Vending Machine Lunch

Copyright © roadbloc
2013

All rights reserved. As
always :)

Vending Machine
Lunch.

By roadbloc.

For the SCUMM
fans.

Chapters.

Acknowlegements

Drag Me
Out of a Good Dream Why Don’t Ya?

Ignorance Is Bliss Until They Take Your Bliss
Away.

I Never
Liked You.

I’m
Sorry For This Mess.

Sunday
Bacon Always Tastes Better Overdone.

Would
You Like A Razor Blade With That Thought Sir?

Thank
You For Helping Us Help You Help Us All.

I’d Get
Up If I Knew I’d Fell.

I'd Love
To Stay and Chat, But I'd Rather Have Type Two
Diabetes.

Acknowledgements.

Thanks
to my Mum, Dad, Sausageface, Drunken Buddhist, Both Grandmas and
Granddads, Macky, Sam, Ginger Chris, The Exfire Forum Regulars™,
Abi Smith, Kylee Gilpin, Celia, That Guy, Amy Pond, My music
collection, FRONT Magazines and Tea. Oh, and anyone else
I
’ve missed.

Drag Me Out of a Good Dream Why
Don’t Ya?

The blackened sky
roared at little James. It had done for many years. He wasn't meant
to see the outside, and many things had prevented him from doing
so, however, a small crack in the wood of a boarded up window
provided some light on the outside land. Maybe light was the wrong
word.

His father had
done everything in his power, which was an awful lot, to stop James
from seeing the outside land. The windows were boarded up, higher
floor access was denied and despite James's attempts, the doors
remained unresponsive to his retina.

And yet, years
after he had given up trying, James became aware of a small crack
between the boards of wood blocking the east wing main window. No
more the size of a splinter it was, but it provided James one
thing: a little more freedom in his life. It was something his
father and the maids knew nothing about. For the first time in his
life, he had a secret. He knew something they didn't, and the pride
swelled up in his chest like a puffer fish. It excited him that for
the first time in his life, at the back of his alveoli, he had
something that would make them squirm. That despite their efforts,
he had seen. Not much, only the constantly roaring blackened sky,
but it was something his father didn't want him to see. His pupils
widened at the thought of it.

The sky
continued roaring, as it always did. James had yet to see it not do
so. He had read books of times when the sky was the colour of blue,
the clouds were described as fluffy and the wind was something that
was considered pleasant and cool. Creatures called birds glided
through the air and balanced upon garden fences, people played ball
based games in lush green fields and people dance and skipped and
laughed and ate honey sandwiches and-

Of course James
didn't really believe any of the books. He may have been
less-uninformed and slightly naïve, but he wasn't stupid. They were
fictional. Probably written for him to make him think that the land
outside was a friendly place. However, the level of detail in the
books was astounding, his father must have hired a load of writers
just for them. Some contained events which could be
cross-referenced to other books, the most popular being an event
known as “The Fall of the Mahusay Na Mundo.” The books even had
dates, some leading back to as far as the early millennia. It was
safe to say that his father had put a lot of effort into convincing
him that the land was a different place to what it really was. But
it was easy to see, simply from the fact that he didn't let James
outside and a vast majority of the events in the books just didn't
make sense, that the land was not how his father tried to portray
it to him. As I said, despite being young and left in the dark,
James was not stupid.

A while ago,
James had come to the question of why? Why had his father seen fit
to hide the land from him? James just didn't know, and any approach
of the subject on his father resulted in ignorance.

His eye still
firmly locked to the small gap, he watched the air rage. Black
clouds screaming and fighting amongst one another in a constant,
relentless battle for something unknown. Occasionally, James would
see a gap, or a place where the cloud had thinned out, revealing
white light behind the black battle. The bright whiteness didn't
last long, within a second the roaring black took over again. A
sinister sight.

“Master James,”
the female voice from behind startled him.

James span
around to see that partway down the corridor, Jennifer, the head
maid was there. His hands were pressed tightly on the small crack
in the boards behind him, afraid Jennifer had seen.

“Master James,”
she repeated once his face had emerged from the dimly lit corridor,
“Your father requests your attention.”

James
internally breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't noticed, although,
he doubted she'd care if she did.

“Where am I
expected to find him?” asked James, walking down the dingy corridor
towards Jennifer.

“He is
expecting you at is quarters. It is nearly six you know Master
James,” replied Jennifer, in a slightly concerned voice.

Nearly six. Of
course, James remembered. The old man had asked him to wake him for
then. The reason was unknown to him, his father was quite capable
of waking himself up before today, in fact, James even doubted his
father ever slept. Or at least in a long time. No doubt there was
some sort of anniversary of some meaningless thing he wished to
share with James, so James thanked Jennifer and began his way down
the corridor, towards the stairs.

One thing James
had always noticed about the house, was how it never changed. The
elaborate, rich coloured wallpaper had always been the same. No-one
had ever bothered redecorating. His toes sunk into the deep red
carpet. There was a day when James used to pretend that the carpet
was grass, and he would imagine himself running through it in his
father's fictional land. Obviously, he later figured that the long
green plant known as 'grass' probably never existed. James had
always wondered why on earth his father made the outdoors such a
desirable place if he didn't want him to discover it. Although, the
wizened old fool probably never thought of that.

In contrast to
the corridor, the spiral staircase was wooden and cold. As he
climbed, painting upon painting of young males, followed him
upwards. James had guessed these people were the old owners of the
house perhaps, each were awarded a painting on the staircase when
they inherited the family heirlooms, assumingly at the age of
eighteen or when their old man died. An old family tradition, now
long since gone. He spiralled up past years’ worth of generations.
James often wondered what he would inherit if he reached eighteen
or his father died. If his father ever died.

He got to the
last portrait, which was positioned a few meters down from the top
door. In the painting was a young man, just like the rest, looking
happy and proud that he was now top dog. Just like the rest,
underneath was a gold plated plaque, stating, assumingly, the name
of the person in the painting and the date they inherited. James
had always been intrigued with the last one. Why was he last?
Didn't he ever have a son?

Jeremy Ama.

00003126.

The Ama family
must have been proud; he looked healthy and bright; keen to rule as
such. James had no idea when the date on the plaque was in
comparison to today. Something his father had hidden from him was
the date; he was only permitted to know the time. Thanks to the
many books he had read in his boredom, he could guess it was close,
or at least, the highest date number he had seen.

On the thought
of time, James remembered it was nearly six, and contained up the
last couple of dank spirals to the top door.

The metal bolt
cracked open and James heaved the large wooden door inwards. The
large hinges creaked like they hadn't been used in years and James
cautiously stepped into the room.

His father's
quarters was just how he remembered it, the usual musty smell,
disturbingly dark as though he was constantly wearing a dark pair
of shades and bare. The vertical wooden panels for walls were just
visible in the darkness. Ahead, could be seen a pair of windows,
boarded up just like the rest, a halo of outside light squeezing
its way through the slight gap between the vertical wall boards and
the horizontal window boards. The light shone either side of an
upright bed with decorative wooden head and foot boards; the
complex wood carvings only just visible in the dim light. Either
side of the bed, the light shone onto an array of machines, all
flashing their lights and showing data on their CRT screens, many
connectors trailing or drooping from the machines to the figure
that lay in the bed, slowly breathing.

Those machines
always made James internally shiver. Something about them looked
so... industrial. Inhuman. Incorrect in a home environment. James
had seen machines before, but nothing quite compared to the
ugliness to these ones.

James walked
across the room, taking in the stuffy smell. He disturbed settled
air dust as he walked across towards the bed, past a lone wardrobe
on the left. The mosaic floor said K&K. James had always
wondered what that meant, but knew that it was hardly
important.

He knew the
drill. Flick the switch on the third unit up to the left. The small
lever clicked upwards, producing the lovely clicking sound that
James remembered so well. Some lights flashed on the panel, before
a third CRT screen flickered on.

The screen
hummed and beeped and a processor somewhere worked out what its
function in the land was. A large letter C made out of a lot of
ASCI characters faded onto the screen. The processor had worked out
what its purpose was and decided to start the boot sequence. The
annoying beep stopped.

A lamp above
the bed faded on, buzzing slightly, burning the darkness around. A
moth instantly started its erotic dance around the bulb.

James peered
over the bed. “It's been a long time. How have you been?”

Below James, on
the bed, was a man. However, long since had the man gone. Replaced
by bits of machinery as the years had gone by, as body parts had
failed with old age. The face was totally enclosed, replaced by a
metallic gas mask like thing; white glass circles for eyes stared
blankly at James, a breathing mechanism pumped in and out slowly
where the mouthpiece was. Below the head, the entire shoulder frame
was also enclosed, replaced with some kind of metal, covered in
bolt nuts obviously strapping the device to his body. Below, the
rest of the body was covered with large rubber-like tubes, circling
and wrapping the body within. James always imagined the tubes to be
some sort of central heating system for the body, or maybe a way to
preserve the working muscles like mummifying did.

“Son!” said
James's father with a bizarre energy and joy, sitting up quickly,
“I've been great. Do you like the new extensions?” His voice was
muffled slightly due to the face-mask thing, assumingly due it it
being fused onto his actual face.

“Which ones, I
can't see what is different from last time,” said James, looking
sadly at the sight of his father.

“You blind
boy?” his father jumped out of bed, “Look at the neck!”

He was an
exceptionally tall man.

James noticed
that his neck was now tubed up just like the rest of the body.

“Very nice
father,” said James politely.

“Very nice? Its
God-damn beautiful that's what,” said his father, bending down and
peering at James with the white blank glass circles, “Get me a tie
boy.”

James obeyed
and walked to the lone wardrobe at the side of the room. It slid
open, revealing a rack of different coloured ties.

“Which colour
father?”

“Hmmm,” he
hummed, the air pump sucking in and out, “I'm in an orange mood
today.”

James grabbed
the orange tie and passed it to his father. The gloved hand
received the thin strip of orange material.

“Nicey nice,”
muttered James's father as he strapped on the tie, “Go on then. How
long as has it been now...um... Jeremy?”

“James. And
it's been almost two years I think...”

“Ah, yeah,
James, sorry,” murmured his father, tying the knot, “Two years you
think?”