Everard Morone swore at the screen in front of him, once again it was flashing red as yet another bastard machine broke down in the fields. The third today and it was barely passed midday. He once again cursed to himself at the irony of how little actual farming he did on one of the largest farms in the sub sector. He was in the living room of his wooden house on the edge of the corn fields. The room was dark as the window shutters kept out most of the sun's rays in a vain effort to keep the temperature down. Other than the small screen hanging from the wall keeping him apprised of the goings on in the fields there was only a small dining table with a simple white cloth covering it and a scattering of wooden chairs.

The house was a strange contradiction. On the whole it was a very basic, almost primitive building with flakboard walls and cheap wooden furniture. It lacked any form of lighting outside of kerosene lamps or candles and you needed to light a match to ignite the ancient stove. But scattered around the house were pieces of modern equipment, screens displaying the status of the machines in the fields, logic engines in the basement working out approximant yields, a small pict taker that Everard had never gotten to work and a vox machine in his bedroom.

Everard ignored the flashing screen, and all the other screens in house which were doing the same, walked past the stairway to the second floor and entered a small kitchen. Taking a glass from a shelf he plunged it into a rusty metal bucket full of water. The Administratum praise be its name had decided in its wisdom that running water was required only for crops and cattle. Evidently it felt that they were more important than the people who actually ran the great farms of Acuada. Everard smirked slightly to himself. Run was perhaps too strong a word for what he and the other inhabitants of Acuada did, the Mechanicum machines and tech-priests ran the farms, he like everyone else was just here for maintenance. He wasn't a farmer; not really, he was more of a mechanic or even more aptly a maintenance man.

Stroking his white stubble beard he put down his glass and turned to head outside. He stopped at the door and turned back to look up at the stairway.

'Candace! I've got to go down into the fields again, another bloody machine has just broke.'

There was no answer from above.

Everard called out again to no answer. Shrugging he opened the door and stepped outside. Immediately smacking into a woman in dirty orange overalls,

'Crap!'

'Sorry, sorry daddy, are you ok?'

Everard steadied himself and smiled down at his daughter.

'I'm fine Candace, were did you come from I thought you were up stairs?'

Candace bristled and pulled at the bandana around her short brown hair.

'While you were asleep in the living room again I went to deal with a broken machine out in sector four, those damn cog boys and their shit that's what the third today?'

'Throne, when I woke up the screen was red again so make that four, this time its sector two.'

Candace scowled and scrunched up her face, Everard hated seeing that look on his daughters face. He knew when he was her age his face scrunched up the exact same way.

'All right dad, I'll go deal with that one too. It won't take too lo-'

'No, I'll go, just cause I'm in an "advanced age" doesn't mean your dad can't show you teens how it's done.'

Candace gave a small smile, Everard was a little more than just "advanced" in his age but he still moved around like he was in his thirties. Glad to get out of the heat Candace nodded.

'If you're sure daddy, take my vox so you can call me if you get into trouble.'

'Hell Candace I can barely get the one in my room to work never mind your's. Just like the pict taker, the smaller they get the harder it is to get the buggers to work.'

Candace shook her head at her father's techno incompetence.

'Fine, just be careful.'

Everard left the house and walked over to a small dusty open topped tracked vehicle which he used to get around. The vehicle was roughly square and barely reached Everard's midriff. Everard had used it for his entire life and had no idea what it was, what it was called or were it came from. He didn't much care, he knew it was tracked, was tough and had never needed serious repair. He knew were the steering wheel was, which pedal was which and were to put oil in to keep the bastard running and that was enough for him.

He checked that his tools were still in the back and leaped over the side into the driver's seat. The vehicle had no doors, Everard suspected that it was once a military vehicle of some sort, he'd never seen the PDF using anything much like it though. On the other hand as far as he knew the thing predated anything the PDF had. Heading off towards the corn fields, Everard reflected on his daughter's and his recent woes. The last week seen no fewer than twenty machines breaking down in the corn fields and Everard and his daughter had been working day and night to get them back up and running.

Everard reached the edge of the corn field's first sector. The fields were divided up into fifteen sectors over a roughly rectangular area of over eighteen hundred hectares. There were thousands of such fields for corn and other crops along with cattle farms across the planet. His house, located just west of the first sector was now completely out sight. Driving along the edge of the fields Everard's vision couldn't penetrate even slightly into the mass of tall crops. The fields had never needed any kind of barrier; crops had always grown to the exact limits of the fields defined hundreds of years ago by the Mechanicum. Now however, for the first time in his life and as far as he knew the first time since the fields were created the crops had begun to grow beyond the fields limits. Everard had seen good yields before but nothing like what he and his daughter had been seeing in the past week. If I didn't know any better I would say their growing wild, Everard thought to himself as he drove along the edge of the first sector.

There wasn't a road exactly along the edge of the corn fields, but the use of the tracked vehicle for over a hundred years had worn a clearly visible path. He could hear the multitude of machines tending to the crops but could only see the tops of the largest of them. The crops now reached over twice his height and obscured anything else. He passed a rectangular piece of wood propped up against a large rock with the words "SECTOR 2" written in fading red paint. He stopped the tracked vehicle and leapt out. He slung the strap of his bag of tools across his shoulder and walked towards the mass of crops. There were supposed to be pathways throughout fields that you could walkthrough but the overgrown crops now obscured them utterly. With a sigh he plunged into the mass of vegetation, hoping he didn't hit a machine.

Instantly he realised his mistake. His world was suddenly very small, surrounded on all sides by vegetation he struggled to get his bearings, he couldn't see and all he could hear was the rustling of the crops he was bounding into. He tried to turn back but he didn't know were back was. He tried to cry out but every time he opened his mouth he gagged on vegetation. Panicking he stumbled around wildly looking for any opening in the mass of crops, he found none. His mind racing he tripped and fell heavily. Groaning he lifted himself upwards, to his relief he realised his fall had led him into a more open area.

In front of him lay a massive machine, roughly spherical the machine was the size of a heavy truck. While it barely came up to his hips around the sides, the machine sloped upwards sharply and at its centre it towered above Everard and the crops. It was the tops these machines that Everard could see before he entered the fields. All round the underneath of the metal sides were lethal looking curved blades. When working, the blades would spin relentlessly as the machine moved around the fields, cutting through and moving the crops into the machine's centre were they would stay until they could be deposited for harvesting.

This one was most definitely not working, the blades were still and silent and Everard could see faint wisps of steam rising from the top.

'So much for the bigger they get theory,' Everard muttered to himself. 'Damn plodders.'

The Mechanicum had designated this kind of machine as a Crop Collector, in its typical lack of imagination. Everard and the other inhabitants of Acuada called them plodders, due to their large size and almost painfully slow speed. Everard could tell immediately that this plodder was down for the same reason as all the others. He could feel the heat rising off it despite the fact that it hadn't been moving for at least a couple of hours. Even the cold machines had been overworked in the past week. Like the others the plodder simply could not keep up with the increasing workload of the overgrowing crops. With almost every working part of the machine overheating, it had finally shut itself down before any serious damage could be done.

Everard whistled to himself and threw down his bag of tools. He knew from experience that only one would help. Putting on his tough grox skin gloves he quickly pulled a rusty crowbar out of the bag and walked towards the plodder. He lifted himself onto the hull, careful not to touch the hot metal with any bare skin and worked his way around to the machines rear. The only way to tell front from rear was the small square panel on the rear side of the machines sloping centre. Normally you could open the panel with a simple screwdriver but

'Yep, fused all together, son of a bitch…' Everard murmured.

Prying away at the panel with the crowbar Everard could have sworn he could feel the crops growing around him even as he worked. He was unsure whether he was having a harder time with the plodders panel or with shaking off the painfully ironic feeling that he was an almost farmer who was about to be killed by his own crops.