The Machine

Morpheus

Slowly, almost imperceptibly tension mounted throughout its body, it creaked and groaned in as plastic and steel components began to coil and make ready. The machine like a jungle cat, lay waiting to pounce, its muscles tensed and senses alert..

Waiting

Waiting

Wait.....

Suddenly and like a dam bursting, came the release it had made ready for.

Now to you or me, it all happened in milleseconds, but to the machine, the ending of its lifecycle took an eternity and time dragged by...

All of its stored massive potential energy was suddenly uncaged and trasformed into the kinetic energy needed to drive large lever.

A long thunderous bang resonated through the machines body as the lever swung up smashing against the rear of a long needle like metalic shaft. The force drove the shaft towards eternity and forced it down into a tiny dark hole. The tip of the shaft would have gleamed with a sharpness had light been able to penetrate this chamber of hellish night.

Further and further the shaft travelled, its point gaining momentum until finally a sliver of circular golden light could be seen ahead. The shaft rushed to meet freedom, but it had been fooled, there was no exit to this tunnel, the shafts point smashed into the cold hard solid golden circle dead centre.

The far side of the golden wall was dark hard and silent. A thin film of mercury molecules were smeared out across the circlular walls inner surface. Woken from their slumber by the sudden impact of the shaft, they vibrated at a dizzying speed and as one exploded into life.

The heat and flame of the mercury traveled only a brief distance before smashing against a solid wall of coal like material, this was the final stage of the machines brief cycle, but the black wall, rather than stopping the mercurys fury, embraced it. The walls own atomic level changed state and in one instant it exploded in a brief powerful flash.

Expanding now in a dante like inferno the flame and heat driven gases became extremely hot, the mixture smashed back uselessly against inside of the golden wall trying to find a way out. Bouncing back it travelled in the opposite direction, where it met a solid grey wall of softer metal. Under the immense pressure of the exploding gases, this cold dull wall finally began to move, slowly the ignited atoms pushed and metal screeched and slid.

At last the metal burst free and gained momentum, it came to life, down down down it travelled along a dark silvery cylinder, ahead light spiralled to meet it, the metal rotated, faster and faster, it tore along, the chambers walls a blur and with a final rush burst free into the clean fresh air.

It hurtled along drilling an arrow straight hole through the air, pushing a bow wave of air molecules ahead of it as it went. Suddenly a large dark shape loomed with velocity, quickly blotting out everything else in the world.

The little piece of metal slammed into the object which was surprisingly soft. As it entered the bow wave of air molecules disipated with a pop and the metal began to spin end over end.

On it travelled, tumbling and turning, twice it struck and smashed through something dense and hard. It slowed a little but nothing yet stopped its journey.

Its final memory was one last jarring impact and it began to break up. Striking a second soft barrier, this time with most of its energy used up, it broke into smaller slivers and burst through to oblivion.


...........

A crushing impact knocked the wind out of him followed by a loud snap, looking out he saw a figure duck back around the corner. A weakness seeped into his body. The soldier dropped to his knees, raised his arms and grasping his chest he looked down in disbelief.

His own life blood pumped through his fingers from a tiny smoking hole in his chest, he felt no pain only a grateful numbness being drawn into him.

His corpse tumbled backwards onto the pavement.....



Pretty crap, threw it together on my lunch, just something that came to mind.

CuLT

Grammar is a little erratic in places (probably the result of not making a couple of drafts ), but I love the general style and method, very Banksian.

Same style as the one or two other pieces you've put up a good while ago, correct? Keep at it, and keep posting them up.

Morpheus

Cheers!!

Dont post that often, I literally stayed in over lunch and wrote it, quick re-read of it now shows up lots of grammatical errors, but i dont write too often so its my own fault.

Thanks for the comments though!

Educate me... Whats Banksian?

Doc

Its far from being crap I liked the peace a lot.
One thing I would say is somehow the end didn’t sit right for me. After the lengthy description of the shot personally I would have preferred an even shorter description of the effect of the bullet outside of its own experience but what do I know...

CuLT

Originally posted by Morphéus

Educate me... Whats Banksian?

Heh, sorry, I mean it's similar to the style of Iain Banks; he's a popular sci-fi author from Scotland, he makes for an enjoyable, if occasionally predicatable (not a reflection on you, just a side note) read.