Honey counts the buttons that span the length of the control panel; twenty-six. Usually, she only makes it halfway before the machine demands her attention. Twelve, thirteen, and then it starts screaming and she counts the seconds it takes her to shut it up. Honey has more buttons than years of her life.

'A marvel of modern mechanics, wailing like a toddler,' she had remarked on her first day.

'Is that what she is?' Penny had replied in that wistful, distant way of hers. 'I've always thought of her as a lot older than that.'

Everyone has a different name for the machine. Penny calls it Mary. Honey just calls it the machine, and rolls her eyes every time Penny jokingly suggests that she lacks creativity and should pick something different. Something nicer, is what she means.

One, two, three.

Tapping her fingers against the control panel, Honey starts humming a tune. The numbers are her lyrics, and the endlessly whirring mechanisms of the machine set the beat. 

Four, five.

Her eyes are fixed on the buttons - bright primary-coloured instruments of torture. Well, Penny calls it torture. Honey calls it the job. 

Six, seven, eight.

Red, yellow, blue. Glancing up, Honey peers through the glass in front of her and sees into the room on the other side. Her eyes fix on a patch of old flesh working its way through a tube, on its way to be stretched, sliced, soaked and squeezed dry.

Nine, ten.

A scream. Honey stops tapping. She presses the button that administers the mildest shock, and the machine shudders. The scream is replaced with a high-pitched whine and, wincing, Honey presses another button. She is rewarded with silence. 

One second passes, then another, and then the silence is broken by the familiar sounds of dutifully whirring machinery. Honey cracks her knuckles and congratulates herself on a job well done. 

Before she can begin counting again, she hears the familiar groan of the door opening behind her and recognises the cadence of Penny's footsteps: she always tries to tread lightly but her work boots weigh her down.

'That was a bad one,' she says. 'Heard it from the ladies' on the second floor.'

'I dealt with it,' Honey says, tearing her gaze away from the churning flesh and trying to focus on the buttons. Instead, her attention is caught by the machine itself; how its steel skin glows under the scrutiny of the harsh lights while its gears grind themselves to death.

'With her,' Penny corrects gently. There's nothing she loves more than a lost cause. Honey shrugs, and Penny sighs, and they both know better than to argue with each other. 'Go on,' Penny says instead. 'It's your turn. I've got her.'

Honey opens her mouth to protest, then closes it again. Mumbling a few words of gratitude, she hurries out of the room, cringing at the sound of her own heavy footsteps. 

She tries to walk to the bathroom on the second floor but instead carries herself to the machine. She had told herself she wouldn't do this anymore, but she needs to listen without Penny's incessant chatter. Just for a minute; just for a small, stolen moment.

Nobody goes into the room when the machine is switched on. All of the white double doors more than twice Honey's height are plastered with bright red warning signs, but nobody needs them. 

Everyone has their own story about a co-worker who went into the room before the machine was switched off at the end of the day, and everyone shakes their head solemnly and places a finger against their lips when asked what happened.

In truth, nobody knows anyone who was insane or desperate or curious enough to do such a thing. Maintenance is only done when the machine is switched off. Nobody guards the doors anymore; there aren't enough people staffing the factory. Everyone is needed elsewhere.

It crosses Honey's mind, not for the first time, that she could go into the room right now. There is no door in the factory her keycard cannot unlock; fear keeps her out of anywhere she isn't supposed to be. 

Honey cannot see the machine, but she can hear its mechanical moans more clearly than before. Penny once likened them to the slurred speech of a drunk, and then apologised profusely for hours, as if her Mary could hear or forgive her.

To Honey, the noises are hidden clues; fragments of a song. Tapping a finger on the sticker-plastered doors, she listens out for a tune, buried somewhere in the grinding and whirring and buzzing. She starts humming again, but this time, she can find no melody to mimic, no beat to follow.

With a sigh, Honey turns away from the looming doors, away from the machine. She knows she'll come back for more.

Honey has mechanical dreams. 

She has steel skin, and a body brimming with wires, and somewhere in the distance is a fleshy newborn that screams and screams and screams. 

She knows the child is hers but that it will recoil from her touch, and then the fizz of an electric shock rips through her and she thinks for a moment she might be dying, but instead, the screams subside and she is rewarded with half a second of the most beautiful music she has ever heard before she springs awake, shivering and shaking and human again.

She lies awake in bed, running her hands over her arms and staring up at the ceiling.

She thinks, I used to be a finite resource. Back when the birth rate was dropping and nobody had dreamed up a solution yet, in the days before the machine.

Now all they need is her body. 

She thinks, I have become something expendable. She digs her fingers into her skin just to feel the sting, and wishes she could dream of bleeding hearts and torn tendons, fingernails that snap at sharp angles and eyes that bulge out of their sockets. Anything human.

'I hate you,' she says to the night air, wondering if somehow, some way, the machine can hear her.

'No way,' Penny says, her face going pale. 'It's intrusive. I said last time, I'm not doing it again.'

Honey tries her hardest not to roll her eyes as the two directors standing in front of her launch into their painfully long-winded explanation of how the Machine Maintenance department is so short-staffed these days, and how they'll pay Penny extra, and how it's just this once, we promise.

'It's just maintenance work,' Honey says bluntly, cutting through the directors' speech. 'I'll do it,' she adds as they exchange worried glances. They are both nervous creatures, with constantly moving hands and eyes that stare in all directions, refusing to focus.

The only thing that gives them any aura of authority is their navy-blue uniforms, smartly-pressed and spotless, and their shining shoes. One director coughs awkwardly.

You should all get a different job, Honey thinks, folding her arms across her chest. The machine begins wailing plaintively; the mewling of a child who has no other language. No drunkenness, no music. 

Honey refuses to look at the machine, instead studying the directors, even when Penny glances over her shoulder and sighs sympathetically. 'You have to feel sorry for her.'

Ignoring her, Honey says, 'Am I doing it or not?'

One of the directors shrugs his shoulders, flashing her an apologetic smile. 'Only because nobody else will.'

'Thank you, Honey,' Penny blubbers, reaching out to pat Honey's shoulder. 

Brushing her aside, Honey says, 'You owe me a drink when we clock off tonight.'

'Of course,' Penny gasps, but Honey is no longer listening.

Examining the machine up close for the first time, Honey can't help laughing to herself. It's all dangling wires and long, spidery steel limbs, towering over her like a metal stranger trying and failing to be intimidating, a too-tall teenage boy not yet comfortable in his own skin. 

If the machine really were a human being, it would be awkward, embarrassed with itself. It would try and fail to fit in with its kin. 

Armed only with a screwdriver, Honey gets to work. A laughably simple task, almost mind-numbing in its artlessness. And yet it was too much for Penny.

To distract herself from her irritation, Honey starts to hum. There is no mechanical beat, no melody churned out by grinding gears for her to imitate or harmonise with. She tries to build a song around the whispering of the turning screws, but to no avail.

Bored with humming, Honey starts to sing. It's an old song; a sad one. A tragedy of lost love, the kind of gloomy ballad her mother used to sing her to sleep when she was young. Fed tragedies instead of lullabies, Honey grew to find solace in them, and doomed lovers, destroyed empires and divided families became her black sheep, her twinkling little stars, her Frère Jacques.

Halfway through a song about a mother and child, the machine begins to sing. 

Honey's voice falters but she does not fall silent or even stop turning the screws. The machine's garbled chant is a poor imitation of Honey's clear voice but it is music, nevertheless.

It's just maintenance work.

The turbines start to spin, the pistons start to fire, the gears start to turn. More music. A beat, a background, adding layers to the song. 

It's the job.

Emboldened, Honey sings louder. She doesn't notice the long, spindly talons reaching down, only registering their presence when they wrap around her body and yank her up with enough force to rip the melody from her throat.

It's the job you're paid to do.

Honey drops her screwdriver with a cry and it hits the floor with a mocking clatter as she is dragged through the air, towards the gaping, singing mouth of the machine.

As if realising that Honey has fallen silent, the machine transitions from song to scream. Honey kicks her feet and writhes and cries out, her shouts harmonising with those of the machine. Even now, they make music together.

Looking around desperately for someone or something to save her, Honey stares through a pane of glass and makes eye contact with Penny. She tries to call for help but her cries are wordless and the machine keeps pulling her towards its gaping maw, still screaming.

Penny leans forward, pressing one of the twenty-six buttons. Her fingers don't even tremble. The machine stops screaming.

There is a moment of perfect silent stillness, and then the machine starts to sing as it drops Honey into its waiting mouth. And somewhere, in the whir and grind and hum, is a voice that sounds just like hers.