Phoenix, Arizona is a collection of buildings in the middle of a desert that, at some point in time became large enough to be called a city. Nobody planned this, the buildings were never destined for the dizzying heights of cityhood, but it happened anyway. This is evident for two reasons. Firstly, that no idiot would ever build a city in the desert, and secondly, that not even the most depraved town planner could have decided to forgo the whole idea of suburbs, instead electing to build an endless series of tire yards.
On arriving at the airport I noticed that none of the tannoy announcements were made by humans. The usual totalitarian sounding demands and warnings about security destroying our bags were lent a fresh air of menace by a metallic computer voice.
It was going to be a 12 hour stopover, too short to waste my limited funds on a hotel room but too long to spend sitting in the airport playing with my dick. So I went in search of the left luggage lockers, and being unable to find them I asked one of the ever present security staff; whereupon I was informed "They took them out after 9-11." he must have noticed my grimace because he added a smarmy "Oh, don't worry sir" and "It's for your protection." There was a strong temptation to reply "Well then, thank fuck for that!" but I didn't fancy the prospect of being labelled a troublemaker and subjected to further searches by fat, humourless Americans of indeterminate gender.
On leaving the airport I boarded one of the brand new (and at that point still free) Metro trains to downtown. The Metro system had the shiny awesome futuristic look of, well, something shiny awesome and futuristic. When I boarded it seemed that the entire population of the town were out riding the Metro, talking about the Metro and generally engaged in a flurry of Metro related activities.
The highlight of my 12 hours in the desert was an accidental stop at Steve's Green House Grill which I was impressed to find served Orval, a heavenly and quite unique Belgian trappist beer. After several bottles (I felt it was my obligation to make sure that he was cellaring them right).
Despite it being a bright and sunny Saturday there seemed to be relatively few people on the streets downtown, odd for a weekend but understandable since they were all out riding public transit. One of the few exceptions was a confused looking recruiting officer in Army desert fatigues.
It was then I started to put it all together, nobody on the streets, mechanical voices everywhere, endless tire yards. It could mean only one thing, that the city had been taken over by the machines.
It all made sense. The man in uniform wasn't a recruiting officer at all, but the confused survivor of an elite commando unit sent to shut down a military computer gone out of control. The dusty façade of the tire yards was merely a camouflage for sinister factories ready to churn out robotic simulacrum of the cities' inhabitants; and the packed Metro trains were carrying the cities inhabitants to their doom.
I had no reason to think that the machines had been paying me any special attention, so just had to blend in for long enough, not make a scene until I could get out of the city somehow. The most cunning plan I could muster was to finish my steak [shit, in all the excitement I forgot to mention that I was still in Steve's Grill], have another couple of beers, take a taxi to the airport and catch my plane.
The only hitch was a customs officer who suffered from a strange obsession with English Premier League football [possibly some kind of advanced prototype machine designed to root out imposters pretending to be Englishmen]. The only problem was that I'm not quite a typical brit, and even just saying "Ooooh... fucking Manchester United mate! Aaaaah! Yeeeah!" more or less exhausted my football knowledge.
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