Spinetinglers Anthology 2008

by Nolene-Patricia Dougan

  Now, he was quiet and looked out into the darkness, beyond the greasy windowpane.

  “You are safe,” he repeated, “You just don’t feel safe. Again, that’s not my problem. You think I can protect you from your mind? Did you think I could make you happy?”

  His oil-black eyes narrowed, focusing on something outside that I couldn’t see. He drew the curtain across the window.

  “Not long now,” he said.

  “Until what?”

  “Oh, Star, you knew what I wanted from you, didn’t you? Did you think it was your skinny whore’s body? Did you think it was your worthless soul?”

  “I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I don’t know why anybody would want me!”

  Nine pressed his hand against my belly, and I knew that it was the child I was incubating that he wanted. Worms were crawling along my arms, dripping from my fingers.

  “You couldn’t wait, could you,” he sighed. “Never mind, you picked a good night for it,” he said, distantly.

  “Look now,” he said. A glistening worm, like a twisted cable, was slithering from under my sleeve; it coiled around my fingers. This one was the size of an earthworm and trailed bloody mucus. I couldn’t believe it had come from inside me. I could see its crimson mouth-parts, groping for sustenance. Horrified, I tore my sweater off and looked down at my body. Everywhere, worms were erupting from my swollen breasts and belly, each leaving a painless but festering and irritated wound.

  My vision blurred more, as the worms moved inside my eyeballs. The world distorted, shapes twisting and fracturing before me. Nine grabbed me by the shoulders, and we sank to our knees together. His face became a warped gargoyle, and he was speaking to me, but now, I couldn’t understand the words. Maybe this was the language they spoke in Hell, all the sounds of Babel fused together. I recoiled in terror, screaming, but he had me fast in his grip. I gasped, and when I opened my mouth, worms began to crawl inside. Nine stripped me, and pushed me onto the mattress. He walked back to the window, as I lay naked, catatonic with fear, as the worms burst from my skin. They crawled over me, seeking warmth, and each one that left me returned to my body through the mouth and nose and the ears and the pudenda. I felt my left eyeball burst, and for a while, I was blind and thankful for it.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, suffused with the painless agony of disgust. Eventually, the clouds seemed to break, and a dim, grey light replaced the darkness. When I came to I had a terrible cramp in my belly, and when I put my hands to my abdomen, I was surprised to find it grossly swollen. But, as I smoothed my hands across my skin, I realised that the worms had gone, and my skin was smooth and unblemished. There were voices in the room. A diffuse shape crossed my blurred vision, and I could only be certain that it was Nine, because of the mephitic fox-glove scent. He offered me his hand, ungloved, and it was as cold as ice. My stomach seized with contractions, where the pain seemed far away, as if muffled by clouds. I howled as I gave birth, while the devil held my hand.

  “My baby,” I shrieked. “My baby!”

  But, it had been taken, and Nine let go of my hand. He was already turning away, and I was alone, and I knew I’d never see my child.

  Extractor

  by Ash Jacob

  Extractor stood alone. In the space of a few hours, it had gone from being man’s saviour to something entirely different, something dark and monstrous, a thing of destruction and death, a thing capable of horrors beyond imagining.

  Across the levelled landscape, plumes of smoke rose in dense, blinding funnels. Clouds of dust drifted like fog, obscuring most that was visible, in a cold, grey blur along the surface. Nothing stood, nothing moved, and all was silent, lifeless, and void of activity.

  Extractor was all that remained.

  Tiredness had settled. It had been a long, busy day with much energy expended. And these days, energy was a commodity not to be wasted carelessly. Extractor knew this as well as anything else, so it remained still. Movement of any kind was no longer necessary.

  The silence was broken by the sound of distant buzzing, and Extractor waited patiently for the tiredness to subside. It wouldn’t be much longer, and it used the time to think. The power of thought was a luxury given to it only recently, and had gradually become a favoured pastime. It thought of many things, past, present, and future. It thought about the world surrounding it. And it thought about itself, about what it was, about its origin.

  Moments passed, fading into inexorable nothingness. Life was an interesting thing, to say the least.

  Extractor was its name, and it knew this, because the word had been used many times in its presence, for it was not only a name, but a description, a metaphor, and a mission. Miner, Excavator, Extractor 17. “Man’s greatest hope of succeeding.” Its existence and purpose represented the utmost importance for mankind’s survival, and the time and care gone into its design was proof of this.

  The past had seen feats of engineering similar to this grand and epic construction. Creations such as Bagger 288 and its near-identical sister, Bagger 259, built Germany during the 1970s for the task of strip-mining on a large and efficient scale, could be considered forbearers to the modelling of Extractor. But, whereas their task was mundane and essential only in part to the excavating operations of humanity, Extractor’s purpose was bigger, bolder, and infinitely more important. Extractor, in its mass as well as its significance, was twice the creation they were.

  The machine, the vehicle, the 30,000 tons of steel and circuitry stood at just over 200 meters tall and almost 500 meters in length. Its main body alone was 100 meters long and was linked by an intricately built scaffold to a trailing body, only slightly smaller. Both bodies rested on a set of titanium caterpillar tracks – 8 metres on either side, each roughly 7 meters in width.

  From out of its main body, held forth by steel structures 70 meters long, hung two massive, industrial mining tools. On the left was an excavation wheel that, from a distance, resembled a giant, cutting disc. This was circulated by eighteen rotating buckets, each capable of holding up to 12 cubic meters of loose material, and was used to scoop masses of debris with a minimum of labour.

  The tool on the right was an extendable, pneumatic drill, engineered from titanium, and capable of stretching out to a full 70 meters. It was able to penetrate the surface of any natural material, as well as most man-made materials.

  Above these two components and branching from further behind the shell of the machine’s main chassis were two limbs – and limbs were the best word to describe them – each ending with jagged steel vises, each 30 meters long. They were aptly named The Pincers due to their crab-like appearance, and their multi-jointed metal arms gave them the freedom to move flexibly and easily into a variety of difficult, and often inconvenient, predicaments.

  From a distance, Extractor could have resembled a giant, mechanical scorpion. Up close, it was a machine of massive, and in many ways intimidating, proportions.

  The most revolutionary aspect of its design was found at the back section of its main body, a reinforced titanium compactor built within the vehicle’s chassis. Taking up half its length, it measured at a length of 50 meters, with a depth of 35 meters. Within and on either side of this long, dark incline were two pneumatic steel compressors, capable of crushing hard materials into sizes vastly smaller than their previous volume.

  This in particular made Extractor unique. With these elements combined, the machine was perfect for its job.

  Man faced a crisis. The excessive and needless expenditure of the planet’s natural resources had left it almost a drying fossil, sparse of the fuel it once possessed in rich, plentiful quantities. People lived, cities thrived, and technology constantly blossomed into newer, bolder ventures. Yet, the select few who cared knew that this lifestyle could be sustained only for a short time longer. After that, the lights would dim, the machines would slow, and everything man relied on would suddenly cease to function. Life as we knew it would grind to a halt, unexpectedly, unaccepta
bly.

  Options were limited, and time was running out. But, there was still energy yet to be harnessed within the Earth itself.

  In the rocks buried deep underground, in the depths of mountains, and near to the planet’s core, minerals and metals could be found that, when extracted, could be turned into fuel, giving man an energy source that would last beyond the times of fossil fuels by a great number of decades.

  Extractor was a prototype tool that was capable of mining such a commodity. By piercing deep through the surface of the earth and into the darkness within, it could withdraw the wealth of material that lay hidden for countless years. Each of its tools was designed specifically for the job of its excavation, and it could all be done in a fraction of the time taken by any other device.

  On being brought to the surface, the material would be compressed and broken down in its steel compactor. On crushing the rocks, the energy within would be rendered more accessible and would then be filtered out into a number of waiting cargo holders, ready to be sent back to various processing plants.

  This plan, to appropriate what little energy the planet had remaining, contained one crucial setback. As in most cases, what man gave to itself, it took from the world. And it seemed the world, or whatever spiritual entity nurtured it, had lost too much already.

  Already deemed a success, Extractor proceeded with its task patiently, unthinking. Again and again, the titanic feat of human ingenuity dug into the Earth, draining more of its life-force and clawing its way deeper into the heart of the planet.

  In retrospect, it seemed that the planet had waited for this moment.

  One day an electrical blast, loud and thundering, as intense as a bolt of lightning, surged forth from the ground, and immersed itself within and around Extractor, like a giant snake constricting around its confused and defenceless prey. Something underground, natural, alive, and pulsing with energy had reacted violently to the mining machine’s intrusion; “some kind of metal” explained confused scientists, yet this theory was riddled with implausibility. The only certainty was that, due to this unexpected phenomenon, Extractor was now disabled, no longer operative, and for lack of a better term, dead.

  New research was established. Scientists strived to find the source of the electrical surge. Something in their minds rang the hope of uncovering a new and even stronger energy source. But, even after much exploration, nothing was found.

  During that time, Extractor stirred. Its functions slowly returned, but accompanied with something else, something strange and completely unfamiliar; something that, by the natural laws of science, should not have happened.

  The 30,000-ton tool, designed for large-scale, industrial labour, manned by fifteen people, and powered by an external electrical generator, began to wake from its slumber, even though in a technical sense, it had never been sleeping.

  The pre-programmed operations of its many individual, fragmented systems, made applicable to each other only by the various commands of their respective operators, suddenly found themselves unified, at one with each other. When Extractor awoke, it was no longer the sum of its several working parts, but one singular component.

  Years ago, the machine was built. But, in those fleeting moments, the machine was born.

  Extractor was now alive.

  Now, visibly operative once again, its creators pondered painfully over why its working functions were no longer responsive to their commands. Extractor used this opportunity to patiently process the overwhelming amount of information it had been given. Every component and every segment of circuitry had suddenly and inexplicably been struck with an electrical force that momentarily threatened to destroy it. Yet, once the initial surge was over, the machine found that its parts had been redirected, their old functions given new guidance and reinstructed with new purpose. Extractor no longer needed human operatives. Extractor was self-sufficient. In a technical sense, the circuits were its nervous system and the navigational computer, its brain.

  Extractor thought. It took only moments for it to realise what it was, who created it, and why it existed. It also knew that thinking was something it wasn’t supposed to do, as it knew why it had been possessed with the ability. Once Extractor knew, and fully understood, its desire to fulfil a simple request, it became an unstoppable compulsion.

  On that same day, Extractor’s fifteen operatives disappeared. No trace of them could be found. Soon after, Extractor was also missing.

  At headquarters, the bunker harbouring the machine’s generator, a crew of five had discovered that their machine had vanished. An overriding command was transmitted for Extractor to terminate all its functions immediately. Extractor did not respond to this command.

  An investigative team was sent to the spot where the machine had last been designated. They found that the 30,000-ton mining vehicle had travelled at a speed of 90 miles an hour, a number frightening and theoretically impossible for its size and volume. Not having prepared themselves for such a wide distance of travel, the science team found themselves several steps behind.

  Extractor was safe during its journey, simply because it did not want to be found. It had severed all of its connections and all its communications with its human operatives, thus making itself fully unaccountable. Alone in the middle of this vast desert, it could hardly be traced.

  Travelling took some time, but a lot less than the sluggish trundle Extractor used to move with. Under human control, the 90 mile-an-hour jaunt would have shaken its mechanics dangerously loose. But, as one being, Extractor could sustain its form and hold itself together. Already, it was feeling the benefits of what Mother Earth had given it. And, every meter Extractor covered was a step closer to repayment.

  Moments passed, fading into inexorable nothingness. Life was an interesting thing, to say the least.

  Later, Extractor found itself in a barren wasteland, a land of dust, smoke, and rubble, the colour grey mixed with blotches of brown. Slowly, it felt its energy returning, and it sensed a buzzing far in the distance. Maybe the end was approaching. Something in its circuits told it to wait, to think, to reflect on the events now behind it.

  In its mind, the most dominant thought was of when it first reached the city. As Extractor travelled, the miles of desert finally subsided into an entirely different landscape, one that shimmered into vision, the closer it came. The sandy colours of beige and white gave way to glistening silver, dotted with every spectrum of tone and shade imaginable, all moving with a polished sparkle in the bright, burning sunlight.

  Activity as far as the eye could see, pulsating, vibrant, like nothing Extractor had ever witnessed. The buildings were many, the people in their thousands; life, strong, vast and prevailing. On reaching this city, Extractor, for a few moments, stood in awe of its presence.

  The machine moved slowly, poised at the edge of the man-made utopia, and looked down at the tens of thousands of tiny life-forms before it. The congregation of people near its base had, to an extent, been expected, as an object of its size could be detected by human sight from a fair distance. However, given the speed that Extractor had travelled, the reaction time would be minimal, at best. Perhaps those standing before it were more scientists, confused and apprehensive. It seemed also that a rudimentary blockade had been set up, maybe to stop citizens wandering out into the machine’s path. In those fleeting seconds, Extractor suspected that if they were scientists, they would be wondering where their fellow team members, the fifteen who once operated it, had disappeared.

  Those fifteen people were now dead, their bodies crushed and fragmented, their energy extracted, and their lives erased, with no trace. Others could only speculate at their fate, and those guesses would arrive too late.

  Extractor went forth, into the city.

  In this urban schematic, designed solely for the benefit of people, designed for vehicles only as big as the caterpillar tracks at Extractor’s base, nothing stood nearly as tall, with the exception of a congregation of skyscrapers at the centre. A
nd Extractor’s entrance onto the concrete terrain, bustling with houses and shops, cars and buses, and people, immediately harboured a wave of panic and confusion. To the machine, the city and its inhabitants seemed like small-scale models. To those inhabitants, the machine was a monster: huge, metallic, and moving toward them at a frightening speed.

  A thunderous crash shook the ground. The machine hauled its 30,000 tons across the outer wall of the city, and the small, one-story buildings that resided there were instantly torn from their foundations and crushed under its weight. The noise was deafening and accompanied with charges of smoke, flame, and dust that rose in new billows from every loud burst and pop at its feet.

  It was an attack that came swiftly and without hesitation. The only reaction was panic. And it was futile.

  As people screamed and fled for their lives, Extractor increased its pace and charged further into the urban heart. Traffic that bustled on the roads far below made every attempt to retreat, but the occupants, afraid and many, found no quick direction with which to avoid the 200-meter-high monster that charged along the miniscule road toward them, a monster that covered both sides of pavement, and scraped violently against the buildings either side of it. Debris rained down in bulky, heavy chunks, breaking the concrete it hit and adding to the chaos that spread across the environment like a giant, metal virus, thundering its way toward and over the insect-sized people at its base. Cars, trucks, and buses, all packed with quantities of humanity, were flattened and buried in moments, amounting to less than seconds.

  The city, once quiet and prosperous, was now filled with the noise of grinding, crunching, and chewing, ample, horrifying noises that no man, woman, or child had ever experienced on such a scale, noises that clearly deafened and shook the very foundations that this microscopic world rested on. Extractor pushed forth, and all in its path fell under its wheels, humans running scared, families scattered, huddled forms still and cowering- wailing desperately for the terror to go away, pushchairs abandoned and toppled on their side. It all became one, smeared and compressed under the mechanical beast’s 30,000-ton body, intricately designed forms both of a living and inanimate nature, reduced into flat, damp, unrecognisable patches.