Devoured, Patrick stretches his back for the first time in who knows how long and slips the palm glove from his wrist, wipes the sweat off on his thigh. Breathes.
The noise is unexpected: gurgle of digestion, pump of blood, hiss of breath. He is surrounded by tubes, suddenly uncomfortably aware of his own fluids moving through his own tubes, with and against gravity, the regular tick tick tick of valves opening and closing.
He waits for dissolution, for hunger or thirst, but in vain. First he grows bored, then he grows restless; time passes. He drags his desk to more stable ground, his chair, taps his fingers on the edge, and begins again to draw.
Each page vanishes as he completes it. Unknowable outside the monstrous machine burps.