In some way they would never leave here. They and all the others. They were claimed by the city and what it was built upon. Casualties caught in its many gears.
I’m sorry, Hayes said to them. I’m so sorry. But they did not hear, or if they did they did not show it.
Then finally they came to a huge, dark room with a thin passageway running along one side. Hayes looked to the end of the passageway, thinking. Then he raised the lantern and as the light reached further out it found Garvey standing there, the knot in his cheap tie loose and his hands in his pockets. His small smile was wry and sad, as though he was pained by the things he’d seen and yet at peace with the absurd knowledge that he’d willfully see more of them. Hayes swallowed as he stared at him. Then Garvey’s small smile deepened and he said, “Someone has to look, for things like that.”
The hand holding the lantern began shaking. Then Hayes took a breath and said, “Yes. Let’s take a look.” And he turned the lamp away until his friend was swallowed by shadows, and he and Samantha walked to the edge of the passageway.
They lifted the lamps and found Tazz’s machine waiting for them. It was huge and dead and silent still, its turbines quiet, its pistons frozen. Hayes nodded and walked to the ladder rungs and began to climb down, lamp hanging from the crook of an elbow. Samantha did the same, leaving one lamp burning at the top of the ladder.
When they were at the feet of the machine it seemed larger than ever. From this perspective they saw it was easily taller than most buildings. But Hayes took no notice and instead found the small hutch in the machine’s side and the many tools that had been left there. He knelt and peered into the hutch and sniffed. Then he nodded again and grabbed the second lantern and got down on his hands and knees.
“How will this be any different?” asked Samantha.
“Different?” said Hayes.
“Using this machine…” she said. “How will this be any different from what McNaughton was doing? How will this help, and not hurt further?”
Hayes thought for a moment. “It will be different,” he said, “because now I know the limits. We know how fragile all this is. And I am not looking to build, and grow, and keep pushing the boundaries. I am looking to make sure that the heart of the world keeps beating.”
He crawled in on his hands and knees and dragged the second lamp in after. Samantha stooped and called into the hutch, “But will that be enough?” Yet Hayes did not answer.
On the inside the machine was a world of gears and pipes and bundles of wires, of blown glass and steel and frail copper plates. Hayes crawled or walked or sidled his way among them, looking them over and somehow recognizing them. He knew them and saw how primitive and vulgar and simple the device was, how it was a feeble work that attempted to ape something far beyond the conception of its creators. But he could sense the potential there as well. It could be fixed. Brought back or even made better.
He began adjusting it as he saw fit. Moving the parts until they matched the design in his head. It took hours, but he hardly noticed. So many foreign memories were coming to life inside him, memories and patterns and designs that had waited eons to be used.
Finally he slid one copper plate into its slot and the machine filled with a deep, resonant hum. Hayes looked up above at the roof of wiring and piping and crawled back out as the hum grew. He pulled himself out of the hutch and saw Samantha seated at the lip of the wall, staring up at the machine with wide, frightened eyes. Then she saw him and helped him up and they both stood and looked.
“Sometimes I think this city has a voice,” said Hayes.
“A what?” said Samantha, surprised.
“A voice.”
She looked away, and then shut her eyes and tried not to weep. “What does it say?” she asked.
The hum kept deepening until they could feel it in their bones. It seemed as though there were some great pressure shifting down in the earth, something pushing up and rising through the rock and charging toward the surface.
“That things are going to get better,” said Hayes.
The hum reached its apex and another hum joined it, this one of a higher pitch, and then another and another as boiling air coursed through the many metal throats in the machine. A groan rolled throughout the room as gears that had long been silent began to move. Then the air took on a slight charge as electricity found its way through the device and signals began echoing through its recesses, whispering to long-forgotten components and rousing them from sleep. Soon the little crystal in the Sibling above began flickering, perhaps calling to others like it and straining to attract their attention. Distant islands of machines floating in the dark, chained together by links of light, all of them aware of this little rogue pocket in the center of the city that had suddenly come back into existence. Wondering what this could be, if they could wonder at all.
Let them watch, thought Hayes. Let them listen. Let them see what we’re making here. Something extraordinary. Something genuinely for the future. Maybe they’ll listen.
“Open your eyes, Samantha,” said Hayes. “Open them.”
She did so, and gasped softly. The many hums gathered like a chord on a church organ until finally there was a great squalling and the dozens of pistons began to move. At first it was slow and painfully arthritic and the machine strained until it seemed it could not bear the force, but then the pistons began to find some lost rhythm, a slow, pumping beat that pulled more life and power into the machine with each stroke. And somehow both of them recognized that beat, that soft, powerful churning they’d heard before, echoing up storm drains and air vents. It spoke of great strength and magnificent power, enough to move the Earth and the stars themselves, should it be set to it, and both of them thought it new and terrifying and wonderful. Then the beat faded as the pistons gathered speed until they were churning at a blinding rate, smoothly and beautifully, and the hundreds of gears spun cleanly and the wiring sang and the batteries sparked and every inch of the massive construction was moving and humming and alive.
“Yes,” said Hayes. “Things are going to get better.”
And they sat and watched as the machine awoke.
