I am based in Leeds, UK, and recently self-published a novel (An Unpleasant Hole to Fill – https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0C6BFB72N). Writing is very meaningful to me and a great way to allow my conscious and subconscious minds to forum with each other. This story forced its way out of me in one day, I woke up needing to write it and I didn’t go to sleep until it was finished.

The Universe Machine

The machine I found in the forest, the rain falling and causing me to find shelter, I dove deeper into its heart. And the whirring and distortion roused my interest, stepping closer to comprehend this anomaly. But you can’t look directly at the machine, it persuades you not to, averts your gaze. I think if I looked directly at it, I would die. But from the corner of my eye I see cogs spinning, and metal grinding, and something like black coral weaving in and out. The sound of rumbling engines, chugging and grinding reality into dust, or fuel, or perhaps into nothing. But if I focused my hearing onto these sounds they became deafening and transposed into a most desperate screech, and it felt as if time would stop forever. I turned away, frightened, like a child cowering from fireworks, unable to see the beauty for the tremendous bangs of sound. And so I ran away.

I tried to forget the grand machine of the universe, but as I walked through my daily routines, the idea haunted my steps. It whispered down the back of my neck as I leant into my coffee. It crawled like a spider up my back as I left for work, and like a spider it made a web that stretched across my mind, catching other concerns or fancies like flies. The flies wriggled to escape and one or two managed to break free, and my affairs kept me busy for a time. But the web remained, the spider growing fatter, the weight of its bulbous body pressing on my brain, making sleepless my nights, until days later I relented, in the apex of night, and four hours later, as dawn broke and the world faded into being, I headed for the forest.

Curiosity kills the cat, and it was with cat-like curiosity that I returned. I looked for the distortions, the fragmentations that I remembered, that led me to the machine before. The trees crinkled at my presence and the tiny streams sang beneath my feet, and deeper I went. But my promise of freedom from the shackles of inquiry was not granted. The machine wasn’t to be seen, or heard, just to be remembered. The spot in which I saw it, on that violet, spectacular night, was empty, filled with grass and surrounded by foliage, staged by trees. A shock of disappointment, though I couldn’t help but see the traces of the machine, an imprint it had made. When I wasn’t looking, the edges of the trees had shimmers, when I closed my eyes the fragments of reality flashed, and unto open eyes insisted, like small cracks through a pane of glass, that something had happened here before, that it wasn’t just a trick of my memory. I took a picture, but those I showed it to denied any oddity to be seen. After time I had to admit that the picture was just that, no fragments or cracks could be seen through the image. And as the years passed by, the idea of the machine dulled, flattened into a normal life, a life of routine and toil, and as my visits to this sacred spot in the forest became less frequent, I saw the cracks that the machine had left less and less, until one day I wondered if I had ever seen them at all, if in fact it had all been a dream, a nightmare, and with that I continued my life.

And my life was pleasant, quite pleasant. I had a small, close group of dear friends, and I loved them, and they loved me. My time, that which I had spare, was engrossed in conversations about philosophy and poetry, literature and love. We admitted love to each other openly, and this allowed us to truly bask in the presence of one another. Oh yes, my life was quite full. So why, as the years went on, did it steadily feel more empty? There was an ache in my heart, one that awoke in my nightmares, that dreamt of the machine of the universe. Upon lucidity sometimes the churning of its engines would ring in my ears, a forgotten sound that I knew, somewhere in my subconscious, to be true, the whisper of the universe.

And a depression fell unto me. I stopped taking calls, and started to deny the life that I had built for myself. I decided to go away, as if the problem inside me could be escaped with distance, as if the darkness building inside of me was tied to my homeland. And so I left, with few goodbyes, to another place. And the churning in my mind grew louder.

The South of France is an excellent location for solace. Many afternoons, drinking lattes and beer, and listening to the French that I couldn’t understand. The mountain that looms there casts a shadow that you can follow with your eyes or your feet, depending on how much energy you wish to expire. And up the mountain I climbed, past the dust and rocks and onto the top of the world, to face the curves and greens of the hills that rolled towards the blue, the blue that seems to go on forever. But in my heart, I suspected that if you reached the edge, the edge of the sea that I could see with my eyes, that you would fall off of the world, and perhaps, into the universe. Oh I know it’s contrary to logic, and the learnings of science, but that is how it felt in my heart, looking off of the mountain onto the edge of the world.

After I’d seen the ocean from the peak of the mountain I craved for waves, to crash into me, and take me into the flow of the water. The days I spent at the beach were tranquil, the shells and the birds chirped, and the foam gurgled as I stepped into its domain. I swam as far as I could, closing in on the edge of the world, but a deeper instinct took hold and told me of danger, and so I swam to the shore. Defeated by the will to live, like Esther Greenwood must have felt on her way back to that Boston beach. Her drowning, my edge of the world. I am, I am, I am. Sitting on the sand I watched the waves ripple over my feet, and thought of where they had come from. Each water molecule had exploded, suddenly and together, out of a single point, the beginning of the universe. And I had exploded from that point there, the molecules in me waiting an epoch to meet again in my form. And the water droplets kissed my feet, and the molecules of my feet greeted each droplet as one does an old friend. I saw sea beams, bounces of light reflecting off of the waves, travelled so far to meet my eyes. The secret of the universe was in the reflection, and my mind opened a little wider, just for a moment. And then that moment passed. I could remember what it felt like, but the secret was forgotten to my mind. I wanted more. I spent days searching rock pools, finding small fish trapped in their prison of stones, and I wondered if they knew how small their world was, compared with the world that once they knew. Did they remember the ocean they had once swam through freely? Did they yearn for it? Or did they make peace with the drop of the ocean that surrounded them? I thought that, if I were a fish in a rock pool, I would not be satisfied. I’d be always looking for a way out, into the bigger, into the vastness, the infinity, of the ocean beyond the rocks.

And so I left the rocks that had begun to surround me, and headed further afield. And I saw things, beautiful things. I saw the faces of people that I didn’t know, and found joy in them. Oh, I was growing older, but still the world brought freshness into the wrinkles forming on my face. A quiet type, I’d exchange polite words with waiting staff. I’d smile and nod at the pedestrians that shared my footpaths. Our languages were different, our lives and ideas a world apart, quite literally. But a smile shared between strangers, if you truly see it, it shows you, briefly, that secret of the universe, that secret I had forgotten, and that I would again forget moments after each such encounter. Occasional glimpses weren’t enough. I frequented buddhist temples, staring into the gold and piety, begging the structure, made of man, for something more. But the giant Buddhas remained silent in their meditations. And the rains came. And still I wanted more.

And so I returned home, empty handed, the hands of time having etched a few more lines into my face. My dear friends rejoiced, and I remembered their love. How could I have left it for so long? How could I have rejected it in my hasty departure? Oh, surely the secret to the universe, the thing that really mattered, was somewhere in those creased smiles, those tight hugs. The connection to another, not just in substance but in spirit, wasn’t this the most important thing?

And so I thought, until I heard it again. The moan, the whirring, the rattling metal sound that shot me up in the dead of night. I rushed, unshowered, clad in shambled clothes meant only for the private indoors, into the forest, towards the spot that I knew the sound was rushing from. And the sound grew louder as I closed in on that clearing, my torch flashing past haunted branches and clawing roots that meant to obstruct. Owls hooted in warning and the swamps of the forest gripped to my legs, but the sound grew louder and called me in. And as the clearing opened up before me the sound grew tamer, and calmer, the spluttering of the machine ran down to exhaustion as I finally witnessed its source again. Shattered pieces and sharp edges spread out amongst the ground. Jagged metal cut through the air and tilted reality. The cogs scraped against each other and the black coral seemed broken, hanging in the air amongst the wreckage. The iridescent wreckage that shimmered, lagging in place, glitching the space in which it sat. I still couldn’t look right at it, but this effect was weaker, and the churching and screeching had quietened to a stalled whimper. Confronted with the fractured reality in front of me, with the spluttering, splintering machine, I could only hesitate, frozen in fear, and awe, and overwhelmed with the majesty of the dying God that sprawled out in front of me. Suddenly the panic manifested and I wanted to run. Taking a step away I stopped myself, remembering the years of waiting, the wondering, what if, what if. And so I turned back to the broken machine of the universe, and frightened as I was, I knew that I had to fix it, to help it, if this were at all possible.

As I began to shout, to inquire into what my remedying action might be, the whirring rose to meet my voice and I had to shout over the accelerating vibration.

“WHAT DO YOU NEED?” I screamed.

“HOW CAN I HELP YOU?”

And the whirring got louder, and rasping, and the parts started to churn and slam against each other, the bangs beating against my eardrums so loudly that I thought they might burst. And the flashing, the flashes of colours I will never be able to describe, the motion and the flashing starting everywhere and concentrating down, and down, into a single space, a clink of metal that allowed itself to be seen. It was black, and dark, and I knew it was the error, the thorn in the lion’s paw. It was Hell. The metal pulsed with venom and snarled with all of the terrors that ever occurred. Its poisoned surface crawled with acid, and poison, and scorn. And the fractures of reality splintered outwards from this point, cracking into the space around it, chaining the machine against the fabric of spacetime and holding it prisoner. It was clear what had to be done. I would unwedge this malice, I would free the machine of the universe from its scourge. I looked around for a weapon, a branch or a tool. One sturdy stick, when I jammed it into the groove between the cracks, began to melt and bubble into the blackness, pulled from my hands and reduced to tar. And the black seemed to grow, and the metal sharpened and splintered further in. The machine screeched its engines and wailed for mercy. I saw cracks fracture into the air, cutting their way through reality and slicing the spacetime around me. As the screeching grew louder I screamed and dived onto the infection of black metal. I found razor sharp edges meeting my hands, and slicing the skin, and I wailed and screamed and the pain seared to my brain, and I grabbed harder, and the cut deeper, and I pulled, I pulled with everything that I had. And in a moment that lasted eternity, the metal clinked, and shifted, and exploded out of the machine, flying past my head and away, away from the gash, and disappearing behind me into the night, and I falling backwards into the dirt. And the tear glitched and whirred and configured, and flash of light blinded me and astounded me, the universe machine, spinning back into function, the cogs grinding together and the metal shifting and the black coral weaving itself back into place, and the hum, the churn of the universe, filling my ears, the sound of the universe that I’ll never forget.

And so it was that the machine, the wretched, scourged machine of the universe, opened it’s doors to me, and upon seeing the bright, dazzling darkness within I stepped inside, and it showed me things I could only dream of. The exact process of transportation is unclear, my mind becomes frazzled when I attempt to recall, but the machine spins, it’s cogs turn and the metal flashes and disappears, and the realms of reality flash by as the sound chugs into being, the churning and spluttering and grinding, the engine of the universe, the crescendo of reality. And I was in ice and fire and Heaven and Hell, all possibilities spinning around me, and gradually slowing down, the dizziness subsiding as I checked the placement of my feet.

I stood on a pearl white staircase, one that never ended and looped around, went upside down and back again. The machine was nowhere to be seen, and, somehow, I felt surprisingly calm. I had made it, to the realm of realms, to the keyhole through the door of reality. I walked up a few stairs and my surrounding reality altered to keep up. I jumped upwards and across, and although logic would dictate I would land on my head, my feet met the ground. Oh how I rejoiced. I ran around the whole circuit, aware of my defiance of gravity and the paradox of these stairs. And I howled into the darkness, the whooping cries over the low rumble pressed into the dead-space around me. But soon I grew tired, and the secret hadn’t quite revealed itself. And so I asked the machine, I asked it for more. And the whirring of the universe grew louder in my ears.

And so the machine gave me what I had asked for. It gave me more, always more. I found myself without and within, never and forever. I saw planets burn in the heat of their sun, their atmospheres on fire and oceans bubbling. I saw whole solar systems wiped out by supernovae, and I heard the screaming, the endless screaming. I saw civilisations crumbled to dust, the birth of a species mere moments before it’s end, and I squinted to spot the secret of the universe, to find something that mattered, inside their pain, the torture inflicted by nature. But I wanted more, and the whirring grew louder, and the flashing panged past my eyes. And I floated in the deadspace, in the coldness, in the seat of the universe, the stillness at the centre, and I screamed into the abyss.

“MORE! I WANT MORE! GIVE ME MORE! GIVE ME IT ALL!”

And so the universe poured itself into me. And in the coldness and the darkness, the light came from all directions and penetrated my chest, and poured into my heart. The rush and the bang and the noise all too much, too close, too bright, and it pulled and gripped at reality and shoved it into me. Every instance and particle and sound and light all piling into my soul, the rush and the gravity curling in on itself, and the deafening whirring of the machine. And then there was darkness. Only darkness. And one moment of stability, that lasted forever, was over in an instant, giving way to the unstable, and all at once it poured straight back out of me, forcing its way out of my mouth and nostrils and eyes. The force, the rush of the universe. And the fire of the universe flashed, the violence spun fantastically, spat out of me and into the black, spiralling away and away, and bright and loud. And the whirring spinning down now. And as soon at the matter and the light slowed, the black holes started up, tugging greedily at the edges of reality, and all things collapsed while I stayed in place. And the cycle started and ended, the beginning of all things and the last breath, but still I breathed afterwards, and onto new reality, more reality, more.

And I saw wondrous things. I saw the rules of physics bent like playthings, the laws of time spun back against themselves and folded for my convenience. I shaped worlds, grew species, played God, I sparked consciousness and showed it the light on a whim. But the more I took control, the less the secret would reveal itself. So I tore myself away from power, from the raw power I had possessed. A God who had lived too long for matters of reality, but not long enough to find his own. And so I decided again to travel, this time to transverse reality, and so I asked the machine, take me somewhere new, somewhere unexpected. And it showed me everything, all realities, and flashing and burning all together the realities spun, a superposition of everything that ever could be. And as time passed by, I grew weary of these travels, and I sunk into the beat of the machine, I allowed it to go where it would go, and I went along with it. I hope I was a good companion during our time together.

The machine took me once to a place where I could have run off of the edge of the world. The land like a disc in the darkness, sand and gravel slipping into the void from the deserts’ extremities. And as I ran towards the edge the dust and gravel kicked up behind me, so that I could barely stop as I reached the drop, faced with the endless abyss, and watching the dust overtake me into the night. Instead of jumping I laid down over the edge, and looked underneath. Only dust, only yellow, and gravel, and dirt, another identical plane of desert. And the fragments of the machine cracking the surface, and the whirring of the universe growing louder in my ears.

The final stop on our transcendental journey, the machine had transported me to a place where the red rain tasted like blood, and the skies wailed with the loss of their son. And I wailed too, cursing and falling onto the blue glass that I had come to know so well, the silver trees spinning upwards to thwart the heavens. And the son of the sky dead beneath their roots, and the spite of the Gods tumbling down to wage their war. And the pain, the burning love. And I had seen enough, I could no longer find something in these places. Just decay. And fire. And Hell. And nothing mattered. And I was tired. And I heard the churning grow louder and larger for the last time.

The machine of the universe, chugging and spluttering and churning, it had taken me away from myself, and into the great expanse of possible realities, each blinking in and out of existence, like subatomic particles that spontaneously explode into being, just to meet their counterpart and melt into annihilation less than a moment later. It all exists, or has at least the potential to, if only somebody were there to witness it. And that is what the machine did for me. It let me witness it, it let the realities exist, just because they could, just because the machine had the power to explore that great superposition of everything, existing in potential all at once, only needing a conscious witness to tear it into being.

And when I returned home, my dear friend, she asked me where I had been. And I told her I had seen it all, the mercilessness of the grand scheme, the beauty and the burning, the horror and the brilliance, revolving around each other forever.

And I wept, and I wept, and she held me in her arms. And this, this mattered more.