The only area open enough for Mike to cram into was a narrow mess of abandoned spider webs. He took in a deep breath and instantly regretted it. Dry air drug its way down his throat and sucked the moisture out of his lungs. His body wanted to cough but he held it. Coughing, like most reactions in life, would only make things worse. Self-preservation, sense both common and uncommon, and Thousands of years of evolution told Mike to stay put. A few bolder senses told him to run away. But those voices didn’t understand what having a job meant. For nothing less than a paycheck, Mike leaned forward and wedged himself into the space. He swatted the webs away and made the decision, which he immediately regretted, to start scooting in the space.

No wonder the spiders left; nothing should have to live like this. The further Mike made it in, the worse it got. Coarse concrete scraped his back and electrical components poked in on his front as Mike drug his body deeper into the crevice. Mike swapped between leaning forward into the jutting electrical components, and back against the concrete. Either way he leaned, forward or backward, was pain. He kept trying for some balance between the two that he hoped existed.

The crawlspace was underground. Probably. It was hard for Mike to be sure, the building was so large it was easy to lose track of how high or low anything was. He looked back at how far he’d gone in, how far he’d have to go to get back out. After doing the math in his head, he decided to keep moving. I’ve always hated math.

Eventually Mike gave up finding a perfect balance and decided to rotate between the two. He found it easier to deal with the suffering he understood rather than blindly hope it would end. Just as he finally found a rhythm a strand of spider web brushed against the back of Mike’s neck and his entire body jerked into the components in front. He sat there wedged in, trying to figure out if he was hurt or just in pain.

The further in Mike made it, the tighter everything felt. His back and face burned. Beads of sweat dotted his legs and back. Bright industrial strength light above cast deep, sharp, shadows over the electronics that poked into Mike's front. The light was unnatural and off-color. He felt uneasy just being in it, like his body was absorbing something harmful. His throat was too dry to breath and a spider web was stuck on the inside of his collar and he couldn’t get it out but kept trying and- This isn’t worth it. I can’t be here. I need to get the fu-

Dispensing anxiety relief.

The biochip's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. They were capable of monitoring a user's vitals and could diagnose and treat most biological issues within moments. After a few seconds Mike felt the tension melt away. Reality shifted back into its rightful slot. The interesting and unnerving transformed back into neglected and sad. The light didn't feel unnatural anymore. It was just old, made by the cheapest bidder and installed by an underpaid contractor.

Norms reestablished, please make your way to a more open, less life-adverse environment.

Disable alerts. Mike cut off the voice with a thought and it went away for the time being. It always came back. He didn’t mind some of the alerts, but he hated the out-of-context advice. It was like a GPS telling him to turn left over and over again when left wasn’t an option.

With the voice in his head out of the way, Mike finally got around to the reason why he was stuck between a rock and a sharp place. To locate and fix a mechanical relic; a machine forgotten by time. He shifted forward and a strand of spider web brushed against his nose. This time the scream came out.

“What’d you say?” A woman's voice bounced out of an office, down a hallway, into a service room, crammed down the crevice, before finally landing as a whisper in the crevice where Mike was.

“I said, is the light on?” Mike lied into electrical components and could only hope he was heard. The tech had been fully engrossed in her social media feed when he'd tried to talk to her about fixing the machine. She'd nodded and ‘sured’ her way through his explanation of him getting in the crawl space and stifled a yawn as he mentioned her mission essential job of watching the machine for any changes. No part of their interaction had inspired confidence, but Mike had a job to do, so here he was. He started again, “Is the light off or-

“I don't think so.” She echoed back. Her responding caught him off guard. It took him a second to register what she said. She doesn't think so? It's on or off, where is thinking supposed to factor into that?

Mike couldn't math out a way to ask her what she meant without ending the sentence with ‘you idiot’. So he took what his third grade counselor had called a ‘calming breath’; Mike pulled a deep drag of air in through his mouth, my throat feels like it's full of cotton. He pushed their air calmly out his nose, I can feel every individual hair. He opened his eyes and tried to take in his surroundings with a fresh perspective. That didn't do shit.

“On or off?” he shouted at the utmost limit of what his voice could handle. It hurt a little bit, but oddly made him feel better.

“I think it might be really dim?” Echoed back at him.

“I think you might be really dim,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I said, if it doesn’t look on, it’s not on. So, is it on?”

“No.”

Then it's time to get to work. Mike leaned back so he could get a wider view of all the tech in front of him. It was all oversized and old. Some parts wouldn't look out of place in a museum, the rest would have looked at home in the garbage. Mounds, cylinders, squares of plastic and metal. Everything was laced or peppered with coils. It looked like a post-post-modern art project where the artist was trying to see how much they could get away before being called out on their shit.

He grabbed one wire with a ‘'do not grab’ tag on it and pulled down another one with a ‘'do not pull’ tag. They were just two of tens of different tags added by mechanics throughout the years; masters of getting a machine up and running however they could, and then promptly going home before the duct tape gave and their hard work fell apart.

Glancing over the panels, he could count the layers of mysterious notes, duct tape, and bad wiring like rings on a tree. Their legacy was left behind in historical accuracy. They left a fire hazard, is what they did.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

With both wires in hand, Mike let everything else fade into the background. There was something that made them stand out. Some clue to what he could do to get this pile of rubbish productive again, even if it was for a few seconds.These wires are new. He examined the wires and their years of wear, tear, and disrepair. They were a few decades older than he was. Well, they're newer than the rest. They don't belong here.

The wires had a chaotic and unfortunate look to them. Like spray paint on a classic car. He cut through the wires and stripped back the protective plastic. Just as a precaution, he tested for voltage. He'd already cut the power off to the unit so there was almost no chance it could- His instruments buzzed signaling they held a charge, strong enough to at least ruin his afternoon.

Hey buddy, if you're listening, I could use some more of that anxiety juice. Silence deactivated. Anxiety medication is on standby for the next 30 min- Silence alarms.

Mike inched his way deeper into the crawl space, following the wires. He did his best to keep his mind on his shirt catching on the electronics, and felt the concrete rubbing his back raw. For a moment he pictured his 7 year old self looking from the past, wondering why he was in a tiny crawl space abusing his body and breathing in death, instead of on a spaceship headed towards Mars. Judgemental little prick.

Eventually, out of breath and scraped up, he made it to where the wires entered a custom and roughly drilled in hole through steel paneling. If he'd taken the time to wipe the years of dust and grime off of the note next to the hole, he would have read the words ‘'Don't unplug,” on the wires he was unplugging. “Is it on now?” He called up again

“You’re sure about the dim setting?” She yelled from a much further distance.

“On or off?” He yelled louder.

“Off.”

That meant what Mike had disconnected wasn’t the problem. Well, not the only problem. He leaned back some more, really digging his body into the concrete, and looked around as best he could. Everything was worn and old, but nothing looked worn out or blown out. These things were made to last for every decade they'd been around. Most machines operate just fine until someone thinks there's a problem and tries to fix it until there is one.

He shuffled further down the concrete wall, struggling to keep from catching his clothes on the wires and whatnot on the panel. He felt every bump and groove in the tons of concrete pushing him in from behind. Which was strange because according to my ex-girlfriend, I hadn't ‘felt’ anything in years. She had a point.

Mike kept scanning the machinery as he edged along. Something else was off, but nothing looked off. There were signs of minor shenanigans but nothing definitively wrong. He scanned all the components, worked over every wire. It has to be here somewhere. Maybe…

He spotted an airtight sealed unit wedged between two large resistors; A small box jam-packed full of tiny and hard to handle objects that had been spared exposure to the outside world since some minimum wage worker had crammed them together a lifetime ago. Mike wiped the front of the unit down with his shirt. The words Do Not Open were written in large, clear, bold letters. For once he was inclined to agree. But…

There was an almost imperceptible chance that something had gone wrong in the box. That its precise configuration had somehow flawed over the years. That the worker stuffing the jigsaw of parts into the box had sneezed and that phlegm had finally worked its way to clogging the gears. There's a chance, and everything else, Mike wanted to say the word ‘right’ but after looking around at the mess around him decided to edit it a little, is right-ish.

Opening a sealed box did not usually cause more problems than it solved, it always caused more. Opening one would be stupid, irresponsible, unethical, and according to the many labels on the box itself, illegal. But I don't have a choice.

There's always a choice, saying there isn't is a way of excusing stupidity. Mike slid his thumbnail across the paper seal. The paper didn't cut but shattered from age. He thumbed the latch that would flip open the box and expose it to the chaos of the outside world. Just a few pounds of pressure between perfect order and chaos. Aren't we all? Here goes nothing-

“Wait,” echoed all the way down to the sealed box where Mike's thumb slipped off the lever, “I think the light is on.”

God damnit, “Karen,” he called back and started to shuffle his way out of the crawlspace, “don't press the button until I get out.”

“The button?” She hadn’t remembered him talking about the button. To be Frank, Karen hadn’t known much about the on and off portion of the adventure until Mike wouldnt stop yelling about it.

“Yes, the button, wait before you-”

“Okay, I pressed it.”

There was a racket of gears latching, quickly and higher at first, then slower, lower and heavier. Mike felt the percussion drum in his body and the strain building up behind… behind what? His head snapped left to catch a burst of air out of a valve, next to the exit door. Time to get out of- The door promptly slid down and latched with a series of winding, tightening clicks.

Mike stared longingly at the spot that had just recently stopped being an exit. He thought of the good times, when he swatted away spiderwebs, was in intense pain in his back and front, or when he had only a minor panic attack.

Karen, you're ruining my life. He felt the concrete wall start to shift closer to the electronics. Ending! You're ending my life! His feet slid forward, pushed by the wall behind towards the circuits, bulbs, and other assorted electronics rocking and buzzing in front. Seriously, how does this thing have power?

The buzz grew louder and was joined with a grinding sound, like rocks being crushed into sand. Blue electricity arked over components and turned the air metallic. The world got smaller, tighter, and brighter. The buzzing rose higher and higher in pitch until it drilled into Mike's ears while a dense beat of what had to be metal on metal vibrated his body. Each impact rattled his bones and made his skin itch.

There was barely enough room for his body now between the concrete and the electrical components. None of the electricity has arced into him yet, but he knew it was just a matter of time. His body jolted against the components with each beat, the concrete behind pressing in more and more.The pressure was more than he'd ever felt before; even more than when his father told him to move out and get a real job.

Right before the pressure became too great for his body to handle, and everything that was in sprayed out in a mess of circuit damage that could never be fully repaired, there was silence. The flashing, buzzing, beating, grinding - everything stopped.

“Karen!” Mike’s face was crammed sideways, with concrete on one side and uneven components on the other, one stuck up his nose.

“What?” her voice echoed higher pitch in the narrowed space, and then she added, “Need me to press it again?”

“No!”

The concrete slid back and Mike inched his way towards the exit, desperate and less careful this time. Every second he expected his world to come to a crushing end. His tool belt caught on wires and without thinking he unlatched and left it behind.