The machine

I wrote this flash fiction piece as a writing exercise.

The prompt

Pick 3 works of literature from my bookshelf. Choose a random number (mine was 26) and, on that page of each book, find 2-3 phrases that pop out. Write a >1,000-word story using several of the phrases.

I chose phrases from page 26 of Little Women, Rabbit Redux, and Anne of Green Gables. The phrases included:

Dress circle

The curtains flew apart

A gloomy wood

A slouched hat

Burst out in a wild strain

The machine is a baby

Like spirits, without shadows

Lips pinch in

Scalloped glass dish

Prepared a couch

Lighted a candle 

The story

The Machine

That Saturday, it rained an incessant silver torrent of rain. We woke up to the insistence of it against our east-facing window. Then we sneaked a mutual smile across the mattress at each other. Agreeing without words the weather wouldn’t keep us inside. 

In those days, we tried to go to the theater every weekend. As grad students we still lived simply then, on ramen and peanut butter and day-old bagels. But we’d chosen New York, and we weren’t shy about our gluttony for the eternal tide of art flowing without end here. 

We could only afford the off-off-off-Broadway productions, and then only the matinees. Sometimes it took three trains and several-block walks to get to some of those makeshift theater spaces, spare and claustrophobic blank, black spaces inside warehouses or above martial arts studios. I found the plays in the listings at the back of the free weeklies, after the exposés about legalizing pot and police scandals but before the ads for XXX clubs and the sleazy classifieds. 

The plays we picked ranged in style and story. Usually they ended up being absurdist, a bit silly, and occasionally disturbing. We once saw an adaptation of The Glass Menagerie, but all the characters wore frog costumes and ate flies instead of sipping drinks. 

All we knew about the play that Saturday was that it was called “The Machine” and had been described by a Village Voice reviewer as “a force of symbolism and emotion.” We fought our way down to the train through the downpour. The city was crossing the bridge between summer and fall, no longer steamy but still muggy and unpleasant in the subway tunnels. Julia wore a purple dress with chunky, yellow Wellington boots and the slouched felt hat she’d claimed from her grandfather’s house when he died. She looked like Christopher Robin. 

Because we arrived early and the rain kept people away, we scored seats in the dress circle. I held Julia’s hand. At stage left loomed a giant black box. The lights went up for the first act, and a young woman stepped into the spotlight and narrated some lines about the technology revolution, bio-technological relation and determinism, accelerationism, and human evolution. I was paying attention, but it was lost on me. Another pretentious production. 

The majority of the play involved people arriving on stage in various work costumes—nursing scrubs, police uniform, businessman’s suit and tie, blue work coveralls and neon orange vest. Each actor would deliver a short soliloquy, then feed the looming black box, which was supposed to be some kind of machine. Unpleasant groaning and grinding sound effects played every time they inserted paper, scrap wood, and random tech accessories through a slot in the box. The machine was a baby, devouring every item with rapacity in its infantile id. 

The parade of characters reminded me of one of those Richard Scarry picture books I read as a child. Or of The Village People. I began to enjoy myself, not because the play was good, but because I found it so absurdly bad. I found myself already thinking about the fun Julia and I would have discussing it over dinner. 

By the time we emerged from the theater, the daylight was waning and the rain had stopped. We walked hand in hand in the peach-purple light to a tiny Italian restaurant tucked several steps down from the street. 

Not until we were settled at our romantic little table and the hostess had lighted the candle in its scalloped glass dish between us did I actually glimpse Julia’s face and realize that she wasn’t amused. Her lips pinched in; a deep sorrow had sunken into her eyes. 

“Oh, what’s wrong?” 

She shook her head. The waitress brought over a carafe of chianti, placed two glasses in front of us and poured, then disappeared into the back. We were the only patrons in the place at this early hour. 

“Julia, what is it?”

“It’s just…that play.”

“Ridiculous, wasn’t it?”

“But not, really. What if that’s what our life will become? What if that’s what we’re heading toward?”

Without thinking, I scoffed. Her worries seemed ludicrous at the time. We were both in prestigious grad school programs. We were young and healthy and beautiful. We had dreams: traveling the world, making a difference in our work. The future was vague, but there was no reason not to feel optimism. 

“You’re being overdramatic! It was an awful play with heavy-handed symbolism. Stop being so hyperbolic, Julia. Cheer up.” 

I wanted to laugh with her, like we always did, to clink our glasses of cheap wine and relax for a change. 

I couldn’t have known at the time that a brief flicker of life had flared up inside Julia, minuscule but all-consuming, burning long enough to change her appetite and turn her inside-out in a clash of fear and hope. And that just as quickly as it had disappeared as quickly as it came, leaving her deflated and grieving, queasy, exhausted. 

There’s no way I could have guessed, but Julia made up her mind about her own future right then. Because she could glimpse what I would become.