It wasn't called the Intravenus machine in those days, of course, it wasn't called anything. So that's when Tom Sharpsaw came calling. He paid a night-time visit to the Council Yard where all the useless objects were stored. And he found a home for the strange new machine in the Vanishing Palace. Of course he didn't know what the purpose of it was either, not at first anyway, not until he started to work on it, and I'm sure this is where Oris the Robot comes in handy. It was Oris that most probably discovered the secret code of the latest machine, because all the Factory's products are linked in some weird way.
We just don't know the weirdness of the way, that's all.
All Tom Sharpsaw had to do then was turn the secret code into a process that could be coin-operated, by the special coin naturally, and there it was, the star turn of the Vanishing Palace. He painted the sphere black, with the word Intravenus in swirling red letters. He only called it the Intravenus after he'd found out what the purpose of it was, so all us kids were real keen to have a go on it. And I was a bit mad at him anyway, because he hadn't let me help him work on the machine, that wasn't fair. The least I was expecting was first go on the new game. Except then he goes and paints adults only on it as well. It was the first time we'd ever seen such a phrase in Crawl. Tom was very strict about it being for adults only, and so it was only a few men of the town who got to play the Intravenus. And not only men, because some women started to play it as well. They would stare through one of the holes, while a beam of light that Tom had rigged up was shone through the second hole. What they saw inside, we just couldn't imagine. The arrival of the game didn't please everybody, however, because pretty soon some of the older and more conservative people of Crawl started a campaign to have the Intravenus machine closed down, even destroyed. This made us even more curious. We'd ask the players as they came out of the Palace what it was they'd seen in the game, what had happened, what was it like, what was the secret? Please, we'd demand, please tell us what the mystery is.
But nobody would. They'd just walk out of the Vanishing Palace with this glazed expression on their faces, as though they were drunk or something. Near everybody who'd played the game would start to gather around the Factory's outer fence, just staring at the place. Like it was a temple or something. We got so curious that some of us decided to hide in the back room of the Palace while Tom locked up for the night.
There was me, and Bobby, and Janet, and Flo.
Bobby dropped out because he was too scared, I think, so that left the three of us, three girls. I guess that's why we were so fascinated with the machine, not so much that it was adults only, but more because of the name; we all wanted to be in love one day. Because what else could you hope for in a town called Crawl? So there we were, all three of us cramped in the little store room, surrounded by all the bits of things that Tom Sharpsaw hadn't got round to using yet. And it was dark, and scary, and worse still I couldn't help feeling guilty at doing the dirty on Tom, after all he'd taught me. I was going to use the skills he'd passed on to me against him. So how could I not be feeling bad?
But the Intravenus Girl was calling, and that's all that mattered.
Tom lived in some little rooms above the Palace. We had to wait a few hours until all was silent from up there, and every flicker of light had been extinguished. Even then we still waited a while longer, just to make sure. Then we crept out.
It was easy enough to find the box he kept the special coin in. And easier enough with my stealing skills to pick the lock on it. There was the coin! How it gleamed, not like the usual coins at all. This one was shiny, with no marks of hunger. Freshly minted, but how could it be, with a queen's head upon it. Elizabeth II. How long ago was that? Nobody knew.
There was a plan to all this. Flo would keep watch, and Janet would help me with the machine, but I would be the first to look into the hole, that was decided because wasn't I the one who had stolen the key? Tom had suspended the sphere from wires, to bring the apertures up to eye level. Of course that was too high for us kids, so I had to stand on a stool to get to the right level. Janet held the stool while I climbed up, and then I told her to put the coin in the slot. Which she did, making the beam fire into the one hole while I put my eye, tenderly, nervously, against the other.
And I looked inside of Venus.
At first, all was a fog, a swirling of darkness that the light beam cut into fragments. And then the beam would bounce off the inside of the globe, and cross over itself, and where it crossed, a side beam would shoot out. In a few seconds the whole of the inside of the sphere was rilled with these crisscrossing beams of light. So many of them now, they made a spectrum embrace; a meeting at the centre, where the lights fused into colour.
And inside the colours, an image started to form, giving shape to a woman's face. A woman's face I had seen before, in one of the picture books at school. The last supervisor! She was trying to speak to me…
Just then I heard Flo shouting from the doorway, and I thought Tom must've woken up or something, heard a noise perhaps, the woman's voice, or else he'd noticed the beam of light. And the next thing was Janet screaming, and pulling me off the stool.
I was on the floor, with Janet beside me, and Flo running over towards us. And there, rising up on what was left of his spindly legs, Oris the Robot was jabbing at my body with the electric needle and then I was screaming as well, especially when I saw Tom Sharpsaw standing over me, shaking his head in a fearsome rage…
All this has come back to me, because Tom Sharpsaw died recently. He never did make it out of the town, and now his body is just one more occupant of the graveyard. We drifted apart after the incident I've just described, and pretty soon after that he shut the doors of the Vanishing Palace once and for all. He more or less closed himself up in there, only coming out for food, or for the occasional stealing trip. Eventually even those stopped, and we never saw much of him at all. And that was an end to playing the Intravenus.
I went to the funeral, I'm not sure why. I was the only person there. He meant a lot to me, I suppose, when I was a kid, and certainly my life without him became very boring. I work for the council now, processing the Factory's products. That was never a part of my youthful fantasies, was it? But still, we do know a lot more about the place these days, and about the mysterious fourth fence, the one within our minds. I think Tom was a kind of escape, just in his company, maybe that's it. But standing there amongst the rain-spattered tombstones, I couldn't help but look over to where the Vanishing Palace shadowed the thin, dying rays of the sun. The building was in a terrible state; the windows boarded up, holes in the roof where a few birds fluttered to and fro, the whole thing dusted with cobwebs.
What can I say? It was a simple job to work the mechanisms of the lock. Some skills you never lose. Opening the door, it was like going back twenty years, but the sight that greeted me was altogether a shock. The whole amusement arcade had been taken over by the machines. I couldn't say there was a definite number of them any more, because Tom had joined them all together, over time, into one giant apparatus. It was a game beyond all rules, and I could only wonder at the controlling loneliness that had produced this monster.
I turned on the overhead lights. Luckily, the electricity was still working. I stood then, in silent amazement at the sight. The room was filled, wall to wall, with the game. Pipes and wires sprouted here and there, in seemingly random display; wheels waited to turn; fanbelts were stretched over pulleys and cogs; levers were poised; gyroscopes were balanced on the horizon's edge. And there, at the very centre, was the suspended globe of the Intravenus.