The Diary of Vernon Wright (Part 1)

This story is the script for Season 1 of the "This Machine Belongs To," a podcast produced by Halfwit Podcasts where Vernon Wright is voiced by Jonathan Swenson. Click the link below to listen to all episodes and visit halfwitpodcasts.com for other great content.

This script is based on the journaling game "The Machine" by Adira and Fen Slattery. Click here to purchase the game and support their work.

October 8, 2008

I bought this journal tonight.

Well, sort of. I didn’t really plan on buying it. That doesn’t make sense out of context, though, so it’s a lot easier to say I bought it.

Okay, this is going rough already. I was never much of a writer. I could do a little better than most of the other engineering students in college, but this is just making no sense. All right, slow down, reset, try again.

I bought a random box tonight and inside it was this journal. I think it technically was an estate sale, but it wasn’t official. It was a perk of my job, I guess you’d say. I graduated with my degree in August and had a job and an apartment in the city lined up, and then three weeks into the job I was laid off. Something about tightening budgets in the recession…I don’t know, I never understood economics. All I know is that rent doesn’t pay itself, and when you’re locked into a lease for a year, you don’t have much choice but to jump at any opportunity you have. Or make your own.

I guess I did the second one, sort of. In my junior year I worked part-time for an exterminator. Rodent Raiders. Terrible name, good exterminator, and decent pay for a college student. I’m still close friends with one of the guys I met there, and between the begging and the pleading I somehow managed to convince him to give me work. I owe him one now, though. It’s hard to get a job right now, and Dennis is sticking his neck out for me. He’s a really good guy.

Anyway, that’s where I was today, at some rich lady’s house to clear out some rats. And damn, were there some rats. I had already been there once to set the traps, and tonight I was just cleaning it up, and I found their nest, and…my god. You probably could have sewn a tapestry out of the corpses. It’s the part of the job I always hated the most, was finding them. I get it, people don’t want them in their home, but they’re just looking for food and shelter. Isn’t that the reason most people do anything? Isn’t that the reason I took this job?

Nope. Way too deep for a sober Wednesday night. Moving on.

The reason we had to clear out this house was because the rich lady died and her family is putting the house up for sale. Or her daughter is, more accurately. It’s a shit time to do that now – the news talks about how low house prices are – but I guess they can’t really control when she died. And it’s all on the daughter, too, which really sucks. Marissa, was her name. Or Maria? One of the two. She paid me at the end of the day, and we got to talking, and I guess her brother and sister didn’t get along with her mom towards the end. So she has to deal with all of it. It might be for the best, though. I remember when my grandmother died and the house got split between her kids, and the legal stuff drove them apart. At least she doesn’t have to deal with that.

Anyway, at the end of the day, she said I could do more work for her. Well, she said it that way, but it wasn’t actually work. She said that the less she had to sell, the better, and she said there was a bunch of junk in the basement she hadn’t gone through yet, and I could buy anything I could carry for twenty bucks. We’re not supposed to do that kind of stuff on the job, but you know what? What they don’t know won’t hurt them, and I don’t think Maria will say anything. I had already seen what was down there when looking for the rat nest, and it was mostly boxes of random stuff. Her only rule was I couldn’t go through any of the boxes first – just had to buy one as is, if I wanted it. Most of them looked like they were Christmas decorations stuffed into cardboard boxes, but there were a few wooden chests that looked in good condition, so I grabbed one of those. It was small enough that I could carry on my own, and not too heavy. Which was good – I didn’t really want to ask Maria for help, after all she’s had to deal with.

I grabbed a small end table and balanced it on top, too. I planned on getting furniture after building up some savings, but that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. And I was getting tired of eating on the floor.

But anyway, I got home and opened the box, and it’s kind of a disappointment. I expected something interesting, and it kind of is, but I don’t think it’s all that useful. It’s just a bunch of wooden pieces and some metal prongs. Or bristles, or something - I'm not even entirely sure what. They probably all fit together, but I have no idea what they do. And at the bottom of it all was this journal. I wouldn’t even have seen it underneath all the wood if it weren’t for the red ribbon sticking out of it. The brown leather blended right in.

I’ve never kept a journal before, but maybe I’ll try. Dennis said that when he was in jail, he got into working out so he looked forward to something every day. I guess this might work for me.

And maybe tomorrow I’ll dump out the box and see if I can put together whatever that thing is. I’ve never been good at puzzles, but I like to work with my hands, so maybe it’ll be fun to do. It’s probably just some handmade crib or something, but I can try to sell it once it’s put together. We’ll see.

October 10, 2008

God, I hate glue traps.

That’s not what I planned to write about tonight, but it’s what’s on my mind. We don’t use glue traps at work. I asked why at one point, and Dennis told me they’re cruel and don’t actually do anything to get rid of infestations. But every once in a while, you’ll find a family that buys a bunch of them cheap and puts them out, thinking it’ll solve their problems. They usually change their minds when they find pieces of a rat stuck to one of the traps and the rest of it bleeding out a few feet away.

And that’s exactly what happened with the couple tonight. Young, only a few years older than me. Trying to save money and used those traps before hiring a professional. I get it, it makes sense, but it was pretty bad. Judging by the looks on their faces, I’m guessing they won’t make the same mistake twice. They said they heard a noise coming from the basement for days before they realized it was the rats screaming in pain. They had a bunch of glue traps left over and gave them to me when I left, thinking maybe I could use them. I won’t, but holding onto them will make sure they’re not used somewhere else. I’ll keep them in my apartment for now and get rid of them later.

I got home from that around six and needed to get those images out of my head, so I decided to empty out the box that I got the other day. The wooden pieces are a lot more intricate than I thought. They’re all different and only a handful of them look like straight pegs. The rest are curved into swirls or loops or bumpy paths. Sort of reminds me of those table toys you see at the doctor’s office, for the kids. My first instinct is to bend some of the metal pieces into the same shapes and see if they go together, but I’m afraid of breaking something before I’ve even gotten started. Anyway, it’s not brightly-colored like those kids’ toys, so that’s probably a stupid idea anyway.

Right now, I’m happy to just roll the pieces between my hands, feeling the various notches and textures. It’s soothing. Some of them have pockets like golf balls, others have corners and holes that catch the skin of my fingers. It doesn’t hurt, though. Most of the time it just reminds me to take a look at the holes, since some of them are small and I can’t always see them. And they’re all different, too. Most of them are the same length, but some are a lot wider than others. Which is weird, because the metal rods seem to be more or less uniform. I tried sticking a few into the holes, but no luck. I’m too tired to go farther than that right now. I have a day off on Sunday, so maybe I’ll look at it then. Tomorrow I have another job. Hopefully it goes better than the one today.

I really hate glue traps.

October 12, 2008

Okay, I might have done something. I also might have broken a piece.

I had my day off today and ran some errands in the morning, and it’s cold outside, anyway, so I didn’t really want to go hiking or anything. There’s a forest only a few minutes away that I promised myself I would explore at some point, but it’s not going anywhere. It’ll still be there when it’s warmer.

Anyway, that left me with nothing to do but hang out at home and look at those wooden pieces for a few hours, so that’s what I did. The pieces were where I left them from the night before, so I resumed rolling them between my fingers. At one point I stopped to make lunch, but I kept going while eating, and when I rolled a handful of pieces against the floor, I heard a loud click.

Honestly, it’s good that I was eating and only using one hand, or else it would have been really hard to figure out where it came from. I rolled each of the pieces in that hand individually, trying to imitate the same motion against the carpet, and in one of them I heard it again, and I felt it, too. I put the other pieces in the box and examined that piece by itself. It looked like nothing had changed, and I almost gave up and put it back in the box, but I rubbed it against the carpet again, and after a few minutes, it clicked again.

This time I was able to feel where on the part it was coming from, and I looked closely at that area, about an inch from one of the ends. At first I thought it was the same, so I rubbed my finger across it, and my fingernail caught on something and the piece pulled apart. What I had thought was the grain of the wood was actually a thin slit, and inside it was…I don’t even know. Some kind of rubber, I think. It reminded me of an accordion, with a thin strip of wood at one end and the rest of the piece at the other.

I think it’s supposed to do that? No, that’s a lie - I don’t have a clue. They didn’t teach us how to decode mysterious wooden rods in college. If it isn’t supposed to do that, then I broke a piece. If it’s supposed to do that, though…how many of those are there? Most of the pieces are covered in grains of wood. How many of those are slits like this? Or is this the only one? Like…am I gonna have to go through and find these on every one of these pieces?? There’s dozens of the fucking things! There’s no way I’ll find them all! Hopefully I broke it and just won’t have to deal with it anymore.

No, I don’t mean that. I’m just tired. I’ve been doing this for most of the day and I can’t get anywhere. I’m going to have a beer and relax for a bit. I have work tomorrow…maybe I’ll think of something later.

October 13, 2008

I think Dennis thinks I’m a little crazy. We had a long day today, so a few of us decided to grab a beer after work. I like the people I work with, but all I could think of was getting home and playing with those pieces again. Dennis noticed something was up, and he asked what was on my mind, and I told him. Maybe I shouldn’t have - it’s a little silly, you know? Spending your evenings just playing with glorified Lincoln Logs? I know that’s not all they are, but I can see how that would sound weird to someone else. He gave me a little shit about it, but in a fun way. I think he means well.

But none of that matters, because there’s even better news! I didn’t break the piece! I examined it again and noticed some dust had caught in the slit that I noticed yesterday, so I used a paper clip to try to clean around the edges, and I applied a little pressure to get one piece, and it activated the click! The accordion was still open from yesterday and immediately retracted in a way that could only be intentional. So I pressed it with the paper clip again, and it clicked again, and I was able to pull it right out. I think it only reacts to small, narrow objects, like the reset button on my old Game Boy. My guess is that I hit a carpet tack when rolling it against the floor yesterday - all the apartments within my budget had something wrong with them, and shitty floors seemed like a good trade-off to not having a roommate.

But hey, it worked out! I probably wouldn’t have figured it out if my landlord actually took care of the place. I immediately set to work using the paper clip on the other wooden parts, and finding the slits was easier than I expected. They’re hard to see, but sharp objects seem to catch on them, the same way my fingernail caught on the first one I found. So I took the tip of the paper clip and held it against the wooden pieces while rotating them, and I found a lot more. Most of the wooden parts have at least one, but some of them have two or three. And that’s assuming I found all of them - it’s entirely possible I missed some.

But what’s interesting is that they’re not all the same. Several of the pieces have an accordion, like the first one, but the others are even more bizarre. One was a long chain of intricate wooden pegs, all interlocked by miniscule dowels, and another slit revealed a two-pronged piece of metal that I’m pretty sure is magnetic.

Either way, it’s pretty safe to assume that this isn’t just some homemade heirloom. It has too many mechanical parts for it to just be a toy or crib. I think it’s some kind of machine. What it does, I have no idea, but I know I’ll keep working until I find out.

All right, that’s enough for tonight. I’ll have to pass on the good news to Dennis in the morning.

October 16, 2008

Today was a weird day.

Well, it’s been a weird week, if I’m being totally honest. I’ve barely been able to keep my mind on work. Dennis says I’m just tired, which is fair - most of our days this week have been ten hours or more, and it gets draining after a while, even if I could use the overtime. But it’s not that. It’s just…I think I’m bored. All I want to do is keep working on the machine. I even carry one of the smaller wooden pieces in my pocket when I’m at work, touching it when I get restless. Even after all the work I’ve done on it, the wood is still soothing to the touch. I don’t know. I think it’s just what I’m doing for my job. I spent four years studying engineering to design or build things, not to kill rats. I think I just find the machine more interesting than my day-to-day. I’ll have to find another project when I finish it.

But that’s not why today was weird. That comes from this one job that I did at the end. It was a small job, so I went on my own. A couple in their mid-thirties had called and said there was a rat moving around their basement, and they wanted to see if they had an infestation. When I got there, they were acting really nervous, saying they wanted whatever was down there dead as quickly as possible. So I went down to look, and I found the rat, but…it wasn’t what I expected. In fact, it was a pet. I was all ready to get down on my hands and knees to dig around for it, but he came right out as soon as I came downstairs. He was pretty friendly, and I couldn’t bring myself to kill him. I thought that he probably was from a neighboring house and obviously wasn’t from a nest of them, so I used one of my humane traps as a cage and hid him in my bag, figuring I’d tell the couple that I killed him and cleaned up the body. But when I got upstairs, their daughter had come home, and when she saw me she started crying.

I don’t know the whole story, but I think I got most of it from the three of them yelling at each other. The girl looked to be about thirteen, and I think an uncle got her the rat for her birthday. And her parents hated it. So they waited until she was out of the house, and it seems like their plan was to tell their daughter they had an actual rat infestation and that I killed her pet while getting rid of it.

Like…that’s pretty fucked up, right? I get that a lot of people don’t like rats, and the uncle should have asked before getting their daughter a pet, but killing your own daughter’s pet? At least drop it off at a shelter or something and tell her he ran away. It’s real shitty, doing what they did.

But I guess I’m not one to talk…I lied to all three of them. I couldn’t tell this girl that I killed her pet, in the state she was in, but I didn’t want to leave the rat in the house. If her parents tried once, they’ll try again. So I told them that it looks like he ran off.

And I took him home.

That’s not okay, right? I don’t know what to do here. I feel bad that this girl doesn’t have her pet. She clearly loves him, and she misses him, but is it worse to think he ran away now or to see that her parents succeeded in killing him later? I guess she knows that they tried, but…I don’t know. I feel weird about the whole thing. I kill rats for a living. Why should this one be any different? I think it’s because he was so used to humans. The rats in infestations clearly don’t like humans and run away when we see them in person, but this one…I don’t know, trusted me when I first saw him. I just couldn’t bring myself to kill something in that way.

He seems happy here, at least. I don’t have a cage for him, but I turned the machine’s wooden box on its side and put an old pillow in it and he seems to have made himself comfy in there. The girl kept calling him Nigel, and that seems like a good name for him. I think I’ll hold onto him for a little while. Just to keep him safe.

October 19, 2008

I’ve made up my mind. I’m keeping Nigel.

I still feel bad about that little girl, and…yeah, I probably shouldn’t have taken him. But he’s really at home in that box, and he’s good company, and…fuck it, I might be a little crazy, but he is smart. He figured out something with the machine today.

Okay, yeah, that sounds kind of crazy. I think he figured something out. He might just be goddamn lucky, but either way, I’ll take it.

I had my day off today and decided to work on the machine again, and because I can’t catch a break, the power went out. It’s an older building, and there wasn’t a storm, so I think some idiot tripped the breaker. There’s a few college kids who live above me who are always blasting music…maybe it was them, I don’t know. We called the landlord, but it’s Sunday and he’s not in the area, so it took like two hours for the lights to come back on. I went and grabbed dinner while that was going on. I never really liked blackouts.

Well, when the power finally came back on, I saw that Nigel was playing with one of the machine parts. At first I was worried that he would damage something, but it wasn’t that. He solved it even more.

Those metal prongs? It turns out they…I don’t know, unfold. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s kind of like the accordion parts that stick out of the wooden pieces, but it seems even more mechanical. The rod Nigel was playing with was split at the top when I found him, but not in a messy way, not like he had been chewing the metal. It looked very intentional. Another, smaller prong had unfolded from it. I played with it, and it looks like it can easily be folded back in, like it’s on a swivel. The only way to see it is by the very fine lines that outline the smaller piece, and even those are hard to pick out unless the light hits it a very specific way. All I can think is that Nigel started to chew on it and his little teeth were thin enough to pry it loose.

It’s a pleasant surprise, that’s for damn sure. I adopt a rat and he’s either lucky or a fucking genius for his species. Probably just lucky, right?

Well, either way I’m keeping him. Maybe he’ll get lucky again. Either way, I’m excited to keep going now. I was starting to slow down, and I hadn’t seen anything interesting about the metal pieces. If there’s one of these unfolding pieces, there’s gotta be others. I’ll grab a flashlight tomorrow and see if I can find more.

October 20, 2008

Fuck me.

Fuck me. And fuck Dennis. God dammit.

Fuck, I need a beer if I’m going to write about this. Be back in a second.

All right, that’s a little better. Boston Lager feels good after a shitty day. And this was definitely a shitty day. Jesus.

I’ll just come right out and say it. Dennis put in his two weeks today. His parole is over and he’s heading back to Wisconsin.

How could he not tell me??? It’s not like this came out of nowhere. He got out almost two years ago, so he knew this was coming. How could he keep it to himself?

I mean, I’m happy for him, and I’m glad he’s going home, but it’s pretty shitty that it blindsided me. I don’t really have anyone else. I didn’t make any close friends in college, and my friends from high school all went their separate ways. And I barely worked at my job before we were all laid off, so I didn’t have time to get to know any of them. Even my parents haven’t really talked to me since last month. When I told them what happened with my job, they basically said that neither of them had ever been fired from a job before and it was probably my fault, and I…well, I didn’t take that very well. We didn’t see eye-to-eye very much when I was in school, so that comment was just the cherry on top. Maybe I overreacted, or it’s a generational difference, or something.

But anyway, Dennis is really the only person I have left. I even set him as my emergency contact when I started working at Rodent Raiders again. The fact that he’s gonna leave…

I don’t know. He’s got a cell phone, so we can stay in touch, but it’s different than having him in the city. Before this we were talking about going hiking in that nearby forest together. Maybe I’ll find another person to do that with, but it’s still hard.

I tried to distract myself with the machine when I got home, but even that couldn’t get me out of my head. Funny, all week I’ve just been thinking about it when I was at work, and now that I’m home, I can’t take my mind off my work friend. Even Nigel looked like he was waiting for it. He was curled up with some of the parts when I walked through the door.

Oh well. We’ll both have to be disappointed tonight. It’s time for one more beer and then bed.

October 23, 2008

So it’s a bit of a good news, bad news week.

Good news first, I guess. My parents are sort of talking to me again. They sent me a care package, I think you’d call it. At least, I’m going to call it that, since the only other thing I could call it is a get-your-shit-out-of-my-house package. But it had some snacks I liked as a kid, so I’m gonna go with care package.

The box was mostly stuff I hadn’t thought about in years - books, clothes, random shit like that. But the thing that really caught my eye was the high school yearbooks they saved.

Not gonna lie - I got really mad for a few minutes there. Books full of my old friends arrive a day after Dennis tells me he’s leaving? When I opened it and saw those, part of me thought they had found out about Dennis and were sending me some weird guilt trip. It’s really dumb, though - they don’t even know I reconnected with Dennis. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, it’s definitely dumb.

Anyway, I couldn’t help but open them up, and I thought revisiting old memories would take my mind off of everything else, or at least make me nostalgic, but all I got was sad. I read through the signatures in the front and back of my senior yearbook and so many said something like “Good luck in college! Can’t wait to see you soon!” Or even, “Let’s hang out this summer!” You know how many of those I’ve seen since we graduated? Five. I counted. And two of them were a couple who I bumped into at a gas station while I was home on winter break.

What the hell happened? I was never the most popular guy, but I had friends. There wasn’t much to do in our hometown, so we used to drive over to Salem and hang out at the mall there. Or even just steal some beers from our folks and go drink them around a campfire in the woods. And now they’re all gone, off to different jobs in different states. And I’m here, alone.

Or I will be soon, anyway. Is Dennis even my friend? I guess so. He’s leaving like all the others.

Okay, I just paused for like two minutes after writing that last sentence because it sounds insane. It’s like something out of a manifesto. And I’m not really being fair. Dennis is a really good guy who got me a job and has been very supportive. He has his own life, and he has to do what he’s gotta do.

I think I just need some rest. That’s the bad news, by the way. I’ve been sleeping really shitty since Dennis told us he was leaving. I just get stuck in my head when I lay down, and my mind starts reeling. It’s definitely hitting me during the day - as I was sitting down to eat today, I thought I saw two Nigels running through the apartment. But I was just tired.

All right, that’s enough for today. Hopefully I’ll feel better in the morning.

October 26, 2008

Is this all there is? Like…me, being an adult?

I don’t know, maybe that’s weird to think about. It just feels empty right now.

I had a weekend job with Dennis yesterday, and we obviously got to talking about the move. He could tell I was having trouble with it and tried to reassure me that we’d keep in touch. He said he was getting an account on Facebook and I should do the same.

So that’s what I did today. First I tried to make some progress on the machine, but no luck there. I worked without getting anywhere for a few hours, and then Nigel started running around, and I lost any focus I had. It was weird - I tried to look for more of those unfolding bits, and as soon as I thought I found one, he got all riled up. He was going fast, too. I’d see him running from one part of the room, and then when I looked up again, he was in the opposite corner.

Anyway, I couldn’t work with him acting like that, so I stopped and decided to jump on the computer and sign up for one of those accounts. MySpace was kind of a thing when I was in college, but I skipped over that. Truth be told, I thought it was pretty useless and made fun of some of my friends for it. But now I don’t think that was entirely fair. Everyone I ever knew was either in class with me or a half-hour away in my hometown, and a lot of my classmates came from far away. With Dennis moving, I think I get it now. I’ll have to say sorry to a few people if I ever see them again.

Which may happen sooner than I think, actually. Facebook has a search feature where you can find anyone else who has an account, and that definitely sent me down a rabbit hole. I added Dennis like I said I would, and then I figured I should reconnect with some people from college, so I started looking it up, and all of them just seem so…happy.

Is it bad to be upset about that? I don’t know, I guess I’m not upset, exactly. Jealous, maybe? So many of them are talking on there about how they’re doing well. There’s this one girl I met in orientation, Jess O’Laughlin. She studied architecture, and we graduated at the same time, and now not only does she still have her job, but she’s engaged to her college boyfriend. And that’s only in the two months since school. In that same amount of time, what do I have? Parents who won’t talk to me, a job I’ve already been laid off from, and a social circle so small that soon my best source of company will be a rat. A fucking rat.

Like…what am I doing here? Is there something I did wrong that I’m being punished for? Or is there something else? I studied for four years to be an engineer only for it to evaporate a few weeks later. Is it possible that was intentional? That maybe I’m supposed to be doing something else with my life?

I don’t know. I had a friend in college who had some weird beliefs - astrology and crystals and the like. I didn’t really buy into it at all, but maybe she was onto something. That’s just the only thing I can think of, the only reason why me and my friends all did everything right and they’re all fine and I’m not. There has to be something else.

I think I’m going to call out of work tomorrow. I’m just…I’m not feeling okay. I need to take a day to relax and think about things. I don’t have vacation days, but I’ll just call in sick. Don’t have sick days either, but I’m sure I’ll get Dennis to understand. Spend the day with Nigel instead.

Well, Nigel plus one, actually. He made a friend. I was worried, because I know rats in old buildings generally aren’t great, but this one seems nice. And I already have one rat, so one more probably won’t hurt anything. It’s better than being alone, at least.

October 28, 2008

I’m still going back and forth on whether Nigel is smart.

On one hand, he helped me figure something else out about the machine.

On the other, he got very, very lucky.

I called out sick again today. Still feeling a little down, but beyond that, I found a way to put some of the pieces together. I was playing with them yesterday, and unfolded some more of those metal pieces, and found out that there’s a way to make them slide into each other. It seems to be intentional. It reminds me a little of some of the Ikea furniture I put together for my dorm room, where it only came together smoothly if you had the pegs in the right place. I’m still not sure what the machine is supposed to do, but when the metal parts stick into each other, they create these long strands of metal, like small steel cables. It’s pretty incredible to watch.

Anyway, I kept going with that today when Nigel almost got himself killed. I think it was Nigel, at least. He’s got two or three buddies now, so it’s hard to tell them apart at a glance. But whichever rat it was, he almost got himself stuck. I still have that box of glue traps that I got from that couple a few weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to get rid of it since it’s just taking up space, but I’ve been distracted and haven’t really thought about it in a while. And since it’s a little out of the way, I started stacking the machine parts I was able to get together over there, so I knew I was done with them. Well, about an hour ago I was focusing on trying to fit two of the other parts together when I heard a noise from that corner. I didn’t really think anything of it since Nigel is always roaming around, but I looked over there and saw him digging into the box of glue traps.

It sounds weird, but honestly, I was just so scared. They’re sealed up and it was just a rat, but…I care about them, you know? I think that’s part of the reason I don’t want to go to work anymore. I have a few pets here and then go somewhere else to slaughter them.

Anyway, I jumped up and ran over to shoo him away, and he ran off pretty fast and ran right through the pieces of the machine I put together, knocking them over. And I remember not being scared anymore. Now I was angry. It’s not okay, but I think I was angrier about him knocking over the machine than I was scared about him killing himself on a glue trap. In hindsight, I could have just put the machine together, but something just came over me. I shouted “Nigel!” so loud I think I heard someone drop something in the apartment next door.

He ran off scared after that and I didn’t see him the rest of the night, but I barely noticed him scamper away, because something happened with the machine. I’m not entirely sure what yet, but as the pieces fell down when Nigel ran through them, they…there’s no other word for it, they sang. Some of the wood twisted around as it fell, and this really haunting noise came out of it. It reminded me of Billy Mattis when he was learning the violin back in junior high. Every once in a while he’d play it wrong and it would make this screech that still sounded vaguely musical. It sounded a little like that. Harmonious and still wrong. Like whatever the opposite of angels singing is, like it tore a hole directly into Hell and let some of the sound through.

It’s intentional, though. I’m sure of that. Maybe it didn’t sound exactly right, but it’s supposed to make a noise of some kind. After Nigel knocked it over, I picked up the assembled pieces of the machine and gently turned a piece of wood, twisting some of the connected metal. The noise was barely audible; I had to hold my ear right next to the metal cords to hear anything. But it was definitely there.

Won’t be holding my ear that close to it again, though. Having it screech right next to my eardrum made my skin crawl.

So yeah, Nigel helped me figure something out again. I still think it’s luck. Or I’m going to tell myself I think it’s luck. I don’t know. Maybe there’s something else going on here.

But it raises some questions, that’s for damn sure. Is it a musical instrument of some kind? Or something in between an instrument and a machine? A music box, perhaps? Fuck, who knows. All I know for certain is that it’s important. And I’m definitely making more progress here than I ever will as an exterminator, so I’m happy with that for now.

October 29, 2008

It needs to keep moving. That’s the trick.

I woke up this morning and all I could think of was the machine. I don’t remember having any dreams, but maybe I was dreaming about it? I don’t know. I read somewhere that we dream every night but we almost never remember them, since it’s so deep in our subconscious. I don’t know. All I know is that screech was ringing in my ears as soon as I was out of bed. I know I wrote about how much I hated it yesterday, but I needed to hear it again. And not just again, but hear it right. There’s music in these scraps of wood and metal. I know there is. It’s what this machine is meant to do.

So I started twisting it again. At first I could only get that small noise, the one I got yesterday when I held it to my ear. Even when I twisted it harder, that’s all I got. Finally, I twisted it as far as it would go, until it felt like the metal would snap if I twisted it further. And then I let go, and it began to uncurl.

And man, it sang again.

The noise was still harsh, still a little wrong, but it felt a lot closer to actual music, to what I think it’s supposed to sound like. It was louder, at least. Nigel and three of his friends were curled up nearby, sleeping, and they all jumped up when it made the sound. And I keep calling it a sound, but it’s not just a sound. It does something to you. The few seconds it was singing felt like hours. Colors seemed more vivid, with blues and greens and oranges emerging from the drab brown of my apartment. I felt…lighter, somehow. Not like when you hear a song you like and become more calm, but like I was floating, rising from the floor. It’s something else.

Then it stopped, suddenly, when the metal finished untwisting, and I came back down. Nothing had changed, but nothing was the same. There will come a time when I can separate my life into two periods of time, two different realities: before and after, with that note of Music the inflection point in the middle. I really wanted to just twist it again and listen to that sound over and over again. Who am I kidding - I want to do it now, as I sit here writing this. It’s what the machine is meant to do. Of that I’m sure.

But I can’t unleash its potential yet. And I can do better than just twisting it over and over. In school we learned all about repeatability, about how it’s important to make sure a process can be reliably done again and again. So in that moment after the twisting - the first few minutes after the Music - I started thinking about that. I realized that this time, the sound started off really soft and then got louder and clearer the more the metal untwisted. It’s kind of like the ringing noise my dad used to make with finger on a wine glass, how it didn’t start fully ringing until his finger had been moving for a few seconds.

So like I said, it needs to keep moving. That’s the way to get it to sing.

And I need to get it to sing. It needs to sing.

I took a trip to the hardware store and then a hobby store. Completely forgot about lunch, but I didn’t feel hungry at all. I picked up some pulleys, some twine, some wooden dowels, anything and everything I could find that would keep it moving. I think I can make a hand crank to make it move. There might be something like that included in the pieces that I haven’t put together yet, but I might learn something if I just get it moving first. Hopefully I won’t need anything else. I had to put these on my old credit card. I get paid Friday, so I should be fine, but still. Yet another reason why I need to get it working soon.

I spent the rest of the day building a system to try to rotate it one way, allow it to untwist, and then repeat. It’s not working yet, but it’ll get there. So overall, a lot of progress.

Only one bad thing about today. Got a text from Dennis a few minutes ago. I thought I was working tomorrow, but I guess it was today, and I completely missed it. That’s three days this week I missed. I haven’t worked there long enough to get sick days yet, so I’m on borrowed time.

You know what? Doesn’t matter. He’s leaving me, so it’s not his problem anymore. I would have spent all day killing bugs and rodents, and instead I made progress on the machine. I have my credit card, so money won’t be a problem. The Music is more important than anything I’ve done. I’m sure of that.

November 3, 2008

The machine sings.

Don’t know the words, but there is meaning, intent. I built and connected and attached and slid the metal into each other one by one, and now it spins one way and then the other, keeping its pace as long as my hand turns the crank. Its Music no longer scratches, but rings, echoing through my dim apartment and mesmerizing even the rats. They’ve taken to sitting beside me while I adjust the handle and the pulleys, Nigel at the front and his dozen or so friends behind him. Sometimes the adjustments make it clearer, and sometimes I need to backtrack what I did. I think it’s called tuning on normal instruments. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here.

I have plenty of time for it now. I have been freed from my job.

They said it’s because I was out for a week, the last few days unannounced. They said they missed appointments because of me. Lost money because of me. Failed in the promises made to clients on exactly when we would butcher animals because of me. Dennis showed up to drop my last paycheck, and he was mad. He said they took a risk on me, and even though his last day was today, that’s his own reputation. He also said he’s worried, and maybe that’s a tactic of some kind, but it looked like he was telling the truth. He was edging forward, as if trying to get into the apartment. Maybe I should have invited him in.

But I needed to get back to the machine. So away he went.

I was never what they needed for that job. I couldn’t be the person they wanted me to be. They wanted me to be a person who could kill on command and then clean up the shit. Or at least someone who would show up every day without thought and walk the walk and do the job and then go to sleep and come back in the morning to do it all over again.

Maybe there was a time when I was that person. Maybe there was a time where I wanted to be that person. College, job applications, career, financial stability…it all seems so far away and irrelevant. At the end of the day, the only draw of life is to build and make a mark. Or watch it all collapse under its own weight.

I might collapse. Fade away, insignificant, forgotten, a speck of rodent feces brushed away by the broom of time. But even the smallest spark can start a wildfire, even a single slithering rat can start an infestation, and my work can be greater than the sum of my parts.

I can finish the Machine.

I will finish the Machine.

Money might be a problem. Rent’s due the first Friday of the month, so I only have a few days. And my last paycheck wasn’t what I had hoped.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. I’ll finish the Machine and then I’ll be beyond money. I’ll be beyond anything material.

I’ll be one with the Music.

Vernon's story is concluded in Part 2.