Feed the Machine Read Online Free PDF Page A

meant a lot of cutting and reinforcing so the tunnel he was about to create didn’t collapse in on him. He turned the cutter up and sliced a rough hole, alternating swinging with his pickax to pull junk out. Most of it he let drop beneath him but he kept some pieces of metal aside for reinforcing.
    “Found batteries. Pure, no split,” Raj said.
    “I have nothing,” Ash answered, digging deeper. There were a few fragments of circuitry but most of the junk was no different than what he could have found near Cago.
    “Sealed food tin, no label. Dated 2052. Plus another battery.”
    Ash turned around to look where Raj was digging. Behind the surface layer of metal and concrete, his hole turned colorful. Green circuit board, bits of bright yellow and red hard plastic, packages of electronics smashed but sealed in thin see-though bags.
    He turned back to his hole and kept digging. Once he’d gone in as far as he could reach without pulling his body in, he turned the cutter down and started welding bits of metal into the sides of the tunnel to strengthen it. He found a few flat pieces which he laid on the bottom so he could slide forward without shredding his body on the spiky edges.
    “Going in,” he called back to Raj.
    “Found a gold necklace, half a necklace anyway,” Raj answered back.
    Ash pulled himself into the tunnel and once it held his weight he let some rope out so he could inch forward. The two bugs followed, lighting the small area a dull green. He turned on his side and freed his pack, pulling it out from under him.
    Then he turned the cutter up and kept digging.
    It was slow going. He had to slice the junk smaller and push it past himself, down to his legs where Kin would then pull it with his claws over the edge. The air was smoky as he hit fragments of wood and bits of old paper and sometimes the metal sparked as he cut through it, sending out glowing embers that burned his skin when they landed in any gap between his hasdee strips.
    Raj kept calling out his finds. A piece of silver necklace. Half a circuit. More sealed batteries.
    Ash had nothing to call out. It was just metal, concrete and shattered wood. Finally Raj went quiet (a miracle in itself). Ash looked back down his body and out the hole. Like him, Raj was fully inside the tunnel now, the bottom of his feet sticking out as he cut his way towards the large metal box Kin had detected.
    “Twenty centimeters,” Kin murmured from near Ash’s feet.
    Ash turned the cutter up again and sliced through the final wall of junk separating him from his prize. The rubble fell away to reveal the black undamaged gleam of a safe door.
    “I’m here. It’s a safe,” he called back.
    “Same,” Raj replied, his voice faint.
    The bugs ran forward and climbed over the safe before creeping off to the ceiling.
    “Kin, how big and where am I?” he called back.
    He felt Kin creep up next to his leg, his cat stepping on his back. He popped his head over his shoulder.
    “It’s two meters tall and one meter wide. You’re near the top. I think this might be the back. Can’t see inside,” Kin said. He wriggled back, pricking Ash with his claws.
    Ash checked his cutter. Down to seventy-five percent reserve. Plenty of energy to cut through a safe.
    He turned it to maximum and sliced a glowing X across the safe. Then he cut down one side and used his pick to pull at the metal. Nothing budged. Ash held the cutter closer and cut in deeper, pulling with his pick until a chuck of door came free. It was a good ten centimeters thick. He pushed the metal aside and cut along each side of the X until he’d made a rectangle hole in the door.
    He gave the metal a moment to cool. He moved forward, sliding his hand into the hole and feeling around. At first there was nothing but air but then he bent his arm and felt the touch of smooth metal under his fingers. It slipped aside from his grasp and he heard the slide of metal on metal. He felt around, finding something round and