file.”

“My apologies,” he replies and I could swear I can hear a hint of sincerity. “Do you miss your friend?”

“My friend?”

“Co—” He quickly cuts himself off then clears his throat. “Menial 7582. Do you miss her?”

“Why?” I demand, turning to face him head on. “Has something happened to her? Has she perhaps been terminated in spite of her years of faithful service?”

“It would be a shame if she has,” he murmurs. “A miscarriage of justice.”

I can almost see his face beneath the shield. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I know you’re a good person,” he whispers in a rushed breath. “Trustworthy. Kind.”

A strange sort of fear squirms through my belly. “What—”

He puts a hand on my shoulder, gives me a gentle push to turn me toward the doors. “Gather yourself. We’re here.”

The doors slide open on oiled tracks. Breakers don’t talk to anyone below them. What’s his game? What’s he trying to trick me into saying? I grip the bag over my shoulder a bit tighter and he gives me a knowing look. But he doesn’t say anything, only urges me out of the elevator, and I step out into the hall.

It's different here. I can almost feel the pressure easing off my shoulders and I realize that we’re above ground. We’re on the surface of our own planet, with nothing between us and the sky but the ceiling. The halls here are a calm beige, interspersed with fake plants and bubbling water fountains. Imagine the waste. Menials starving and dehydrated down below while the Director and his Admins feed good water into decorations.

I let the rage seethe in my chest as the Breaker leads me down a long hallway. Admins work at glowing terminals, Breakers stand guard, Menials scrub the floors. There aren’t as many people here as I would have expected. Maybe fifty altogether. I suppose it would make sense for the Director to keep traffic here limited, if only to prevent the spread of illness and anger.

We hit a set of double doors at the end of the hall. The Breaker gives me a look before swinging one open and ushering me inside. My mother had told me of this place. She’d told me about the luxury, the comfort. The oddly calming atmosphere. She said that her great-grandmother could remember when people worked in offices, answering phones and typing away on computers. I can’t imagine such a thing. A world where people sat to work with full bellies and happy families to come home to.

A man awaits us behind a desk. But I hardly notice him. No, my eyes are pinned on the window behind him and it’s smaller than I had expected. I catch a glimpse of the something warm and golden, a wavering branch covered with green. Outside. In the world they told us was long dead, burned down to nothingness along with our hope and future. Pounded flat by bombs that left it all a radiated wasteland that would never again support life.

“Ah, Astra. It’s good to meet you at last.”

I pull my gaze back to the Director. Tall, willowy, with a bit of a paunch. Overfed. A round face with dull blue eyes creased with gentle wrinkles and a small mouth. He holds out his hand and I take it for a brief handshake. Soft and plump. No callouses. I imagine this man has never once held a tool, never done anything save sit behind this desk and issue orders. Just like his father and his father’s father, all the way back to when the first Director poured humans into the Home and put them to work.

“I imagine you’re curious why I’ve called you here,” he says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

I pull the bag off my shoulder and clutch it with both hands. “Yes,” I reply.

He perches on the edge of his desk and crosses his arms. “The Machine’s productivity has been declining in recent years. I don’t think I need to tell you that this reflects poorly on your work.”

I cock my head at him. “Does it?”

“It does,” he replies with an emphatic nod. “Your one job is to keep the Machine alive. While it’s unfortunate that you are the only Caretaker we have, we're all a family here. You must adhere to your role—”

“It’s dying.” His face tenses with shock at having been interrupted and I feel an stab of ugly joy.

“Astra,” he begins, and I can see him striving for calm. “You’re young. You don’t know how this works yet.”

“Am I young?” I ask as I slip my hand into the bag and wrap it around a wrench. “Most of us don’t make it past forty and I’m twenty-five. I’d say I’m more middle aged, wouldn’t you?”

The Director glances at the Breaker. I look over, too, to find him posted against the far wall with his arms folded over his stomach. The picture of calm control. There’s no way to get a good look at his face through that cursed shield so I turn back to the Director as he runs his hands through his hair.

“Astra,” he says again and I can hear his frustration clear as day. “Your job is to keep the Machine alive. No more, no less. If you can’t do that, we’ll just have to find someone else.”

“Find someone else?” I let out a snort. “There’s no one else. What happened to your Caretakers? Where did they all go?” I jut my chin at the window and he flinches. “Maybe they wanted some of what’s out there. Wanted to see the lie you’ve been feeding us for years.”

A bit of panic threads its way across his face. “Astra, there’s nothing out there but death. The window, it’s nothing, it’s not—”

“My mother saw,” I growl. “She knew.”

His face freezes into furious lines. “The Caretakers died because of her. She was a love besotted fool.”

The wrench comes free. I drop the bag, draw the tool back. Time seems to slow. The Director’s face twists with confusion, then horror, then terror. My arm comes down and the wrench crunches into the left side of his temple. He drops immediately, falls to the ground in a limp pile. I look at him on the floor and feel nothing but a grim determination.

There’s movement to my left. I whirl, bringing the wrench up as the Breaker takes a step forward. He raises his hands then reaches up to pull the face shield off. Shock tingles through my veins. It’s him. The Worker, the man I’ll never know, wrapped in what must be a stolen uniform. Colt had something to tell me. Is this it? Some plan my isolation kept me safe from?

“Astra,” he breathes and his smile makes my heart give a painful double thump. “I’ve waited so long to speak to you. My name is Mason.”

“Mason. You...what?” He comes toward me, arms out as though to hug me, and I ward him off with one outstretched hand. “What’s happening?”

There’s a distant thud and his smile broadens. “We wanted to tell you, Astra. We couldn’t have done this without you.”

My outstretched hand is shaking. “Slow down.”

“We can’t.” He strides forward past me to plant his hands on the window. “We can’t slow down. They’re holding them off for us, keeping the Breakers who didn’t join us busy. We need to move.”

I rush forward to grab hold of his arm with both hands. “What’s happening?” I shout.

He turns to me and his face softens. “Revolution. Freedom. A new life waiting for us just outside this piece of glass. Don’t you want that, Astra? Colt said you did.”

“And Colt told you everything, did she?” I snap, feeling oddly betrayed.

He looks away from me. “It…it was her plan, Astra. All of this was her idea. She was supposed to tell you everything last night, but they got to her first. She got a message to me, though, told me you had been called. Gave me the number of your escort.”

“You used me,” I spit out through clenched teeth.

There’s a muffled thump. He tenses then holds his hand out to me. “Come with me, Astra. Please. Don’t waste her sacrifice.”

I gaze up at him. I’ve pined over this man for years, envisioned a world that didn’t punish love even between family members. But that isn’t what pushes me forward. No, it’s the thought of a future that I can hold in my own hands. A way to take control for the first time in my entire life and to just simply exist as Astra. Not as Caretaker 148, slave to the Machine. Just me.

I take his hand. He squeezes it tight then raises the wrench. I flinch as he slams it against the glass. Cracks form, splintering across the window’s surface like webbing. He hits it again and again until it at last shatters. Mason turns us both, covering my head with one muscled arm. A rush of wind stirs my hair and I smell something acrid. Smoke, thick on my tongue, bitter against the back of my throat.

There’s a cough then a laugh. “You idiots,” the Director hisses as he rolls over. “The window was a screen, a false image. They’ll find us now!”

Mason goes still behind me. I turn, slowly, willing it to not be true. I want to see the sun and the grass, the flowers and clear skies and everything my mother promised me. Mason tries to block me but I push past him. My legs go weak and I fall to my knees with my hands gripping the windowsill.

Darkness. Broken only by the burning coals of twisted trees. Shattered buildings dot the landscape, belching clouds of smoke into the air. In the distance, I can see movement. Things that clank and roar like machines and people running alongside them. Screams, the pop and rattle of something that sounds hard and cruel. I can smell the death, the rot, the sick. The blood and charred bodies.

“The Great Schism never ended,” the Director whispers. “The workers in the building above us fled into the lower levels. We kept them safe here in the depths. Locked out the war and stayed silent, off the grid, out of sight.”

I turn to Mason. His brown eyes are defeated, his broad shoulders slumped with the weight of hopelessness. I take his hands and he looks up at me. “Will you come with me?” I ask.

“You can’t go out there!” the Director cries. “It’s death! Death and destruction and pain!”

“There are people out there,” I tell him without looking away from Mason. “Living people!”

“They’ll kill you,” the Director retorts. “They’ll kill us all.”

“We’ll find peace,” I whisper. “A pocket of it, a place to call our own. We’ll survive.”

The Director doesn’t respond. I look back at him to find him still and silent, his face gentle in repose. Dead or well on his way. I killed him, killed a man who thought he was doing the right thing. In a way, I suppose he was. I only wish he hadn’t thrown away our freedom in exchange. Mason gives my hand a squeeze, pulls my gaze away from the Director.

“I’ll go with you,” he says.

The sound of fighting has drawn closer. As we step out of the broken window, I see the first of our people burst into the office. They’re bloody and beaten, their clothes torn and singed. But they’re alive. Some take one look at the window and fall to the ground with cries of horrified disbelief. Most set their jaws, follow Mason and I out onto the surface. We stand in a ragged group, looking around ourselves with a mixture of excitement and raw terror.

It’s a strange sensation to be out in the open like this. I almost feel as though the sky will pull me up, send me drifting along the smoky clouds. We’re standing on our own soil. Breathing air created by nature instead of the Machine. No alarms to tell us when to eat or sleep, no locked doors, no protocols. No hierarchy held in place by Admins and Breakers. Only us.

“What do we do?” a Breaker whispers. “Where do we go?”

“It’ll be hard, but we’ll find a home.” I look back at them to see hope glimmering in their eyes. “Come on. Let’s go.”