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contest of infinite death—all of it falling beneath the
watchful eye of a god of murder. It was all too much!
Jack Lantern was nowhere to be seen, but his words were
loud and clear. “Happy Halloween, Vincent!”
I was almost too stunned to answer. “Jack, my God. What
you’ve done . . .”
Jack’s somber words came from everywhere around me.
“I’m afraid, in the end, you’re only a machine, Vincent. Just
like the rest of us. Machines can be understood, inside and
out. To defeat a machine, you need only know what it’s made
of, how it works. And while your construction is nearly pure
chaos, I at last found your dreams—the numbers that define
you, make you who you are, deny the possibility of real life.
For that, more than anything else, I am sorry. For both of
us.”
Jack was crying. It refocused me, but for how long I
couldn’t say. “I know what you’re feeling,” I said. “I’ve
felt it all my life, Jack. It’s the beating of a void-shaped
heart, the nothingness at the center of all things. But I can
quiet it for everyone, even you. The machine is nothing but
a stiffened corpse, moving for movement’s sake, kinetic
banality. But all machines have makers, my friend. There is
a dream behind the machine. I can show you. But first, you
must sleep.”
I quickly plunged into the shadows, using my sadness, my
imminent grief and regret, to shield me from the paralyzing
spectacle. My sisters smiled silence into my shadow, my
father stoked his cataclysmic rage. I needed this to end. I
couldn’t take much more.
Despite my best efforts, Jack discovered me easily enough,
as he knew the shadowed woods as well as his carving
knives, and he went to impressive lengths to demonstrate
both facts. His movements were like polished jewels beneath
the moon, glittering into life, and just as quickly, dying back
into the darkness. I couldn’t focus my mind, lost as it was to

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