Post-apocalypse

Before me, gears and cogs and parts for which I have no name turn and click into place as they have every day since I stumbled onto this abandoned warehouse. I haven’t explored every nook and cranny of my newfound sanctuary, but every day I find myself drawn to this room simply to observe this strange machine. I haven’t figured out what it does yet, but so far it’s the only… “living” thing I’ve found here. No people, no animals, nothing but this tireless machine. Maybe the people who live here are hiding in one of the rooms I haven’t found yet. There are supplies enough for a dozen people to live here for months, so it must have been inhabited once. The layer of dust covering those cartons of food and bottled water makes me think it’s been a while since anything  in this building ate or drank, but I’m holding out hope to find some survivors. It’s been a very long time since I last lived with sane human beings.

        It was purely luck that I found this place at all, and damned good luck at that. In the middle of a sandstorm, halfway to dead already, I saw a shape out of the corner of my eye and ran for it. The building has held up pretty well over the years since it was built, and I haven’t found anything that needs repair. Most buildings I find are little more than boards nailed together, shelters built hastily in the last few years since the weather got worse. This place is pre-war, maybe even older. Older than I am, at any rate. No one in my lifetime could possibly have found this much food and water. Nobody I’ve met could built a building this sturdy, since anyone with access to concrete and steel would have to be incredibly rich. Not really my social circle. Not to mention that machine. Few people bother creating actual machines now. Creating tools and re-inventing things to make life easier, sure, but never a machine that works on its own. Such machines are too complicated and time-consuming, and the resources too hard to find. Not to mention that many pre-war machines were designed to take the place of good, old-fashioned human beings. We do most of our own labour now.

        The more I think on it, the more I dislike that machine. Whoever once lived here seems to be long gone, and yet it’s still working for whatever unknown purpose. It has outlived its original purpose, outlived its true masters. Outlived the people who knew what it really did. I wonder if it might be the last of its kind, even more alone than I am. At least I know there are others somewhere. Does it find comfort knowing that it may still have brethren elsewhere, working towards the same strange goal? Or does it relish being one of a kind? Perhaps it doesn’t think at all. Perhaps it was built before thinking machines, or maybe it was built afterwards and specifically designed to avoid the pitfalls of those unholy creations. At any rate, it tolerates my presence here, and for that I’m grudgingly thankful. Or perhaps it can do nothing to stop the only intruder it has seen in years. Maybe the defense mechanisms only start when I steal from the supplies. My own supplies have held up so far, but if I stay here much longer I will have to take from the unused supplies of whoever once lived here.

        The sun is going down now, so I’ve returning to the machine room to see if I can understand it with closer examination. Looking around now, there’s a large wrench behind the machine itself. None of the parts I can see signify any particular purpose, and in fact the machine is contained solely in this room. If it were important for the survival of whoever lived here, there would be pipes connecting it to the other rooms  to transfer whatever it was creating. If there had been pipes, I might have thought it was a furnace or a carbon dioxide processor for maintaining the air supply. As far as I can tell, whatever it does is limited to this room. Except there’s nothing else in this room. Not even a power supply. What makes it run? There’s no electricity in this building that I can see, and it emits nothing to suggest fossil fuels or steam as its power source. The more I examine it, the more I think there’s no reason for this machine to run at all. I’ve never seen anything similar, and I don’t believe I’ve ever needed one. Whatever it once did must have been a luxury affordable only by someone who could afford all the food stored here.

        As I pick up the wrench from the far corner, I’m looking for obvious weak points in the machine. Places vulnerable enough to be smashed or cracked. One glass or plastic tube in particular loops from the crown of the machine to its base, and this is my first target. After a couple of swings, it shatters. Nothing comes from the broken end of the tube, as if nothing circulated through it at all. There was small burst of light when it broke, but nothing else. Looking around the machine now, the exposed gears seem to be the most vulnerable places. An old phrase my father heard from his grandfather comes to mind, and yes, I will be placing a literal wrench in the gears. I’m hoping to pry one loose or perhaps stop it long enough for pressure to build and destroy one of the many parts depending on its motion. After fitting the head of the wrench around an appropriately sized gear, I use all of my weight to try to dislodge the gear. With a grinding, sickening crack, the gear comes flying into the room and only narrowly avoids taking off my right ear. The flash of light nearly blind me this time, but somehow the machine seems to function without that piece. The walls around me look alien and strange in the flickering light that must be coming from within the machine, but I don’t feel threatened by it. I don’t think this is a fragile machine about to self-destruct. Circling the machine again, I see a plume of smoke rising from a crack in the side. It looks vulnerable enough to smash with my wrench.

        Upon breaking through the outer shell of the machine, there was a flash of light so bright that I was blinded for over a minute. When I open my eyes, I’m no longer in a room on the left side of a warehouse. The walls, so strange a moment ago, have disappeared completely. I’m in a bare room with white-washed walls, and before me is a ruined machine nothing like the one I just destroyed. I leave the room, but the warehouse is no longer a sturdy sanctuary. It’s much smaller than what I remember, and rather than concrete and steel, I see only white-washed wooden walls. The crates of food and water have been replaced by empty cardboard boxes. In many of the rooms dead bodies lie abandoned, dead from starvation or thirst. The other victims of this cruel oasis. It would seem that machine was integral to the building I saw after all. As if it provides any comfort, no other travellers will fall prey to this holographic stronghold. Perhaps my damned luck will help others more than it helped me, when they pass this building in search of better shelter.

        After a while, I found a room with no other unfortunate fools inside. I closed the door and sat down to finish off my supplies of food and water and wait for the inevitable.