The Incredible Machine

(Extinction of a Man)

By George David Thomas
 

Suddenly though, a shape loomed dark in the pale mist, and it was like nothing John Brown had ever seen before. Its front alone was bigger than the size of twelve cars, and further into the distance the vague shapes that protruded from its sides hinted at something even more wonderful, yet at the same time more sinister and mysterious. He racked his brains and trawled the memories of his life to find something that would match the shape that crawled towards him, but all that came back were vague recollections of oil rigs, battleships, and cranes. It was none of those things.

As it came closer, he could see that the driver sat off to one side in a little cabin that was painted red. However, due to a frontal protrusion of curved steel beams, which were painted orange and yellow, he could not see the face of this man, only the space where he should be. This gave the machine the distinction of appearing to drive itself, and John Brown found it all too easy to believe that this was a true possibility. The brains in the belly of such a magnificent machine must be more powerful than the brains of sixteen men, let alone one, he thought to himself.

Slowly and haltingly though, like a wounded soldier returning from the trenches, a memory was coming back to him. It was the red and the orange and the yellow of the paintwork that delivered it to him, and in turn took Mr John Brown way back to his childhood once more. The incredible machine was a fairground ride! What’s more, with its red and orange and yellow circles, fiery like the absent sun, he knew exactly which one it was too. It was the Solar Nexus!

The Solar Nexus had always been his favourite, for that week in May when the carnies came to The Old Boy Scout field at Kilsyth. At its centre was the big fiery ball of the sun, and arranged around it were of course the planets, always circling the sun at great speed, whilst at the same time swooping up and down and rotating about their own axes. He smiled to himself. They were good days. They were a long time ago now though, and so much had happened since then that he was inclined to forgive his memory its distant and fading pictures.

Lost in his memories though, he stared without seeing, and it was only as the machine came closer still that he suddenly realised he was wrong. It was not the Solar Nexus at all! The fairground ride he knew so well had been covered with flashing lights and stars, and on this machine there were no flashing lights or stars. Now it was closer he could see that it was a serious machine. He stepped off the verge to get a better view, and the thing that stood out to him now was the hoses, dozens of them, looping out from somewhere at the top on each side, and then returning deep below. They must carry something. Water perhaps, or milk, or hydraulic fluid.

He had laboured once for a few years for the Mackays down at Banknock, and he had seen something similar there. That was a thing for spraying the crops, and a contractor had brought it mounted on the biggest tractor he had ever seen, just for the day. The hoses were identical, and the steel beams, if they only folded down, were remarkably similar. When he thought about it more though, he decided it would be such a waste to build a machine as incredible as this, just to kill weeds. Besides, the one down at the Mackays was a definitely a tractor, and this was not like any tractor he had seen before. It must be something else.

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