A New Kind of Monster, issue #7

Compartment part 2

This is the newsletter for the New Kind of Monster project - an ambitious and twisted project whose goal is to invent an entirely new kind of monster. In this issue, we have the second installment of the serialized sci-fi story Compartment, a story about a child who has lived her entire life inside an enormous and mysterious machine.

If you’re a new subscriber, welcome to the newsletter! Please calmly descend these perfectly safe and normal steps without fear or hesitation, and enjoy the search for a new kind of monster…

Compartment

Part 1 of the serialized sci-fi story Compartment appeared in issue #6.

part 2

The people sat in their places at the Maintable. Because it was the celebration of Arin's millionth turn, Arin sat at the head of the table, in the seat normally occupied by Father. From Father’s station at the table, she could look past the gauge deck railing, across the void over the initial gear, to the turn count display. The head seat at the Maintable was several arms lengths from the other seats. Without turning her head, Arin could see all the people simultaneously. The most important things in her whole universe were arranged to be seen in one glance: every person that existed and the turn count display.

The people (except for misses Jenco, of course) watched Arin count the turns out loud. "Seven hundred thirty three..." Father sat to her left, in Arin’s usual spot at the Maintable. Mother to his left. Her hair, Arin noticed, was growing long. In a few shifts, she thought, it will have grown so long that it would be hard to see her scalp. Perhaps Father let her skip a trim so she would look pretty for the celebration.

Mister 5-8 Jenco sat across from Mother. Unlike all the other place settings, his fork, spoon, and cup were neatly arranged on the left of his bowl. The exception to Father's rule about tableware setting was allowed due to mister 5-8 Jenco’s missing right hand. Mister 5-8 Jenco's wife, simply called misses Jenco, sat on Arin's right. Her eyes gazing forward in a way that suggested they weren't focused on anything.

"One million three hundred twenty-five thousand seven hundred..." Arin took a dramatic deep breath, "and thirty-FOUR!" Most of the people in the world clapped. Mister 5-8 Jenco smacked his left hand on his leg, since he didn’t have a right hand to clap it against. Only misses Jenco remained still. But nobody expected her to move anyway.

With a volume of just under four million cubic meters, the compartment was a miracle of miniaturization. Each massive gear, crank, shaft, cam, and rod – the primary locomotive components – fit together perfectly. Each precision-made, person-sized part played its role in the never-ending dance of machinery. Parts would slide or rotate out of the way just in time for another part to move into the space it had occupied. The new configuration would hold for a moment before the parts shifted again to push the pose shafts into the next position in the cycle.

The parts to the control mechanism were much smaller, but no less important. The clockwork of cams and belts and pulleys and chains took the inputs from the control shafts that entered the compartment at the top, used their positions to adjust the maneuver mesh, and transferred the outputs of the mesh into the motion cycle of the pose shafts.

The gaps between the primary and control components were filled with tertiary machinery. Lubricant pumps, coolers, temperature sensors, electricity distribution gear, ventilation and air handling fans and ducts, and so on. The gaps between the tertiary equipment formed a warren of irregular spaces where the items of quaternary importance would fit: The people. The work areas they used to maintain the machinery. The catwalks and crawlways that let them access each part in the compartment. The spare parts storage. The Maintable and the gauge deck.

Father used the insulation trimmer to slice the apple into five wedges. Arin was surprised to see that the apple was white inside. Not perfectly white, but the color of her skin. She expected that it would bright red throughout.

“Are those the batteries,” she asked.

“No, those are the seeds. We don’t eat them.”

Arin didn’t know what a seed was. If she asked, Father might launch into a long explanation, which would delay the eating of the apple. So she nodded as if she knew. She guessed that a seed was probably just some special kind of feed, like the electric feeds that entered the compartment. Maybe she’d ask about it later.

Father handed each person a slice of the apple. Misses Jenco didn’t move when father offered the wedge to her, so he placed on her plate. Mother started crying when father handed her the wedge from the apple. Mother cried for some reason or another most shifts. When the pose alarm sounded, or the lights flickered, or when the redundancy switches clanged to a new setting. Arin wondered for a moment why the apple was something to cry about. Then Father handed her a wedge and her train of thought about Mother vanished like a burst of steam from the bonding spray-down tank.

The apple smelled like the coolant in the lubricant radiator. “This is safe to eat?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” Father said.

She bit a small triangle from the wedge. The crisp crunch was wonderfully strange – so much different from the soups and slimes they normally had during meals. The sweetness was shocking.

Everyone was staring at her (except for misses Jenco, of course). “Well,” Father finally asked. “Do you like it?”

“Can I have another?”

Father laughed. Mother sobbed uncontrollably. Mister 5-8 Jenco laughed and said “I’d also like another.” Mother grabbed the wedge from misses Jenco’s plate and devoured it like she hadn’t already eaten.

Arin decided to stay in Father’s seat at the Maintable for as long as he would tolerate it, which turned out to be for the rest of the shift. This might be the only time she would be allowed to sit in his seat, so she stayed there to enjoy it.

Before. Her thoughts turned to questions about the beginnings of things. About the before-beginnings of things.

The initial gear had turned 325734 times before she was … what? Before she was logged as new personnel. What about before she was in the compartment? How did she get into the compartment? The only inputs to the compartment were the electrical feeds and the pose control shafts. Did she come into the compartment as a burst of electric current?

She looked at the turn count. The initial gear had made another three hundred rotations since the celebration. What happened before the first turn?

Arin made no progress thinking through these questions of existence. She doubted she came into the compartment through the electric feeds, but, since she had no other theories, she couldn’t completely dismiss the idea.

Her imagination completely failed to deliver ideas about what happened before the first turn. The machinery couldn’t have just been stopped. It never stopped. It must never stop. It follows that it had never stopped before.

Mother and Mister 5-8 Jenco were putting misses Jenco to bed in her hammock. Father was recording something in the logs. Arin slouched further in father’s chair and continued thinking.

There were other kinds of befores to wonder about. Not before in time, but before in sense of operating the machinery in the Compartment. Before the electric mains entered the compartment from the aft bulkhead, something put twenty thousand volts of potential on them. Before the maneuver mesh turned the orders from the control shafts into the desired movement, something above the compartment had to choose the controls settings. The apple she ate must have existed before father gave it to her.

The ventilation system also had a before – the air intake brought fresh air into the compartment. Where was that air before it entered?

Thinking about the air triggered a terrifying thought. A wonderful thought. The Compartment’s ventilation system was a before for something else. The system cycled air through the chamber, and then moved it out the exhaust ports. The air was in the compartment before it was wherever it went next.

The air went somewhere after it was in the compartment. And it went there through the air handling spaces.

Sixty shifts earlier, Arin helper father replace a relay in the lower starboard air handler. Father had her crawl deep into the handler to perform the swap out. This eliminated the need to disassemble the unit – a process that would have taken three shifts. What if she had kept crawling through the system, past the relay? She could follow the air and see for herself what was after the compartment.

Favorite Narrations

In this issue, I’m excited to introduce two new (to me!) YouTube channels.

CreepCast recently narrated two of my stories: If you’re Armed and at the Glenmont Metro, Please Shoot Me, and My Daughter wants to Eat a Woman who Shares her Birthday. Not only do Meatcanyon and Wendigoon do a great job narrating the stories, but they take us on fascinating tangents about tractor accidents, mercy killing, and immaculate conception.

Uncanny Horror did an absolutely amazing job narrating one of my favorite stories (of mine!): My Girlfriend is the Creator of the Universe. Let me know if you cry at the end!