Slowly, slowly

It’s definitely the machine causing all of this. There’s no other possible explanation. Today, I noticed that all of my emails were received before they were sent. This sometimes happens to the odd random message, but all of them? Something is afoot. The machine is cunning - it doesn’t reverse time in every situation - that would be too obvious. No, it just tinkers with our world in a few subtle ways, hoping that we won’t notice. It’s sneaking up on us slowly, with the stealth and stillness of a glossy black cat. Piece by piece, the fabric of our normal lives is being eaten away – banks are collapsing; people are suddenly behaving out of character; one of my bathrooms has stopped working – the list goes on. All these little idiosyncrasies go almost unnoticed as individual occurrences but collectively, they reveal one thing: the machine is evil and its malevolent plan is to overwhelm us.

Take last night for example. I had a determination to go home after a couple of ‘early doors’ drinks in Edin’s. Indeed, I did this – I went home and ate my dinner before settling down to an evening of sober self-instruction. Imagine my surprise therefore, when I found myself walking backwards down the hill towards Edin’s. This was completely against my will, but the machine was pulling me back and I was powerless to resist. I struggled, fought and kicked - all to no avail. Several pints later, and after another sing-song around the (now tuned) chaos piano, the machine finally released its grip and I was able to escape. By this time though, the damage had been done. More and more wildebeest had been similarly drawn into the vortex and what had started as a quiet Tuesday evening, had been transformed into a riot by the machine.

We need to destroy the machine before it destroys us. I aim to set up a Facebook group for that very purpose. You will recall that I wrote here about E M Forster’s story ‘The Machine Stops’. When it does, we will be liberated at last.