The machines and Zeno

Zeno quietly observed the contradictory machines travelling down into the pit. The gentle, somehow light manner in which they glided over the rough ground clashed strongly with their bulky frames and firm, heavy contours. The machines were powerful, but the eerie silence when they were in motion unsettled him. Under the darkness, Zeno could discern no obvious wheels at the base of the machines. They were either tracked or some manner of hovercraft. Or maybe his vision was just deteriorating faster than he thought.

The machines were not identical. Some were larger than others. Some looked specialised for shifting ground, others for prospecting and surveying. Not one of them looked harmless.

Zeno could not pick out details, but nightmarish protrusions disfigured the profiles of the vehicles, probably instruments and actuators. Silhouetted against the darkness, the machines looked like the favourite tools of Satan, or perhaps forged especially by some capricious general to strike fear into their opposition.

The horrendous, hushed convoy finished its short trek down to the bottom of the pit. Zeno stealthily crawled forward and craned his neck over the edge, so he could see the gulf below. The machines were no longer clearly distinguishable from each other. The darkness was so inexorably permeable, mingling in amongst every object, that he could discern only a fuzzy, terrifying mass at the bottom of the pit.

Without taking his strained eyes off the assembled hands of the Hades below, Zeno fumbled about behind him for his binoculars. Of course, the antique apparatus was powerless against the poor lighting conditions, but Zeno felt better about at least making an effort, though all he expected to see was a larger indistinct congregation.

Zeno's left hand clasped around a barrel of the aged binoculars, and he pulled them up toward his face. As he hefted the dense apparatus towards his outmatched eyes, something slipped.

He lost grip of the binoculars, and they slid out of his hands, dropping like a rock down into the pit. Zeno's heart choked, his hands clenched.

Shit, he cursed silently.

They dissolved into the murky darkness about a metre down. Zeno suspended his breathing. Nothing could be heard for several seconds, and then...smash. A brittle collision could be clearly heard, reverberating off the hard rock walls of the pit. Cringing at his mistake, Zeno could feel the glass lenses shattering and the wooden barrels splintering inside himself, imagining the ground coming up to punch the now invisible binoculars.

Maybe they didn't hear, hoped Zeno feebly.

But the machines were no longer silent.