The Matter Transforming Machine

Billions of rays cut into the core of life, into its genes, like glass piercing flesh. They spark in the air and light up the horizon with a sickly glimmer whose color defies exact description. It is a heat that rots blood and bone. Its source flows through rivers, seeps from power stations, and drifts through the air carried on particles of dust that catch the red light of a falling sun and dimly glow like so many dying stars.

Months ago everyone left the little town of Newater, everyone but the 13-year-old girl sitting in the yellowed and withering yard of a rundown house with faded ivory walls and a gray slate roof. Her freckled face shows the signs of sickness; her skin is ghostly pale and her nostrils are flecked with dried blood. Life will leave her by tomorrow and she knows it. But she isn't sad, in fact, an overflowing joy wells up in her chest as she shapes the metal in her hands with a makeshift press.

In an hour or perhaps two, she will have finished building her grandfather's matter transforming machine. "If you copy the motions of the wandering stars, you can put the atom and its particles back together," he had said. The idea seemed simple at first, almost child-like. But it had taken her weeks to decode its exact meaning from his cryptic sketches and sometimes incomprehensible notes.

The machine had been designed to reverse the process of destruction which, in her grandfather's words, "Began with the use of technology based upon fire." He often described how people burned the trees and then eventually carbon stored in the ground until the air and water were toxic and there was nothing left to burn. He said that they then switched to machines that ran on the heat produced by breaking down atoms. This apparently improved conditions for a time, but the process was dangerous; people couldn't really control it and many were also sickened by its waste products.

As a result, a new technology was developed; this time it broke apart the smallest particles of matter and freed one of the two energies that bound their structure together. At first, this seemed to have solved everything, as no detectable waste was produced, only tremendous amounts of heat. But after several decades, it was found that the new technology gave off rays that transformed ordinary matter into something very much like the dangerous radioactive elements used in machines of the past.

Despite efforts to obfuscate the subject, coming primarily from industry leaders, including the girl's own father, the technology was eventually abandoned, however, it was already too late. Matter that had been contaminated emitted what were called intermediary-rays, these were somewhere in-between those produce by the new technology and the toxic radiation of the old atom-splitting method, being that they had both transverse and longitudinal components. These I-rays could transform matter just like the primary-rays of the new technology, but unlike the latter, they were directly toxic to living things. Worse still, the best theorists said that this process "Could in all likelihood go on for an indefinite time."

This disaster had prompted the girl's grandfather to explore novel methods of energy production and physical metamorphosis. Despite being known to many as "The best engineer of the century, perhaps the best ever" he was regarded as something of a "peculiar oldtimer." His habits were, without doubt, bizarre to many; he grew his own food in a small vegetable garden, rejecting the far more hygienic and civilized laboratory-produced rations provided by the state. He also healed himself with herbs collected from the hills, even though such remedies had been disproved long ago. There were even rumors that he practiced some form of shamanism instead of believing in the ubiquitous scientific atheism that had prevailed for the last few hundred years, though no one could show that this was the case. Thus it wasn't surprising that after his research departed from accepted theory, most serious academics wrote him off as a curiosity at best.

As his work progressed he became all the more sure of himself and this confidence provoked no small amount of contempt from friends and associates. For this reason, and also because of the worsening world circumstance, he began to make cutting and often difficult to refute attacks on the academic model of nature. Inevitably this caused people to distance themselves from him and because his closest friends were either dead or quite old and unable to visit, within a time he found himself alone. Even his family, except for his granddaughter, no longer came by.

The girl felt that her grandfather was a sort of hero who was able to do almost anything. Countless times she had seen him fix the most complex machines, often spotting the problem within seconds. "Nothing, no puzzle, no problem was too difficult for him to solve," she thought.

The girl's unwavering conviction that her grandfather must be at least partly correct, had brought her into direct conflict with her father, who often said that "The man has simply lost his mind." This in conjunction with the fact that the girl's grandfather urged her to make tea out of roots from the forested hills to protect her cells from "The toxic rays," had led to a tremendous fight.

"So long as you are a member of this household, you won't be filling your head with that nonsense."

"Well, maybe I don't want to be a member of this goddam stupid household."

"Don't talk like that! You have no right. You have no rights! And how dare he suggest you take those toxic, dirty roots."

"I talk however the hell I want. He's right about you, you made us all sick, you made everyone and everything sick. His roots aren't toxic, you are, you piece of shit. I'm done, I'm just done. Okey."

She left that day and filed the paperwork for her emancipation and put up a tent in her grandfather's yard.

"You can stay as long as you need, I just wish things hadn't turned out like this."

"Maybe they wouldn't if dad wasn't such a dunce, I guess he didn't get your brain, ha!"

"Unfortunately my son is a great deal smarter than he is wise."

The girl stayed with her grandfather, watching him work month after month. She spent most of her time in his garden tending the plants and playing with his lazy old tabby house cat. But he did insist that she continue with her calculus even though she had dropped out.

Over the course of the summer, it became evident that her grandfather's roots weren't toxic after all, and indeed that he had been right. Both of them drank the tea every morning and suffered few ill effects from the rays. However, the girl's father, who she saw every few days crossing a nearby street, had begun to wither away. His once brown hair was now mostly gray and his eyes visibly bulged; he had also gotten much weaker and thinner and now used a cane to get about.

By mid-summer, her grandfather's pumpkins had started to die and he was not fairing well either. He worked day and night. Dark circles appeared under his eyes and his usually neatly tended beard looked like the white crest on a stormy black sea. The roots had also become scarce and he insisted that she take most of the tea, "I'm an old man, you still might have a future, so go on and have it."

As the weeks passed he grew ever closer to a workable technology, but a shadow loomed over his successes. He felt sure that someone was trying to intimidate him. He said that things were being "moved," or "misplaced" and that "Someone must have gotten into the house."

"They try to threaten me, you know. But I'll beat the bastards. I stand up to everyone!" he said.

"Bring me my gun; I'll pay them back."

Her grandfather's strange comments and swiftly deteriorating health made the girl wonder if maybe he really had finally gone mad. But she wouldn't let herself believe it. So she brought his gun, made dinner for them, and went to bed.

The next day her grandfather was slumped over the table with blood drying on the side of his head, the gun in his hand. A note beside him said, "I'm sorry, I was wrong, I'm sorry I wasted everyone's time. We all have to grow up at some point. You'll be better off this way."

The pain robbed her of breath, it ate at her soul, she felt like the world had ended. She cried until it hurt but no tears would wash away the ache. There was no color, no light, no future just a lifeless stream of gray images punctuated by pangs of horror and sadness.

"You need to come with us, it's how my father would have wanted it."

"You have no idea what he wanted!"

"You'll be safe where we're going and we'll get the best care."

"From who? The same kind of people who caused all of this?"

"Is it worth dying for a fantasy?"

"Yes! I don't care if he was wrong! I will finish his work. This whole world is shit! At least I'll die for something beautiful, even if it isn't real."

The rays had withered the garden and all the roots ran out but she kept on working as the summer drew to a close. She was kept awake with periodic fevers and chills and she could feel a tumor already starting to grow in her abdomen, but she didn't care. She would finish the matter transforming machine no matter what. She worked because it eased the pain in her heart.

Now it was the middle of autumn and she had completed every part but the one she was holding. When it was finished, she would plate it with gold and at last, the task would be done.

The only gold she could find was the heart-shaped necklace that she always wore. It had a picture of her with her first and only love inside it. They had both scratched their names into it, "Sofi" and "Lily," Lily was taken to another town a year and a half ago. This was the first time Sofi's heart had ever been broken.

She tore the necklace off, placed it in the cyanide plating bath, and readied the electrodes. Then she sat down to cry for the first time in weeks. It was so sad that she had to die like this, it hurt and she finally really felt it. It just wasn't fair!

"Why can't they die instead, I don't deserve to die! I don't want to die! Life can be so beautiful."

It was done! She had given it everything, her life, her heart, and the last thing that reminded her of a future she would never get to see. "And yet it still moves," these were the last words she ever spoke.

"Why are the flowers blooming next to her? I thought everything died."

"I wonder what the giant spinning top was for? I wonder who she was!"

"I don't know about her, but it was going when I got here!"

"When did you arrive?"

"Six hours ago."

"That's odd."

"Yeah, it is odd, the thing slows down and speeds up but it never seems to stop."