everything that wasn’t bolted down, and eventually it shattered. In the laboratory area were three vats, like the one I’d seen toppled. They were filled with that rust. Two of them were. The third was filled with rabbits. They were ripping each other apart. A few of the men were getting ready to spill the rabbits out, but the scientists were begging us to stay away. They listened, and not a minute later the lights dimmed and the hum vibrated the hull. A flash of blue and a spray of sparks burst from the vat where the rabbits were being held. We looked inside and saw that the rabbits were being devoured by the rust. It moved on them like it was alive.

“Marvin, this hot-tempered mechanic, cracked one of the scientists over the head with wrench and started moving toward the others. He grabbed Dr. Klein by the neck and smacked him hard against a rivet. Then he did it again. I tried to help pull him off, but by the time we could stop him Marvin had made Klein in to pulp.

“The scientists told us that the thing in the front of the boat was some kind of ‘time machine’. Those weren’t the words they used, that’s just how I understood it. It could take things apart and rebuild them in the way they would be minutes or days or years from now. They told us that they made the rust in that machine and that they gave it a taste for different things. They said that they started out giving it sea water and plants, but they had to keep giving it more complex things to get it to change. According to them, every time the machine turned on it was like letting the rust grow for hundreds of years.

“All that time we’d been shipping crates full of this stuff around Europe and Africa. We were at war and I’m just a sailor, but before I saw Dobbs like that-in that thing-as that thing-I’d never have thought about morality in this context. I know people were suffering and dying everyday, but this felt different. It felt like real evil. Unnatural.”

Anderson removes another folder from his attaché case and opens it on his lap. “I think we should talk about the fire.” He says while flipping through a series of grainy black and white photographs.

“Good. Let’s talk about the fire! Let’s talk about the god damned fire!” Joseph screams as he grabs his tea cup from the window sill and sends it crashing on the wall behind Anderson. “We can talk about anything you want!”

Anderson, visibly shaken, says, “I’d like to know what exactly caused the-

“We tried to get that thing back on the crane and in to the ocean, no one was supposed to touch it.” Joseph interrupts.

“I see.” Anderson says, looking away.

“Marvin was lifting the casing we had gotten around the mass, but a piece of it wrapped on to his leg and it started to rust. The other men tackled him and tied his arms to a box of bolts and tackles, then they pushed him overboard. He tried to fight it, but he slipped over the side. He never had chance. The water must have been freezing.

“We weren’t thinking anymore, we were like those rabbits from the chamber. Parts of that the crew were everywhere, smeared on walls; pulsing under our feet. One time I was on fishing boat in the sea of Cortez; they have squid there that get big as a man. They jig them with baited hooks and the water starts to run with their blood… that’s when they reach out their arms and rip each other limb from limb. Hooked arms pulling at eyes and fins. Anything that falls in the water is ripped apart and dragged into the black ocean. That’s what we became-feral.

“The more disorganized we became the more vicious the mob grew. It wasn’t a mutiny, it was a slaughter. The captain found a side arm and starting firing into the hold. Some of the men half-trapped inside of that monstrosity got a hold of his legs and dragged him inside with them. He held on to a ladder until we heard his bones actually snap. His limp-armed torso fell into the belly of the beast.

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