Funny Machines

Silence is a rare and valuable thing. Even far outside the city, away from everything, sounds are still there; the rustle of leaves in the wind, the soft hum of traffic in the far distance, the airliner crossing the sky. In silence, I can hear my breath, my heartbeat, every twitch of every muscle. In silence, I can hear my thoughts.

The world is too noisy. When I was a child, the doctor called it “auditory hypersensitivity.” The earplugs plus the heavy-duty soundproof hearing protectors the closest I could hope to get to that kind of silence in my work. Rather than being caught up in the sounds of my tools and the funny machines I work on, I can focus on the actual work.

Usually, my work involves repairing whatever machine’s been left on my bench. Using my eyes, fingers, and sometimes nose, I can figure out what needs repair, and how it needs to be done. I lay out the tools I will need, in the order I will need them, and work as quickly as I can to get the job done. Then the tools are cleaned and returned to my tool bag.

There are times, however, where my job is to take a machine apart. It is not to be rushed, as the dismantling is exploratory. Sometimes it becomes necessary during disassembly to stop a leak. Never with the same care as when repairing, just enough to stop the leak.

I checked my bag, made sure I was stocked up on consumables; gloves, tape, cleaning cloths, and other assorted items that get used up during repair or the other thing. The bag has two top openings and a divider in the middle, which makes it easy to keep the repair and disassembly tools sorted.

Boss has known me since my childhood, and he developed a sort of gesture shorthand that allows him to give me orders while my ears are shut off from the world. For his part, the only gestures of mine he pays attention to are a nod or shake of the head, and a shrug of the shoulders. If I can help it, I don’t talk when I’m working. I don’t like the sound of my voice echoing in my head.

With a few gestures, Boss let me know I had a repair job coming in first, and the other sort after. The repair wasn’t overly complicated. A foreign body lodged in the machine, and the concomitant leak.

In the bright lights of my workbench, I donned magnifying goggles and went to work. As I suspected, the leak worsened when I removed the flattened piece of copper and lead from the hole. Careful repair to the fine structures, a patch over the repair, and it was ready to return to whatever it was meant to be doing.

After I had cleaned off the workbench and put my tools in the cleaner, I prepared for the next task. Boss preferred that I lay out my disassembly tools before the machine was placed on the bench. Sometimes, it meant that I didn’t need to do any work, but that was a rare occurrence.

This was not to be one of those times. The machine was bound to the bench and struggled against the bindings that held it in place. It was already leaking like the one I’d just repaired. For these quick fixes, I had developed my own method.

I cut the cloth covering the machine away with a pair of shears to get to the hole. With a shake of the can, I sprayed in an expanding foam to fill the hole, then with a small butane torch I ignited the foam. The smell of burning plastic mixed with the smell of burnt meat told me that it had worked and would stop the leak.

Boss examined it for a while, making me wait. I spent the time browsing the internet on my phone, fighting off boredom. I was in the middle of reading about the mating habits of Diplopoda when Boss tapped my arm.

A hint of ammonia had joined the other smells in the shop. The ear protectors kept the sounds out, though. The lack of sound allowed me to pay attention to how the machine rolled its eyes, the shape of its mouth, the clues that told me when it was safe to push on and when to let up.

One might think that Boss dealt with the noise because he needed to hear it in order to get them information he needed. Boss, from what I could tell however, lived for the sounds: the squelch, the snap, the sizzle, the sobs, the screams. Still, he wouldn’t deign to dirty his own hands. That’s why I was there.

Speaking of hands, Boss pointed to his pinkie and made a scissor action. I’d been doing disassembly long enough to know what he meant.

I picked up my side cutters and grabbed one of the machine’s extremities. Lining up carefully, I removed the last third of the extremity. I followed that up with a short blast from the butane torch to stop the leak.

Boss examined it for a while, then brought me back to prune a little more off. It went like that for hours. By the time I had removed ten extremities in twenty-eight cuts, I knew everything the internet could teach me about millipedes.

It was just a short while after that when Boss had me move on to internal disassembly. This requires skill and care to keep the machine operating while removing critical pieces. I know I said that Boss wouldn’t dirty his hands, but this time, it looked like he had. My enucleation spoon was dirtied, and Boss was holding the still-attached orb and talking to it before yanking it completely free.

I reset my tools, replacing side cutters, chisel, and torch with scalpels, clamps, and cautery pens. I began by opening it up at the soft, lower portion. From there, I could hook the tubing and extract it slowly, being ever so careful as to keep the machine working. When it would go into shutdown mode, I’d pause for a moment, and use the smelling salts to rouse it. Once I had all the tubing laid to the side out of my way, I had access to all sorts of other things that could be removed.

I had just started widening the opening so I could get at more of the insides when Boss stopped me with a tap on the shoulder. He made the signal to dispose of it. I gave him a nod and piled the tubing, and the soft globe, on top of it before transferring it to a cart for disposal.

It was still operational…just…when they pushed it into the incinerator and fired it. While that was happening, I cleaned up my work area and tools, and made sure my tool bag was set for the next job.

When I’d finished for the day, I thought about what I’d learned from the latest disassembly. The false silence of the stuffing and covering of my ears made that possible. I wondered how different my insides looked. Probably not too different, although, whoever dismantled me would have to deal with a uterus and ovaries. I hadn’t yet had a funny machine like me on my workbench, and I wondered when I would.