I try to focus my eyes on an object twenty feet away for twenty seconds every twenty minutes. It's supposed to fight the fatigue of the ciliary muscles common in proxies, or maybe to fight the atrophy of the muscles, I can't remember. But if I don't set an alarm I'll forget, and hours of dense symbols on bright screens in dark rooms will suddenly elapse, and I'll have sunk far into the machine broth. The pods are all too small for an object to be twenty feet away, so we can be grateful for the small window in the root pod, partially above ground, peering from below like a periscope. Out this window I gaze every twenty minutes, across a stretch of dry dirt and into the plants, a wall of foliage. It would be hard to find a discrete object to focus on in the muddled greenery, if not for the lemon tree providing its idyllic yellow spheres. I pick a lemon to rest my eyes on for twenty seconds. One second at a time I am pulled closer to the surface of the machine broth. I never reach the surface of this liquid, that would take years, but on a good day I can at least prevent further sinking.
Twenty seconds pass, and I return to the machines. FRENZY_STALE_MULE has emitted three colored symbols, beaming bright on its monitor.
I click and hold a grey button on the console, marked with a piece of tape with a drawing of an ear, to differentiate it from the hundreds of other grey buttons.
"For who?", I ask.
A few seconds pass, then a small paper slip is ejected from a slot in the console.
"CITRUS_DISSENT_CITY" it reads.
On a notecard, I draw each symbol with colored pencil, and make note of the recipient machine on the backside. There might be millions of unique symbols, or they might never repeat, either way they are meaningless to me. CITRUS_DISSENT_CITY's pod is downward one ladder chutes, eastward one crawl shaft, then southward one crawl shaft, from the root pod. I traverse the dark tunnels, no axis left out, and arrive at the pod. Finding the recipient machine's console, I insert the notecard in its reader chamber. It spits the notecard back out, a few seconds pass, then a response: seven colorful symbols beam bright on the monitor, casting a pale glow through the windowless pod.
I stash the returned notecard in a trash bag I carry with me, and on a new notecard, with my various colored pencils, I transcribe the symbols.
"For who?" I ask, holding down this machine's labeled ear button.
"FRENZY_STALE_MULE and TRENCH_BLUE_PATHING" the printed slip reads.
Two recipients. I make a second transcription copy, then traverse back to the root pod where the first recipient machine is. Before insert a notecard, my alarm sings, and so I head to the window for respite. I sit on my cushion - a trash bag stuffed with note cards, and look out past the dry dirt, into the muddled greenery, and find a lemon. For twenty seconds my eyes rest on the smooth yellow sphere, becoming weightless and neutral, eyelids half mast. Each second, a tangled and confused ciliary muscle is sorted and smoothed. I feel myself softly tugged by some warm tether toward the surface of the machine broth, caressed. The sunlight through the window warms my cheeks. I can survive a long time I think, here in the machine broth, so long as I can watch the lemons and so long as the promise of one day breaching the surface is alive. But the dirt is dry and shifts in the wind. It threatens to bury the window and cast me under forever.