Machine of Death Read online

  Jamie’s almost eighteen, and he’s still a No-Know. I’d just die if that were me. I’d just die.

  “It’s okay, Jamie,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He has a couple of napkins in his hands, and he’s dipping them in his water and holding them out to me. He started to dab one on my breast, but figured out in time it probably wouldn’t be such a good idea.

  I try to stifle a sudden memory of me and him kissing behind the convenience store dumpster. I was probably about twelve or thirteen, and he was fourteen or so; right before his parents joined the League. I remember he tasted like strawberries.

  I hope Jamie doesn’t see my ears and neck turn red. He’s one of the few people who knows me too well for me to hide it.

  “Your mom picking you up after school?” he asks.

  I keep dabbing, shake my head. “My dad.”

  He nods. He’s watching the motions of my hands as I rub the damp napkins on my lap, on the fabric stretched across my ribs, but he’s not really seeing me.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again, and I don’t think he’s talking about mustard.

  By the time Dad picks me up, I’m mentally exhausted.

  He kisses the top of my head when I get into the car. “Hey kid! Happy special day.”

  “Thanks.”

  I throw my stuff in the back seat and fasten my lapbelt.

  Dad’s just sitting there with a loppy-sided smile on his face. “You want to go get an ice cream first, or something?” he says. “You want pizza? A movie?”

  How can he be so freaking clueless? I want to tell him what a moron he’s being, but when I look at him something feels like it slips sideways in my stomach. For the first time, I’m looking at the forty-something man with the glasses and the stubbled cheeks and the ugly sweater, and I don’t see my dad.

  I mean yes, of course, I see my dad; the middle-aged med-head c-of-d (accidental overdose) with the over-expensive house and the boring job and the two kids and last-year’s-last-year’s car, bought cheap with high mileage from a rental fleet…

  But I also see a guy. I see a guy who loves me so much, he can’t even put it into words. It never occurred to me to think this might be a big deal for him, the day I get my slip. He looks tired, I think. More tired than usual.

  I reach out and put my hand on his where it’s resting on the steering wheel.

  “Sure, Dad,” I say. “Whatever you want.”

  He covers my hand with his other one, so it’s kind of like a hand-sandwich, my fingers and knuckles pressed between two layers of his. His eyes look a little bright for a second, but I decide it’s only my imagination as he places my hand back in my own lap and starts the car and pulls out from the curb.

  I watch the school get smaller and smaller in the side mirror as we drive away.

  I finish off the last of my ice-cream cone, and so does Dad. We wipe our sticky fingers on the wet-wipes and throw those away, and I get up from our food-court table and gather all my bags as I stand. Dad’s bought me a new pair of shoes, two new books, and a hat he says I look great in, but which I know I’ll never, ever wear again in a million billion. All I’m missing is the partridge in a pear tree.

  “So…what next, Birthday Girl? Need some new gloves? Music? You used to love the music store.”

  He’s walking over to the mall directory, studying the list of stores. I walk up to him, set down my bags of books and shoes, and touch his arm. “Dad,” I say, “It’s time.”

  He doesn’t look at me right away. He takes off his glasses and starts to clean them on the edge of his sweater. I can see he’s just making them all linty and smeary, so I take them from him and clean them on the inside hem of my dress, instead. When I hand them back they’re considerably cleaner, and I pick up my bags and start walking in the direction of the slip kiosk. I don’t have to look up the location on the mall directory; I know exactly where it is. There’s not a fifteen-year-old in the country who doesn’t know the location of the nearest machine. I know its hours of operation (regular mall open-hours: ten a.m. to nine p.m.), I know how much it costs (nineteen-ninety-five-plus-tax), I even know the brand (Death-o-Mat, by DigCo.; “We Give the Same Results—For Less!”).

  The only thing I don’t know is what’s going to be on that strip of paper when it scrolls out of that slot.

  It’s getting kind of late, and the mall’s going to close soon. Most of the stores are empty. It’s a school night, so nobody my age is around. It’s mostly tired-looking shop clerks with achy feet, and straggly-haired moms pushing heavy strollers.

  The machine kiosk is in a darkish corner over by the restrooms. The janitor has the door propped open to the ladies’, and even though I kind of have to go, I’m not about to brave the janitor and his stinky mop. Besides, I don’t want to put this off anymore. I need to know.

  Dad pauses when we get to the machine. He fumbles with his wallet, pulls out his identity and credit cards. He clears his throat, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at me.

  I thought Dad’s hand shook a little when he slid his cards into their proper slots and keyed in his and my social security numbers and other information, but I’m sure I was imagining things. It was probably just my brain buzzing. That’s what it feels like inside my head right now; like all the curves and loops and folds of my brain are buzzing with tiny bees, or maybe electric currents. I guess brains are, after all, though. Filled with electric currents, that is, not tiny bees.

  The machine’s green light comes on and an arrow points to the small, shiny, self-cleaning divot in the otherwise dull metal. I set my bags down at my feet, slowly reach one finger toward the indention—

  “Carolyn!”

  I jump, look up into Dad’s face.

  He pushes his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, fumbles it a little, blinks.

  “Uhm…for an extra five dollars, it will tell you your blood type, your glucose levels, and whether or not you’re pregnant.” He points to the list printed on the machine’s face. Then he frowns, distracted. “Hey, there’s no way you might be pregnant, is there?”

  I close the tiny distance between us and wrap my arms around his waist. He hugs me back, and for a second, as I breathe in the warm fuggy-sweatered dadness of him, I feel like the most precious and important thing in the universe.

  Without letting go of Dad or giving him any warning, I reach behind him and jab my finger into the shiny divot. Dad flinches, and presses my face closer to his chest.

  A tiny slicing pain flits across my finger, then numbness as the machine sprays its analgesic and disinfectant.

  I pull back from Dad, and he clears his throat and lets me go. The machine spits out Dad’s two cards from their slots, and my slip scrolls out from the single slot below. Dad and I both reach for it, but when I freeze he pulls back. I’ve got to do this, and he knows it. He plucks his plastic from the machine and slides the cards into his wallet while I uncurl my slip and read.

  I read it three times. Four times. I’m on my fifth when Dad, unable to contain himself, gently tugs the paper from my stiff fingers and reads aloud.

  “Death by Millennium Space Entropy,” he says.

  “But…”

  Dad wraps both arms around me and swings me up into the air like he hasn’t done since I was a very, very little girl. I keep my arms stiff, but let my legs and body go limp, and Dad twirls me in a circle, laughing, joyous.

  He finally sets me down, and I have to reach out a hand to steady myself against the edge of the machine. I’m a little dizzy. Dizzy, and confused.

  “Millennium space entropy,” says Dad, shaking his head, unrolling the slip and reading it again. “That’s amazing, Carolyn. It’s fantastic! You’ll be nearly a thousand years old by the next millennium. Maybe you live to be a thousand! Just think, medical breakthroughs all the time, vastly extended lifespans… It could happen, sweetheart. It could really happen.”

  Dad, grinning, crushes me to his chest again, and I can hear the r
umble of his happiness somewhere deep inside. “I just want you to have a long and happy life, Carolyn. A very long, long, long and happy life.”

  “But Dad,” I say into the nubby wool of his sweater, “where will I sit tomorrow at lunch?”

  Story by Camille Alexa

  Illustration by Shannon Wheeler

  FUDGE

  TO ANY OF THE COUNTLESS SHOPPERS PASSING BY, THE KISS WOULDN’T HAVE SEEMED LIKE MUCH. Longer than a peck, sure, but nothing overlong or excessive. It didn’t appear to be anything special. But for Rick it was something else entirely. Any time he touched Shannon he managed to get lost in the moment, swept up like the hapless lead in some cheeseball Hallmark special.

  “Bye, baby,” she said, giving him a little wave. “Don’t spend too much!”

  “Not too little either,” he fired back, and her grin widened before she flipped her hair and walked away. As Rick watched her go he noticed more than one set of eyes doing the same, but he was used to that. When you’re engaged to a beautiful woman, it comes with the territory. Best to take it as a compliment, because at the end of the day she was coming home with him, not anybody else.

  Busy schedules had left them with no choice but to be here at the mall so close to Christmas. Over the next hour he managed to find a few things for under their tree: a bottle of her favorite perfume, the scent of which stirred him in all the right regions; an earring set with sapphires that would match her eyes; fuzzy green footie pajamas, which on her would be sexier than the flimsiest of négligées; an outstanding chef’s knife, razor sharp, which was a bit of a boomerang gift—he loved to cook too. A quick glance at his watch informed him that their time apart was due to end soon, and he began heading toward the fountain where they’d agreed to meet.

  A sign in the window of a bulk candy store caught his eye. In bold white letters against a black background, it proclaimed ‘WE HAVE THE MACHINE HERE!’

  Rick stopped in his tracks, then edged up to the glass and peered in. They had a Machine? A Death Machine?

  He was fuzzy on the details—he’d skimmed an article on it in the Sunday Times Magazine on his way to losing another bout with the crossword puzzle—but the nuts and bolts of it, he remembered, were that you stuck your finger in a hole in the Machine where it took a blood sample. Imagine the first guy who volunteered for that! Then it would spit out a piece of paper marked with a couple of words, or maybe only one. If the stories were true, that little slip would tell you how you’d die. Not when, not where, but the manner in which you’d meet your demise, although the writer of the article had cryptically added that there always seemed to be a bit of a gray area.

  There were also websites devoted to following predictions with a level of obsession that bordered on the ghoulish, and Rick wasn’t so proud that he could claim he hadn’t visited a few from time to time. If one were willing to accept that an inanimate object could be capable of such a thing, it seemed undeniable that the Death Machines had a healthy sense of irony. One girl drew ‘BOAT,’ so she immediately gave up sea travel—which did her no good two years later when a truck towing a cabin cruiser jackknifed in front of her on the freeway. Some dude got ‘BAT’ and started avoiding baseball and caves, but he found out what it meant when the husband of the woman he was having an affair with used one—of the wooden variety, not the kind with wings and sonar—against the side of his head. Of course the story that came up most often was the junkie who got ‘CRACK.’ The guy managed to break his addiction, clean himself up, find a job, and start a new life. One day on his way to work, he tripped over a break in the sidewalk—a crack, if you will—and dashed his head out against the concrete. Or so the story went.

  They made for good lunchtime reading, but Rick wasn’t quite sure how much faith he put into tales told on the Internet. Still, he’d always been intrigued by the whole concept of the Death Machine, but too lazy and embarrassed to make an appointment at his doctor’s office. Moving over to the store’s entrance, Rick spotted a short queue in the far corner. A sign proclaimed: ‘THE MACHINE! $20’

  As he watched, two girls in their early teens wheeled away from the front of the line. The shorter of the two was consumed by high-pitched giggles, but her wispy friend was ghost-white. As they moved past, the giggler took a deep breath and said, “Oh, Robin! Don’t take it so seriously! It’s probably not true!”

  Rick watched and saw the other knuckle at her eyes. “But what if it is?” she said. “I can’t believe he’d…” Then they drifted out of his earshot.

  When he looked back at the corner, someone else was walking his way, a tall guy about his age. When he saw Rick staring he broke into a sheepish grin and shrugged, waving a slip of paper in a matter-of-fact way. “Fifth time I’ve taken the test, fifth time I’ve gotten this answer.” His smile vanished, and his face clouded over. “Still not quite sure what it means, you know?”

  Before Rick could say anything—or get a look at the prediction, which, to be honest, was what he wanted to do—Mr. Five-Times had moved past and was swallowed by the mall traffic. Now the store was empty but for two kids filling a bag with jelly beans, and two figures under the Machine sign. One, presumably an employee, had a handful of bills in his hand; the other was a middle-aged woman with her index finger in her mouth. A few moments later her head jerked down, and she stepped a little to her right—giving Rick his first live look at a Death Machine.

  It was…cute, that was the only word for it. Squat and stout, with stubby little legs. The hole for your finger was larger than he’d expected, and its location made the unit look like a little gunmetal-gray piggy.

  He couldn’t help looking back up at the woman’s face as she read her slip, her eyes widening for a second before she stuck the paper in her pocket and wandered off toward the chocolate section. Rick surmised that the slip hadn’t said “FUDGE.” As he watched, she paused to draw her prediction out again, staring as if it might have changed in the last few seconds. Her brow furrowed, one finger idly tapping her chin, eyes a million miles away.

  “Twenty bucks.”

  The employee’s voice, bored and impatient, snapped Rick from his observation. “Huh?”

  An exasperated sigh. “Twenty bucks, for the Machine. Or are you just going to stand there and block the line?”

  Embarrassed, Rick set his bag down and reached for his wallet, turning to apologize to the people behind him. Nobody there. He was the line in its entirety.

  Pulling out a trio of fives and a bunch of singles—he had a twenty, but the kid had annoyed him—he thrust them out, saying, “Pretty funny. What comedy clubs are you working at?”

  Snatching the money away, the guy scowled as a flush spread under his bad skin. “Whatever, dude. I get tired of people standing in front of the Machine all day while they decide whether or not to go through with it.”

  “Yeah, must be really draining. I bet you didn’t hesitate at all, right?”

  “Me? I’m not doing that thing, not ever.” He shook his head and gave the Machine a look of complete and utter disdain. “I mean, it’s cool if people pay me to get themselves all freaked out, but that’s not something I wanna know, ’kay?” After a pause he added, “No refunds.”

  “None wanted,” Rick replied with a snarl, thoroughly nettled by the attitude. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Go right ahead, then,” was the answer as his bills were added to a sizable wad. No credit cards for the Death Machine, it appeared. After the money was tucked away the guy looked at him with a questioning glance. “You going to go today, or maybe you want a rain check?”

  That was it. “Okay, I want to talk to to your manager.”

  “Ha! Don’t have one.”

  Rick looked over at the girl behind the counter, ringing up candy purchases. “What about her? She your boss?”

  This prompted another laugh, along with a sneer. “I’m the boss. This is my Machine, I just rent a spot from the store. So, did you want to register a complaint? Because I promise I’ll get my best peo
ple on it right away.”

  “You own this? And it’s real?”

  “Yeah, it’s real, and yeah, it’s mine. I bought it from the company that makes them, you know? Anyone can. I was tired of cutting lawns and flipping burgers.” He leaned back against the wall and smiled. “Smartest thing I ever did.” After a few seconds his haughty expression eased a bit. “Listen, you gotta do it or move on. There really are people behind you now.”

  From the murmuring behind him Rick knew it was true, so without another word he shoved his finger into the piggy’s mouth, down into the bowels of the Machine.

  At once it began to hum. It wasn’t as cold as he’d expected, but rather disturbingly warm and soft, almost as if his digit was being suckled. That sensation was interrupted by a sharp prick, to draw blood. The vibrations began to increase, and Rick realized with no small measure of alarm that he couldn’t pull free. But before he quite panicked, the Machine stopped dead and ejected his finger.

  A piece of paper spat out of a slot on the side, and without any real conscious thought Rick grabbed it and stepped aside, shoving his bag over with his leg. He could sense the Machine owner’s glare at his sudden clumsiness, but Rick wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of eye contact. He gathered up his previous purchases and walked out, slip still clutched, unread, in his other hand.

  Outside the shop he fought his way through a suddenly heavy current of shoppers, making his way to a group of tables in the middle of the corridor. One table was occupied by a young woman trying to get a squalling infant to take a bottle. Rick moved to the other table furthest away, dropping into a chair that gave him a view of where he’d just come from, as if he had to keep watch for a sneak attack by the Death Machine, clomping after him on those ridiculous little stems, those leg-ettes, coming to take another blood sample, a much larger one.