Who: Sam (narrative, closed) What: Breaking down the machine. Where: P5 When: This morning. Warnings: ...sad?
In the week following Jude's final death, Sam had shut the room with the machine in it and not entered it once. He'd spent his time in the other rooms of the penthouse, fiddling with electronics, trying to read something to distract himself, and thinking. He did a lot of thinking. It didn't really help at all, but more often than not he would catch himself tracing yet another guilt-laden train of thought and pull himself back to find some other distraction.
After the anonymous post, though, the audio on it, the things people had said, he knew that Cole was right. He had to destroy the thing.
In a way it felt futile. Even if he demolished every scrap of the machine, the blueprints to build it again would always be imprinted on his mind. He'd spent too much time slaving over it for that not to be the case. As long as he was alive, the machine still existed.
It would get rid of any evidence, however, and maybe, just maybe, it would soothe his mind. It would no longer squat there, a gleaming thing that now seemed horrible and ominous to him, teasing him with its very presence. If it was destroyed he couldn't use it again without the check of being forced to rebuild it. The process of rebuilding would surely give him enough time to rethink what he was doing and stop.
He got up the morning after the anonymous post with a purpose, and walked into the room after a good five minutes of staring at the door, fighting to find the courage to face it. It was just a fucking machine. It didn't have any power unless he gave it power. He'd created it, and he would destroy it.
It was just as he left it last when he opened the door, deceptively benign, dim lights gleaming off the chrome. He turned them up and got a screwdriver. Then he got to work.
He began by shutting off the power, since electrocuting himself would sort of defeat the purpose. Then he pried open the panels at the base and began unplugging wires. It began as a slow, methodical process, until he realized there was no need. Then he started ripping them out. First one or two, then by handfuls.
He began prying open the other panels, tearing the wires out of their sockets with both hands. When all the connecting wires lay on the floor he got to work on the frame. He unbolted the base from the floor and then began unscrewing the arcs from it. It was too slow, though, and by now his heart was beating ever faster. This far along he just wanted the thing gone.
He still had the sledgehammer he'd tried to use before, an antique that rested against the opposite wall. It wasn't practical, though, not light enough for a satisfying swing. He stalked back out of the room, found the shovel he'd used to bury Jude, and opened up the collapsed rod, screwing it tightly into place.
Then, with wild, exhilarating abandon, he swung it back like a baseball bat and hit the second arc with the narrow edge of the shovel. The arc went flying, clattering to the floor, the thick metal pieces and wiring inside it breaking apart.
He moved onto the next one. Then the next. When all the arcs were on the floor he still didn't feel done, and slammed the shovel against the base so hard the impact ran up painfully through his hands. He pushed the base over, where it crashed to the floor, and then tore the remaining, loosened pieces of metal apart with his fingers.
When he was done he was sitting in a room destroyed. The front half of the room remained untouched, but the back half was covered in wiring and metal pieces, screws and sharp fragments of chrome. Sam sat in the middle of this radiating pattern of debris, shovel laying bent and broken off to the side.
It was gone. It was done. So why didn't he feel any better?
He tangled his hands in his hair, curled over himself, and wept.