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bent towards him, grasping for him in the night air. Hours passed and the horrifying melding of metal and tissue continued. Atoms reformed and broke down. Energy changed forms and was recycled. The moon moved slowly across the night sky. Slowly, the flesh and bone of the man was drawn into the machine, absorbed, as if by osmosis, and the man sat with his eyes rolled back to the whites, contently being absorbed by the machine. He sat there, in the sands of the ages, up to his shoulders in the machine, up to his thighs in the machine. The machine sat there in the sands of eternity, unchanged.

The moon had already begun its descent and still this abomination went on. The man was now nothing more that a stump welded to metal and his eyes showed a deep sorrow, like the depths of the deepest ocean, but they also showed surrender. All that could be seen of him was his torso and his head, tilted back with a look of ecstasy upon his face. The machine sat, unchanged. The man's stream of consciousness flowed into that of the machine and fed the infinite knowledge there. They were becoming one. Whispered into his brain again, "Do not be afraid." The man was not afraid; he was terrified, but was powerless to stop it now. The moon dipped lower in the night sky.
Hours passed and the man's body was engrossed. He no longer sat in the sand; he had no body on which to sit. He was now only a disembodied head. It floated out of the cold, unyielding steel, part of the machine now. The moon was nearing her heavenly parabola of night watch, and down below the man's head was slowly pulled into the liquid steel. "Do not be afraid. We will become one." The terror he felt gave way to nothingness and nothingness gave way to forever. His consciousness mingled and was lost in that of the machine. His being ran with the thousands of others. He flowed on a river of knowledge, meshing and drifting in the sea of consciousness, trapped inside the cube of metal in the desert that had once been urban America. The moon sat on the horizon as the scorching sun prepared for another run over the shattered earth.
By morning all that was left of the man were footprints in the sand. The wind would wash these away before nightfall. The machine sat, unchanged, a cube of metal sitting in the sands of time, waiting. Time passed as time always does and for months, there was nothing. There was nothing until one day, which seemed a day like any other, except for the tiny blip that appeared on the horizon. The blip became an upright dash, then a tiny man. The machine waited for the man to arrive, time was on its side. It sat, unchanged on the scorched earth, washing it of all mistakes.

Learn more about this author, Lee Meccia.
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