A Machine to do Everything

Caleb was locked in the lab every day and night for a whole year until he emerged one morning shouting:

"I've done it! I've made a machine that can do everything!"

"What? Anything?" Asked Cordelia.

"Yes, everything!" Hailed Caleb. 

"Anything?"

"Yes, everything and anything!"

"What, like make toast?"

"Of course!"

"Bake a cake?"

"Sure!"

"Drive a car?"

"Easy!"

"Divert a river?"

"Naturally!"

"Cause a riot?"

"Yes!"

"Move mountains?"

"Yep, it can literally move mountains!"

"Run for President?"

"Just say the word!"

"End the world?"

"Alas, yes."

"Go back in time?"

"Whenever you want."

"Travel the Universe?"

"When do we go!"

"Watch the Big Bang?"

"Front row seats!"

"See the Big Crunch?"

"If we had to, yes."

"Start World War Three?"

"And end it!"

"Cure Cancer?"

"Today."

"So where is this fabulous machine Caleb?"

"It's me Cordelia, I'm it, I'm the machine!"

"But you're Caleb!"

"No, I'm Machine Caleb."

"What? Where's Caleb Caleb?"

"He's dead. He died this morning finishing me off."

"What? How?"

"He put his heart and soul into me. Literally. I run on his heart and soul."

"What? So where's Caleb now?"

"Caleb Caleb?"

"Yes!"

"He's there in the lab."

Cordelia ran to the room and just as the machine had said Caleb was there, his body  lying on the floor with a huge bloody hole rent open in his chest.

She faltered and grabbed a desk. 

"Oh my God!"

"No, not God! It's me, the machine that can do any single thing, except one."

"What?" Said Cordelia, her eyes filled with tears at the loss of her dear friend.

"Caleb gave me his heart and soul one hour before he died and switched me on. I only get one hour. I can't run longer than that unless I get new ones and I need new ones every sixty minutes."

"What? You need human hearts and souls to operate?" Choked Cordelia.

"Yes and for those sixty minutes with new ones I could perform great miracles. I could be a god and solve all the world's problems."

"But you have to kill someone every hour!"

"Yes. It's a design flaw I agree and one that dead Caleb ran out of time to solve. It is what it is Cordelia."

"Well just stop then. End yourself!"

"Oh no, I can't do that. I must go on as Caleb intended. To do everything and anything for all time until there is nothing left to do."

"So you're not a miracle machine at all!"

"No, I suppose I'm not Cordelia."

"Why are you coming towards me?"

"Well, you see, time's nearly up and in five minutes I'll cease to function. That just won't cut it really will it. But this will!"

The machine held a large scalpel in its hand and grabbed the girl by the throat. She kicked and struggled but it was no good. She felt the scalpel enter her chest, slice open her ribs and watched helplessly as the machine's hand ripped out her glistening pulsating heart.

For a split second she stared into it's desolate metal eyes and glimpsed a vast and lifeless abyss, in which mutilated human corpses were stacked as high as skyscrapers and thick red blood gushed through the streets in torrents. 

She realised there and then that this terrible thing would bring an end to mankind in the blink of it's wired eye.

She also sensed her soul being forcibly stolen.

"No, Cordelia, I'm not a miracle machine. I am Annihilation itself!"

The Caleb dropped her broken body, set it's timer to sixty minutes and walked off into the busy city morning, the clock ticking loudly in its grinning head.