Machine Man - Max Barry [4]
We were supposed to be bombarding a lightweight carbon polymer with radiation. The idea was to check that it wouldn’t melt. On our three previous attempts, it had melted. It was interesting to watch but frustrating on a professional level. It was probably going to melt again. This was not what I wanted to be doing, with my phone missing: watching a polymer melt. But I stood and went to get my coat because, after all, it was my job.
JASON RETRIEVED the polymer while I swiped into Lab 4 and powered on the Clamp. The Clamp was a pair of hydraulic-powered steel plates, good at holding things and not melting. The rest of the room housed a spectrograph, a compact accelerator, and various support equipment, all connected by dangling cables as thick as arms. As I wiggled the joystick to maneuver the Clamp into place I saw Elaine and Katherine, green-tinged and blurred, moving about in the Glass Room. I wondered if they had seen my phone. I should have asked. But I had to concentrate on what I was doing because the Clamp was approaching and that thing was so heavy it could hurt you moving at a tenth of a meter per second. Once it had left a bruise on my hip that took three weeks to heal. My own fault. The equipment had safeties but your primary piece of protective equipment was your brain. There was a presumption that anyone entering this room was intelligent enough to keep away from hot things, sharp things, and things carrying large stores of momentum. We were not factory workers.
I set the Clamp in place and pressed a rubber button to bring its plates closer together. A klaxon sounded. An orange warning light spun. That always happened. It wasn’t something I noticed anymore. While I waited, I thought about that girl in the elevator. I should have told her about elevator algorithms. She might have been interested. She might have said, I had no idea, and when we arrived at her floor, put a hand on the door to stop it closing.
I saw my phone. I had spent so long imagining it that for a second I wasn’t sure it was really there. But it was. It was on top of the spectrograph. So obvious. I had worked late and when checking my pockets for a pen had realized I still had my phone, which wasn’t allowed, and none of that mattered because here it was. I went to get it. My outstretched fingers were about to close on it when my thighs brushed metal. I looked down. I had walked into the Clamp. The plates were touching me. They were actually closer than I had meant to bring them. I should have hit STOP a few seconds ago. I heard the klaxon and noticed the swirling orange light as if for the first time. I began to back out. I wasn’t in real danger. The plates moved too slowly. Although that was deceptive. The gap shrank linearly but in relative terms it accelerated. My thighs jammed. I turned sideways and shuffled. My left shoe caught. I freed that but then the right did. I hadn’t accounted for a self-reinforcing feedback loop: the plates increasingly obstructing movement. I had left insufficient margin for error. I lunged for freedom and fell face-first onto the floor. I pulled one leg free but my right shoe caught. I grabbed my thigh and pulled. Above the clamp, through the green glass, Elaine and Katherine gaped. Between them and me sat my phone, untouched.
I felt unbearable pressure. My intestines tried to squeeze out of my ears. I didn’t hear the noise. The klaxon covered that. But I saw the spray. In the orange light, it looked black.
During Clamp operation, the lab autolocked, for safety. I had to tear my shirt into strips to stem the bleeding. I had to flop across the floor until I could reach the controls. I’ll be honest. There was a lot of screaming. I got my hands on the STOP button. The klaxon died. The orange light faded. I closed my eyes. I was going to vomit, or pass out, or one then the other. The door opened and Jason said, “Oh fuck, fuck.” I felt very sad, because that seemed to confirm it.
A ROOM formed around me. It didn’t happen all at once. It wove itself out of nothing by degrees. Not really. It was