THE USELESS MACHINE

I

I never really knew Charles Rockwell that well. Even now, the man is an absolute enigma to me. Yes, we worked together. Yes, we had the occasional lunch break at the same table. But he was always the type of guy that seemed to be in a world of his own. The type of guy you couldn't really hold a conversation with. Really, I had always imagined him as something like that quiet kid in the back of the class. (Really, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's what his high school days had actually been like.)

No friends to speak of. No girlfriends. No visible interests or hobbies. Nothing really special about the man. Even after three months of him working on my floor, nobody managed to connect with him.

But you got the impression he liked it that way.

Because one look at him would tell you that he was neither a stupid nor socially inept man. Sure, his hair was mostly unkempt, and I'd always catch him wearing the same clothes a few days in a row. I'd also heard the Boss sigh whenever he realized he would have to go over to Charles' cubicle over a sloppily-written report. On more than one occasion.

Yet, his eyes - there was something about his eyes. Even in the few conversations we'd had before, my own could never actually lock with them. It was as if a single look could pierce through me. I shivered every time.

I must admit, however, that I never paid much more attention to the man. I had my own worries to attend to.

Around the time he appeared, my wife had given birth and the only thing on my mind was thinking of excuses to come home as late as possible. As hard as it is to say, I couldn't stand the kid. Not without a sip of something strong, I figure. But I wasn't going to be caught dead with a bottle of the stuff.

Thus, I began to stay at the office as long as I humanly could. I can't begin to tell you how good those few extra hours of silence felt. And to come home to complete silence - the baby thankfully tucked in and my wife fast asleep - it felt like winning the lottery, sometimes.

I'm sorry.

It's not my fault.

I never wanted a baby.

II

It was complete chance. Or perhaps destiny. Who could really tell?

During one of those precious lonely nights, as I was getting drowsy and waiting for the elevator, ready to head back home, he approached me. Charles. Hadn't even noticed him, though. Just happened to turn my head at one point and - bam. He was right there, next to me. Scared me half to death.

"Oh. Sorry," he shrugged, "Didn't mean to scare you. Didn't even really expect anyone else to be here."

"Don't worry about it." A yawn from me followed shortly afterwards. "I had some business to take care of. You?"

"Likewise." Avoiding eye contact this time around was easy. He was barely paying any attention to me; his gaze steadily focused on the light indicating the elevator's current position. 3rd floor... 4th floor... 5th floor... "You never really struck me as the type of guy to work the extra hours," he said, after a generous yawn of his own.

"Oh? And how did I strike you?" I was just trying to make chit-chat.

"Like the type of guy that's dead inside." The tone was very matter-of-fact. I remember because I felt a flash of sudden anger pass over my face.

"What?" I asked.

"What?" he replied in kind. Still refusing to look at me.

6th floor.

"What did you just say?" I squeezed the leather handle of my briefcase.

He scratched the back of his head. Another yawn. "I said that you seem like the family type of guy. You always look like you'd rather be somewhere else, if you ask me."

"A-Ah..." Had I misheard that?

"But then again, I don't really know you." He chuckled tiredly. "And what do I strike you like, I wonder?"

That was easy enough. "You don't strike me anything. I don't know anything about you, man."

"Well, I don't know anything about you, either. That's why I made an assumption. For all I know, you're going to go throw money at hookers after we part ways. It's an impression for a reason. So, let's not have a cop-out, what do you think of me?"

"I have no opinion of you." I was blunt. "Sorry."

He remained unfazed. "Hm. Nothing to apologize for. I guess I haven't gone out of my way to make myself interesting."

7th floor.

"So," he looked at me, at long last, "what do you think I do? In my spare time?" A strange question. I imagine it would've felt even stranger had I not managed to look away from him in time.

"I don't know. What do you do, Charles?" I asked, beginning to regret prolonging the conversation to that point.

"Well... If you must know..." Yet another yawn. He really was exhausted.

8th floor.

"...I'm going to test out my time machine tonight."

Ding.

III

It was just one of those things.

Something about the way he'd said it. Or... no. It was the indifference in his voice that made me think he might've actually been serious. No matter how many times I tried to get him to tell me it was a joke, he simply shrugged. "It's true. I have a time machine." I waited for the part where he laughed. He never did. He looked at me. And that piercing gaze took out all the strength I had left to try and argue with him. He didn't have the look of a madman. Chances are, he saw the moment I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. And he didn't mock me for it. Something about this man was extraordinary. But I had yet to determine in what way.

Before I knew it, I was in his apartment. I knew my wife was going to ask me about it later. Really, at the time, I think she was suspecting I was having an affair. I never bothered to bring it up. And I never gave her a chance to do it herself. At the time, I must admit, she was the last thing on my mind.

Despite what his appearance might've suggested, Charles had managed to keep his apartment surprisingly tidy. You could never tell he was just an average accountant by looking at the place, though. It was filled with tools. Drawings. Memos. Blueprints.

"My brother was an engineer. He taught me a thing or two." He explained. "In high school, I'd flunked my exams and failed to get into engineering. But my grades were good enough for economics. Can you believe that?"

I couldn't.

We moved from the small living room to his bedroom. Well, what I imagine had been a bedroom at one point. By then, it'd been completely turned into a workshop. Rather - his entire apartment was one. But this was THE room. The place where the master did his craft. No windows. No furniture. Only tools and the shelves that held them.

And in the very center of it - a machine. About 5 feet tall. Looked like a refrigerator. About twenty cables hooked to it. Most of them to connect it to the three power generators surrounding it. One was connected to a laptop in the corner of the room.

Basically, it looked exactly as I'd pictured it.

"This... is it?" I managed to find the words. But I already knew the answer.

"Yep." Charles said simply, moving across the room to turn the laptop on. "I know what you're thinking. 'Why make it so big', right?" That was most certainly not what I was thinking. But a valid question nevertheless. "My ultimate plan is for people to use it. To send themselves to the future. Sure, I could've started off making it all small. Then I could've shown it off and let someone else perfect it for humans. But that's not what I'm about. I start big. Because that's the only way you get to your goal." He moved over to the generators, turning them all on, one by one. The machine started to hum.

"Sending people to the future...?"

"Oh." He stopped. "Right. The machine can't actually go to the past. One, because I have no idea how to do it. And two, because if there's one thing the movies teach you - it's that it's not to be messed with. Time paradoxes and shit, you know?"

I was speechless. The situation was ludicrous, but there I was. Watching what (by all accounts) was a time machine. A gate to the future!

"How far can it go?" I asked.

"Dunno." Charles admitted. "I mean, theoretically, as far as you want it to. But as I said, I still haven't actually tested the thing yet."

"B- But you will? Tonight?"

The last generator was turned on. "Indeed I shall." he declared proudly. "And you will be there to witness it."

He explained to me that for the first test, he would be using a toy car. "The testing part is somewhere where I DO have go small. Whether I like it or not. First, I've got to make sure it works on objects. Then bigger objects. Then, I sell it to some... big company. Probably the military. And only after they approve it can we go with human test subjects."

I raised my brow. "You don't want to try it?"

He laughed. The first time I ever saw him do it in the three months I'd known him. "You mean, do I want to become the first test subject for a thing I built in my apartment with scrap I found here and there? Fuck no."

He opened the (slightly rusted) metal door that served as the "entrance" of the machine. The room inside was practically empty, save a few wires and what I guessed were magnets. Charles refused to go into details on how the machine itself worked. "Professional secret." He smiled. "Not that I don't trust you. But this is kind of a big deal. Can't let anyone take credit, you understand?"

He placed the toy car inside, shut the door, and moved over to the computer. "Okay... I'm going to send it... four minutes into the future. That should be a good start for now."

I smiled nervously. "Four? Why not five?"

"Because that's the number of years your wife is going to put up with you before she finally realizes how much of a piece of shit you are." He told me.

"What?"

"Because five will take an eternity to wait. Four will be a bit more bearable, no?"

My hearing was never quite that great.

I nodded, deciding not to suggest sending it three minutes to the future, if he was really so impatient.

"Okay... Everything looks set!"

He hit the 'Enter' key and practically jumped to where I was standing, in front of the machine. For some reason, I was conflicted. I was convinced I was going to see a miracle. But at the same time, I must also admit that a part of me wanted it all to be a lie. Or, rather, that it was all just a product of a mad scientist's imagination and that in those next few moments, nothing would happen.

But nothing did not happen.

The machine began to shake. The humming grew louder than before. I began to see light emitting from somewhere behind its metal door. There shouldn't have been a source of one, though.

And then, in an instant - it stopped.

We rushed to the door and swung it open. I inspected every inch of the damn thing. I was convinced I was the victim of a magic trick of some kind. Three minutes, I searched through it. Charles standing behind me, smirking.

I, of course, found nothing.

The toy car was gone.

I closed the door behind me. And sure enough, a minute later, the machine shook the exact same way as before, making the exact same humming noise. And sure enough, after the mysterious light had flashed once more, we opened the door to find the toy car. Sitting right where we'd originally left it.

Charles began to laugh.

And so did I.

After that, we tried sending my watch. The result was the same. The watch itself was undamaged as well - showing perfect time. After that, a chair. Same result. A TV? No sweat. A stack of clothes? No trouble for the machine.

It was incredible.

"Charles... You're going to be a rich man." I told him, as we set on his balcony, sipping wine.

"It's not about the money." He told me. "It's about creating something for the world."

IV

I was a man of honor. I swore to Charles I wouldn't say a word of it to anyone. And I didn't.

Our company did not specialize in technology - we sold furniture. So, Charles had to go and get investors himself. He was often absent from work. Once, an entire week, even. Naturally, he was fired the first time the Boss laid his eyes on him afterwards. He left with the same look of indifference he always had.

Something, though, seemed different.

We agreed to meet for coffee.

"What's wrong?" I asked, getting right to the point.

"I can't sell the damn thing." And so did he.

"What do you mean?"

He sighed, visibly frustrated. "I mean - I can't sell the damn thing. I get to investors. I show them the thing with the car. And the chairs. And the go 'ooooh'. They smile. But then..."

"Then...?"

"Then, they ask me - 'What can you use it for?' And I tell them: 'To go to the future!' And then they ask: 'Well, okay. But why would you do that? How does that help? Can it go to the past? We'd much rather like to see it go to the past.' And I have no answer for them. Every. Single. Time."

I was at a bit of a loss. "But... it's a time machine."

"Right." Charles nodded. "But a fucking useless one. Nobody NEEDS to go to the future. Not if you're not going to have any impact on the past."

He gave a sad laugh.

"I built the most advanced piece of technology on the world. And you can't do shit with it. Isn't that funny?" He finished his coffee. "I can't change the world with this. I can't do anything with this!"

And he continued to laugh.

V

The front page of the next day's paper left me numb.

'MAN SENDS HIMSELF A HUNDRED YEARS INTO THE FUTURE.'

It seems Charles had an investor's meeting shortly after our conversation. During it, he'd finally lost his temper. He turned the time machine on and jumped into himself, declaring that he will go far so far into the future - to a point where technology will have advanced enough that he'd be able to build a machine that goes back in time for them, and return with it to the present.

A month later, they declared him dead.

In his will, he left the machine to me.

VI

It was four years after all of that, on a warm summer day, that my wife told me it was over. She'd found someone else. It seems that the loneliness had gotten the better of her. At that point, I couldn't blame her. I was far too tired. Being a parent had exhausted me beyond belief. Trying to be a good one even moreso. I couldn't do it anymore. And she knew it. Really, I think she did it with my best interests in mind.

Or maybe that's the comforting lie I chose for myself. Who really knows at this point? Perhaps I just didn't want to think that had been my destiny all along.

As I watched her and the kid drive away in her boyfriend's car, I couldn't help but laugh. The same way I laughed that night in Charles' apartment.

She was willing to let me go.

And I was finally willing to let go of everything else.

I stepped into my garage. There, under a blanket, was the machine. In perfect condition. I never sold it. I couldn't bring myself to. Charles had left it to me in good faith. And I was a man of my word not to speak of it.

I turned the generators on. The laptop on, as well. He'd left me instructions on how to operate the thing. I was ready to go on a trip. But where? Or, rather, when?

"Why not see what Charles is up to?" I told myself.

96 years into the future. That should've been good enough.

I hit the key and leapt inside of the thing, slamming the door behind me. The machine began to shake - and I with it. Before I could even think, I was blinded by a flash of light.

And then-

Blackness.

Complete blackness.

Where was I? Was this the future?

I looked around me. And I saw something in the distance. On the ground. What looked to be a silhouette of a person.

I ran over to them.

It was Charles. A very much dead Charles.

That's when I realized. Charles hadn't built a time machine. He'd built a "storage", of sorts. Whatever was sent was simply sent to... this place, until it was needed. Charles had been in this empty space for four years. He must've starved to death.

I looked at his, now boney and malnourished, face. His eyelids were, thankfully, shut.

And I began to laugh.

THE END