text: (Hello, quick content warning here for themes of suicide, mental health, and real world issues.) The Machine God hungers, and we march into its waiting maw. Step by step in neat little lines through mazes of twisted iron, blinking red lights burning our retinas from above, the cracked pavement abrasive against the soles of our feet. The air holds the memory of ash and smoke, though the fires they spawned from burned out long ago. It brings stinging tears to the eye. As they roll down our cheeks and the salty taste of them fall upon our tongues, we know it is the closest any of us will come to drinking water again. It is in these moments I think of the oceans we will never see and of the brave and cruel explorers that once sailed them, and of cooler, cleansing rains. It arrives as a sterile fact that I’ve forgotten the source of. I know they existed and I know they were real. Yet I feel as though they belong to a dream. The thought of people traveling the world is as foreign a concept to me as the idea of clean water. It is the sort of thing you might say to the neighbor ahead of you in line, or perhaps the one behind, and expect them to laugh. What could they do but laugh? What can you do but join them? But not for long. Laughing means you aren’t walking as quickly as you could, and the Machine God hungers. We can hear its call through the labyrinth, beckoning us to crawl or climb or shuffle through the fallen concrete megastructures, stepping carefully through fields that grow only mines, to do whatever it takes to reach it. Its klaxons are deafening, and they sound regardless of time of day. It does not care for the passing hour for neither do we. Why should we when we cannot see the sky? It is time to sleep when we are exhausted, then it is time to walk. These are the only distinctions to our routine we know. Our pilgrimage goes on for many cycles. Several die and must be carried. An old man who collapsed from starvation is my own burden. My forward neighbor carries a bag filled with parts of one who wasn’t careful enough in the fields. My backward neighbor is lucky, she has no one to burden her. Dead, alive, young, old, intact, or explosively dismembered. It doesn’t matter. The Machine God hungers. Our flesh will do. Early into our sleeping time, the klaxons blare. They are growing louder, and soon I know we will find the altar. What we will do there, I don’t know. I’ve forgotten. I don’t know if any of us remember, but I’m too afraid to ask. Not afraid that they won’t know, or this will turn out to be pointless, but afraid they will. The dull eyes that greet me when we stop make that seem unlikely. Still. Superstition then, perhaps, is what keeps me from asking. It isn’t a real concern so long as I don’t vocalize it. Allow me at least this comfort, to think it is pointless, that this will amount to nothing, that there is no purpose. It is self-pitying, yes. It is like picking at a scab, scratching at the itch of dry skin. Painful and pleasurable in equal measure. We sleep. We wake. We walk. We’re getting close. The labyrinth opens up. The metal and concrete pulls away to reveal a...a...circle, a hub of sorts. A small clearing. More people are filling in from other directions. They look tired like us, they are carrying their dead, they have no food or water to spare. They march toward the Machine God to sate its hunger in worship at its altar. Same as us. Our common purpose unites us, so we need no words. We sleep that night together, as a community, and in the morning we march together down the only path no one arrived from, deeper into this jumbled mess. North, perhaps? It hardly matters the direction; it is as meaningless as time in our prison. The Machine God’s roar is so loud now that it drowns out even... ...thought. It snatches what little mind was left to us, allowing us only a small reprieve when it is time to rest. It is here I sit now, waiting for the time to come when I am no longer myself. It won’t take much longer...another cycle or two, perhaps? Then I won’t need to think at all. I will only need to prostrate myself before the Machine God, and hope my meager offering of flesh will sate its hunger. The roaring starts anew. We pick ourselves up, we gather the deceased, and we continue on. Who were we before this? It doesn’t matter, for we are born anew. The Machine God hungers, and we have arrived. It is...majestic, perhaps. Majestic is an adequate descriptor for something as large and indescribable as it is. A face of metal and concrete, yes, but also of fire. It belches thick, black smoke each time it opens its mouth to bellow, and its eyes stand open wide as small portals into hell. It sits in the center of the more familiar hell we’ve walked through. It does not react to us as we approach, except to open its mouth and bellow the klaxon call, but I imagine it would do that regardless of our presence. Then, one by one, we fall to our knees. Some of us pray, some of us prostrate, self-flagellate, adulate. We do so until we, and our faith, is expended. Then, one by one, we stand and step into its open maw. That is why we’ve come here, isn’t it? The Machine God hungers, and only our flesh will do. It is its mercy that the process seems mostly painless - the sacrifices do not even scream when they plunge into the flames. Only a few hesitant remain at the end, and myself, though I do not consider myself hesitant. But I want to see. So we roll the corpses in one by one next, and after that, we jostle each other and threaten and barter until the last living follow in. Until, finally, I am left with the Machine God. In this moment, I know we are both unique. I am one of a kind, by virtue of being the last of my kind, and it is the God we worship. With me, it will be over. Except. No. I don’t think it will. The fires inside the Machine God show no signs of quenching, and it is through them I see that I am not enough. None of us were. We could not sate its hunger, because it was never possible. “You’ll never be content,” I whisper through its roar. It does not listen, but why would it? I’m not even sure myself if the words are a curse, a eulogy for humanity, or mere prophecy. I know that they are right, though. Then I throw myself into the Machine God’s mouth. I was right - it is painless. But the Machine God hungers still.