placebo's machine

Protected 12

Protected

“This is the smoke lever. It controls the rate that smoke is pumped out.” Kurt touched the dial. “This monitors if that rate is too slow or too fast.” He picked up the wrench. “We have to loosen it, because the dial goes too slow, which could be dangerous.”

Eva smiled. “Oh. Is that how the gas tank blew out?”

“Exactly. You catch on fast.” Kurt frowned, pushing his glasses up. “In case something happens, you should leave the ship. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Eva left, still grinning. Kurt and Jan ran a business that repaired airships, which were one of the only ways to gain significant money. FOMAE, a company which held almost a complete monopoly of the country’s economy with their leading production of airships and total control over trade, was a supplier of most jobs. If you didn’t work related to them, then you either had a small, worthless job or no job at all.

The country was in a horrible state.

It was the worst kind of depression, with no economic movement save for the billions that FOMAE accumulated as if they were sand found in one’s shoes after walking through a desert. Even the president had turned to nothing more than a figurehead, speeches unable to reach the people after cable lines and electrical wires had been lain to waste by dust storms caused by over working farmland. Kurt and Jan lived in Idaho, a place once known for farming and prairies. Now, only stark deserts, frigid tundras and tumbled fields of wildflowers occupied the land not crowded with tangles of black forest or toxic swamp.

Kurt and Jan never said what exactly happened, but over their gritty radio which played alternating obituaries and gospel songs she could hear snatches of nuclear power plants and invasions from the north and south. Warmer summers, colder winters and storms that tore parts of the country completely off the map. Famine, disease, orphans, drought...

But it felt isolated, in Kurt and Jan’s house. She liked to sit beneath the airships that Kurt would fix after he would tell her what was wrong with them, then send her out, fearing her health. The rust and sparks that drifted down reminded her of snow.

Often she didn’t think of that.

Snow made her feel...confused. Like her flight that she had taken in the storm, confusing. But she remembered that something had happened in the snow, something lost or gained she wasn’t sure.

Jan was often in their backyard, trying to coax plants from the dusty ground dotted with yellowed grasses and purple flowers. She would sing to herself, in a husky voice that seemed suited for lullabies. Sometimes Eva simply sat and listened, absorbing every word that Jan sang, every note. At night, she would draw circles on rough sheets with her fingers and hum the songs to herself.

Kurt and Jan hadn’t let her into town yet.

Now Eva sat on the dusty carpet, drumming her fingers and listening to Kurt whistle and Jan sing. Slowly, not wanting to disturb the harmony, she hummed.

The words appeared in her mind, giving depth to the melody.

O’ come once more, Emmanuel...shall come to thee oh Israel.

That was Eva’s favorite. Mostly because of the minor chord, and the descending slurs, but Jan had once told her the meaning.

“It’s about someone coming to save us from our wrongdoing,” she explained, wringing a shirt. “Born of a virgin, son of God.”

“How?” Eva had asked.

Jan smiled warmly. “It was a miracle. Of course, she had been a bit confused when she found she was pregnant! But an angel came and told her-”