At five A.M. the siren cried, just as it had for as long as anyone could remember. A collective yawn stretched out of the darkened windows as the sun began to crest the horizon. The first ashen puffs of smoke began; tumbling lazily down the stained grey sides of the two imposing smokestacks, wafting down, down into the city. One by one they emerged, in various shades of dinge, and dusk. Their boots on the pavement made a wet mechanical slap, like that of some grotesque organic clock; thrumming through the town, towards the smoke. Ticking away.
At five thirty the siren bellowed; marking a new silence within the place, save for the crows overhead, and the rats underfoot. The silence splits. Wheels turn. Gears grind away. Furnaces rage. The smoke leaps from the chimney high up into the sky, and a single pair of eyes deep in the city, snap open.
At five thirty four, a truant figure dashed through the streets, acting like an off-tempo metronome to the machine’s massive measured hum. It bolted towards the smoke erratically. Towards the massive monument to man.
“Laaaate,” the city seemed to groan, as he whizzed past.
“Idle-lazy, idle-lazy Idle-laaaazy,” a crow screeched from above.
The figure moved quicker.
The hum of the Machine grew louder, and the blanket of oppressive ash settled more thickly by the moment. The figure approached the two, enormous handleless doors, and began to thrash and yell to be let in. Louder the beast moaned.
At six A.M. The figure stood to the back of the unholy monstrosity of concrete muscle, and steel sinew. Scanning through the choking vapor. It saw no way in; and returned to the opening of the titanic machine. The smoke filled the streets utterly, leaving nothing to be seen. The machine droned on.
At seven thirty P.M. the smoke halted. Slowly the streets cleared, and the elephantine doors whined on their massive hinges, open. In neat rows, they re-emerged; their boots creating similar soggy cadence as they orderly spread out amongst the narrow alleyways of the perpetual slum. Now, however, the rhythm changed ever so slightly, as each of the boots avoided the slumped grey mass huddled in the path.
“Poor fool,” a chalky ancient woman said as she walked past
“Did he not know his fate?” another chirped, and kept moving.
No one stopped. The engine would not allow it. The monotony engine droned on.
“It must, after all!”
“Without the engine all is lost.”
“Without the engine there is no certainty.”
And they worked ceaselessly to maintain their certainty, always hoping not to be the one who was late to the siren, never halting long enough to pity those were. They gave everything to it. They died for it. And they died for it.
