The Infinite Shred Machine (DF)

Pt.03: More beautiful scenery...and somebody is the "third hammer"?

Sam led the rest of the dragons on the way to see the machine. 

"Take your time," he assured, "We're not in a hurry. The machine is here to stay."

As if the pink skies weren't amazing enough, the other dragons were quick to notice the beautiful, turquoise hills in the distance.

"Pink and turquoise," Gee commented, "Colors that work very well together."

"I would think so as well," Alicia replied.

Suddenly, Marc's attention was sunk in by a large, robust, navy blue rock structure in their midst.

"I don't know where I've seen something like that before," he pointed out, "but it looks kinda familiar. And intriguing, at that."

Everyone found pleasure in the blue rock and even took pictures with it. "That's going on a keychain," ZP murmured.

Then they were finally at the feet of the main event. It stood about twenty feet high, and was a tall white box spitting out small snippets of paper at an alarmingly fast rate.

"This is it, everybody," Herman pointed out, "The Infinite Shred Machine you have all been waiting for."

Everyone stared in admiration of the machine. Suddenly, a few of them ran up and investigated the pieces of paper falling from its gigantic beak. 

"Hmmm...." Fred gestured Marc and Herman to come to him, "There seems to be a few marks on the pieces."

"Maybe," Marc suggested, "somebody can help me unscramble them. I'm curious as to what exactly this machine is shredding."

"That seems like a daunting task," Fred assured. "You know, shredding paper results in it being cut into thousands of pieces!"

"Someone say shredding?" Herman interrupted, as he broke into an imitation of his stage presence, despite not having a guitar on him.

"The other shred," Marc laughed off Herman's fun little interlude, "as in shredding papers. Now, what is this shred machine shredding that shouldn't be seen?"

As Sam looked on, everyone helped collect the pieces with marks and unscramble them. After a few hours, they finally unveiled a message, reading:

YOU ARE THE THIRD HAMMER

"I don't know where that could have come from," Marc noticed, "besides, it's 'Three Hammers' not 'Three Hammer-people.' Also, who is this being addressed to?"

"Maybe it knew we were coming," Sam guessed, "and wanted to take cue from our lyrical content."

With that in mind, Marc was busy imagining what other messages could come from the Machine.

From what they had heard previously of the machine, none of them could have had the speculation that it could write its own messages. But the dragons, as a result of this discovery, were even more intrigued.