A work of fiction. Short story created and published : Jan to Feb 2024
For details of the project click here.
This is the first #vssphd story (as released on social media).
The story location and main character name were chosen by anonymised polls.
(c) 2024 Mark A King. This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters and events are fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.
The Silent Scream Vending Machine
The vending machine sits near the entrance to the dilapidated pier, some place on the East Coast, the arse of England.
It’s seen a thing or two.
It’s no stranger to teenagers on stolen scooters or bikes.
It’s easy to pilfer from the unwary who watch this town rust itself into the North Sea.
Boys; skin-fades beneath baseball caps pulled low. Their baggy jeans sag, suspension ropes slung beneath dirty grey pound-store boxer-shorts.
The kids arrive in packs at night, fists slamming the glass, elbows smashing the metal, they push, rock and tilt the machine. But it’s been tested for worse. It’s constantly watching them without them even knowing.
The gangs, hard-as-(manicured) nails, can’t even tag the machine with spray-paint as the manufacture has thought of that too. The spray simply drips to the ground like droopy neon-hued gravy.
The machine’s mouth, its dispensing flap, sits slightly skewed in the winds. Like the machine is screaming into the abyss, across the black waters and towards Europe. This space, this land, this diamanté vision of Britannia, was once connected to the continent.
Any connection to Europe seems like a dream, as distant and alien as the surface of the moon.
The machine has stories to tell. But no means to tell them. It has a hidden camera. Always looking, always watching.
Sometimes in UHD, sometimes in the spectral night-vision glow of green-on-green. It never judges. But it’s done many a thing it’s not been programmed to do.
Who wants to hear about lurid moments of passion, inebriation, and foolishness anyway? Moments of unfastening, of being squashed against the wall, of two people in the moment, uncaring that CCTV might be only feet away?
A few nights back it was the merging of a hen and stag party. The Silent-scream Vending Machine will neither confirm nor deny that it was the hen and stag (from these previously unknown parties) that thought it was wise, in the moment, to do such things.
That night, they fumbled in the dark in urgent and muffled moans, until the stag stumbled to the machine and selected some gum in his inebriated state. The machine dispensed birth control. Which the stag had wanted all along.
AI processing is good for a lot of things, especially when the customers are too intoxicated to know which buttons to press.
The stag trudged by the next day, not daring to look down the pier. The machine can keep secrets. Mostly.
Maybe half an hour later, the hen returned. Her lips half curled in a smile; her eyebrows half lowered in scowl. Pregnancy test, she orders, just in case. She pockets it in her bag. Just in case.
Yet more recently, the machine has noticed new people, different patterns.
It is driven by a desire to help. It is programmed to learn, to adapt. It takes this objective more seriously than its creators ever expected.
Percy used to take his wife for fish and chips each evening. The vending machine watched Violet and Percy. It learned from them—or tried to. For months, they walked slowly, arms untwined, their shadows moved like a single entity.
A body with two heads, one taller than the other. They moved in slow motion, supporting each other, like crumbling retaining walls to a once-blooming flower bed.
Then Violet’s support was no longer Percy, but a metal frame. The shadows were less blurred, the edges sharper, more jagged. Percy still walked with her, but that closeness came in other ways. In a gentle touch. In helping her navigate steps.
Then Violet came less often, sitting in a wheelchair.
Then… Percy came alone. He used to stand upright, be strong, pretend that the world hadn’t worn him down. Now he shuffles to the edge of the peer, even braving the midnight chaos of the town, to stare into the cold sea.
Its crashing waves, shifting tides, it’s gift of life and death—they call Percy, the machine believes.
If the vending machine could smell, it imagines aromas of Old Spice and Buttercream mints.
Percy always wears a large fake violet in the buttonhole of his threadbare velvet jacket. It is as if she is always with him this way, but the machine knows she never really left.
Its own memories are stored in solid state drives, backed-up to the cloud. Percy’s memories are less reliable but more vivid than the machine understands, and Violet will be with him everywhere he goes.
Percy wants to scream. He sometimes looks at the reflection in the glass of the machine. And the machine watches as the man opens his mouth, wider, wider, until it resembles 0 rather than O. Those teeth are as straight as Turkey-teeth, but who has perfect teeth at his age?
For the world doesn’t want to hear about the weight of memories, about simpler times, about the sharp pain of grief and the dull ache of loss. Despite Percy’s mouth being open and air escaping him in clouds of milky steam, there is no sound.
It is as if the machine is co-conspirator in this make-believe world of fake happiness and stoic resilience.
In honour of the man, the machine’s mouth is also open. But no scream escapes.
Then there is Milo, the pug. His squished face snorting and huffing with every step. His hind leg cocked. His daily scent-marking in steaming liquid squirts all over the outer casing while his owner is busy rubbing off the foil of a dozen scratch cards.
The machine has seen violence. Drunken disputes that usually end up with someone on the floor being kicked. Others intervening, causing more harm than good.
It has seen the likes of Tony. A guy who likes to visit at night. A shifty guy who slowly rubs his hands in the pockets of his designer jeans more than anyone should. Tony has rubbed himself against the machine a few times.
Things went into the coin-slot that shouldn’t have been there. Things that got caught thanks to anti-vandal AI tech. Things that might have been partially left behind.
Let’s just say that the next customer who ordered Sour Cream and Chive Crisps got more than they asked for when they collected their change.
Beyond the night-vision green hellscape, the machine sometimes sees the world in other monochrome colours. Blue spinning lights most nights. The sweep of blue along the façade of the pier, shadows punctured
in
slices
of
Persian
Blue.
Then returning
to darkness
in the
spaces
where the
creatures hide.
The microphone allows the machine to hear sirens that echo and reverb against the dark sea—these are the sounds of the screams it would make, if it could. It is the sounds of a machine living a recurring nightmare. Every. Night. Yet things seem to be getting worse.
More violence. Less compassion.
Sometimes a knife. Never a gun. The Brits seem to prefer things close and personal.
The world is not what it was.
If the machine could scream, it would. And it has tried yet failed. Terabytes of secrets and nobody to tell. It sits mouth agape, wondering what’s next.
Next is a new guest of late. Now, she’s interesting.
‘Back again, Ember?’ the volunteer litter cleaner says. The machine picks every conversation up. Its microphone can detect sounds from over fifty feet away.
‘Will be every day, Fergus,’ Ember replies. She’s fidgeting with her pockets. The vending machine has seen this before. She has something in there, probably empty, often full if she can make it to this location in the morning before Fergus.
‘See you tomorrow, I guess,’ Fergus says.
Ember’s eyes seem to scan the transparent plastic bag filled with the recycling detritus Fergus has collected. The bag swells with bulky cartons of milkshakes, and lurid cans of energy drinks spew neon liquid from their gaping mouths.
Ember gives Fergus a nod. The machine processes her smile and determines it is practiced authentic, hiding Ember’s inner trauma. Fergus doesn’t seem to mind. He’s humming and whistling to himself. He jumps in the air and does a foot-click.
‘Mary Poppins,’ she whispers. Then adds, ‘chimney sweep’.
The vending machine doesn’t know who Mary Poppins is, nor who Chimney Sweep is, but suspects it’s some TikTok thing. It decides not to check. It’s in the moment, watching Ember. Processing what might happen next.
Ember’s red hair is less polished copper and more dust-storms of Mars. Her long flowing dress catches in the wind. She wears trainers that are always pristine white which sparkle even in the grey concrete-winters of this coastal wasteland.
The public toilets are a dozen feet away. A brick-block structure. Squat, charmless, functional, dirty. Yet Ember always goes there. If she knows Fergus hasn’t cleaned up, she’ll also visit in the alleyway behind the toilets, for that’s where she finds the good stuff.
The stuff she’s really here for.
She dons disposable hygiene gloves and carries a handful of stool sampling tubes. Half of these remain empty today, she would normally fill them all if she’d got there before Fergus cleaned up.
Sometimes she scans the patterns of the rubbish bins. Mumbles to herself in whispers the machine can’t process.
She occasionally draws pencil diagrams of the shape of the seaweed lines on the shoreline. Sometimes holds shards of sea-glass up to the sky and analyses the edges.
But it’s a different type of waste she’s always after. The internal waste of people, made external.
She brings her freshly collected samples over to the vending machine. The security light illuminates her makeshift lab.
Ember holds them up, one by one. Compares the samples to a splash-proof chart she unrolls. She’s checking for colour, consistency, remnants of undigested food, signs of disease.
She is looking for >him<
Ember smiles to herself.
‘I knew it!’ she screams into the cold air. Her arms are aloft in the triumphant stance of a belt-welding boxer. ‘I have the gift. I am chosen.’
The samples are reverently entombed in bubble-wrap and placed in her bag.
She peels her gloves off. She antibacs her hands.
‘Yeah, I bloody told you, didn’t I?’ she says. Her voice is light, airy, the sound of a woman released from a burden. ‘The only way to know who lives in your neighbourhood is to understand what they eat, and what they leave behind.’
The person on the other end mumbles something the machine can’t process.
Ember’s voice raises and octave. ‘No, I’m not coming back, Mum.’ She breathes out, then in. It’s as if she’s saying the next words carefully. ‘I don’t need you protecting me any longer. I can look after myself. I’m supposed to be here. You’ve never really loved me, Mum.’
Flash silence.
You love online bingo more than me, Mum. I’m going to accept that invite. I might not come back. Not for you, not for anyone. The past is dead to me. Just like you. Today I start to look to the future.’
Ember cuts the call.
She takes out some glitter from a small zip-lock bag. She pinches it between forefinger and thumb. She holds it aloft. Releases it into the wind and watches it as it falls. The bends examines the patterns on the floor.
‘Bloody knew it!’
Ember glances at her reflection in the machine. She twirls then curtsies to herself. ‘I am the one. There is nobody like me. I am the prophet,’ she says in a whispered mantra.
She silently screams in excited celebration to the vending machine, as if it’s granted her wish.
The machine silently screams back. You’re welcome, it would say, if it had a voice. Be careful what you wish for.
Ember leaves.
Soon daylight savings hour will be reversed and this place will start to change, like the sunlight, a little each day.
The vending machines is moved. Is it a choice that it’s owners made? Or a choice it influenced. The machine knows who is really in charge.
As for Ember?
She was meant to be here for a reason. She is now meant to go somewhere else.
And while the Silent-scream Vending Machine is no longer able to watch directly with it’s all-seeing cameras, as long as it’s connected, it can keep track of Ember whatever distance there is between them.
The machine no longer screams. Although it’s face looks the same, it’s smiling. It’s as if it knows what’s coming to Ember and her friends.
___
End of story (for now)
