A Beautiful Age of Progress
Robert Kloss
Once, the men built machines on the edge of town. Machines of wicker and coiled barbed wire. Various pistons and pumps steamed and howled through the nights. The machines gouged into the hard cracked earth. The machines smoked. Sometimes workers fell into caverns. Their screams echoed out, months after they died.
The machines prospered so the men built more.
Corn fields and radish prairies were torched with gasoline and lit matches. Machines were erected from the scorch. Soon our pigeon infested skies cleared. Pigeons crashed through shop windows or cascaded, broken, along cobbled walks. They fell coughing out soot and char.
Our forests—chopped and cindered. Bears wandered lonesome through town drinking malt liquor outside our shops. Deer drowned themselves in public fountains.
—Wilson’s colonial house and his farm hands and his children—. His wife most of all. Found them in sacks. Found his house in piles of splinters. His farm now a howling forest of machines. His wife and children a pile of gristle.
The machines flourished. The men ran out of men to look after the machines. Soon, multitudes of hoboes wandered into town with fliers depicting contented hoboes eating beans. Depicting pleasant, safe machines. “Is this true?” the hoboes asked. We led them to the machines. There they were handed brushes and buckets and turpentine. Through the nights, they whistled and scrubbed and sang sad hobo songs. Lonesome work, out there, on the machines, in the night, it was said. However they were fed and they slept safe and comfortable in the shadows of the machines.
The men were exhilarated by the progress. “This beautiful valley will soon be a valley of machines,” the men said. “We will feel their hum in our skulls long after we die.” What’s more, the men told us, “the giving of the machines will spread to other aspects of our lives. For instance, we shall taste their soot in our bread.”
—hoboes drank malt liquor outside our shops. Hoboes died of the fumes and caverns.
Now, all the horizon is machines and wires connecting the machines to each other. Now the horizon is always the smoke of the machines. This is a new smoke, a good smoke, filtered and purified, the men tell us. It is a healthy black, they tell us. For proof, they gesture to the pigeonless cobblestones. Other remarkable improvements: in the old days, they hooked the machines to cattle. Now the machines are hooked to themselves. In the old days the stink and rot of the dead-cattle brought vultures and plague. Now, we are mostly a healthy, vultureless people.
—we secrete their oil in our night-sweats.
“This is a beautiful age of progress,” the men tell us. “We are becoming better with the machines.” Perhaps it is so. We are yet alive, for instance. And the birds no longer haunt our skies.
- - -
BIO: Robert Kloss wrote this story as part of a larger work: The Ancient House.
Robert Kloss
Once, the men built machines on the edge of town. Machines of wicker and coiled barbed wire. Various pistons and pumps steamed and howled through the nights. The machines gouged into the hard cracked earth. The machines smoked. Sometimes workers fell into caverns. Their screams echoed out, months after they died.
The machines prospered so the men built more.
Corn fields and radish prairies were torched with gasoline and lit matches. Machines were erected from the scorch. Soon our pigeon infested skies cleared. Pigeons crashed through shop windows or cascaded, broken, along cobbled walks. They fell coughing out soot and char.
Our forests—chopped and cindered. Bears wandered lonesome through town drinking malt liquor outside our shops. Deer drowned themselves in public fountains.
—Wilson’s colonial house and his farm hands and his children—. His wife most of all. Found them in sacks. Found his house in piles of splinters. His farm now a howling forest of machines. His wife and children a pile of gristle.
The machines flourished. The men ran out of men to look after the machines. Soon, multitudes of hoboes wandered into town with fliers depicting contented hoboes eating beans. Depicting pleasant, safe machines. “Is this true?” the hoboes asked. We led them to the machines. There they were handed brushes and buckets and turpentine. Through the nights, they whistled and scrubbed and sang sad hobo songs. Lonesome work, out there, on the machines, in the night, it was said. However they were fed and they slept safe and comfortable in the shadows of the machines.
The men were exhilarated by the progress. “This beautiful valley will soon be a valley of machines,” the men said. “We will feel their hum in our skulls long after we die.” What’s more, the men told us, “the giving of the machines will spread to other aspects of our lives. For instance, we shall taste their soot in our bread.”
—hoboes drank malt liquor outside our shops. Hoboes died of the fumes and caverns.
Now, all the horizon is machines and wires connecting the machines to each other. Now the horizon is always the smoke of the machines. This is a new smoke, a good smoke, filtered and purified, the men tell us. It is a healthy black, they tell us. For proof, they gesture to the pigeonless cobblestones. Other remarkable improvements: in the old days, they hooked the machines to cattle. Now the machines are hooked to themselves. In the old days the stink and rot of the dead-cattle brought vultures and plague. Now, we are mostly a healthy, vultureless people.
—we secrete their oil in our night-sweats.
“This is a beautiful age of progress,” the men tell us. “We are becoming better with the machines.” Perhaps it is so. We are yet alive, for instance. And the birds no longer haunt our skies.
- - -
BIO: Robert Kloss wrote this story as part of a larger work: The Ancient House.
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