Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (18 page)

Lars invented a machine so advanced it replaced the human labor force at the plant. He called his machine the Kalt Afdeling System, and no one knew how it worked. He even barred anyone from seeing the revolutionary device. Many believed the claims of his invention impossible—a self-sustaining power plant. They called him a fool, they called him crazy, but the insults died the day everyone walked out of the plant, and the power remained on.

Netta felt the pain of watching scores of friends leave the plant, their livelihood removed. She remained one of the few employees left at the company. After the successful launch of the Kalt Afdeling System, Lars turned his attention to Netta—attention she neither requested nor desired.

As Netta continued working for Lars, Pia noticed changes in her mother. Netta stopped laughing, and then, she stopped smiling. She nearly collapsed at the end of each shift, but not from physical labor, like when she worked long hours at the plant. Then one night, Netta never came home.

Pia Hansen never knew what happened to her mother. She left for work in the morning and disappeared. Police opened an investigation, questioning everyone who last saw the woman. They directed many questions toward Lars, her employer and one of the last people to see her alive. The police found nothing. With no leads, the investigation turned stone cold, and eventually closed.

As unanswered questions mounted, Lars acted. He announced that he would adopt Pia and raise her as his own daughter. The little girl moved into the Rasmussen mansion.

Without her mother, no temporal possession could restore the loss in Pia’s life, and the girl grew despondent. She also found that the person she thought Lars to be never existed. The man who spoke so kindly with others changed into a vindictive bully. Three weeks after moving into Lars’s home, he told her of his decision to move her from the mansion.

“Where will I live?” Pia asked.

“You’re going to work for me,” Lars replied.

“In the mansion?”

“No. You’ll be working in my power plant.”

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Work,” he told the frightened and confused child. That day, Lars himself drove her to the gates of the power plant. After informing her of her new responsibilities, he left her alone, with only her memories for companions.

Always the resourceful child, Pia found living by herself a much better situation than the time she spent living with Lars. In the vast expanse of the factory, no one yelled, no one threatened, and no one hit—living without love the price she paid for those meager comforts. Lars needed someone inside, someone to do this important job. In her, he found the perfect candidate—perfect, because she had no other options.

Pia turned her attention to her duties and the long night that awaited her. Normally, the law required the boilers power down after eight o’clock, but tonight, the people’s need for energy required the plant operate well into the night. That meant two extra shifts for her; one at ten o’clock, and another at midnight. After that, she could finally take a well-deserved break and sleep. She checked her timepiece; it showed 7:50 p.m., ten minutes until her next shift.

Shadows from endless pipes, walls, and wires cast eerie patterns on the dark hallway leading to the heart of the building. Pia approached the room slowly. She could feel the heat, even through the thick metal doors that stood between her and the inferno beyond.

As she walked, the sweat already forming on her small hands made it difficult to hold the clipboard and pencil she needed to do her job. She stood on her tippy toes and hit the button releasing the door. It crawled open and, as she had done hundreds of times before, she entered the room.

She worked as fast as she could, recording the information from each of the twelve boilers, then recorded the numbers into the crawl space. Only two more shifts, and she could finally stop for the night.

Pia took longer than normal to return to her room. The one-time private living quarters for the plant’s security guard contained a bed, bathroom, and a small eating area. The girl slowly climbed the large steel staircase to the room surrounded by windows. These gave the plant’s only occupant an unparalleled view of the vast conglomeration of piping and vents, hallways and secret passages. Lars Rasmussen might have owned the property, but Pia oversaw it all.

Her bare feet ached as calloused flesh touched the cold metal of each step. The day she came to the plant she had shoes—good shoes—but she long ago outgrew them.

Once in her room, Pia lay on the thin mattress of her bed and closed her eyes. As her tiny body tried to recover from the torment inflicted upon it, her mind began to swim in a sea of unconsciousness.

Her breathing slowed and her mind filled with dreams. She saw an entity made entirely of heat, not only physical, but also spiritual in nature. This mysterious being pursued her, and she tried to get away. Pia’s legs began to thrash on the bed as she tried outrunning the horror that progressively gained on her.

She ran endlessly through the plant. The chase ended when Pia saw an area she did not know, a place where she had never been. When she turned back, she expected the monster to consume her. Instead, she saw nothing, no phantom, no threat. Something more deadly, yet welcoming, replaced the dread. The thought jolted her body awake, and she quickly sat up in her bed.

The calmness of the dream replaced her sense of fear. Pia cursed herself for falling asleep, something she could not afford to do between shifts. She’d done it before, and the repercussions were swift and severe. She quickly checked her timepiece and exhaled in relief. She still had time to make the ten o’clock round, but she must hurry.

Pia flew down the stairs. With clipboard and pencil in hand, she reached the boiler room with only a few minutes to spare. She stepped on her toes, hit the button, and entered after the door rolled open.

The blast of heat overwhelmed her. She thought it could not possibly get any hotter inside, but she thought wrong. It wasn’t until the large metal door clanged shut as she left, her readings taken, and she wiped the sweat off her face, that she realized the increased heat burned her exposed feet.

Only then did she feel the searing pain. The floor inside the furnace room reached temperatures hot enough to burn. She sat on the floor of the hallway and tried massaging the pain away. After adjusting the switches, she sat and wondered how in the world she would be able to check the wicked engines one more time.

The red glow from the boilers cast a long shadow of the sad girl on the hard concrete floor. Pia imagined those outside the high plant walls, the children and their parents, and what they planned on doing for their one night of extended freedom, the one night everyone could stay up and welcome in the New Year. She struggled to control her emotions. Ultimately, fatigue and exhaustion overcame her, and memories of better days, happier days, with her mother came flooding back, as if a dam had burst.

For years, she, too, celebrated the New Year’s arrival, when soldiers put down the weapons of death and honored life. She remembered the parties, the delicious food, the joy of laughter, much of it her own. And the fireworks—oh, the fireworks—that filled the sky with millions of points of brightly colored light. She loved the fireworks most of all.

The thought of parties and laughter and fireworks for everyone else but her caused her to sink deeper inside her cocoon of inner anguish. She wished New Year’s would not come, or if it did, she wished she could just disappear before it arrived.

Dejected, Pia finally stood and began meandering around the empty plant, not returning to her lonely room atop the stairs. Each step proved a painful one, but she felt a greater pain inside her heart. She kept walking.

She wandered the empty halls, passing places she visited hundreds of times. She continued until coming to a part of the building foreign to her. Looking up, she read the words: KALT AFDELING.

Pia knew as much about the workings of the plant as any normal ten-year-old child. She understood the boilers somehow made it possible for everyone in the city to have power, power to do the things they needed to do. However, her mind could not comprehend Lars’ system, other than it made possible a ten-fold increase in power from the existing engines. She did know she stood just outside the room housing Lars’s greatest contribution to humanity.

Pia looked at the sign that loomed overhead, and a chill spread through her body. That part of the plant felt strange, foreign, unknown. Pia glanced about her furtively, as if someone lurked in the shadows, watching her. She felt as if a presence would run at her, screaming at her for her obvious disobedience. The silence echoing throughout the building only added to Pia’s trepidation.

She waited, but no one came. Pia checked her timepiece. She had one hour until the next shift, until she again faced the tormenting heat.

Instead of leaving as she knew she should, Pia remained and studied what she saw. She noticed a wall with no indication of an entrance. The hallway simply ended, and where a door should be, nothing. She read the words of caution on the sign and said the words out loud. “Kalt Afdeling.”

The natural curiosity of the ten-year-old overcame the previous fear of being caught trespassing in a restricted area, and she remained, transfixed in front of the silent wall.

“Kalt Afdeling,” she said again. “Kalt Afdeling . . .”

A ping somewhere in the bowels of the plant brought Pia out of her hypnotic trance. She checked her timepiece again and cursed when she realized how much time she had wasted standing before the metal barrier. She turned to leave, but her body disobeyed. And when she finally moved, her motion took her toward the unknown, not away.

Pia stepped closer to the wall and felt a presence, an entity that hid somewhere beyond. She recognized the presence—it was the same one that came to her in a dream two hours earlier. Somehow, Pia
had
to get beyond the partition. It called to her.

Pia extended her hand and touched the smooth surface of the wall. The moment her finger made contact, a light appeared just right of where her finger touched. She touched the wall again, this time where the light seemed to be coming through the metal.

For a few seconds, nothing happened, and then she heard a faint hum coming from behind the metal wall. She took a step back. Suddenly a panel began to move slowly and silently until it disappeared, leaving only a black space where it once stood.

Pia froze. The beating in her chest increased as she stared into the nothingness before her. The black scared her more than her dream, more than her memories of Lars. She shivered with cold even though her body remained warm from the boiler room. An urge to turn and run washed over her. Instead, something inside the space issued an inaudible call to her, and she answered by slowly walking into the darkness.

Once Pia crossed the line where the hallway ended and the unknown began, a flash of brilliant light flooded the chamber, whiter than anything Pia had ever seen in her short life. She shielded her eyes. The brightness of the room overwhelmed her.

Something else hit Pia as her eyes adjusted to the almost painful light—cold air. It swirled around her, comforted her. The freshness also soothed her soul.

A moment after Pia fully entered the room, the panel silently slid back into place, sealing her inside. She didn’t notice. She did notice the stale metallic air of the plant no longer filled her lungs when she breathed, as well as the absence of any sound in the space, only a faint hum felt through her shoeless feet.

Finally, Pia’s eyes adjusted to the point where she could see. What she saw overwhelmed her. She stood in a foyer with a larger area beyond. The floor-to-ceiling windows allowed her to see inside. Huge metal tubing crisscrossed the ceiling, all converging at a single point in the center of the room.

The conduits led to a large machine, but it was unlike anything Pia had ever seen. The vibrations came from the apparatus in the other room. She saw a small entrance door to her left, and she moved toward it.

She unlocked the door, and the silence disappeared, replaced by the hum now audible as well as felt. It came from the contraption. Something else came from the room . . . cold air. It cooled Pia’s body, even her clothes, still warm to the touch from the overwhelming heat of the boilers. It rushed at her, comforting her with a smothering pillow of relief. The open door invited her in and she answered the call.

Pia entered the room and her blistered feet touched a frozen floor. She recoiled. The frozen atmosphere slowly wrapped itself around her. Her feet burned, but not from the fire; from ice.

Pia wrapped her thin arms around her body. She knew she should leave, but the same prompting that drew her to the room begged her to stay. The frosted air reminded her of the times spent with her mother, years ago. Their ill-equipped home provided poor shelter from the bitter winters; somehow, they survived. She remembered huddling around the home’s only fireplace, listening to Netta tell stories of her childhood.

Pia slowly ventured further into the room about twice the size of her living quarters. Shaking, she approached the machine, but as she drew near, something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Behind a silver tube, she saw a shoe—a shoe attached to a foot. She recognized both immediately. The child took another step and came within full view of the perfectly preserved corpse of Netta Hansen.

“Mother!” Pia screamed, and ran to where the woman lay on the frozen floor. She knelt beside the lifeless body and touched her shoulder. She didn’t move. Pia placed her hand on her mother’s cheek and jumped back. She touched skin as frozen as the room around her.

“No,” Pia whispered. “No.” She began to back away from the vessel that once contained Netta’s soul. As she stared at the body, all lights in the room went out, leaving the terrified girl in complete darkness, except for the faint light coming in from the inner room’s door. Pia turned and ran as fast as she could out of the room and into the bowels of the power plant.

She stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading to her quarters. Instead of going to her room, she sank to the floor and drew up her knees under her chin.