Trapped

I see an enormous machine, the size of our entire civilization, of cast iron construction, oily and black. It takes as feedstock mostly young children, about five or six years old, but also occasionally grim-faced adults. The machine's operators, gruesomely fitted with heavy harness-like appliances, each stamped with a string of presumably individualized symbols, deftly manipulate the controls while maintaining visages that indicate trance-like focus or concentration. I peer into the machine's dark interior and notice the heavier cast parts marked in raised letters, BABYLON MFG CO. Soon I realize that the jumble of parts, with their violent and erratic movements giving a dangerous appearance and producing terrifying sounds, performs no useful work. The children do not know this. They are frightened. They are on their own, and the exit is not marked. Many years pass before the inductees make their way out, the children now shell-shocked young adults and the adults now mere wisps of humanity, gaunt and bowed. They take their places at the machine's empty consoles where operators have worn out or committed suicide. Those who refuse to be harnessed or to report to their station cycle again through the machine.

From a wider perspective, I sense the entire scene surrounded by a dark and unnerving predatory energy, as if just beyond the periphery of my vision (and far beyond any operator's ken or focus), that by undiscoverable (paranormal?) means seems to influence or direct the machine operators' movements, to devastating effect on those inside (judging by the immediate response of anguished cries). I feel this dynamic infecting all with terrible dread and despair.

I survey the operators again, more closely. I think I recognize people I know, friends and family, even. I see my own doppleganger and terror begins to well up in me as the awareness emerges that I have been merely dreaming this outside perspective. My body jerks awake and I find my grimy hands skillfully working two greasy black levers.