This Machine Belongs To
This Machine Belongs To details the journal entries of those that toil away at the machine. Be careful dear listener, or you may find yourself under it's same compulsion. (Produced by Halfwit Podcasts)
This Machine Belongs To
Vernon Wright - October 16th, 2008
My first pet was a Triop from those kits at the science museum.
=== Credits ===
Produced by Halfwit Podcasts ( https://www.HalfwitPodcasts.com ).
Written by Matt Spaziani ( https://vocal.media/authors/matt-spaziani ).
Vernon Wright is voiced by Jonathan Swenson ( https://www.jgswenson.com ).
Based on the journal role-playing game "The Machine" by Adira & Fen Slattery ( https://adira.itch.io/the-machine ).
Music and sound effects used with Zapsplat Gold, and Ghosthack Music licenses.
Vernon Wright - October 16th, 2008
Today was a weird day.
Well, it’s been a weird week, if I’m being totally honest. I’ve barely been able to keep my mind on work. Dennis says I’m just tired, which is fair - most of our days this week have been ten hours or more, and it gets draining after a while, even if I could use the overtime. But it’s not that. It’s just…I think I’m bored. All I want to do is keep working on the machine. I even carry one of the smaller wooden pieces in my pocket when I’m at work, touching it when I get restless. Even after all the work I’ve done on it, the wood is still soothing to the touch. I don’t know. I think it’s just what I’m doing for my job. I spent four years studying engineering to design or build things, not to kill rats. I think I just find the machine more interesting than my day-to-day. I’ll have to find another project when I finish it.
But that’s not why today was weird. That comes from this one job that I did at the end. It was a small job, so I went on my own. A couple in their mid-thirties had called and said there was a rat moving around their basement, and they wanted to see if they had an infestation. When I got there, they were acting really nervous, saying they wanted whatever was down there dead as quickly as possible. So I went down to look, and I found the rat, but…it wasn’t what I expected. In fact, it was a pet. I was all ready to get down on my hands and knees to dig around for it, but he came right out as soon as I came downstairs. He was pretty friendly, and I couldn’t bring myself to kill him. I thought that he probably was from a neighboring house and obviously wasn’t from a nest of them, so I used one of my humane traps as a cage and hid him in my bag, figuring I’d tell the couple that I killed him and cleaned up the body. But when I got upstairs, their daughter had come home, and when she saw me she started crying.
I don’t know the whole story, but I think I got most of it from the three of them yelling at each other. The girl looked to be about thirteen, and I think an uncle got her the rat for her birthday. And her parents hated it. So they waited until she was out of the house, and it seems like their plan was to tell their daughter they had an actual rat infestation and that I killed her pet while getting rid of it.
Like…that’s pretty fucked up, right? I get that a lot of people don’t like rats, and the uncle should have asked before getting their daughter a pet, but killing your own daughter’s pet? At least drop it off at a shelter or something and tell her he ran away. It’s real shitty, doing what they did.
But I guess I’m not one to talk…I lied to all three of them. I couldn’t tell this girl that I killed her pet, in the state she was in, but I didn’t want to leave the rat in the house. If her parents tried once, they’ll try again. So I told them that it looks like he ran off.
And I took him home.
That’s not okay, right? I don’t know what to do here. I feel bad that this girl doesn’t have her pet. She clearly loves him, and she misses him, but is it worse to think he ran away now or to see that her parents succeeded in killing him later? I guess she knows that they tried, but…I don’t know. I feel weird about the whole thing. I kill rats for a living. Why should this one be any different? I think it’s because he was so used to humans. The rats in infestations clearly don’t like humans and run away when we see them in person, but this one…I don’t know, trusted me when I first saw him. I just couldn’t bring myself to kill something in that way.
He seems happy here, at least. I don’t have a cage for him, but I turned the machine’s wooden box on its side and put an old pillow in it and he seems to have made himself comfy in there. The girl kept calling him Nigel, and that seems like a good name for him. I think I’ll hold onto him for a little while. Just to keep him safe.
"This Machine Belongs to" is a production of Halfwit Podcasts. This episode was written by Matt Spaziani. Vernon Wright is voiced by Jonathan Swenson. Based on the journaling game "The Machine" by Adira and Fen Slattery.
If you'd like to support our endless toil with the machine or listen to our other podcasts, visit HalfwitPodcasts.com, or find specific links in the show notes of each episode.
Lastly, the most efficient way to build The Machine is by telling friends of its importance in our once meaningless lives. Some day, This Machine could belong to you.
