Abney Park's The Wrath Of Fate (27 page)

The chief dragged her screaming back down the cobblestone streets while throngs of her neighbors looked on in horror. Not all of them seemed to disapprove of the police chief’s actions, but I did notice that the ones who cheered her defeat all seemed to have a nasty cough.

Back into the train we went with the screaming mother in tow. She was thrown in a holding pen so large it required its own train car. They must have often taken dozens of
Progressors
at once in this thing.

The cell they threw her in was not empty. In it were two automatons, one of which was Gyrod, sitting perfectly still, not moving his head or eyes. He looked dead, or vacant, but I knew better. The other was a small girl, with clearly exposed gears on the side of her head where her hair and been ripped out. I sat close enough that I could hear the mother and the small clockwork girl talking in whispered tones.

The girl asked, “Why didn’t you leave sooner?”

The mother replied, “To go where? There is nothing out there but death.”

The girl said, “But I have heard there is…”

“Sssh!” the mother interrupted, glancing at me with fear.

Soon I could see ahead our tracks led toward a monolithic building, and as we pulled into the darkness around The Change Cage, I could see the base of it contained a series of train tunnels leading from all over the city.

As the train pulled into the tunnel at crawl that seemed almost fearful, I heard the captured mother say to the little automated girl, “Whatever you do, don’t flinch”.

We screeched to a halt on a platform, and the engine let out an obnoxious jet of steam. Two police officers then went into the confinement car on our train, and pulled the terrified woman from the car. Two more officers escorted the automatons out, who went with no resistance, as resisting would show they were self aware. We were met on the platform by a young military man in a shiny black uniform with silver badging. He held a clipboard, and attached to the clip board was a small cardboard rectangle.

He said, “Name?”

Nobody spoke, so our piggy-chief smacked the lady hard in the head, “Tell the lieutenant your name!”

“April Adams,” she said, clearly terrified and shivering.

The young soldier then said to her in a sugary tone, “Don’t carry on so. It’s not as bad as all that, provided you are worth something.”

“Will I see my children again?”

“Hah! Of course not!” he said, now looking offended. He wrote her name on the card, then spoke again back to the chief, “Focus?”

Our officer replied, “Chemistry. Specifically, Pharmaceutical Chemistry.”

The young officer looked at chief through raised eyebrows and small round glasses, “My, aren’t you specific.” His tone was sing-songy, but accusatory.

“I know my job is all,” the police chief muttered in a much deflated tone, his eyes on the iron floor.

The young lieutenant already seemed disinterested. “Take her for processing,” he said, and two of his subordinates dragged her away as the police officers stayed in line by the train. We were obviously the underlings of the military, and I was getting the feeling we weren’t really allowed to wander. That would make this difficult.

On a massive wall I saw a huge signboard that looked like a train schedule. On it was a listing of dozens of disciplines, and under each of these were dozens of names:

Machinery and Magnetism
(842):

John Calloway - tasked

Jeff Webber - dispatched

Philip Porter - tasked

Seamstress or Leather Worker
(632):

Rachel Fenway - tasked

Thomas Bruin - dispatched

The young lieutenant added to the bottom of a list marked “medical” a card reading:

Amy Adams - Being Tasked

The two automatons walked obediently when told, but the girl’s eyes were pivoting quickly around the room. They were led to a large contraption that featured two huge rolling wheels like a rock smasher, each cover in spikes. A conveyor belt lead to this crusher, and as it pulled, huge hammer like weights smashed down onto it. The machine’s operator stood the automatons in line by the conveyor, and turned the machine on. There were bits of metal scrap on the belt, and the weights easily flatted them before they were fed into the crusher.

The operator told the small girl to lie on the belt, facing up. She stumbled a bit getting on it, which made the operator raise his eyebrows, but the girl then diligently laid down. The belt pulled her towards the first weight. As it came down she cried out, and leaped from belt, tripping and falling and breaking on the floor.

“Clearly sentient,” the young soldier said, making a note. “Dissemble her!” he said victoriously, and they raised the small child up and threw her, crying and screaming, into the compactor. The manner in which she was crushed would have made a butcher queasy, but being mostly metal none of the soldiers gave her a second glance as her scream garbled and then stopped.

I was shaking with rage at this point, and my eyes were tearing up, but there were at least thirty soldiers and ten police officers in the room. Luckily, it was over before I really knew what was going to happen, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. I would have jumped to her aid, and all would have been lost. Still, many a long night since I have lain awake wondering if I could have helped her.

Next, Gyrod was told to lie on the belt. The first weight fell towards him, but stopped before hitting him as it did with the girl. He lay perfectly still.

“Not sentient. Find out what it does, and we’ll put it to work,” said the young lieutenant.

“Chew!” said our chief, once again full of boisterous superiority. “You need to get to administration and find out why you weren’t on my list,” he said this with a growl, but he didn’t leave the line of police officers. Instead he jabbed a chubby finger towards a hallway under the sign board.

Perfect!
I thought. I stepped out of line, and headed toward the hallway. Just before I stepped into the poorly lit tunnel I read on the wall:

Clock Work Sentience (616)

Down the drearily iron hall I jogged, taking in everything as I ran. I passed what had to be an administrative office. I passed a room full of a hundred different kinds of automatons, sitting perfectly still with eyes unmoving. I past several hatch doors that led into large vertical tubes. Inside each tube was a platform and a series of buttons, so I assumed these were elevators. I hopped into one, and pushed the button marked “6”. The elevator began to rise. At floor six I stepped out into another hall, this time lined with locked iron doors about fifty-feet apart. At each massive iron door there was large lever, and next to each door was a number on a rusty plaque. I ran down past 612, 614 and finally stopped at 616, “Clock Work Sentience”.

Gyrod waited by the door, blood on his hands and legs. I had a moment of shock, thinking that whoever he killed might have been undeserving of death, as I remembered automaton child’s death. To Gyrod, this was reason enough, and my brain whirred in a moral struggle, not knowing if man was allowed to kill machine. But there were more pressing problems.

“Crap,” I said. “Now it won’t be long before they are on to us!”

“I know. I am sorry,” he said, and he looked it.

I pulled the lever by the door, and heard machinery grind and halt. The door was locked.

“Pardon me,” Gyrod said, and I stepped aside. With one massive finger he sliced through the iron door like paper. He pulled the door pieces out of the way, and stepped inside.

“Father!” he said, and I heard another voice say, “Gyrod?”

I stepped into the room, and this is what I saw: The room was large, perhaps the size of a basketball court. There were piles of automaton torsos and limbs everywhere. There were tables, tools hanging on cables from the ceiling, and a single bed and chair in the corner.

Standing over an open torso in the middle of the room was a gray-haired man in his mid-sixties, holding small tools he used to select various gears from a tray. As he saw us enter, he set down his tools, and removed the massive pair of goggles that covered most of his face.

“Doctor Calgori!” I exclaimed, for it was in fact my friend the Doctor, looking younger and healthier then I had ever seen him look.

“Yes, that is I,” he said in a tired, confused voice. He did not know me.

Now, you must forgive me for tearing up. Although Calgori did not seem to know me, just a few weeks ago I held him in my arms as he died. I strode across the room, I wanted to embrace him, but I settled for an enthusiastic handshake as I was clearly a stranger to him. I said, “It’s good to meet you again, Merlin!” knowing full well he wouldn’t remember his first words to me.

“What? No, I’m….Gyrod, what are you doing here with this
Bobbie
?” Calgori asked referring to my uniform.

“I’ve returned to free you,” Gyrod said, “I am so sorry I left, father.”

“Nonsense, you had your family to protect. And you came back eventually, so all is good! The plan just took longer then we first thought it might,” Calgori said, smiling. Gyrod looked thankful.

“Also,” Gyrod spoke. “My friend here needs help.”

So I quickly told Calgori about our broken time machine, and the smashed orb. Calgori said, “Yes, I know the style of machine you describe, as I am fairly sure it’s based on mine. I arrived here twenty years ago in a balloon with a similar Chrono-adjustment-field-generator. If we could find my machine, we could use parts from it to repair yours…”

But he was interrupted by a gunshot. I turned, and saw Gyrod, a massive pistol at one side of his head, a hole in the other side of his head was smoking. His eyes went blank, and he fell with a crash forward into the room. Black and silver clad soldiers ran in pointing rifles at us. The young officer with the pistol holstered it, and spoke, “I don’t have authority to execute people when they are brought in, but I do have authority when they act such as you have. Take aim!”

“Hold your fire,” said an impossibly deep and confident voice. From behind the soldier appeared four men, if they were men. They stood as tall as Gyrod, and were as black as the Africans we sailed with years ago. They were bald, with giant round shoulders and arms, all of which were adorned with symmetrical tattoos of interwoven knotted lines. They had huge curved blades at their waists, and massive gold cuffs on the wrists of their bare arms.

The deep voice spoke again, “These two are being requested by the Emperor himself. Please bring them to the roof top, and load them into the Imperial Frigate immediately.”

The young soldier looked terrified, and responded, “Yes, sir!” Then someone behind me held some sort of sponge to my face, and I blacked out.