Chapter 50

ROBINSON UNCOVERED THE Invention, patted it, and connected the machine to the black battery box. It made an instant, whirring sound, and Robinson let out a small yelp of joy. He pushed the key into the little hole at the back, just like he had done on the day he was going to demonstrate the machine’s wonders to Mona, and a great spot of light showered the shelter wall. A small puff of smoke came out of the machine. Robinson took the little winding handle and yanked it until the machine started to wheeze, and images started to project onto the wall. There was the universe first, the galaxies, wondrous colors and gasses and what Robinson thought was the Milky Way, then the Earth could be seen through the collection of the stars and planets, and Robinson watched all this and thought, Have I really created this machine? My God! He patted The Invention again. The machine gave a little wheeze in response, and they traveled through the cosmos together, Robinson feeling as if he too was being transported on the wings of the machine and the future was his to be seen, and as they neared the Earth, carried through space in all its beauty, there were the oceans, the forests, the birds in the sky. Robinson had no idea where the flight would take him, he felt like Aladdin on the magic carpet. He thought, All my life I have worked toward this, ah how beautiful it all is, and the picture drew closer to Europe and to the seas, and toward their little country, Robinson’s and Ruben’s and Rosa’s and Diogen’s and Mona’s homeland, and as it neared, Robinson saw they were getting closer to their region, then to their hometown, the very one he was sitting in at that moment, and then he thought there was something wrong with the picture, for there were ruins where the buildings once stood, ruins like burnt out holes in a piece of wood, and there were people in the street running away, and guns shooting and shells falling, and the camera was now amongst the people and Robinson could see Ruben and Rosa and Diogen and Mona, and they were a little older than they were now, and they were running for dear life, and Robinson stood up and said to the machine, “What is this, what are you showing me you silly thing, what’s all this nonsense I’m seeing?” But the machine being a machine could not speak and did not care for Robinson’s distress, and the picture carried on moving through the familiar streets, and where there had been beautiful things now there was nothing but destruction, and the river was flowing as before, only now it was full of fallen trees and human bodies were caught on the blackened branches, and Robinson stood, wordless, and the picture moved around and out of the town and into the neighboring towns and over the whole land and showed unspeakable things, people in great lines trying to flee, grandmothers desperate, children desperate, mothers desperate, men fighting and starving men behind barbed wire, and Robinson sat down, his knees weak now but unable to peel his eyes off what he was seeing, and he said to himself, “It’s a mistake, surely it’s a mistake, no one can see the future, this is not real.” And as the picture moved onto a military general giving orders to bulldoze thousands of dead bodies down into the ground, Robinson failed to observe that the machine was emitting great amounts of smoke into the room, and as he watched people at a vegetable market murdered by a falling shell, he did not understand that the room was now entirely shrouded in smoke and The Invention was on fire. Robinson watched and wept and did not stand up to put out the fire, he could not move, and the picture kept going on, into this future that was presenting itself through the smoke. Robinson said, “It’s the greatest nightmare anyone could conceive of,” and the land moved away again and the picture was of a burnt down country, and now the picture danced over the land, and Robinson thought he could see The Invention, his beloved machine, he thought he could actually see it smile, somehow, he was probably hallucinating now from the smoke, and he thought he could hear it speak, he could hear it say human words to him: “You wanted to see the future, here it is, and you’re not in it, old man, thank your lucky stars.” Robinson thought, God, my Invention, it’s a bastard, a cruel bastard, it’s playing with me, and he stood up to kick it, but there was too much smoke and he fell to the floor and the machine exploded and all the oil went up in flames.

Upon hearing an explosion, one of the neighbors ran down the stairs to see what was wrong, and saw smoke billowing out from the shelter door. He opened it, and letting in a great amount of oxygen at once, was subsumed by a great gulf of flame, which spread rather quickly into the President Shop, since the shop stood right there, on the ground floor, and the fire devoured everything—picture by picture, ornament by ornament, gulping its way through the wooden paneling, the aged curtains, until the windows started to burst under the pressure like firecrackers on a night of town festivities.