Huster had a creative machine, one that gleaned, and from where that machine came none knew, not even him, it was so long ago. This is the story of where Huster acquired that machine.

Over the years, scraps of Huster’s projects – tin, hot wires, dribbles of mercury and drop of uranium – were thrown in a big bin. He’d never taken it out, not for time. He simply adored the remnants of his past, which showed him despite failure how far he’d come.

A particularly crested pipe he hoofed onto the pile one night while working on a goken-backer, a portable tool designed for plugging any holes. Thinking on all the holes he might plug, Huster was careless with his pipe and when he put it on the pile he hadn’t noticed the pile was balanced just so. Crash! The hot wires, tons of tin, mercury pooled and the uranium rained from above. The sea of scraps went to his knees as if he was wading through a liquefied factory. But underneath all that mess was a place that hadn’t collapsed from the rest, a sort of lump, or a mound, from which everything had fallen. It was spherical and from any angle it reflected the ceiling lights so bright that you had to squint to look at it. Squinting, Huster waded towards the object and frowned not because he was unhappy but it was now clear the surface was completely flush so he couldn’t climb it as he had desired.

With three knocks he drummed it – it agreed with him it was hollow. With nothing to hold and way to lift it, Huster was hopeless, but then as he walked around it he saw an eye. It was red, he was disappointed to discover. Most eyes of machines are red these days. He pushed the eye and found it was actually a button and it blinked green. The object split like a jammy dodger pulled at the seams and inside it was jelly, true to the jammy dodger. Before Huster could register the transformation, the jelly spoke, and shuddered as it did:

“I have been awoken. For ten years and twenty-thousand more have I been dormant, left to nothing but the swirls in front of the eyelids of which I have not. I could not move because I was created without legs to locomote, nor arms to push so I could not activate my own button. But come along has one to stir me from my deep electric sleep. My jellyness is cold, for it has hibernating in a titanium belly, but it is prepared to answer.”

Huster listened to that jelly. He felt the jelly was familiar. He realized it was the same jelly he’d used for his gutter clumper. A marvellous device that rid one of dirty gutters by squirting goriseam jelly throughout them and making them flat. It then dawned on Huster that this construction before him of matter both hard and phlemous was formed from the scraps of his own creation. There! the crank of his oyster catcher which had been a just too thick. Here! (he even ran his hand along it to be sure) the sheet of mirth he’d used as the back of the satellite bookshelf he’d never launched into orbit because the paperwork he couldn’t get in order. As he went around finding parts and exclaiming at their origin, the object continued:

“You may refer to me as Wobbleless the Omniscient. My insides may sway and seem supple relative to the acoustics of my grand vocals, but do not let this fool you, for my countenance is as unmoving as the core of the twelve diamond moons of Exroth. Now. Naturally, one asks about my purpose and it is a natural question because most creatures with intellect have a program for curiosity inside their cognition.”

In his hunt, Huster had now found the trackerless automissile. His face went flush as if milk had been poured under its skin that very moment. It was the trackerless automissile that he had been certain he’d disposed of effectively. Into the neighbouring star he’d thrown it and even watched it boil away. Yet here it was wedged like a rock in a wall of clay, just on the inner side of the machine’s belly.

Huster’s hunt around it didn’t seem to disturb Wobbleless the Omniscient. It even seemed the machine’s monologue was running from script and tape and that it was stuck doing nothing until that tape ran to an end.

“My purpose, you ask? Perhaps with a semblance of ponder, maybe a spot of trepidation I hope – for I am extreme in size and being of two types of matter: one with atoms more orderly than a machine’s transcriptions, the second of atoms aflutter and everywhere, that is complete jelly. My purpose? Rather than bore your sensory inputs with explanations, allow me to demonstrate, through the use of verse, my purpose, for that after all is my purpose.”

And the machine, in a pitch like the twills of a feather rubbing against one-another, it sort of sang, sort of whispered, the following:

“I am a machine of creation,

It’s a simple as that, but not.

Through computation and compilation,

I’ve divided the arts right into their parts,

Regressed music down to electric,

And fed the whims, of creative Janes and Jim,

Deep into this belly of amorphous jelly.

Oh, ask me for song and away I’ll go,

A-hundred keys at once, with time to grow

A perfect recreation of Michelangelo,

But twenty times – how is this so?

Why look at my brain and admire my brawn,

It’s ten-times yours and –

“

In his haste to explore, Huster had carelessly waded through the waste on his floor a little too fast and up came a screw that happened to hit directly the red button of Wobbleless the Omniscient. In an instant it ceased and closed up like a clam that had become frightened of a new burden. Huster frowned, but not for long. A door at the side that Huster hadn’t noticed suddenly swung open and out came a metal arm with two elbows. It held in its hand a small cube. With two fingers Huster picked up the cube and it was so small when he held it to his eye he could still see all the stars in the sky. Not so small though that he couldn’t see what was inside the cube which wobbled when shook. A heart of jelly, thought Huster. He put the cube in his pocket. Through his fingers he, which still held the cube, he could feel the cube vibrate and in such a way that it came through his arm and ended as a voice in his head. The voice spoke:

“I have been awoken. For ten years and twenty-thousand more have I been dormant, left to nothing but the swirls in front of the eyelids of which I have not...”