Blackbeard

A time machine flies through the sky. Oscillating baubles are lovingly rotated and golden chains are pulled to release steam as the captain looks down on the landscape below. A harmonica plays drunkenly over the machines speaker system, being radioed in from a different era.

The landscape is scattered with ruins, covered in greenery and a few cigarette smoke slivers from dirty factories litter the horizon. It is a tapestry of Western monuments, collapsing into the forest and the low hum of smoke stacks feeds yellow sulfuric gas into the crimson sunset. The golden chariot, full of tweaks and whistles, sails around a mountain ridge and the captain spots a small town in the distance.

Having just arrived from the past he cannot tell if the future is Wellian or Orwellian. Is this a North Korean omnipotent superstate, or is this a fallen society with the scraps of humanity ilking an existence out of old power stations amongst the encroaching forest?

The sun is setting quickly and the captain pulls an ivory lever, pushes a leather button and the machine sails towards the flickering lights of the town. As he lands a few hundred metres from the town, no body comes rushing to meet him with spears or offerings of fruit. The whirring baubles slow and as he shifts the ivory levers down the machine falls quiet. In its place a dull, slow thud fills the air.

Dum....Dum....DUM....dum....

Its too far away to hear any other frequency. Cautiously the captain heads towards the camp and as he nears he sees the rusted corrugated iron exteriors of buildings, flickering lights, moving shadows against the walls. The charcoal and sulfur in the air mixes with the dull thuds and a growing rhythmic caterwaul of scratches and beeps.

The captain reaches the first house, or more a pile of old wood and metal. The scratches become a groove, the thuds become a dub. He pulls back an old dirty cotton curtain to reveal the interior. A black beard is behind a big dirty old computer the size of a wall. Synthesizers are sitting on the ground; the keys brown and black from the dirt. Tape reels swoon around and around as the black beard walks his fingers over the keys like a groggy Addams family Thing. The captain feels like dying. The slow groove fills the room like a broken merry-go-round and the black beard plays and plays, never look up and never looking down.