I'm not sure if there is enough fiction to classify this as fiction, but I knew that it was close enough.
The Man In The Machine
By Hiadel
Riding up an elevator I lean on the hand rail and look out through the elevator’s windows at the factory I am in. What a wonder the human race has created! Steam billows out of massive vents as conveyor belts help carry out daily tasks. I can see gears rotating and pumps thumping. It truly amazes me how much hard labor and effort has gone into making this machine. What would I call this machine? Rising up another level in the elevator I see this massive heart across from me through the window. Pumps and wires hook in and out of it and support it to the walls. Why, this machine is me! I am the machine that society has built out of me. That’s how I feel anyway, like a giant machine rolling across the earth.
The elevator eventually stops on one of the higher floors and I get off. Walking into the tight workroom I can see blueprints spread across workbenches, ideas in the process of being planned. On one side of this cramped room rest two large windows that look out onto the world. Stepping closer, I take a look out and see all the other machines in my life. There they go, billowing steam and turning their gears as they move along doing their daily things. I know that they are all more than machines though. To me they are all as I am: men and women stuck inside their machines. I’ll say I’m stuck in my machine because there are times when I want to break out and yell things so loud that the whole world would have to come to a grinding halt to hear me speak. I can sense this feeling in others I see and listen to. We are all trapped inside our machines, prisoners of our own society.
That’s exactly how I feel right now. I’m currently watching one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen walk right by me. I want to tell her how beautiful to me she really is but every time I think about doing so my body freezes up and all those levers and pistons stop moving. My body goes rigged and from my workroom I curse myself for having to live inside this machine. It pains me so terribly so to have to keep all of those feeling locked up inside of me because of my inability to sputter them out. Even if I was somehow able to break free of this prison, what would happen to the woman that I thought was beautiful? Something tells me that she might just turn her head and blow a fuse. Her neck would snap and lights would fly with sparks when she heard me tell her that she was beautiful in my eyes. The machine she lives in would not be able to comprehend what I had just told her. Circuits would bust and alarms would sound as all the crew that manned her machine would head for the life boats.
Why must we all live in such a society as this? As that beautiful woman passed me by I had a sudden burst of inspiration: why should I accept this machine fate? Looking out that window I decided that I was going to break out of here. Grabbing a hammer off one of the worktables I stepped up to one of the windows and started to smash it in. Dammit I was tired of living in this machine! I don’t care if I can’t survive living outside of this machine; I just can’t stand being in it anymore. Pulling back my hammer again and again I knew what I was doing was right. Each crack of the hammer let in more light, and with that light came the vision of a brighter future. Readying my hammer for the last blow I knew telling her that she was beautiful would set me free. As I flung my last strike forward I became more than the man in the machine, I became the man that broke free. Go out and tell the one you think is beautiful that they are beautiful in your eyes. Break free of the machine and learn what it truly means to live!
Well done.