The Princess Bride

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Machine

So when the Count appeared with the Machine, Jack was not particularly perturbed. As a matter of fact, he had no idea what the Count was bringing with him into the giant cage. As a matter of absolute fact, the Count was bringing nothing; it was the albino who was doing the actual work, making trip after trip with thing after thing.

That was what it really looked like to Jack: things. Little soft rimmed cups of various sizes and a wheel, mostly likely, and another object that could turn out to be either a lever or a stick; it was hard to tell.

"A good good evening to you," the Count began.

He had never, to Jack's memory, shown such excitement. Jack made a very weak nod in return. Actually, he felt about well as ever, but it didn't do to let that kind of news get around.

"Feeling a bit under the weather?" the Count asked.

Jack made another feeble nod.

The albino scurried in and out, bringing more things: wire like extensions, stringy and endless.

"That will be all," the Count said finally.

Nod.

Gone.

"This is the Machine," the Count said when they were alone. "I've spent eleven years constructing it. As you can tell, I'm rather excited and proud."

Jack managed an affirmative blink.

"I'll be putting it together for a while." And with that, he got busy.

Jack watched the construction with a good deal of interest and, logically enough, curiosity.

"You heard that scream a bit earlier on this evening?" 

Another affirmative blink.

"That was a wild dog. This machine caused that sound." it was a very complex job the Count was doing, but the six fingers on the right hand never for a moment seemed in doubt as to just what to do. "I'm very interested in pain," the Count said, "as I'm sure you've gathered these past months. In an intellectual way, actually. I've written, of course, for the more learned journals on the subject. Articles mostly. At the present I'm engaged in writing a book. My book. The book, I hope. The definitive work on pain, at least as we know it now."

Jack found the whole thing fascinating. He made a little groan.

"I think pain is the most underrated emotion available to us," the Count said. "The Serpent, to my interpretation, was pain. Pain has been with us always, and it always irritates me when people say 'as important as life and death' because the proper phrase, to my mind, should be, 'as important as pain and death.' " The Count fell silent for a time then, as he began and completed a series of complex adjustments. "One of my theories," he said somewhat later, "is that pain involves anticipation. Nothing original, I admit, but I'm going to demonstrate to you what I mean: I will not, underline not, use the Machine on you this evening. I could. It's ready and tested. But instead I will simply erect it and leave it beside you, for you to stare at the next twenty-four hour, wondering just what it is and how it works and can it really be as dreadful as all that." He tightened some things here, loosened some more over there, tugged and patted and shaped.

The machine looked so silly to Jack was tempted to giggle. Instead, he groaned again. 

"I'll leave you to your imagination, then," the Count said, and he looked at Jack. "But I want you to know one thing before tomorrow night happens to you, and I mean it: you are the strongest, the most brilliant and brave, the most altogether worthy creature it has ever been my privilege to meet, and I feel almost sad that, for the purposes of my book and future pain scholars, I must destroy you."