#great machine

Li'l Ex Machina (Charles Schulz Style)

[The Line it is Drawn #118: A Li'l Collection of Li'l Comic Book Characters]

There are only happy pauses.

Carlos’ wrist watch pinged and he started up from the desk. He’d fallen asleep at his desk, face had creased his comic book. He imagined it probably left some of its ink on his cheek. He was blurry-eyed, but cognizant enough to at least see that his watch read 9:30pm—two minutes before he was needed.

He pushed the chair back and turned down the TV blaring in the corner, the Monday night football game. At the first vault door, he yawned and shushed the pinging of his wrist watch. At the second vault door he started trying to fiddle with it, seeing if there was any way to turn it off as the huge door slowly slid open. Of course, there wasn’t a way to remove it. The company insisted he wear it, monitoring him.

He’d been hired to work four ten-hour shifts, able to do whatever he wanted as long as he didn’t leave the premises, and as long as he pushed the button on the Great Machine whenever the watch pinged him. $24 an hour and full benefits.

The Great Machine was behind the third vault door. The Green Light was still illuminated, but just as soon as 9:32 fell, the Red Light lit and the Green Light went out. It made Carlos nervous each time for about the first eight months before he got used to it. Now, he just pushed the button.

The Great Machine throbbed, there was a shudder as if something was being driven deep into the earth, and the Green Light came back on.

There was also a Blue Light, bigger than the other two. He was supposed to wait three minutes after pushing the button to see if the Blue Light illuminated.

“If the Blue Light is illuminated, it is very bad. Push the button until it is extinguished, if possible.” It said on page 97 of his employee manual. The whole thing had been such formal language, detailing his benefits and contract and exactly how to perform his routine function in excruciating detail without ever revealing what was being accomplished. But on the subject of the Blue Light there was only the one line.

A machine discovered and reactivated by a misguided scientist.

I still dream about you, you know. Not about flying... that part always made me want to puke. No. I miss taking off. That cosmic tug I'd get all the way down to my balls. Like the ride up the parachute drop back in Coney Island. But you know what? I moved on. I grew up. "When I became a man, I put away childish things." There's a goddamn Bible quote for you. See, the first rule of being a good engineer is that it's not about the stuff you build. It's about the people who use it. That's why I had to get rid of you, so I could go back to helping human beings. And I did. I fucking surrounded myself with them. So why am I all alone?

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