"Reconstruction", Submission 13 by Ryan Wrenn

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         The steam engine, while certainly small by any standard, wasn’t small enough to fit between or around any of President Lincoln’s vital organs. The doctor had considered the intestine or the liver (which, in hindsight, may have been best as it ended up being that the President couldn’t any longer ingest liquids in any traditional sense, thereby leaving the liver a sort of useless weight. The doctor consoled himself that the space the liver took up now could one day be used for further improvements). He had settled on the right lung in the end. Some of the engine’s considerable power had to be devoted in assisting the left lung make up for it’s other half’s absence but the doctor thought it was an acceptable sacrifice. A series of lead tubes snaked themselves under the skin of the President’s back, working to cycle the steam from the engine, cooling it down and removing any particles that might result from the burning of the coal. The doctor debated several methods on the eventual release of the engine’s product and eventually settled on the relatively subtle, albeit slightly rude, method of belching. While undoubtedly those around the President would notice a marked increase in this habit, no one would think to complain to the President or anyone else lest they be seen as indelicate. And it was certainly a better option than the doctor’s original, more flatulent plan.

         An elaborate system of gears and pullies, the likes of which the doctor himself never thought he would see, ran up and down the President’s spine. They powered the mechanics scattered around the body; some meant to compensate for functions the President had lost to Booth’s bullet, others meant to accentuate or protect other aspects of the body. The legs were essentially pistons in a locomotive, necessary to support the imposing weight of the president’s new protective armor. A system of the War Department’s devising was grafted into the President’s left shoulder. It fed musket balls to the barrel in his forearm. His right hand was removed and replaced entirely with a mechanical substitute. Unfortunately it did not look anything natural, so the President was obliged to wear gloves regardless of the weather. The hand’s strength was adjustable though, allowing for a firm but gentle handshake for dignitaries, and a vice-like grip for defending against assailants or breaking through a jail’s iron bars. The strength was entirely dependent on the President remembering to adjust it properly. With the President’s mind not exactly what it used to be, this caused some embarrassment in the early days. A young soldier’s hand was crushed, broken in almost a dozen places, when he shook the President’s hand during a state dinner. It certainly quelled any doubts about the President’s strength after the assassination attempt, but it was not what anyone would call discreet. The President’s transformation was still very much not mentioned if it was known at all. The gloves, the belching, and the fact that the President’s iconic tophat was welded onto the armor plate of his scalp to make room for the addition mechanic that kept the pressure from building up too much in the slowly healing wound all inspired whispers and rumor. That combined with a second, public assassination attempt, this by another one of Booth’s co-conspirators, that yielded nothing more than a loud clang from the President’s breastplate meant that it was all the doctor and the President’s aides could do to keep the truth of the matter among a relative few.

         It did not help that the President no longer slept, and took to leaving White House grounds on his own at night. Those who knew tried to ignore the headlines, the stories passed around pubs and brothels. About an impeccably dressed who would had bounded down Virginia Avenue, rapidly gaining on a man fleeing him on a horse. About musket fire leading policeman to a massacre of irregular Confederate saboteurs in the wood surrounding Georgetown. About locks broken at Ford’s Theatre, and a chair in the balcony overlooking the stage that at least one morning a week the owner would find shattered under the weight of something incredibly heavy.

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"Deus ex Machina", Submission 13 by Lee Martin

How did this happen? I would seriously like to know. How Why did the industrial concrete, neon, and culture(“!”) swallow me like a giant machine?

It’s been 10 years now. I first got pulled into this place by the sheer gravity, which is directly proportional to the mass involved, the pace, and the futility. En-Why-See.

The sucking of my life was slow…so gradual I did not notice until it was too late. By the time my nails dragged against the streets and I gasped for a clean breath, I was in the belly of the automaton…crushed beneath the gears, the tires, the pizza crusts. Don’t laugh.

Nothing is impossible; I learned that once from a poster on my kindergarten classroom wall, and I never forgave that tramp of a teacher for stapling it up there. Now I’m hard-wired to hope, to expect. I can do this (?).

So I began the assembly of tools and materials. The size was poetic; slightly bigger than those suitcases the skinny business women drag across your foot in the subway.

Lights to know it’s on. A hum to know it’s working. A labor of love desperation.

You see, I kept getting pulled back into the city. At first I took off at a sprint. I woke up in Times Square with blood on my face and a fat police officer staring down at me. Up yours…help me up, asshole.

Next came a sneaky crawling…a tiptoe away. But every time I sought to leave I kept getting funneled back in, like a skinny boxer against the ropes of the ring, forever seeking escape, only to be pummeled in the face by a big black guy named Moe.

Escape…simply leaving had proven to be unsuccessful. An epiphany occurred after my 110th escape attempt, and I know not why. An angel spoke in my head. No! It was god. Maybe.

I began construction of my device at the guidance of the whispers in my ear, the impulses in my fingertips. PVC, LED. Wires, oil, gears. Ingredients Pieces Components were easy to find, there’s so much shit everywhere. Time passes. Days. Weeks. Full involvement is required for this project. It will save my life.

I still know not what this machine is for. My guidance is elusive and subtle, like the idea someone is watching you. You know they are there, but you don’t know if it’s some girl with brown hair and a lonely bed or the man with a huge knife. But you know they are there.

I trust it. I know. This time is worth it. Continued building, modification, improvement, innovation, renovation, software updates…maybe a few tubes of neon for aesthetics.

This machine will go on requiring maintenance and attention, like a child. A dirty rotten stinking child covered in LEDs and PVC piping…smoke billowing out and the outline of a reclining nude shining in glowing red neon sitting on top. Gradually the full meaning of this machine begins to form in my mind, and the betrayal is made evident; this machine exists solely to distract me from the machine I am inside…this insidious city. My machine echoes that machine. The connection between my mind and the decaying city around me is complete and conspiring. Windows and gears whispered to my mind as I slept and woke, all hours of the day, that perhaps the certain method of ensuring my everlasting prison sentence was to convince me that my machine could break my bonds. I will be forever tending my machine, my Deus ex Machina …it will be my purpose, my occupation, my livelihood, and my chains. I cannot turn back now, and I will never leave this city.