The God Machine

THE GOD MACHINE

‘Hellooo, Mikael,’ I cry as I bound into the tiny hangar. ‘It’s a beautiful day and I’m taking her up! It’s been too long.’

‘Her engine will be rusty,’ Mikael grins, rubbing his ear with an oily finger.

‘Not if you’ve been looking after her properly.’

I share the hangar with three other pilots, but Mikael is the hangar’s mechanic, a dedicated man who helped me to build my plane, the lovely Tia Ana. High winds and storms have kept her- and me- grounded for more than a month. But today is sunny. There is not a cloud in the sky, and only a light, cool breeze is moving the air. I adjust my sunglasses, go to my plane and pull off the canvas.

‘You might as well take a load to Skyfield and do a bit of trading. Don’t waste your fuel.’

The ever sensible Mikael.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘Could you get her ready? I’ll just go to the warehouse and see if they have anything that needs shifting.’

When I return forty five minutes later, Mikael is cleaning the windscreen, with the engine purring quietly to itself. He helps me to load the two crates into the back of the plane, where they barely fit, and kicks out the stops from under the wheels.

He stands back. I look at him. He pulls a face and shrugs his shoulders. Why aren’t I going?

I do an elaborate mime of him pushing the propeller blades, only hampered slightly by my seatbelt. He pulls another unattractive face. I repeat my actions. Finally- he understands, and grabs a metal blade, and pushes, and jumps back. I gun the engine, and we’re off! I push my sunglasses back up my nose and drive out of the hangar, Mikael grinning after me like an idiot.

It’s not far to the take off runway on foot, but by plane, observing all the correct procedures and codes, it is considerably further. I have to navigate the dense roadways, and eventually get to join the queue for the runway. The pilots are kept in line by several guides armed with paddles, who form a line of eyesight right up to the edge of the runway.

It starts to get hot in the cockpit, the clean windshield focusing the sunrays onto me quite nicely. My scalp starts to prickle under my helmet. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn my suede jacket.

Finally, the guide in front of me waves his paddle and I motor slowly to the end of the runway. Fear starts to circle slowly in my stomach. I hope I can regain control of Tia in time. I increase the power and move forward, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The edge of the runway shoots forward at an alarming rate.

Let me explain my concerns with taking off. I live and work from Turatop, which is an air city, a settlement on top of a mountain. One side of Mount Tura is very steep, but the other side- the other side is a sheer drop. And it was someone’s bright idea to build the runways so that the planes were catapulted out over fifteen thousand feet of nothing. There was no space on the plateau for it to be otherwise; in fact, most of the community is underground, inside the mountain. Most of Turatop’s residents don’t seem to mind that there are so many fatal and unpleasant accidents. I suppose some of them don’t know. I suppose it separates the good pilots with airworthy planes from the smouldering ashes.

Please let me not become one of the burnt out wreckages at the foot of Mount Tura after this, my first take off for weeks.

The runway is perfectly smooth, as always. My stomach feels like it’s trying to eat itself. The edge approaches speedily and inevitably. I feel sick. The engine is running full throttle. This is it.

I shoot over the edge and soar into space, blue sky crystalline around me. The view is beautiful. Dust plains stretch out before me in every direction. I can see the glittering blue river in the distance- can’t recall the name in my state of weightlessness- and a grey blot which could be Footfield.

And then gravity kicks in. I begin the sickening drop. I know that the plane has to level out before I start to fall vertically. I know she’s not strong enough to pull out of a vertical dive. I’m pulling the JOYSTICK back as far as it will go. There is white and yellow on the edge of my vision.

The plane begins to shake under the strain.

The engine starts to whine, then scream with the effort.

And then-

Thank sky gods, I can feel the curve of the dive getting shallower. I am pulling out of it! I will live! The joy overwhelms me as the plane reaches that special angle and starts to climb again, exultant and beautiful.

I laugh gleefully, victorious and elated that I have once again cheated gravity. I am where I belong once more. The sky is my home. I pull a barrel roll and pray that it won’t damage my cargo.

I steer Tia around and fly for Skyfield, Footfield’s mountain-bound twin. The flight is not too far: after all, I could see Footfield when I left Mount Tura. I weave around a little bit, now enjoying the way my stomach contorts when I drop the plane. When I get paid for this trade, I will buy more fuel and go to the Titan’s Fingers, a stunning rock formation over to the west. Monstrous arches, thousands of feet high, create an almost cave-like atmosphere, where gargantuan fingers of rock stab up from the floor and hang down from the stone bows above. No one can explain how it could have come to be, and it is the playground of foolhardy, thrill-seeking aviators (like myself- I’ve been told that I fly as if sky demons were chasing me). Soon, Tia, soon.

Ten minutes into my flight, I get a feeling. Yes, a feeling. A funny shiver between my ears that makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it’s Tia. I worry that my plane is going to do something strange, and I’m getting warning feelings. Pre-empting a disaster, as it were. I take her a little lower.

And still the feeling grows. My peripheral vision is blocked by the helmet, so I have to crane and twist my head around to have a look at the space outside the cockpit. Look left. Nothing out of the ordinary. Tia’s white wing slicing the warm air. Look up. I blind myself by looking at the sun. Allowing my eyes time to recover, I crane in my seat to look down in front of the plane. Whirring propellers, and nothing else. Look right. What’s that on my wing? A black shadow-

I scream as something smashes into my right wing. I am slammed violently into the sides of the cockpit as the plane shudders and begins a horrible spiral downwards.

The right wing has all but been ripped off by the impact.

I fall,

horrifically fast,

screaming.

This is it.

Wait.

It can’t be.

There’s a parachute here, somewhere.

Under my seat?

No.

Behind me?

My arm twists uncomfortably around the chair.

Fumble, fumble.

Not much time. Look at the ground.

A strap!

Grab the strap. Pull.

A square pack comes out from behind me.

What if I get caught by a wing? The plane is corkscrewing madly.

No matter.

Clutch the shoulder loops tightly, ejec-

Fly out into the clear, cool air.

I reach the zenith of my spring-driven arc, and begin to fall after my plane, my beautiful plane.

I pull the release strap, and the jerk as the parachute whips out almost tears the pack from my grasp. But not quite. I put it on, strap myself in.

I’m still falling, but not quite as alarmingly fast. The parachute billows above me. It is red. Lovely. My fall is slowing.

Meanwhile, my precious Tia Ana hits the ground and explodes, fantastically and decoratively. I feel a slight shock, a ripple in the air, and a fraction of the heat that is destroying her. It blows me to the left, away from the wreckage. I swing my legs, hoping to go further. I pray I don’t break anything as I land. The ground rushes towards me. I expel all the air from my lungs just before the impact.

And, with a hefty ‘Oof!’, I hit the earth, safe and sound. Impressively, I faint.


After waking up and disentangling myself from the many strings, straps and bands of the parachute, I pad over to the wreckage. The fire has already died down. Small flames lick at the fuselage, and I note that the fuel tanks have apparently disappeared. Tia Ana is a twisted, blackened wreck.

But why? What hit me?

I find a potential suspect a little way off, bent into what was once my right wing.

A strange white box, I find, when I pull it out and examine it. A perfect cube but for the knobs on opposite sides, and a large oval hole in another side. The sides are about the length of my forearm. The white surfaces are untouched by the impact and the explosion that wrecked the plane.

An odd thing to find, even before you knew that it had apparently fallen out of thin air.

And onto my plane. What are the chances of that? I was unlucky for it to have happened to me. Or, fantastically lucky because I survived the crash with only a few bruises.

I hold the box reflectively and look longingly to the sky. It’s hot on the ground, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen next. I suppose I’ll have to walk to Footfield. I pull off the helmet in the heat, and begin to walk towards where I judge the town to be. I can’t see it from the ground.

It’s so hot. I need a drink. I feel dizzy.

I think that I am maybe becoming delirious. I can hear Tia Ana’s engine buzzing for me. I’m about five hundred metres away from the crash site. I turn to squint back through the baking air. Oh Tia.

There’s that motor sound again. And there’s a shadow wiping smoothly over the earth.

A plane. A plane! I am saved.

The pilot makes the landing much more smoothly than I, and jumps out of the little yellow plane. It’s smaller than mine, a two seater, but he is a big man, very broad shoulders. He’s not wearing a helmet, and he tears his glasses off as he runs towards me. I take a couple of steps forward, falter, stand still and wait for him to come to me.

‘I saw you crash, saw the parachute- sky gods and demons, are you all right? What happened to your plane?’

‘Er, there, it’s there, that wreckage on the floor- that one over there-’

‘No, what made it crash?’ He moves forward and gently takes my arm. ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to Turatop. That is where you’re from?’ I nod. ‘Good. Come on now.’

‘This thing fell on me, this box. Just came out of nowhere…’ I show him the white box, the box of mystery and danger.

‘We can look at it properly once you’ve seen a medic. What’s your name?’

‘Kada.’

‘People call me Vivian.’

With me leaning heavily on Vivian, we stumble back to his plane, and he helps me in to the back seat. The journey back is quiet and uneventful. There is no queue for the landing runway, and within minutes of the plane grounding I am being given to one of the airport medics.

He prods me, makes me flex my limbs, and tells me to take my sunglasses off so he can shine a light into my eyes.

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, no? Come on, Miss, just take them off. It’s dark in here.’

I feel that further protests would be inappropriate, and remove my eyewear. The medic gasps. Vivian gasps too. How original. They stare at my left eye in undisguised horror.

‘What… What happened to your eye?’ asks the medic in a small voice after a few long moments.

‘No idea,’ I say irritably, and put my sunglasses back on, covering up the livid scar that curls from the bridge of my nose to the lower edge of my eye. The white of the eye is red, too, the scar tissue making an unusual and unsightly bump. My sight is still perfect- nothing but my already flawed looks have been damaged by an accident I can’t remember. The scar has always been there. I don’t have anyone to ask how I got it.

I get up and prepare to march out, seizing my helmet and the box, gathering them protectively to my chest.

‘Thank you very much,’ I hear myself announce to the stunned room. ‘Vivian. Mr. Medic.’

I leave and try to work out in which direction I can find my hangar. I need to tell Mikael about Tia. What am I going to do? The crash was career destroying.

I realise that I need to go east, further onto the plateau, and so begin to march. Hobble, if I am going to be perfectly honest. Limp. My body is aching.

‘Kada!’ someone cries from behind me. ‘Kay-da’. I turn to see Vivian jogging towards me for the second time that day.

‘Look, are you- are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to get something to eat?’. I find his concern oddly touching.

‘No,’ I say, shaking my head and looking down. ‘I have to go to my hangar, tell Mikael-’. My eyes start to blur. ‘About my plane, my beautiful plane…’

I start to cry, and Vivian starts to look very uncomfortable.

‘Oh- er. Don’t cry. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Oh!’ He is almost as distressed as me. ‘Um. Kada? Where’s your hangar? I can take you back.’

So I wipe my eyes and loop my arm through Vivian’s, and we go towards my hangar, silent but for the odd sniffle (from me). It is a surprisingly lengthy walk, so I take the opportunity to study Vivian in greater detail. His hair is light blond, and cut very close to his head, so he almost looks as if he’s bald. He is tall, broad shouldered. His arms are firm beneath his leather jacket. He has a slightly hooked nose, and light stubble. He looks down at me suddenly and I decide to direct my gaze elsewhere.

When we get to the hangar, I call out for my mechanic and he comes running at the sound of the shake in my voice. Vivian eyes the grease and oil stains on Mikael’s coveralls with initial distaste, but can’t help smiling at the way the younger man reacts to my story. Mikael gasps at my crash, laments the fate of Tia Ana loudly, and seizes Vivian’s hand and shakes it wildly when he discovers his part in it.

‘And this is the box’, I say, offering it to him. ‘Take a look. I don’t know what to make of it.’

Mikael picks it gently out of my grasp, and frowns at it, turning it round and round in his hands. Vivian moves behind him and squints over his shoulder at the mysterious cube.

‘I don’t know either. I can’t see any way to get in to it. No symbols, signs, markings of any kind. Surprisingly light for something so large. I can’t even identify the material.’

Vivian reaches over his shoulder and taps it. ‘I don’t think it’s even a newly developed material. I’d have heard about something like this, maybe seen a plane made out of it on one of the richer airfields.’

I stand, nonplussed, listening to their man talk. ‘I could have told you any of that,’ I say, somewhat impatiently. ‘Pass it here?’

Pulling a face, Mikael hands it back reluctantly, and when I take it off him I find myself standing with my hands on the two raised knobs and looking directly into the hole.

‘I have an idea,’ I say, and put my face into the indent.


I find myself lying on the floor for the umpteenth time that day, but this time dear Mikael is cradling my head and talking incomprehensibly to something.

I make an effort to focus and a man swims into focus. Gosh, he’s good looking. Who is he? I like his stubb-

Oh, it’s Vivian.

‘Kada, Kada! Are you all right?’ says someone. I can see Mikael’s mouth moving. Must be him.

‘Sky gods, what happened?’ I groan. My head feels like an airship.

‘You, you put your head into the box-’

‘-Utterly stupid-’

‘-Flash of light-’

‘-Thought there was an explosion-’

‘-We both dived for cover-’

‘-Came out, you were there-’, says Mikael, indicating my present position.

‘-And he was there,’ finishes Vivian, pointing at a naked man on the floor. We look at him for a second.

‘Whaaaat?’ I say, utterly lost.

‘We don’t know where he’s come from,’ says Mikael, letting go of my head as I sit up carefully. The crumpled figure doesn’t move.

I shuffle over to him and poke his shoulder. His skin is warm. ‘He’s alive,’ I say. I poke him again, harder.

‘It’s no use, I think he’s-’ starts Vivian. On cue, the figure stirs and groans loudly.

‘Jacket,’ I command, holding my hand out to Vivian. He hands it to me and I slip it over the stranger just as he rolls over.

He looks into my eyes.

‘Kada.’

He knows my name.

And he looks like me. Like a male version of me. He even has a faint pinkish line running from his nose to his eye. I look at him and I’m home.

It is Mikael and Vivian’s turn to be really, really confused.

‘Whaaaat?’ drawls Mikael.

‘You know this guy?’ asks Vivian, staring at him.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘But- he could be your brother!’ exclaimed Mikael.