The Old Man’s Machine
By Thomas Bradford
The underground complex is abandoned and has been for a long time. Not abandoned completely, but deserted of its original inhabitants. Now it serves as the old man’s home, its concrete ceilings and dark corridors his refuge from the empty world above.
He sits in front of a peculiar machine. It is a device he has worked on for decades. Breathing through his nose, the air rustles his long white beard as he stares at his creation, concentrating, before lifting a wrench to the side of the machine’s cylindrical frame. There he tightens a bolt slowly, his muscles moving of their own accord, mindlessly performing tasks of which he has spent decades in the hope of one day finishing his creation.
Finally, it seems, he has.
The old man lowers his arm, letting the end of the wrench fall to the floor with a soft clang. His movement is tired as he pulls a yellowed sheaf of papers from his waistband. He adjusts himself on the metal stool and holds up one particular page, his eyes moving back and forth from the completed machine to designs he had sketched forty-seven years ago.
Forty-seven years.
To him it feels like a hundred lifetimes; an incomprehensible span he has become deadened to. Or so he thought. For now the possibility of change has returned, the longing for redemption spreading through his being once again, like water gifted to gnarled roots that for ages have been dried-up and dormant.
Satisfied that each bolt is in its right place, that each metal plate and circuit is exactly as it should be, the man lowers the page, his expression unchanging save for a faint hopeful smile in his eyes. He regards his cylinder of metal, his unassuming capsule, one final time, resolving to test it tomorrow. Getting to his feet, the old man walks away.
Like a silent watchman, his time machine stands at the ready, waiting for his return.
#
His filthy bedroll sits in a dark corner of another room in the complex. This area is as big as a warehouse, with many stairs and catwalks running along its sides. It is under their canopy that the old man rests, his back leaning against the cold concrete of the wall as he sits among his rat-eaten blankets and musty pillows. He idly scratches the white hairs on his chest and thinks of the past. Of the world it created.
He speaks to a rusty machine that floats at the edge of the room, its quiet presence like a specter in the shadows outside the muted glow of the overhead bulbs in their circular dishes.
“A-lon, activity on surface,” he says.
An orange light flickers briefly in the corner of the robot’s rectangular frame.
“Previous expedition to planet’s surface yielded no signs of human life. Long-range scanner detected no presence beyond basic flora and fauna.”
The old man’s eyes are distant as he listens to the robot speak. His lips move slightly, mouthing each word as it is spoken. The machine’s report has never changed, he knows it never will, yet he asks for it every day. In a way he has become like a machine himself, compelled to a routine of robotic banter from which he doesn’t deviate.
“Current state of reserves, A-lon.”
The light blinks again; calculations are made in microseconds.
“683 bags dry goods — 406 dehydrated, 277 regular. Freezer holds 308 items. Freezer itself exhibiting increased signs of failure; at current rate it will cease to function in approximately two days, twelve hours, thirty-eight minutes and twelve seconds. Recommend utilizing my hunt/gather protocol functionality in order to secure parts necessary and/or additional unit.”
The old man shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. There’s more than enough dry food to last. Were you able to find what I asked?”
The machine floats towards him, circumnavigating a metal staircase to come to a gentle stop several feet from his bedroll. Its frame rests halfway between light and shadow; the overhead glow catches its side and reveals a faded serial number: A-lon686742med-u1. A small compartment in its metal frame opens and a rudimentary arm emerges, its two claw appendages holding a clear glass bottle of bronze liquid. The bottle is coated in a fine layer of dirt, the label visible: black, with white lettering.
“One bottle eighty-proof distilled bourbon whisky.”
The old man cups the bottle, his hand trembling. The days when he’d been thankful that his sole companion’s synthetic voice is non-reproachful by design have long since passed. This frequent request has become merely another part of his routine. He murmurs his thanks as he takes the bottle.
“You are very welcome, Robert.”
The old man says nothing. Untwisting the plastic cap, he lifts the bottle to his mouth. Thick bubbles of air chug through the liquid as he takes deep gulps, desensitized to the burn of the alcohol passing his throat, welcoming the warmth as it settles in his stomach like a dull ember. He lowers his arm, his gaze fixes on the floor as it empties and becomes vacant, and he loses himself for a moment. Then he notices the robot again and waves his hand.
“Go away A-lon.”
The machine dutifully obeys. The old man takes another pull from the bottle. Minutes pass in silence, his expression unchanged.
He thinks of the past.
Suddenly the man’s eyes water. He shakes his head bitterly, finally lowering it altogether, as if in defeat. He clutches the neck of the bottle to his leg as he cries, his shoulders hitching in silence, tears spilling onto the rotting blankets. The old man’s heart is heavy and his chest feels like it’s filled with lead. Tilting his head back, he clenches his teeth and rubs a hand across his eyes, wishing for the moment to pass. His nose is running and the mucus is in his beard. He looks ancient, rundown and withered. He is a sorry sight to behold.
The importance of this man’s invention, the machine he has crafted in his many years of isolation, cannot be understated. The empty surface of the world above has not always been empty. If one had the ability to go back, to address the past with knowledge of what the future holds, perhaps that world could be saved. Perhaps the old man’s present could be nothing more than a bad dream, and the world could be filled with life once again.
For anyone else, that would be the reason. It would be incentive enough to construct a machine to travel back in time, and one could not be blamed for expecting it of anyone with such an ability. For what greater purpose could there be than the world’s salvation?
But this man … Robert … He doesn’t care about any of that.
He doesn’t care about the world above. He doesn’t care about those who lived, or those who died. He doesn’t care about the joy they had, the dreams they kept, or the hatred they visited upon one another. He doesn’t care about lost potential for love and kindness, the possibility of wonder, the capacity for creation and destruction and everything in between. The machine he created could be important to the world that was; he created it because it is important to his world that is.
Maybe in the beginning he told himself otherwise. Maybe he even once believed it was so. But even a year in isolation, with ruminations of the past as his only diversion during the countless hours of staring at nothing or lying restlessly awake, is a long time. Over the decades, he has come to know the true reason for his work. Has come to know it intimately, to see its face over and over again, impossible to get away from, useless to try to suppress. The bottle in his lap has always proven a poor weapon against it.
It is regret. It is shame. And throughout all these years, it is all that is left to him.
The old man wants to sleep. He wants to not stare into nothingness with red eyes for hours, days, and years.
He wants to go back and fix it.
He thinks back to who he was before — the child he was, then the man. Nothing seemed to work right for either one. It was an odd-shaped life, a puzzle piece that never fit, its only purpose that to be set aside, disregarded and forgotten. It was an awkward existence where the greatest of ideas had a way of stuttering into reality stunted and ill-formed. Luck was never with him; many decisions he made were doomed to be wrong from the start. And like a curse, his wrongness of being finally culminated in a single instance, a terrible moment of which he would give his life to have avoided, if only he could.
He is to blame. He, and he alone.
But now it seems he can change things. He can erase that blame, make it go away, leaving him free at last, without burden, with a clean conscience at the end of his life. More than anything, he does not want to die with this regret.
An air processor switches on, clicking its fan and pulling the old man from his thoughts. He goes to take another drink from the bottle and discovers it is empty, and that he has no recollection of draining it. Disappointed, sad that it’s gone, he pushes the bottle away, a moment later hearing the sound it makes from the shadows as it stops against the other empty bottles.
#
The old man rubs sleep from his eyes as he sits down on the metal stool. His creation stands before him, its quiet presence unchanged. It has been two days since he completed it. Rather than try it out the following day like he wanted, he found himself too nervous to go near it. He finally summoned his nerve by telling himself that if he didn’t do this now, then he never would. His fingers shake as he adjusts several dials on the machine; this time his shakes have little to do with sobriety.
He sets the numbers, he checks the circuits, he lets his hand rest over the toggle switch. His eyes are wide, his stare intense with a mixture of hope and fear. His dry throat clicks as he swallows. His lips tighten as he steels himself, ready to push the button to start the machine for the first time. For the last time.
He pushes the button.
… Nothing happens.
The old man’s heart drops. His mind floods with panic and he presses the button several more times, each time hearing the dry click of the switch inside the small metal box, followed by his rushing breath, followed by silence. He lets the box fall to the floor and runs his hands over the outside of the machine. He checks the myriad of wires, he feels the bolts, he looks at the exposed circuit boards. He sees nothing wrong.
“…—obert …”
Turning his head, he sees A-lon appear in the doorway. A small red light glows steadily in the corner of the robot’s rectangular body. The old man has never seen it lit up before, and doesn’t know exactly what it means — clearly an error sign of some sort, but he doesn’t know of what.
“…—zer ceased … function …” the robot says, its speech clipped, the words disrupted by quiet pauses. The old man asks the robot what’s wrong.
“… speech …—otocol system is …—ailing …”
The old man nods, understanding what has happened. He is not surprised. It all makes sense to him, in fact. It fits perfectly with what he now knows is the only way this scenario could have played out for him. To imagine otherwise had been foolish of him, and he feels a rueful disgust for ever hoping things could have been different.
The freezer had failed. A-lon was malfunctioning, wearing down after all these years. And his creation was a failure. A piece of junk.
The possibility of this moment had surfaced in his thoughts throughout the years. Part of him had expected it, but a larger part of him had still believed. Believed that somehow, this time, things would turn out differently. This time he wouldn’t screw up, as he had with every other important thing in his life. This time things would come together, and he would finally succeed. Even if it had taken his entire life, in the end he would get this one thing right.
He was a fool.
There would be no fixing anything. The machine doesn’t work, and he is too tired to discover why. He is too old, his mind isn’t what it used to be, and he would likely waste away before the capsule’s mess of circuitry trying to discover where he went wrong.
It is over, in other words. In the end he failed.
Looking at his inoperable time machine with eyes that have begun to water, his stubborn mind slowly begins to come to a reluctant acceptance. He knows that there is only one recourse left to him now.
He must accept the end. Accept his failings, his guilt, as best he can before passing on.
His stomach pangs with a dull ache as he turns his back on his failed invention, putting it from his sight forever. He leaves the room, heading to his storage of dry food. There he gathers only what he thinks he’ll need, storing it inside a blanket which he then ties off, making it into a bundle which he can carry. He takes a small jug of water as well, wishing it were a glass bottle instead. Perhaps he can locate where A-lon has gone all these years to supply him, he thinks.
The old man does not say goodbye to the complex as he starts to leave. It had been a lonely and desolate home to him, and he feels no sentiment in leaving it. A-lon follows the old man as he walks; the man notices the robot behind him just as he is about to leave and raises an eyebrow. He shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “You stay here.”
The old man turns to go, but the robot continues to follow. Again he commands it to stay; again the robot disobeys. Finally, he gives up and instead opens the door, ducking through it and slamming it shut before A-lon can follow, sealing his companion in as he turns the metal wheel. The machine floats on the other side, motionless, lost without someone to direct it. Left without a voice or purpose, perhaps it will never move from that spot for the remainder of its artificial life.
The dim lights of the underground complex continue to glow, illuminating a facility that is once again abandoned. Just as it was less than forty-eight years ago, now it is again, and perhaps now will forever be. In a room tucked away in a back corner of the complex sits a curious machine, its lights and dials dark. If one were to look at it and deduce its purpose, they might discover that the only thing keeping it from working is a lack of power. A simple adjustment to its power cord would fix this problem.
This theoretical person might also suspect that the creator of this strange contraption had already used the machine himself, and disappeared into the infinite stretches of time.
It probably wouldn’t occur to them that the dead device was merely the last example of a lifetime defined by stupid mistakes, of messing up anything and everything it encountered.
#
Tears stream slowly down the old man’s face. His eyes are rimmed with red as he shoulders the makeshift pack on his back. As he limps through the dark corridors on his way back to the surface, he feels as if he is reaching the end of a very long dream, one that should have ended differently.
Everything feels wrong, like things were not meant to be this way, but they are. The urge to make things right is still within him, but it is useless now, impotent, with no path forward and no chance of being a reality.
The old man doesn’t want his life to end underground. This at least is something he can fix.
He wants to see the sky. He wants to breathe the open air. Maybe once he is above ground, he’ll see another human being again. This is secretly his last desire. Although he is old, and facing the end, the capacity for hope in his heart has not changed. His pull towards irrational longing is the same as it ever was, and he hopes to see one person in particular again. If not in the past, then here in the present would be enough. He wants to see this person and say that he’s sorry.
That he always was, and he will die being so.