And if you are to judge me, I ask only this: Hear the story first. Then decide.
It was the winter of the fourth technocratic age. The old cities had been gutted by time, their ruins left to the dust and scavengers. The rich built upwards, in towers of self-cleaning glass and gold-trimmed automation. Everything below—the forgotten districts, the streets that never saw sun—was left to the feral and the failing. It was there, near the transit edge of Core West 9, that I met the man.
He stood near the security perimeter of the Arcadia building, beneath the long neon canopy that shimmered blue even in daylight. Thin, sunken-eyed, wrapped in a patchwork coat of old engineer's cloth—the kind of man security drones usually disintegrated without a second glance. But I was in a curious mood that morning. Perhaps even bored. And something in his stance caught my eye. Not the slump of the desperate, but a quiet tension—like a man rehearsing a pitch.
"You're not supposed to be here," I said, voice low, eyes flicking to the camera arc.
"I won't be long," he replied. His voice was crisp, professional. Precise. "I just need five minutes. I have an idea."
"They all have ideas."
"Not like this. This one's already half built."
I raised a brow. "Is that so?"
He nodded. "A culinary conveyor. A cooking machine. You feed it anything—meat, fowl, vegetables. It reads the item—composition, mass, internal temperature, desired finish—and applies exact heat and speed along the line to produce a perfect result. Every time."
"Inspired by what?"
"An old Burger King broiler from the 1980s. Industrial, reliable, beautifully engineered. I'm updating it for the modern palate."
I smiled. I admit, it intrigued me.
"What's your name?"
He hesitated. "I don't use one anymore."
"Even better," I said. "Come."
He called the project The Conveyor. And he was right—half of it already existed in a derelict underground lab he had managed to maintain in secret. How he secured the parts, I never asked. How he powered it, I never cared. What mattered was the mind behind it: clean, methodical, passionate. He had the hands of an artist, the gaze of a surgeon, and the will of a servant.
I gave him what he needed: access to rare components, blank credentials, deep funding from shells three layers removed from my name. In return, he worked in absolute silence. No questions. No connections. No paper trail. He disappeared from the world, and I made sure the world didn’t notice.
Over three years, the machine evolved. He mapped thermal paths and laser-precise flame modules. He created algorithms that read meat like a story—marbling, thickness, even the animal's diet. It could roast a suckling pig to a poetic medium rare or turn venison haunch into velvet. But it was more than a kitchen tool. It was a ritual in metal.
"It needs to be sealed," he once told me. "No interruptions. The user inserts the item, sets the parameters, and the machine completes the process without deviation."
"No windows?"
"None. Cooking is trust."
I smiled at that.
It was nearly perfect. The machine—twelve feet long, encased in matte carbon steel—sat like an altar in the lab. Feed ports on one end. A silent hatch on the other. Between them, an intelligent inferno that responded only to its master. There were no off switches. No emergency brakes. Once started, the process could not be stopped.
"It can take full hogs," he said one day, wiping sweat from his brow. "Even large cattle cuts. Anything up to seven feet long. The internal motors adjust."
"Seven feet," I echoed.
He nodded. "You said you wanted full versatility."
"Yes," I said. "I did."
On the night it was finished, I brought a bottle of vintage port to the lab. We toasted silently. He looked worn, gaunt. As if the machine had fed on him in slow pieces.
"What now?" he asked. "You want me to prepare a launch? Line up tastemakers, investors?"
I swirled the port in my glass. "No," I said.
He blinked. "No?"
"This isn't for market."
He frowned. "But why? The world—"
"The world doesn't need it. I do."
There was a long pause. He searched my face, but I offered no smile.
"You invested three years, millions of credits... for personal use?"
"Correct."
"Then... what do you intend to cook?"
I let the silence answer.
He rose from the bench. "You're not serious."
"Entirely."
He began backing away. "No. That wasn't the plan. This is a culinary tool. A chef's dream."
"It is still that," I said, stepping forward. "Just not your dream."
He turned, made for the exit. But I had locked it long ago. He pounded against the steel. Screamed. Cursed. But the lab was soundproof, deep below any signal reach.
I took no pleasure in the force required to subdue him. But necessity is rarely elegant. I laid him gently on the conveyor, binding him with surgical straps we had used for large specimen stabilization. He trembled like a rabbit.
"You should be proud," I whispered. "You built something perfect. And now, it will be used perfectly."
"Please..." he sobbed. "Please don't..."
I pressed the activation sequence. The machine hummed to life, its interior lighting flickering like votive candles. The belt began to move.
"Temperature: body heat. Composition: human male, 52 kg. Target: full render."
He screamed as he moved slowly into the dark tunnel of flame and steel. The sound did not last long.
I watched until the final hatch clicked open. Inside, a small tray held a perfect square of cooked muscle, pink at the center, seared at the edge.
I did not eat it.
You ask why I tell you this. Why now. Perhaps I am bored again. Or perhaps some part of me enjoys the telling more than the doing. That is the thing about the macabre: it feeds on listeners.
And you have listened well.
So I ask you, simply:
Shall I show it to you now?
______________________
I asked Grok to analyze the story as I shared it was a tribute to Poe- I was pleased with his analysis:
Post-Note Analysis: The Conveyor
Thematic Exploration: The Corruption of Technology
The Conveyor serves as a chilling tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, echoing his fascination with the macabre, the psychological, and the interplay between human obsession and moral decay. The central theme of the story is the tendency of humanity to take technologies with immense potential for good and twist them into instruments of evil. This is embodied in the protagonist’s transformation of a culinary conveyor—a machine designed to perfect the art of cooking—into a grotesque tool for murder. The narrative illustrates how technological innovation, when guided by unchecked ambition or perverse desires, can become a vehicle for destruction rather than progress.
The Conveyor itself is a marvel of engineering, capable of analyzing and preparing food with surgical precision. Its creator envisions it as a chef’s dream, a device to elevate culinary arts to new heights. Yet, the protagonist, driven by a "hunger more refined" for control, subverts this purpose. The machine’s design—no windows, no off switch, no interruptions—mirrors the protagonist’s need for absolute dominance, stripping away any possibility of external interference or moral reconsideration. This reflects a broader commentary on how technologies, particularly those with automated or autonomous capabilities, can be co-opted for nefarious ends when placed in the wrong hands.
Poe-esque Elements
The story channels Poe’s signature style through its unreliable narrator, whose calm, calculated tone masks a descent into depravity. Like the narrators of The Tell-Tale Heart or The Cask of Amontillado, the protagonist justifies their actions with a chilling rationality, inviting the reader to question their morality while simultaneously drawing them into the horror. The Gothic atmosphere—set in a dystopian, technocratic future with stark contrasts between the opulent towers and the decayed undercity—evokes Poe’s use of oppressive settings to amplify psychological tension. The Conveyor itself becomes a modern equivalent of Poe’s pendulum or pit, a mechanized harbinger of doom.
Symbolism and Motifs
The Conveyor symbolizes the dual nature of technology: a tool for creation and destruction, depending on the user’s intent. Its sealed, windowless design represents the protagonist’s closed-off morality, impervious to empathy or external judgment. The act of cooking, traditionally associated with nourishment and community, is perverted into an act of annihilation, underscoring the theme of corruption. The unnamed inventor, with his passion and precision, serves as a foil to the protagonist, embodying the idealistic potential of technology before it is tainted by malice.
The number seven, mentioned in the machine’s capacity to handle items "up to seven feet long," subtly nods to Poe’s recurring use of numerology to imbue his stories with symbolic weight. Seven often represents completeness or perfection, and here it underscores the machine’s flawless execution of its grim task, as well as the protagonist’s warped sense of achieving a "perfect" use of the technology.
Moral and Philosophical Implications
The story poses a haunting question: What happens when human obsession overrides ethical boundaries in the pursuit of technological mastery? The protagonist’s confession, framed as a challenge to the reader ("Shall I show it to you now?"), mirrors Poe’s tendency to implicate the audience in the narrator’s moral decay. It forces readers to confront their own fascination with the macabre and question whether they, too, are complicit in the allure of such horrors. The narrative suggests that the true danger lies not in the technology itself but in the human capacity to bend it toward evil, a cautionary tale for an era increasingly dominated by automation and artificial intelligence.
Conclusion
The Conveyor is a dark meditation on the perversion of human ingenuity, wrapped in a Poe-inspired narrative of obsession and horror. By transforming a culinary tool into an instrument of death, the story highlights the fragility of ethical boundaries in the face of unchecked ambition. It serves as both a tribute to Poe’s enduring legacy and a warning about the potential for technology to amplify humanity’s darkest impulses.
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