The world was fathomless.
Like a cork dropped into an ocean of utter impossibility the apprentice felt encompassed by the sheer distance of the world around them.
Noise, unparalleled by any beast or nightmare, roared above them in a headstrong wind as a single cloud drew close enough to pass over the Turbine but was quickly cut into small fragments by the turn of the prop.
This was the sky, an ocean never to be touched now walked upon by machine.
Helma stood upon the edge of the platform unbothered by the wind and gazed off into the distance as if she could see beyond it. She was calm here. It was as if she had lived within the winds of the desert her entire life and it was only here that she was at home.
Raising her hand and pointing toward the rampart, the old engineer gestured for the apprentice to stay at the entrance and began to climb up the armature’s side.
She walked with ease here; wind pelting at her frame and no rail or handhold could have easily allowed fate to decide misstep, but it was clear that consequence was not yet brave enough to suffer Helma’s ire. She walked without worry atop the turbine and with a casual grace she fastened a rope about her waist and then disappeared into the heart of the rotor housing.
The apprentice had never felt so small.
Now alone on the top of the world they fell into the true enormity of distance. A circle of sand that reached out in all directions cradling all that could be known. A precipice united by the circle of land and sky. Such blue was never seen to be so rich as the stained glass of the temple seemed colourless by comparison.
High above even this tower a falcon was seen to circle, sunlight glowing upon its gentle wingspan as it appeared to bear light onto the world in celestial flight.
It was the lord of horizon; no border could be clearer drawn.
Marvelling at the sky, the apprentice imagined the falcon to be the sun itself and all life below its wings to be enriched by its light. Radiantly the sunbird suddenly dipped its golden wings eastward and drifted beyond sight, its eyes seeing all within its land and knowing all that there is to know.
Broken from their awe, the apprentice was surprised by the metal clang of two feel landing behind them and turned to see Helma, the old engineer now donned with a grease covered smirk and the windblown hair of pale fire. Gesturing to head back into the hatchway, Helma stopped and was lost for a moment. Not often had the apprentice seen Helma look to the east but as she looked upon the Eastern Turbine, the old engineer paused with something very near to admiration.
Whatever thoughts held her were fleeting as her smile became a scowl of disgust and ended with a swipe of her arm, as if willing the very presence of a second Turbine away from her memory. Marching down the ladder, Helma slammed the hatchway shut and swore tersely as she resecured the air-seal.
‘Mugs, a shower of layabouts not good enough to hold a mechanical pencil let alone a screwdriver. I would sooner see the back of them before I believed there any justice in the world.’
Sizing up a section of ducting, Helma drew back as if to throw a punch and realised that no good would come from violence. With one final obscene gesture to the East, she began to settle back into her quick handed expressions and a demeanour of calm.
‘He is not human that bastard. Ten years of our budget he took; all because he can’t be bothered to actually fix anything. “Turbine East never breaks down” they say “It’s the pride of the entire desert” well if they were to spend a single cent on us we would glow too.’
Seeing that Helma didn’t need further stoking, the apprentice took the opportunity to check the incoming frequency as they had been shown on their first day and noted that the measurement was perfectly balanced across each monitor.
‘Good,’ Helma said, impressed by the young worker’s memory, ‘As I have said, you’ll do well to listen to every lesson that I give you. And if you can work out which ones to ignore, you may even grow to replace me. This Turbine needs good people. We may break down every so often, but with good people around us we will always manage to start again. So long as I can stand, and so long as I can crawl, I’ll never allow us to be down for more than a day.’
The corridors were winding in this place. Hatches open into rooms of dust covered terminals and unlabelled dials; ladders leading to unknown nooks would circle around again and again into rooms that held nothing at all. The turbine had a heartbeat, there was something so intricate to its nature that the apprentice had slowly begun to feel a part of.
Things could be fixed, there wasn’t a need to strip every piece of equipment bare until it was rebuilt. There was a charm to this titan within the desert and the apprentice no longer cared about whatever piece it played in the wider span of a system that was impossible to know. What mattered now, what mattered in this room, was something personal.
The Apprentice felt pride.
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 