Down Jersey Drive-shaft

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Age of Mother

"Sono morto?"

Surely the ringing in her ears, the absence of feeling, equates to death. Right? Everything is different, a hazy muddle of configurations. Noises jostle about the ringing, moving parts without form, cylindrical pumping. Crank sees WHITE. WHITE. 

She forgets time, has no concept of space or fields, war or life. She simply is. 

A million years congeal into four seconds of instantaneous eternity. Had she the mindset to consider that, it would engender an epic migraine. But Crank has nothing but the White.

Nothing lapses.

Then.

A miasma of fluids ripple overhead, taking on shapes. Solidification. Parts to match the sounds. Passing light. Engines. Chemistry. Motion. Time. Self. 

The cage is the sky. It takes her some time to realize the difference, but there it is. The cage, a megalithic forest of barbed pipes and cross-hatched bars, forms a semi-circular enclosure far above her head. She tries to estimate how high it is. One thousand feet? Two? Her ears catch the pings and pangs made by minuscule mechanical things that scurry over the ground where Crank is lying. On her back, watching the cage and a passing false suns of lights like an upside down train of stars. Hiss! Oxygen escapes from a dozen vents in every size and dimension.

It's the overpowering odor of diesel fumes which prompts her to sit up. Owie! Lightheaded? I only sat up. her eyes adjust somewhat to the jaundiced air. Everything has its tint, not unlike an old photograph. It, however, pales in comparison with the overall view.

"Mio Dio..."

Crank sits on a road, of sorts, anyway. It has the texture, the apparent visual of tarmac, the undulations of the barriers from Pea Patch. But it bends down off to the right and to the left, parallel to the caged ceiling. She gets it right off. A circle. Rising up on either side of the road, mechanical skyscrapers. Not buildings per se. Machines. They match a skyscraper seen in New York City, the Flatiron, but every floor possesses moving parts, thousands upon thousands of them. Pulleys and levers in the millions. Blackened gears. Crystalline girders in cerise and magenta. Black springs extending, larger than tanks stretching and contracting from roof to roof, dropping condensation on the metropolis. It splashes on Crank's jacket. Petroleum and water? Heh. She sees a harsh grass on a ground of gray soil. Coarse, silicate grass. The machines and the plants drink as one around the pinkish crystals scattered here and there. 

Wow.

Crank rises, wipes her jacket off. "Motherville. I'm inside Motherville. Un altro mondo! Oh...wait a minute." She clutches her body. "I'm inside of Motherville! Oh, diavolo no!"

"Nothing to brag about, Mechanic," Wilkes gags out some sarcasm. He is only a dozen feet from Crank, coming up out of a ditch with Roy, Thurman and Goldman. All appear well, albeit shaken. Serpentine machines slither away from them leaving petrol trails.

Fuse helps Wilkes out. "Crank. I see--" He pulls himself and Wilkes back just in the nick of time. A machine, a long train of a thing leaking fuel, huffing at a mean speed, roars down the road. It bears flames along the top. It is not ferrying supplies, but wounded, crying. Crank two-steps off the road, holding her hat on her head. "Crank!"

"I'm here!"

Roy sees her hands waving up in the air, just high enough over the machine to be visible. The thing rolls on and one without end, a continuous serpentine contraption of pollution, of errant, discordant noises.