James Smythe - The Machine

Who’s that? Beth asks, a jerk reflex. Asking Vic that question. Something she hasn’t had the chance to do in years; he always used to be the one who opened the door to people. She would always tell him to go and do it, and assume he would know who it was before he even looked. As if he was always expecting somebody.

The bell rings again, and it’s followed by a knock. Three knocks, rapid and harsh. Beth stays where she is, staying quiet. Nobody ever comes to see her. Might be that it’s the neighbour with the girls. Another series of raps on the door, and Beth moves to the doorway of the bedroom to get a better look – to hopefully see a shape through the pebbled glass at the top, and somehow recognize the person from that vagueness.

The letterbox flaps. Beth? It’s me. Laura’s voice. I know you’re in there, Beth. Please answer the door, she says. You don’t have to do this alone.

Beth stands and holds her breath, and she completely forgets that Vic is behind her with the Crown still resting there on his head.

Beth, Laura says again, but she lets the letterbox snap back into place, and her shadow – just a shape – moves away, and down towards the window that looks into the living room. The curtains are closed so she can’t see anything, but her shape lingers as she tries to peer in.

Beth’s phone rings: the house line, because that’s the only one that Laura’s got.

Come on, she hears Laura saying through the window, which is cracked slightly open at the top to let the air in. Answer, answer. She paces and lets it ring, and Beth stands completely still and there’s no noise apart from the roar of the Machine, but that must be too quiet for Laura to hear, even though inside the bedroom it sounds like a gale, when you really focus on it.

The phone rings for a minute and then stops, and there’s a few seconds where Beth wonders if she’s gone – Laura’s silhouette is nowhere to be seen – before a note is pushed through the letterbox, and then she walks past the window.

Beth goes and picks up the note, which is a single folded piece of paper, but pre-written, prepared, as if this – her not answering or being out, one or the other – was an eventuality Laura had anticipated.

Beth, I came to offer you my shoulder and my advice. I can help you through this. You shouldn’t make these decisions on your own. Call me. Laura.

I’m not on my own, Beth says aloud.

Beth carries the note around with her as if it has a special meaning, but keeps it either in her hand (where it scrunches in on itself) or in the back pocket of her shorts (where it attempts to smooth itself out again). She thinks about it as she feeds Vic his lunch of apples and pineapple and tinned peaches, mixed down in the processor, like this is some fad diet, and when they resume their sessions in the afternoon she sits and reads it over as Vic listens to himself talking about his training. These sessions are the worst: the ones that have only to do with his army background, that she listens to because they’re there.

Am I being selfish? she asks him in their fourth session of the afternoon, pausing the playback for a second. Would you even want this, if it was offered to you?

The Machine’s noise is something that should be ruinous. It should destroy her, to hear it, because it’s so pervasive and so intense. There’s no escaping it when the Machine is working, or even when it’s idle. And she’s felt it shaking a few times before, but now, as she sits at the foot of the bed, she could swear that the vibrations from it are coming through the carpet. She climbs off as Vic talks about the speed with which he can strip and clean and rebuild a rifle, and she lies on the floor with her head on its side to see if the carpet is actually trembling, as she suspects. She feels it in her face: that slight tickle, like pins and needles.

When the fifth session is over she takes the Crown off and puts it back in the dock. She doesn’t unplug the Machine, because the hum when it’s on standby is almost comforting, she thinks. She wonders if Vic likes it. If it’s reassuring. She hauls him to the bathroom again, and makes him a dinner of spaghetti hoops on two slices of mushed-up bread, and puts him to bed, making sure that the bed is dry (which it is, as the heat pretty much ensures that anything left for half an hour bakes itself dry). She gives him water, but not too much.

Shower in the morning, she says. He shuts his eyes without her having to tell him to, but that might just always be the way he’s done it. When he’s tired, he knows.

She sits on the sofa with Laura’s note in her hand and pulls the laptop out and starts to flick through her usual forums. She searches to see if there’s anything about Machines vibrating, and if that’s a side effect of the custom firmware. She’s become an expert on these things, she thinks. Ten years ago, firmware wouldn’t have even been a word to her. When that search throws up nothing she searches for threads on The Positives, the name they use for those carers who’ve successfully brought people back from vacancy. There are six on her main forum, the one where she actually has a username and a login, and they were the only six people people she knew of who had managed to get hold of Machines. She was lucky number seven. The firmware was all programmed by the first one, and he shared the wealth. Swedish, lost his wife in the same war as Vic fought in, and he was desperate, because he didn’t have money. And their government banned the Machines; his chance of anything happening of its own accord was slim to none. She sends him a question.

How long did it take for your wife to become herself again? (Recognizably.)

Beth presses SEND and waits for a reply.

The users of the forum are dedicated and passionate, and they’re all willing to help. The users say that you don’t know what families of the vacant are going through until you go through it yourself; the only people who can help are those who feel your pain. It’s a motto of the forum-goers. Beth sits and rubs the sides of her head, where the headache has set in – like spending too much time near a photocopier, and so intense, concentrating on this, putting all the tension into her head and her jaw, making her bite down on nothing, making her tense her entire face over and over, every muscle in it – and she’s thinking about the ibuprofen when the reply comes.

Hi there! It was exactly two weeks after we started. We took it easy because I was sacred.

Beth thinks that he means scared, but she could be wrong.

I did not want to hurt her. So it was two weeks before she said something that was exactly her. But she made noise that she was getting better before that, and so I persevered. Are you going to be hopefully joining the club of the rest of us? Because we can give you any more help, if you need it. Just say the ask. Smiley face.

Beth doesn’t reply. She thinks about it – she types a reply, which she deletes twice – and then shuts the laptop. She still has the note, and she reads it again: Laura’s handwriting, which now looks over-rehearsed to her, as if she wrote this once on another sheet and copied it out, like writing letters to relatives when she was a child. And the words: suggesting that she needed help or advice. That she wasn’t entirely sure of what she was doing. It’s an intrusion by somebody on the outside, someone who was barging in where she wasn’t wanted. She hasn’t been through this pain, and she can’t understand it, so she can’t expect to help.

Beth puts the TV on and then mutes the sound and leans back. She shuts her eyes. That’s all it takes.

The sky crackles.

It wakes Beth up because it’s so noisy, like firecrackers snapping away. The television is halfway through a Japanese cartoon, but that doesn’t give her a time to use as reference. The clock says that it’s just gone midnight, which means she’s barely been asleep any time at all. It’s so dark in the flat, only the TV is giving off any light at all.