The Automatons Part 4: Dissecting a Mattress

After The Automatons took Pete’s journal that evening Trisha couldn’t stop moving or thinking. She didn’t even lay down until the wee hours of the morning. Most of the night was spent pacing around her house. She would shut the door to her son’s empty room then open it minutes later. Wishing everything would be back. At a minimum, she wanted to find another clue or note. At one point she flipped the mattress off the frame out of frustration. When it lay to the side she looked at the frame, hoping Peter or Milton had left something there for her. But The Automatons were thorough, nothing of use was left in the room.

Trisha wondered if a note would come with her breakfast in the morning, but that was still hours away. After hours of pacing, she finally wore herself out and laid down in bed. Regardless of how many times she tried to close her eyes and fall asleep, she could only think about the new and definitive emptiness in her life.

She finally found sleep around five in the morning. When her alarm went off an hour later for her job at The Mill she slept through it. After thirty minutes the sound gave up. The house served Trisha her omelet at the usual time, but the food got cold after an hour of waiting for her. Finally, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, Trisha stumbled out of bed to use the bathroom. She enjoyed the first drowsy moments of her new day. The memories of everything that had just happened to her, and everything she had lost, hadn’t come back to her yet.

As the forgetfulness of sleep faded, her emptiness came back to her. Her shoulders quickly became burdened by the dread of the days ahead. By the time she made it to the kitchen and saw the cold omelet, she had remembered everything. She tore through the food dissecting it indifferent to the nourishment. She wanted the food to have another note, and for a moment she felt like there was a chance. When the omelet had been all but destroyed, she dropped it into the almost full trashcan without taking a bite. Then she began the pacing again.

The question that kept coming to Trisha’s mind was “What would Peter do?” She could only come up with crazy solutions. She knew that if she had his journal then maybe she could glean some idea of how to get out of The Process with it. And Peter had gotten out of The Process. Trisha remembered the events leading up to his editing.

Peter vandalized a statue of The Automaton. It was a statue in the center of The Process. Everyone passed it at least once a day. The Process was designed to force people to pass it for one reason or another. It was a bronze statue, larger than life, portraying An Automaton and a young girl. The Automaton was serving the girl a meal. The figure offered a small bronze cup and a matching plate of food.

Peter had stockpiled miscellaneous supplies to make a rudimentary paint. It took him months to curate the things he needed, and when he had it all, he went to the statue in the middle of the night and vandalized the figure with paint. That night Trisha didn’t even notice that he had left. That morning over breakfast Peter explained that she had to go to work regardless of what she saw on her way there. She was confused until she saw the statue in the morning until she recognized her husband’s handwriting on the statue.

Peter had written on the arm that offered the drink “POISON” and the limb of The Automaton that presented the food had the word “LIES.” He had written both words in sharp white letters. He also illustrated The Automaton’s face with cruel facial expressions like boys who doodled mustaches on historical figures in textbooks but without the humor. The emotion, however cruel, seemed strange on The Automaton’s traditionally expressionless face.

Trisha considered turning around and going home to be with Peter then and there. But he had told her that she had to go to The Mill today. She hadn’t understand when he explained this to her over breakfast, but now things were becoming clear. Instead of turning around she resolved to come home at lunch to see him. Looking back she wished she had turned back then and there. Maybe she would have been lucky enough to have edited with him.

By the time she walked past the statue at lunch something had cleaned it. When she made it to her house all she found was a note saying that Peter had been edited for treason against The Automatons. That note devastated her even though she logically knew his disappearance was coming. Trisha didn’t return to The Mill that afternoon, and a week later the robots came in and cleaned out all of Peter’s things. The only thing they left her was Milton who was just a baby.

She could do the same thing, but it would take weeks to stockpile enough supplies to make the paint, and since Peter hadn’t invited her to work on the vandalization she didn’t remember what she needed. To make things worse Trisha didn’t feel like she could wait to get out. She needed to do something quicker than stockpiling paint supplies.

Trisha laid on the couch exhausted from the ten hours of sleep she had gotten and the hopelessness of her situation. After napping for an hour she woke up with an idea. She began taking apart Milton’s mattress and spent the whole evening at it.

She carefully cut the seams of the bed with the only cutting instrument she was allowed to have in The Process, a pair of scissors. The bed was filled with layers of foam and springs that were packed in individual casings to keep them evenly distributed. She cut open each packaged spring and made a pile of thick metal springs. She didn’t know what she was going to do with them, but it was what The Automatons had left her. By the time she piled the springs in the corner of her son’s room, it was a single didget hour of the night. She crawled into bed and slept soundly through the night.

Morning was starting to eek its way into the afternoon by the time she woke up. The first thing she thought of was food, she was ravenous and didn’t know the last time she had eaten anything. She quickly ate the cold omelet that the house had served to her early in the morning. It was bland and lacked a note from Peter or Milton, but she didn’t care, she needed the food. She wiped her hands on her pants and saved the paper napkins that came with the meal.

After finishing her food, she went back to work on her project. She had a clear direction for the mattress now, but she didn’t know if it would work. She was unsure of what she would need, so she kept all the materials from the mattress in very organized piles.

How will I even pull this off? she wondered as she shredded the different foams that made up the mattress. There were thick foams that looked like bricks and some that looked like the filling of an eclair. She had a pretty good idea of how she would use the light eclair foam.

By the time her afternoon had turned into evening, she had pared the mattress down to its component parts. Different piles around the room held the mattress scraps. She still didn’t know what she was going to do with the springs that she had spent so much time to separate, but there was a notable pile of scrap metal in Milton’s room too.

Looking over her work, she felt content and hopeful that her plan might work. She walked out of her son’s room and into the kitchen to have her dinner. But when she got there the food that was typically set out was not there.

The house was never late with a meal. She checked the time on the machine that prepared her food, and it matched up with what was on her wrist. Quickly she determined that the automatic system had messed up, so she simply ordered something manually.

A clear message went across the screen. “Rations Denied: Missing Work At The Mill” Her face went red. How many days have I missed? she asked herself. Maybe one or two. Was that enough for them to decide to cut her rations?

She turned the machine off and back on again hoping to clear the error. No such luck. The same message remained on the screen. She looked around the kitchen hoping to find something to feed her. The room was mostly decoration consisting of only the necessary parts for consuming food. It had a table, chairs, and some silverware but there was no pantry or fridge to store food. The house had always prepared the meals for her. Then she saw something that might hold hope, the trash can.

She had dissected an omelet only a day ago and it might still be in the trash. If she ate it slowly it might be able to hold her over for a few days. Otherwise, she would have to go back to The Mill. Trisha wasn’t sure if she could stand going back there though.

She walked over to the trash can trying to do it slowly to calm her nerves. She put her foot on the lever to open it and looked down into an empty white bag.

As she stared at the pure white bag, she realized there were only two crummy choices for her. She could go to The Mill and work to earn her rations back, or she could work harder on the project she had started. Trisha didn’t know how she would deal with all the people actively avoiding editing there.

Her stomach growled, but there was nothing she could do about it. The Mill wouldn’t start up until morning, so she couldn’t fix the problem now. She put the decision off and with dwindling energy and a new tighter deadline she walked back to Milton’s room to dismantel the wooden dresser.

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