June’s free story is another oldie, and a little quirky too. It first came out back in 2021 but had lingered on the hard drive for a while while I tinkered on it and grew busy with other things. There are maybe a few things I would do differently today, but the writer I was then was just that, so, as with other stories I post here, I’m letting it stand as it was without attempting to edit it too very much.
I think it points the way to a whole lot of my other fiction too-people exploring mysterious alien structures. I even have a novel coming out later in the year with similar tropes.
Oh, I should mention that it’s kind of long for a short story – about 8500 words, maybe 50 regular pages of a book. So, maybe a funny choice for online reading.
I hope you enjoy “Dangerous Machines”.
Thanks for reading.
Dangerous Machines – blurb
Celebrated writer Sean Monaghan’s stories beguile and entice the reader.
Explorer Gina Parker searches through strange underground alien tubes. The mystery of their existence draws her. The odd sounds and acrid smells change as she travels deeper and deeper.
Creepy.
But the tubes hold more than mysteries.
And Gina might just find more than the answers she so desperately seeks.
A quirky story of courage and resilience with a human touch.
Dangerous Machines
Chapter One
Gina Parker stood on the rocky base of the vertical tube. Around her the air was cold and dark. Several passages led off from the sides.
Here she was, underground. Again. Should be used to this kind of day.
The space reeked of something dead.
She hoped she didn’t tread on the carcass in the dark.
The tube directly above her reached to the sunny surface. Three meters across. Fifteen meters deep. The cables of the rope ladder clacked against the stone sides. Still shifting from her climb.
Gina had a couple of minutes before the others came down. If they did. They’d been getting antsy lately. Lowering the remote on a rope.
She unclipped the flashlight from her waist and shone the light around.
It was just after midday, but hardly any light made it down the shaft. Some reflection from the slick walls, but not really enough to see by. Not into the other tunnels.
At least it was cooler here at the bottom.
The light did its best to show the surrounds. Gloom and more gloom. Five tunnels led off in a star pattern. Each a cylinder two meters across. The light reached a hundred or so meters along. Dark glassy walls.
Artificial. Machine dug.
Alien machine.
Not a good start to the day.
Gina sighed. She rubbed her shoulder where she’d fallen earlier in the day. Still sore. She’d had a weak shoulder for years anyway because of dislocating it surfing when she’d been a teenager.
Almost twenty years ago now.
So much had changed in her life in the meantime. Qualifications, losing her father, the arrival of the mechismas.
Gina wore investigation overalls and her OAL jacket. Not an especially comfortable or fetching outfit. But her job called for practical more often than formal. At least her tough boots were fitting and comfy.
Keeping the flashlight beam on the ground, Gina took a step toward the first of the side passages. The light glistened beautifully. Refracting a rainbow, with golds and blues. The kind of thing Mel, her sister, would love.
Gina took another step. She called out a quiet, “Hello,” into the tube. Her voice echoed back at her. Fading away.
She hadn’t seen one quite like this before. Tubes with one or two horizontal passages, but never five.
Five. What was going on?
OAL, the Office for Alien Landings had been created around the time someone realized that the mechismas were a more serious problem than the FBI or Homeland or any of the other agencies could handle.
Frankly, the OAL was really little more than a shadow agency. No real powers. Just an investigative role. Sixteen of them in the whole agency. Squeezed into a musty old office building just outside of downtown Missoula.
Not that there was anything much special about Missoula. Cold in the winter. Filled up with skiers and other mountain fiends.
Also, cheap, practically abandoned office space.
Plus, the first real investigations into the mechismas had been around Montana anyway.
The mechismas came from who knew where? Sirius? Betelgeuse? Mars?
Yeah, some people said Mars. Said we sent all our rovers there, so Mars was returning the favor.
Mechismas came in a range sizes, from millimeter to small-car. Machines. Or maybe machine life.
They’d been witnessed. Photographed. But no one had an actual specimen yet.
No official agencies had arrived in time from one of the sightings. Another good thing for the big agencies; having the OAL meant there was someone to blame. Gina’s job description practically had Scapegoat in big letters across the top.
The mechismas looked like short slugs. Fat at the head end, tapered at the tail. They had articulations in their bodies. Like an armadillo, or a slater. Their sides came flush with the ground.
No one knew what they looked like underneath. Or inside.
The external parts were dark gray. Gun metal. But in the gaps the visible cogs and springs and joints were all kinds of colors. Coke can reds, old ice blues, mineral pool greens. Like the Grand Prismatic Pool in Yellowstone.
Beautiful, Melanie had said. She’d used some of the photographs in compiling an online exhibition. She’d actually gotten a lot of traffic.
Good. After the way things had gone, it was real good that Melanie had a focus in her life. Not that she would ever be the same.
Video footage showed the mechismas digging these holes. Always three meters across. Always fifteen meters deep.
The smaller mechismas moved in a spiral. Digging from the inside out. They scraped off a layer, spraying earth, then rock, out the side.
Once they’d completed a layer, they spiraled their way inward. Working back and forth, they dug. And they dug fast.
The first meter in under five minutes. According to reports. A bit slower as the soil grew coarser and they began chewing through rock.
The spoil came out in a fine, directed fountain. It fell to Earth, forming a neat circular berm around the hole.
No one had seen any of the big ones dig. But they had been witnessed, and filmed, making their way into pre-dug holes.
Gina wished she’d seen the digging in action. But the reports always came in with a lag.
She’d yet to actually see one of the mechismas with her own eyes.
Only two of them in the agency had. Doug Mikhyeyeva, and Sally Jenkins. Both of them before they’d joined OAL.
“Hello?” Gina called again.
Of course, just her own voice came back.
“Who’re you talking to down there?” someone said from above.
She looked up and saw Doug’s mustached face staring down at her from the surface. He was smiling.
Doug was a cop from Seattle. He’d been camping in the west of Washington with his family. Near Spokane. They’d seen, and filmed, and posted, a cat-sized mechisma spiraling, sending out the spray, building up the berm. The kids had played in the loose spoil, making castles and digging their own holes.
A week later Doug had found himself transferred.
Nice guy. Accepted the transfer. Got on with it.
Similar story with Sally, just that she didn’t think much of getting moved from San Diego to Missoula. Who would?
“Just listening to my echo,” Gina called back to Doug. “This set is different. Five tunnels.”
“Good. You should get back up here. Croddy has just pulled up. He’s going to want to talk with you.”
“I bet.”
Jose Croddy was the OAL’s head. He’d been there since day one. Encyclopedic knowledge of the mechismas—not that there was a lot of information anyway—extensive investigative experience. Montana man.
He’d come up through the military. MP, and counsel. Rumor had it that he’d gone through some of the steps to get into the astronaut program. Tough competition.
Now here he was bossing around a team of fifteen misfits without any clear direction. Making it up as they went along.
“Is she down the hole again?” Croddy’s voice came from the distance. Echoing down the tube. “… again… again… again…”
Ah, well. Better get back up top.
As she reached around for the rope ladder, Gina’s flashlight caught movement down one of the side tubes.
She stopped. Moved the light again.
“Hey!” Croddy called, voice clear now. Peering into the hole with Doug. “Get out of there will you? I’ll end up having to reprimand you, do you know that?”
“Right.” Gina moved away from the hole. She stepped slightly into the side tube. Directed the beam down it.
Nothing.
Just a trick of the light. Reflections.
“What are you doing?” Croddy said.
A sound from along the tube. A whisper of metallic movement. A scraping sound.
“Gina!”
“Shush now!” she shouted back at him. “I heard something.”
She took another step into the tube.
“Gina!”
Chapter Two
Gina stood a hundred and sixty eight centimeters. Her father, scientist with a drinking problem, had eschewed the imperial system. She’d known her weight in kilograms, her height in centimeters, the distance to school in kilometers.
Of course that got to be an issue when she’d learned to drive. The speedometer was in miles per hour. The distances on signs, and posted speed limits were in miles. In plenty of countries the speed limit was 100. Kilometers per hour, of course. About sixty three miles per hour.
But 100 seemed like such a nice figure. Printed in a circle. Like a target.
65, even 75, seemed like a crawl.
Thing was, with a two-meter high tube, Gina had plenty of head clearance.
“Gina,” Croddy called from the top of the vertical tube. “Get back up here.”
“Just a minute,” she called back. “There’s something here.”
She shone the light ahead again. No sign of anything. The light petered out after about twenty or thirty meters. It was just a hand flashlight. Maybe they needed to get some high-powered lights down here. Maybe some strobes.
“What’s that?” Croddy said.
“Just a minute.”
She’d walked out of the light from the vertical tube now. Into the darkness of the side tube. Still no sign of whatever had moved. Not visual anyway.
That metallic scraping sound continued.
“Gina!” A shout this time.
She took another couple of steps. This was going way off briefing. Bad enough that she’d come down the hole. Technically they weren’t supposed to.
Even though they brought the ladder, it was meant to be for emergencies only. If, say, a teleoperator fell down the hole. They needed to be ready to send someone down to get them.
But Gina had been down every hole so far. Taking photos. Getting a sense of the place. All before the teleoperator even showed up with their little remote-controlled buggies to send deeper into the tubes. Today that would be Peter. Usually he was more prompt.
Some of those remote photos had made their way into Melanie’s exhibitions. With acknowledgement to Gina. Melanie gave acknowledgement to all the original photographers, even though the manipulations—cropping and color enhancement and so on—were all her own.
Gina had been to the last one. Titled Some of These Machines are Actually Pretty Dangerous. Silly and over the top. Clearly they weren’t dangerous. They kept to themselves. Dug their holes.
Melanie had a much better developed sense of irony than Gina. And that had only gotten better in the last year. Sometimes Melanie could be worrying. With her darker moods.
Gina never knew what to say.
“Gina! Get back up here. I’m not kidding.”
The word ‘kidding’ echoed around her.
She shone the light around again. The refractions flickered, casting their brilliant displays.
Just an illusion.
She turned and took the ladder. Just hearing that whisper of metallic sound again.
Maybe just an echo from the ladder’s cables.
But then, the sound came from just one of the tubes.
Chapter Three
Up top the sun was brilliant and scorching. This part of Colorado verged on desert. It hadn’t rained in months, and it was into August now. Meteorologists were hopeful, climate change scientists less so.
Croddy had hired a campervan to be their local base. He’d parked it five minutes walk from the hole. At the end of a local dirt road.
They didn’t have their own vehicle. This location had been a short flight out of Missoula, via Bozeman, into Denver. Then a long drive back toward Grand Junction. Government systems.
Gina stepped over the berm, her feet sinking into the soft spoil. Doug and Sally were standing a few yards away, with Peter Bensemann and Avril Smith. Two of the other on-duty OAL agents. All four of them wore light slacks, with collared shirts. Peter wore a peaked cap, on account of his balding pate.
The hole lay on the northern side of a gently-sloping valley. Not very deep, but pretty old. By some craggy rocks on the southern flank’s ridge a cell phone tower stood. Partially obscured from her vantage.
There were wiry trees growing around the area. A tough looking bird twittered from the branches of one. The bird darted off, hunting a flying insect.
“Hey,” Doug called. He waved Gina over.
“Why am I the only one wearing overalls?” she said, joining them.
There were some other vehicles parked by the camper. Black SUVs. Government, probably.
“Nothing going on here,” Peter said. “We’re going back home.” He nodded at the vehicles.
“We’ve been pulled out,” Sally said. She didn’t seem happy about it.
“By whom?”
Peter shrugged. “Go talk to Croddy. He pointed farther along the road. The one that led back toward the main highway. Another vehicle parked there. Bigger.
A truck the size of a big rig. No articulated trailer, but a connected paneled box on a long chassis. Black, with some white markings. A couple of small windows.
More like a genuine mobile command post. Less makeshift than just a rented camper.
Croddy was down there. Talking with about six other people. Three in uniform, two dressed like Doug and Avril and the others, and one in board shorts and a t-shirt.
They had clipboards and equipment in boxes. Croddy was waving and pointing. Gesticulating was the word. Adding emphasis to whatever he was saying.
Frustrated, clearly. Upset even.
“How did they even get that thing up the road?” Gina said. It had been rough enough coming up in the camper.
She started walking down. Her feet crunched on the surface grit.
“I wouldn’t go over there,” Doug said.
“And why not?” Gina kept walking. Who knew if these things—the mechismas—were a threat? The thing was if multiple agencies were working on it, they needed to work together.
“Because,” Avril called, “Croddy’s down there trying to placate them.”
Gina turned.
“You went down the hole,” Doug said. He pointed. Her footprints, and his and Croddy’s, were all over the berm.
“Protocols,” Avril said.
“How are we supposed to get anything done if we can’t go down the hole? And where is the remote anyway? I thought I saw and heard something down there.”
“You did?” Sally said, at the same time as Peter said, “There’s your problem right there.”
Gina stopped. “My problem?”
“You charge in. We need to be circumspect. Follow the protocols.”
She stared at him a moment. Took a breath.
“We should just go grab a beer,” Avril said. “It’s hot. We’re not going to make any headway. Leave them to it.”
There were beers in the fridge in the camper. Croddy had seen to that. Tough taskmaster, but still knew that people needed to unwind.
But now wasn’t the time for that.
“Tell you what, Peter. Avril,” Gina said. “You go follow protocols and have a beer or whatever.”
“Gina,” Doug said.
“Me. I’m going to be a whole lot less circumspect.”
Gina turned and headed for the big vehicle.
Chapter Four
A big insect buzzed at Gina as she strode across the rough ground toward that mobile command post. Some kind of beetle with a black carapace and dangling legs.
She waved it away and ducked. Sweat dripped into her eyes. It would be better down the tube. Much cooler down there.
And a beer would be nice.
“Hey!” she shouted as she approached the others. “What’s going on?” She tried to sound friendly, but worried that it had come out as aggressive.
Melanie always said Gina needed to work on her manner. Be less abrupt, Melanie would say. Let people warm up to you.
“You should use that for the title of one of your exhibitions,” Gina had said.
Melanie had laughed.
The group turned toward her. Croddy’s already raised hands went to his head. His fingers knitted.
Not happy.
There was a rickety wire farm fence between Gina and the group. She stopped and put her hand on one of the uprights. It was rough under her palm.
The big vehicle hummed. Kind of like an ice cream truck. Except this thing was never going to attract neighborhood children. It loomed. The sound had to be aircon. For all the equipment in there.
Like one of those films, with operatives wearing headsets, hunched before a bank of monitors.
“What’s going on?” she said.
The three in uniforms were young. Probably just signed up. Light fawn, with a kind of enlarged pixel pattern. Was that army? Did they call those BDUs?
“We’re just discussing the handover,” Croddy said. “Could I ask you, Gina, to head back to our post and prepare things for departure. Please.”
“Handover? Peter hasn’t even gotten the remote down there yet. We’ve hardly even started.”
“And we’re done, Gina.”
“But this is special. There are five horizontal tunnels leading… from the…” She trailed off. That was the point. Something had changed.
That’s why these guys were here.
“I did see something down there, didn’t I?” she said.
“You saw something?” the guy with board shorts said. He stepped over.
“Saw and heard,” she said.
“All right, Gina,” Croddy said. “Let’s get this packed up now. Please.”
“Just a second,” board shorts said. He was nice looking. About thirty, maybe. Dark brows and a day of stubble. Hazel eyes. “Mitch,” he said, holding out his hand. “Mitch Templeton.”
“Gina Parker.” She took his hand and shook. He had a firm grip and a dry palm.
He smiled. Stared right into her.
“You saw and heard something?” he said.
Her eyes flicked to Croddy’s glare. He still had his hands on his head. Frustrated.
“Might have,” Gina said. “There are a lot of reflections down there. Light bounces around the walls. They’re pretty glassy. And sounds echo. It might have been the rope ladder’s clicks against the side. My own footsteps.”
“You were down the hole?”
“Sure.”
“For how long?”
“Four or five minutes. I know it’s not protocol, but we haven’t been making any headway. So, yeah, I’ve been—”
“Enough, Gina,” Croddy said.
Mitch glanced around. “Claire, why don’t you show Mr Croddy our plan and set up.”
“Yes,” one of the women in the BDUs said. “This way Mr Croddy.”
“But I…” Croddy trailed off. He threw another glare Gina’s way and followed the woman toward the back of the big truck.
“Good,” Mitch said. “Gina. Let’s go see this hole.”
Chapter Five
Ten minutes later Gina stood at the bottom of the tube again. It hadn’t changed. Glassy reflections. The echo of her voice along the tubes.
She stepped away from the bottom of the rope ladder as Mitch came down. Gina kept one hand on the ladder to steady it.
Mitch dropped down beside her with a thump. His breath smelled of cinnamon. He was chewing gum.
“Well look at this,” he said, shining a flashlight around the five tubes. “Look at this. Which one did you hear the sound from?”
Had she said the sound had come from just one? Probably. Mitch had pumped her for information on the short walk back to the tube entry.
“That one,” she said, pointing left. The tubes all looked identical, but the rope ladder gave her a compass point.
“Good. Let’s go take a look, shall we?” Shining the beam ahead, he strode off along the corridor.
“Wait,” Gina said. “You can’t just go down there.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Mitch stopped and turned to face her. “Except for the rules?”
Gina nodded. “Mr Croddy runs a tight ship.”
Mitch laughed. “Quaint expression. But yes, I got the sense from him that he’s playing all this very safe.”
“The remotes,” Gina said. “They gather the imagery. Everything we need. Temperature data, atmospheric, sound.”
“Right. You mean those little remote-controlled cars you send rolling off along the tubes, don’t you?”
“Which agency are you with?”
“Well, technically I work for JPL. You know, out in Pasadena.” Mitch turned again and headed away along the tube gain.
“I know JPL. How does this involve them? You?”
“You saw the uniforms?”
“Couldn’t miss them.”
“Turns out this might be a bigger issue than we thought.”
“We don’t know how big of an issue it is anyway,” Gina said. “There are about twenty-two holes. Hundreds of photographs. We don’t know where the mechismas go.”
In all these excursions, the remotes had only reached the end of one of the tubes on three occasions. The shortest had been after about sixty meters, the longest more than two hundred.
No sign of the mechismas. No answer as to what had happened to the spoil from the horizontal tunneling. A lot of it had been reconstituted as glass, but that didn’t account for it. Glass’s density was close to that of the material mined.
“Maybe they go down the other tubes,” Gina said. “The ones where we haven’t yet seen the end.”
Mitch kept walking. “Your team is pretty under-resourced right?”
“With too big of a remit, yes.”
“Figures. And everyone is trying to pin it all on you. Everything that’s not going right out here.”
“Or anywhere.”
Before they’d come down the tube, Mitch had introduced himself enthusiastically to Doug, Sally, Peter and Avril. He’d even thanked them for the work.
“How many sites are you monitoring?” Mitch said, still walking. He shone his own light up and down, and from his feet to far ahead. “Did you say twenty-two?”
“Seventeen,” Gina said. “The other five were early. We didn’t have the equipment. We hope to make it back to them sometime in the near future.”
“Right.”
“Thing is, new holes keep showing up. So we have to check those. Which is just as well, because this one is a whole world of different.”
Gina ran her fingertips along the wall. Cold and smooth. A slight tingle of electricity to it.
“Different?” Mitch said.
“Five side tubes. More than any ever before. There should be people with better skills than us on it.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Of course.” Funny, from anyone else it would have sounded patronizing, but from Mitch it was friendly.
“And they’re coming in at the rate of about one every three days now,” Mitch said. “Am I right?”
“About that.” Gina found herself liking him. Easy going, not too concerned. Either about the protocols or about the issue of the mechismas.
“So you’re pushed. Your team has to gather resources, fly in. Figure out how to use local infrastructure to investigate. I mean, filling the gaps in your equipment list. Like the rental camper.”
“Like the camper, yeah.”
They kept walking. Gina looked back. The light from the vertical tunnel shone into a kind of dusty haze. About forty meters back. Reassuring, at least.
“Well, what have we here?” Mitch said. He slowed.
Gina came up behind him. Leaning, she tried to see around him.
Something lay on the tubeway floor. A lump. Maybe twenty-five centimeters high. Maybe forty meters farther along. In the dimmer part of Mitch’s light.
“Hello there, little friend,” Mitch said.
Chapter Six
As they approached the lump, Gina glanced back at the entry. The light seemed very far off. Almost as if the tube walls were closing in. The air smelled oily.
Mitch stopped and crouched down. He shone his light around the lump.
At first it had seemed like one of the mechismas. But now it was clear that it was just a pile of parts. Almost as if one of the remotes had been here and broken down. Why would it fall apart like that though?
Gina had never seen a mechisma in the flesh, so to speak, but she’d seen enough footage and photographs to know exactly what they looked like.
This wasn’t one.
But it might have been the remains of one.
“You did hear something,” Mitch said. “And saw it too.” He had a real camera out. He took a lot of photos.
“We’re a long way down the tube.” She stepped around Mitch and around the pile of junk. Careful with her footing on the sloping part of the tube.
On the other side of the pile, she crouched. Shone her light into it.
Curved plates. Dull gray. With other pieces. More colorful.
Tiny cogs and sprockets. Springs. Thin rods. Unidentifiable parts. Dozens of them.
“It’s a mechisma,” she said. She took out her phone and started taking photos too. Melanie would love them. In a morbid way.
Gina shivered. Death. Not good. Melanie was always willing to talk about losing her baby, but Gina never knew what to say. Who would?
Maybe that was the appeal of Missoula. Far from having to sit through those family ordeals. The awkwardness. Melanie so easy and so fragile at once.
“Gina?” Mitch said. “You all right?”
Oh, and the research. “Is it dead?” She focused back on the pile. “Maybe just discarded parts?”
Mitch took a pen from his pocket and poked at the pile. It made a tinkling sound as pieces moved around.
“Keep taking pictures,” he said.
It wasn’t discarded parts. It was one of the small ones. Dead, somehow.
How did a machine die? Or were they even machines?
Usual story. The more they found out, the more questions that came up.
“We need to bag it,” she said. “Take it topside.” Suddenly she felt very amateur. Coming down without full equipment. They should have a proper team down here, with all the gear.
Just that they didn’t know enough yet. All they’d done so far really was come and document the holes. Location. Size. Gather any local footage and images. Put it all into the database. Wait for the next one.
“Unprecedented,” she whispered.
“All of this is unprecedented,” Mitch said. “Everything about them.”
“Right. But finding one. We haven’t gotten any of them yet. They always vanish. We should—”
“Gina!” someone called from back along the tube. Voice only just audible. Echoing quietly around them.
“What?” She stood.
“You need to get out!” Get out… get out…
“Why?”
“There’s a big one coming!”
Chapter Seven
At her feet the pile made a loud tinkling sound. Mitch had grabbed at it.
“Come on,” he said. “You know what the big ones do.”
“Right.” Gina moved around him.
The big ones got into the holes.
She started along the tubeway. Running. Mitch’s footsteps right behind.
Ahead the light ahead changed. Dimmed. Then darkened more.
Went out entirely.
Just the bobbing of their flashlights as they ran.
“Don’t like the look of that,” Mitch said, already puffing.
Gina kept running. A noise grew ahead. That familiar clanking and hissing she’d heard before.
But only in recordings.
From when she’d seen those videos of the big ones. Going down into a hole.
Taking up most of the space.
The vertical tubes were wider than the horizontal holes. Those big ones would just fit.
No space for a couple of humans.
Only a one in five chance that it would choose their tube.
The light dimmed even more. They were about halfway back to the junction.
Gina slowed. The reek of rotting vegetation rolled across her.
“Phew!” Mitch said. “That’s something those videos don’t convey. These things stink.”
“We’re relying on luck here,” Gina said. If the mechisma did decide to come along their tube it would crush them.
And there was no spare space at the junction. They had to choose one or other of the tubes.
No way to tell if the mechisma would choose to go down, or avoid, their one. Perhaps it was coming to look at the dead one.
Perhaps not.
How fast was the mechisma coming down anyway?
Maybe all her headwork now was moot anyway. The mechisma only had to descend fifteen meters. Gina and Mitch had more like a hundred to cover.
Not that the mechismas were particularly fast. But still.
A thump from behind. Gina stopped. Turned.
Mitch had stumbled. He was scrambling up from his knees.
“Keep going,” he called. “Get out.”
Gina shone the light at the junction again. They were only about ten meters away now.
Something hung into the junction. Two waving things. Like vines.
Antennas? From the mechisma?
Gina kept moving. The smell was getting worse. The sounds too. Hisses and clanks. Frightening.
She took another couple of steps. Stopped.
The front end of the mechisma appeared. Metallic eyes looked around at her.
It stopped.
Stared at her.
“We’ve attracted it,” Gina whispered.
Mitch came up behind her. “What do you think?” he said. “Stay? Run? Try for another tube?”
The mechisma started moving again. Lowering into the junction.
No way past it now anyway.
“Run,” Gina said. “Back the way we went.”
“Got it.” Mitch’s footsteps came from along the tubeway. Running back.
Gina stayed watching the mechisma for a moment. It kept its eyes on her.
Was it really watching her?
Its descent was slow, but accelerating.
Gina took a step back. What if it came this way? What if this was a blind tube?
And if it wasn’t, where did it lead?
Nowhere. They had to all be blind. Just because they hadn’t gotten any of the remotes as far as the end of some tubes, didn’t mean those were endless.
But where did the mechismas go? Those little hard-working ones who dug and dug? They had to go somewhere.
“Unless they all died,” she whispered. Like the one she and Mitch had found.
“Come on Gina,” Mitch called.
The large mechisma was halfway down now. A full meter of it sticking below the top of the tube.
Gina wished she could see the underside. Was it legs, or wheels, or what?
“Gina!”
“Yeah. Coming.”
As she turned something whipped out from the mechisma.
One of the antennas. It grabbed at her ankle.
Gina yelped. She stumbled.
The antenna wrapped around. It dragged her back along the tube.
Chapter Eight
The tube was cold and hard. It grabbed at her skin. Almost sticky.
The whiplike antenna kept pulling her back.
“Gina!” Mitch shouted.
Gina found herself thinking of Melanie. What would her sister make of this?
Melanie would probably tell Gina that it was her own fault.
The earthy stink of the mechisma felt like a cloud over her. Thick and strong.
The wiry antenna clung on. It dug into her ankle. Not cutting, but maybe cutting off her circulation.
Mitch grabbed her hand. “Hang on,” he said. He sounded freaked out. He tugged her back along the tube.
“I think it’s stronger than you.” Gina felt calm. If this was meant to be, well then that was that.
“Right.” Mitch let go. He went around her. He put his hands on her ankle. Tried to prize off the antenna.
“Ow,” Gina said.
“Sorry.” Another pull. “Can’t budge it.”
The antenna continued to drag Gina along. She’d almost reached the vertical tube. The mechisma.
Its sound was intriguing. She should be scared. Freaking out. Instead she was intrigued by the sound.
A kind of soft variation on white noise. Something rhythmic in there too. As if the thing was breathing.
And a quiet chittering. Actually the thing was quieter than she’d expected.
“Take some photos,” she said. “And record the sound.”
“We need to get you out of this.” Mitch kept tugging.
“You won’t. We don’t have the right tools. But we need the data.”
Mitch took a beat. “We’re going to die.”
The title of Melanie’s exhibition popped into Gina’s head. Pretty dangerous all right. So much for the mechismas keeping out of people’s way.
The rope ladder lay in a heap. It had fallen. Cut off somewhere up there by the descending mechisma.
“Maybe Croddy was right,” Gina said. “We shouldn’t come down the holes.”
“You say that now.”
Mitch crouched right down. They were practically under the mechisma. The stink just about fell from it in gristly blocks.
“It’s only a couple of meters across,” Mitch said. There’s a gap between it and the vertical tube’s wall. We could climb up.”
“The rope ladder has dropped. Are you going to chimney up?” Wasn’t that what rock climbers did in narrow, vertical crevices? Too wide for that anyway.
“There are handholds in the mechisma’s structure.”
“You want to do that, you should go ahead. Get clear.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Mitch looked up again. “Anyway, I’d only get partway up.”
“Photos,” Gina said. “At least they’ll maybe get data about what happened here.”
“I…” Mitch slumped back.
The mechisma had stopped moving down. The antenna still gripped her ankle. But it had stopped pulling her along.
The mechisma’s glassy eyes peered at her.
Mitch got out his camera. He fooled with the back panel a moment. He held the camera out and took a photo of her.
“Not of me!”
“Posterity,” he said. “They should at least know who we were.” He spun the camera around and selfied.
“Sheesh,” Gina said.
The mechisma still didn’t move. If it dropped it would crush them. Well, all of Mitch, and Gina’s legs. If the mechisma withdrew the antenna, it could chew her up into… well, whatever was inside them.
Gina reached into her overalls pocket. She found her phone.
Mitch photographed her ankle. The mechisma’s eyes. More of the antenna. He scooted around under it farther. Taking more pictures.
“Don’t go farther under it.”
“This is great,” he said. “No one’s got pictures like this yet. Up close.”
“You should use the flash.”
“Don’t want to disturb it. Anyway, this has a CCD with pretty good ISO. Our flashlights are providing good light.”
Skeptical, Gina swiped through to the camera on her phone. There was enough light there for dull, grainy images. Still, when they retrieved the phone, they might be able to do some enhancing.
“You’re very calm,” Mitch said.
“I’m twisted in knots inside. And, who knows? It might just back up out of the hole. Or take another tube. Maybe it’s just curious.”
“Right.”
“Either way, you should come out from under it.”
“I’m going into one of the other tubes,” Mitch said. Something rattled.
Gina jerked. But it was just Mitch bumping the rope ladder.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t go into another tube.”
He was right, though, in a way. Separation gave them an individual better chance of survival. Probably much better for himself too. The mechisma already had her in its clutches.
“Right,” Mitch said. “I’ll stick with you.”
He started coming back over.
“No. I changed my mind. You’re probably better away from me.
The mechisma kept peering at her.
The scent in the air changed. The muddy, organic smell faded. Something sweeter replacing it. As if the mechisma knew it was fouling the air.
Or if it was changing processes.
Mitch scuttled across beside her.
“Hey!” someone shouted from above. “Are you all right? Gina?”
It sounded like Croddy. Probably only a couple of minutes had passed.
Where had the Mechisma come from anyway? Had they seen it moving across the ground?
“We’re here,” Gina shouted.
“Hurt?”
“No. The mechisma’s got hold of my leg.”
“All right.” All right? How was that all right? “We’re sending down a rope.”
The mechisma shuffled. Shifted.
It moved back up the tube a few centimeters.
“Uh-oh,” Mitch said.
A quiet whooshing sound started. The mechisma shook.
“Hey,” Peter shouted down. “Watch out down there. It’s getting bigger.”
Mitch peered up around it again. “How about that?” he said. “It’s expanding.”
“Cutting off our escape?” Gina said.
Mitch didn’t reply.
Chapter Nine
The mechisma made a quiet tinkling sound. Kind of like toy Christmas bells.
“You should get down the tube,” Gina told Mitch. Why hadn’t it grabbed him too? The thing had two antennas.
“I’ll stay with you,” he said. He pulled back from the hole.
Made sense. If she’d asked him to join her in the same tube, then it didn’t make sense to send him away again.
Especially since they weren’t climbing out now. Even if the mechisma released that air and shrank, she wouldn’t want to risk attempting to climb past it.
“I appreciate it,” she said.
Mitch kept taking photographs. “You know if that the camera will get crushed too. There’ll be nothing left. Dust and ashes.”
“Perhaps the mechisma will eat the camera?”
Mitch laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Organic life forms eat organics. Machine life forms eat machines.”
“It’s life? You think they’re alive?”
“Of course. Look at it. Just because we only know organic life—carbon-based life—doesn’t mean that’s the only kind.”
The mechisma clanked.
It shifted down some more.
Mitch backed up.
The antenna unraveled from Gina’s leg. She shuffled back. Still lying on the tube floor. A kind of backward crawl.
The mechisma came right down.
It swarmed into the tube. No other word for it. The parts moved, one riding over the top of the other. Sliding back underneath the next.
Perhaps it was a swarm. Perhaps it was hundreds upon hundreds of individual machines. All working in unison.
Like a body’s cells.
The eyes peered. Moving around, examining the tube. Watching Gina.
“It’s chosen this tube!” Mitch yelped, his voice a panicked squeak. Clearly he hadn’t thought through the consequences of staying down here.
One in five chance.
The mechisma advanced slowly. It rattled and tinkled as it came.
The air still smelled sweeter than it had, but it felt thicker. As if the mechisma was breathing out.
The air was getting warmer too.
Mitch was a long way down the tube. His pounding footsteps sounded as if he was panicked.
“Mitch,” Gina called. “Slow down. It’s not moving fast.”
“They can move faster,” he shouted back. His echo came almost like an instruction, faster… faster… faster.
Gina kept up a steady pace, but walking backwards.
Mitch’s footsteps echoed around her.
Gina kept moving. She glanced along as she went. Light from Mitch’s flashlight darted and bobbed. Diminishing too.
They weren’t far from the pile of pieces. The dead one.
Gina was surprised. It had felt like a long way when they’d first found it.
She kept moving. Stepped around the pile.
The mechisma tinkled and rattled. The tube vibrated slightly as the mechisma trundled along.
The thing had to be heavy.
So many details they didn’t know. Some much was extrapolation. Between the images, and the tubes.
Wasn’t that how paleontologists worked? Joining together pieces of information to create whole dinosaurs from just a few bones.
The mechisma came to a stop. Right by the pile. The mechisma’s antennas darted out. Touching and probing.
Gina stopped.
She took a step toward the mechisma.
Another.
Why had it stopped?
Chapter Ten
Gina tried to keep her breathing even. She shone her light right down at the pile of parts.
A dead little mechisma.
The air was still thick. The sweet scent continued to seep from the mechisma.
“What are you doing?” Gina said.
“Gina!” Mitch called. His voice blurred with echo. He had to be a long way down the tube.
Perhaps there was an exit. Or a branch.
Or something. A bigger area. Maybe like one of those wide bays in the middle of a long narrow bridge. Where two vehicles could slip by each other.
Did the mechismas come back and forth?
The mechisma continued to tinkle. The vibration had stopped.
The eyes moved around. Looking at her. Looking at the pile. The eyes made quiet whirring sounds.
Just like a fancy camera’s lens mechanism.
Maybe it had eaten some cameras.
The tinkling continued. The eyes all looked down.
Right at the pile.
Some probes came out of the mechisma’s forward end. Kind of robotic arms, with three little thin sharp fingers.
They poked at the pile.
The mechisma hummed.
Another probe came out. This one with two scoops. Like garden trowels for bedding in carrots.
The mechisma picked up the pile.
Gentle. Like a midwife with a newborn.
Or a stillborn.
Gina’s breath caught. It was impossible not to feel something.
The scoops had collected every piece. Holding it together as it had been on the floor. Tiny mechanical tendrils came out from around the sides of the scoops. Touching and brushing the pieces.
The arms lifted the pile right up to the mechisma’s tube eyes. It peered. The whole mechisma rocked gently side to side.
The tinkling even seemed to be in a minor key.
Gina reached out. She put her hand on one of the eye tubes.
It was warm.
Soft to the touch.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t…” She didn’t have the words.
Where had this emotion come from?
No. She knew where.
The mechisma brought the pile close to itself. Right up against the forward plates. Right under the eyes.
Gina put her other hand up. Pressed into the plates just above the arms. Just above the baby. Child. Whatever.
The plates were warm. Soft. Not metallic. More like rubber. Maybe a coating.
The tinkling continued. With a kind of a hum too.
A sad, sad sound.
Gina leaned in. Right against the mechisma. She leaned her body against it. Felt the eyes pressing into her breasts. Into her belly.
She bent her head. Leaned her cheek right against the mechisma.
Gina stood there, holding it.
The antennas touched her back. Caressing this time. Not grabbing.
Stroking.
Gina held on.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The mechisma seemed to be purring now. A change in the tinkling.
“Gina!” Mitch shouted. Some echo, but much closer.
He’d come back along the tube.
“Get away from it!” he yelled.
Next thing, he grabbed her. Yanked her back.
“No!” she yelled. She stumbled back, landing hard.
The tinkling started up again. With something else.
A deep, deep rumble.
They mechisma’s eyes all focused on Mitch.
Chapter Eleven
The sound of the mechisma echoed along the tube. Gina got to her feet.
“Mitch!” she shouted. “Leave it.”
Mitch had stepped back.
The mechisma’s eyes stayed on him.
“Mitch.” Gina got to her feet. Twangs from her ankle. She’d twisted it when she landed. She took a limping step forward.
Mitch turned. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. The tunnel goes a long way. We might be able to find an alternative exit.”
“We don’t need it,” Gina said. “She was only coming this far.”
“She?”
Gina stepped around him. She touched one of the mechisma’s eyetubes again.
The mechisma still cradled the dead one.
“It’s all right,” Gina whispered.
She felt the gentle touch of the antenna again. On her knee. The antenna slid to her ankle and closed in again.
Gina didn’t feel frightened.
“Come away, Gina,” Mitch said. “Come on.” He’d moved farther along the tube again.
The antenna gripped. It pressed and massaged. Gina’s ankle tingled. It felt good. Relaxing.
Healing, even.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She leaned in again. Hugging the mechisma.
“Gina, this is nuts,” Mitch said.
The mechisma shifted. As if leaning back from her. A section on the left, below the eyes, opened. More digits came out. Carrying a kind of foil.
The fingers worked quickly, wrapping the dead one up. The foil cinched in, compressing.
After a moment, it was done.
Another arm came out and pressed to the tube wall. The arm had a disk on the end. It spun. Touched. Cut a hole. Silently.
Just big enough for the foil package.
Dust flew back from the cutting. The dust smelled earthy. It formed a vortex that spun into another opening in the mechisma’s side.
“What’s going on?” Mitch said. Far along the tube. “Are you documenting it.”
“No,” Gina whispered. It didn’t feel appropriate. This was a private moment.
A privilege to share it.
The mechisma withdrew the digging arm and placed the package into the hole. The foil slipped away out of view.
The digging arm tipped the disk over. It pressed into the tube wall and moved around the outside of the hole. A burning, brittle smell filled the air. The tube wall crackled.
After a minute or so, the arm and disk pulled away. The tube wall was as smooth as before. There was a discoloration in the glass—a blue tinge to it—where the hole had been filled.
The mechisma reached out with its antenna again. The tip touched Gina’s belly. She shivered.
The eyes stared at her.
Gina stared back.
More tinkling. Clanks. Rattling. The plates around the eyes moved. Openings formed. The eyes folded in through the openings.
“What?” Gina said.
The sound grew louder. More rumblings. The plates closed up. Shifted more. They seemed to settle lower.
A vague whiff of smoke in the air. And it got cooler.
The mechisma started moving away. Backwards.
No. Its front had settled and lowered so much that it had become the tail. Had they eyes moved through the mechisma to appear at the front?
How did all those plates move over the internal workings?
The mechisma ratcheted along the tube floor. Gina followed. Soon they came to the junction and the mechisma headed away along another tube.
Gina looked up. Doug looked down at her. “Do you want a rope?” he called.
“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “A rope would be good.”
Chapter Twelve
At the top of the tube, the berm had been crushed by the mechisma. When it had come across into the hole. There were scrapes and track marks in the ground nearby. Some of the small plants crushed too.
It had taken ten minutes for Gina to be able to excuse herself from the group. Everyone had questions. Everyone liked the drama.
Mitch liked the attention. He didn’t understand it really.
But it would all go into Gina’s report. These weren’t random machines. The mechismas were living things.
Like us. Just not biological.
“Gina!” Mitch called as she stepped away. “Come back here.”
She waved and held up her phone. “Got to make a call.”
“I… all right. As soon as you can.”
“Will do.” The others had barely noticed that she’d stepped away. They clustered around Mitch. He was showing them his images. They were more like social media fiends, than scientists, right now.
Gina strode across the dry ground. Reception would be better a little higher up the slope. A little better sightline to that tower.
A couple of hundred yards from the little group—who were still baling Mitch up—Gina stopped.
She looked back around. The valley was very pretty, in a desolate way. Rough, low scrub, and a lot of dry ground. A light-colored bird hopped around, pecking at a struggling insect.
Gina took a breath. How long since she’d spoken with Melanie?
Too long, maybe.
Gina looked at her phone’s display. She flicked through some of the photos. Interesting colors and shapes. Melanie would like them.
With a touch, Gina sent one to Melanie. The sending circle twirled slowly in the screen’s center. Data struggling so far out in the wilds. Even though the tower was visible, she still had just a single bar.
With a couple more taps she brought up her contacts and connected.
Dialing the phone said.
She held it to her ear.
The phone rang. Rang again.
Maybe it would be better to go see her. Instead of just calling.
The phone clicked, and Melanie said, “Hello?”
It took Gina a moment to find her voice. Even then, it caught in her throat.
“Gina?” Melanie said. “Are you all right?”
“Not me,” Gina managed. “I mean, I’m fine, yes. Hi. I was calling really to see… to see how you were.” Stumbling over her words. Was she really this bad at emotion?
“Me? I’m fine,” Melanie said. “Oh! Look. You sent me another photo. Is that new?”
“Yes. From just now.”
“You took it?” Melanie sounded excited. “It’s not like the others. The ones from other people.”
“No. It’s from me all right.”
“This is so cool. You got a picture yourself.”
“Yes. Quiet down for a moment. This isn’t easy for me.”
“What?”
“I wanted to ask how you were,” Gina took a breath. This really wasn’t easy. “I mean how you really are.”
Melanie paused a beat. “Me. I’m doing okay. Sure. What’s this about?”
“I saw something. Today. Just now. And it made me think of you. Of you and your…” Gina swallowed. “Your baby.”
Silence.
More silence.
“Melanie?” Gina said. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“Shut up,” Melanie was crying now.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” Melanie said. “This is good. This is good tears. I love you. But you never asked before. You never… and I understood. Because of who you are. The way you are. I just… I just didn’t think you’d ever ask. It’s… sorry, I’m losing my words.”
“Mel.”
“Thanks for asking.” Crying, crying, crying. “It’s crushingly sad, Gina. Every single day. But I get on. I do.”
“You carry it. Well, I suppose.”
“I have to. You have to get on with life, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And now it’s so much better. I can’t tell you.”
“Better?” Gina frowned.
“Because you asked. You actually asked. That means the world, sister. It means everything.”
Now Gina was crying herself. Seeing the mechisma bury the dead one. So sad.
And talking to Melanie.
“Something’s shifted in you?” Melanie said. “I can hear it in your voice.”
“Yes,” Gina said. “It really has. I think I’ll fly out and visit. If you’ll have me. And we can talk and—”
“If I’ll have you? Of course. Come now.”
“All right,” Gina said, grinning and crying at once. She started walking for the vehicles. “I’m on my way.”
If you wanted a copy to keep, “Dangerous Machines” is available in ebook directly from the website – seanmonaghan.com – and also from the usual places for ebook, and in print from Amazon – click this link to go choose your favorite retailer.
My Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures series now has twelve novels. It was fun to write them all, and I’ll admit that I do have some favorites among them.
Well, it’s been about a year since Cradle Robbers, the last Captain Arlon Stoddard novel, came out, so it’s both a thrill and a relief to get Margin Dwellers into the world.
Royd Melgrave slams himself into an emergency vacuum suit as klaxons blast around him. The refinery station seems doomed.
Dead Ringers, book 9 in my Captain Arlon Stoddard series is available on pre order with an April 20th release – 
Experienced Captain Ulliana Alvis loves skimming above the forty-five hundred kilometer stretch of the Tegh Sea. Her vessel the Mourave carries fifty passengers in safety and comfort. The calm of the water always reassures and moves her at once.
Sean Monaghan - Writer 