by Ryan Tang
At the bottom of the stairs, a jet black door sat at the center of the Eternium amphitheater.
The boy and his companion knelt before the door with their heads bowed down deep, as if in prayer.
The robed boy didn't look quite so sickly anymore. His skin didn't look as pale, and his hair seemed thicker than before. His delicate mouth was set with a determination that made him look many times his age. His eyes glinted with their usual fire. Nothing could change his waifish thinness, but he stood straight and tall as he rose back to his feet.
The screaming came from inside the door.
Someone had scrawled a messy eight-sided scribble on the door. Burnt red gazed out of the forever black.
"A slight vein ran through the stone, the familiar burnt red cutting through a black as dark as space. My eyes widened. Cautiously, then frantically, I began rolling the cool knob of metal around my hands. Before long, my hands were clean, and the lump of Eternium ran burnt red from edge to edge, the same color as our lying ruler's machines. I blinked. It was only then that I understood how thoroughly Eternium was stained with blood."
No matter how hard Alex stared, the shape couldn't come into focus. As she ran her eyes down one line, it bent and twisted into two. When the librarian doubled back for a second look, the bend was gone. It seemed like the line was moving as she tracked it.
The boy looked at the door for just another moment.
Then he fell forwards and kissed it.
His tongue slithered out once again.
Alex stared as the boy starting licking the twisting paint, tracing his tongue over each and every complex step.
For a frozen moment, the only sound in the hall was the melodic slurping of the boy's tongue against Eternium.
Then the bloody symbol suddenly unraveled, snaking off the door and vanishing into the darkness.
The door opened with an echoing snick.
A woman walked out.
Alex stared.
A thick shawl hid her hair. She wore a floral dress tied at the waist. She had an unusually heavy face of makeup, but otherwise, she looked as ordinary as a woman could be. Despite her screaming, there was no visible trace of damage anywhere on her body. She even looked calm and happy, with wide eyes and a gently uplifted smile.
To Alex's confusion, the boy immediately knelt before her.
"Goddess of harsh truths and gentle lies. It is your loyal servant Falo. My people have spent years searching for you. Your imprisonment ends tonight."
Alex never heard the rest of what the boy said, and neither did the woman.
She ignored the boy's words entirely. She lifted a strangely limber arm and pointed right at Alex. The supple limb rippled back and forth, back and forth.
Her mouth never moved.
Her lips, painted searing red, remained drawn in that faint smile that Alex suddenly realized didn't come close to touching her barren black eyes.
Yet she screamed and screamed like she had a thousand mouths, all of them opened wide.
"Kill her!"
"Burn her book!"
"Give me her body!"
CHAPTER 3: THE PEACEFUL ENGINEER
The individual parts of the test were simple enough.
To demonstrate strength, carry a 50-ton block from one end of the room to another.
To demonstrate manual dexterity, wield a variety of weapons – sword, rifle, morning star, and shield.
To demonstrate speed, cross the length of the room within 15 seconds on foot and 10 seconds in the air.
When he'd announced the next generation of Southern Robotics Paragons, Director Stock had started with extreme ambitions. He wanted the new Paragons to balance a thousand tons on a single finger. He wanted them to be capable of solo space flight. He wanted new weapons that nobody had ever seen before, like a gun with a hundred barrels.
But as the weeks dragged on, the around-the-clock teams of engineers were met with nothing but failure. Without Eternium, the wonders of the legendary Paragons were far beyond their reach. The machines were too heavy to even stand up straight. The tests became easier and easier. Today's respective tasks could be completed by a forklift, a crane, a car, and a plane.
And still, nobody had completed a single task.
Tonight's trip to the Spire had been his first time out of Southern Robotics headquarters after a straight month of sleeping in his dad's office. He'd forgotten how good it felt to have the sun shining down on him, to see something other than sleek white wall after sleek white wall. It'd been the same for all the engineers. As the failures continued, the Director's rage had built to a fever peak. Nobody wanted to even seem like they were slacking off. The engineers loudly boasted about sleeping overnight to anyone who could hear them, but even that was no guarantee you could keep your job.
Just last week, Leon spectacularly failed a test session when his Paragon fell to pieces before the first task could even begin. Jared's good friend fell asleep in his office trying to fix his ambitious design. The Director woke him up in the middle of the night and screamed at him to immediately leave company headquarters, ranting until he woke up the entire floor.
"Failure! Failure! Failure! You're the biggest failure I've ever seen!"
"Get the hell off my floor, failure! You don't deserve to sleep on my floor, you failure! Get your failure ass out to the streets where it belongs!"
Even Jared's dad had to admit that the Director was being harsh, but that was how things worked at Southern Robotics. It was the premier technology company of the colonies. The current production Paragons - which couldn't independently move their limbs and had to lie flat on their stomachs - might have seemed weak compared to the legendary machines of Old Earth. However, they were still far closer to success than anything else on the market.
The work at Southern Robotics was fast-paced and strenuous. Director Stock not only demanded the impossible, he expected it. Like all geniuses, he could be erratic and easily irritable, but managing his moods was just part of their job description. His father called it "staying political," and it was worth it.
They knew what they'd signed up for. As the pressure mounted, so did the promised award for a successful design.
Director Stock was now offering a full month of sun fees. Every citizen on Plenty paid Southern Robotics fifteen dollars a day for the privilege of living under the company's false skies. With just over a million people on Plenty, a full month's worth of payments was a mind-blowing sum.
Although he didn't dare to say it aloud and jinx himself, Jared had spent the day secretly planning what he was going to do with that money. He'd make a giant donation to the Library Spire. He'd buy Alex a simulator pod. There were a couple of kids outside the Spire who were always playing basketball. He'd build a new court for them. With a month's worth of sun fees, he and his parents could take some time off to travel. They could see all thirteen colonies and fly above Old Earth. He would have the money to start his own company. He'd talked about it with Duncan ever since they were boys. Of course, they didn't have much of a chance competing with Southern Robotics. The company's sun fees and other government subsidies meant they had an unlimited budget to crush the competition. But they could carve out a different niche for themselves. They'd build Paragons that anyone could buy, cheap but durable machines in contrast to the company's fancy luxury models.
The circular hangar door opened. A technician clambered over and impatiently waved Jared inside. He was skinny and very tall, with a neat little pencil mustache and hair that he'd slicked back behind his forehead.
When he Jared, a sneer played around his lips, jerking his mustache up and down.
"Alright."
He did a condescending little shrug.
"Come in and get started with your last-minute adjustments."
Jared swallowed his annoyance. Instead, he bowed his head and smiled politely as he stepped over the circular door into the hangar. His parents had taught him to always stay both polite and political.
He didn't even know the technician's name, but the man was already looking down his nose at him. Jared was used to that kind of behavior. Most of the technicians viewed him as an upstart, only promoted to design work due to his father's influence. It was typical to work for decades as a technician before being promoted. That was how his father did it.
Jared nervously clenched the key in his hand. The yellow fob was soon slick with sweat. If the test went well, nobody would look down on him ever again.
The hangar lights flashed on, and Jared's machine stood before them.
He turned to the technician.
"I'm ready."
He had no last-minute adjustments to make. He had already done his final check last night. He was certain that everything was just how he wanted it to be.
The technician sniggered when he saw Jared's design. The engineer who'd been in there before him, a handsome man Jared didn't recognize by sight, pointed and guffawed as he packed up to leave the room.
"What the hell is that? A troll? Holy shit! It's naked! You built a naked troll!"
The previous engineer's machine was lying face-down and broken on the floor. Like many of the other designs, its legs had snapped when it tried to stand.
Jared felt another hot flash of annoyance, but he made himself smile. He had to stay polite. He had to stay political. Based on the markings on his uniform, the handsome engineer was a member of the company's Inner Circle. If Jared made a smart comment, the senior engineer could cause him a lot of unnecessary problems. Southern Robotics was full of people who loved causing trouble just for the fun of it. Yelling at someone else was the most popular way to feel better about being yelled at by Director Stock.
Jared turned towards his machine instead, grinning with pride at the innovative design.
His machine wasn't much in the looks department, but looks didn't matter, not when it performed better than all the other machines ever could.
For one thing, it could actually stand on two feet. The unfortunate truth was that without Eternium, it was impossible to build a 50-foot tall machine with human proportions. What happened to Leon and the other engineer's Paragons was common. The new designs were constantly collapsing under their own weight. It was why the currently produced models lay flat on their stomachs.
His Paragon stood just as tall as the Paragons of legend when it rose to its full height, but it was usually stooped down on all fours like an ape from Old Earth. He'd been inspired after seeing a picture in a book of animals from the Spire. The posture worked wonders for weight distribution.
The machine had chunky shoulders and forearms and even thicker thighs and hindquarters. The massive hands and feet were carefully padded with layers and layers of protective gel. His machine could walk without marking the colony floor and move supplies without damaging them. The soft and supple hands and fingers could even be used for rescue missions.
The bizarre shape had other benefits too. The massive limbs could fold in, and the back could hunch over to envelope the rest of the machine. The result was a tight pod-like shape, perfect not only for storage but so pilots could conveniently rest without getting in anyone's way. Jared had been forced to land his Paragon in the middle of the street before. He always felt so guilty watching the walkers shunt into the side alleys. With his design's significantly improved ventilation and the new storage mode, that would never be a problem.
He'd carefully crafted a flight pack, adjusting it to fit his Paragon's strange proportions. The package looked just as awkward as the rest of his machine, but it got the job done. He was relying on ancient technology. The pack employed three pairs of fixed wings stacked one on top of the other, carefully built so that they wouldn't interfere with the spindly limbs, as well as an intricate system of propellers. In conjunction with his machine's extremely light weight, his Paragon was capable of blistering speeds and soaring heights. With Jared's new model, the Waters administration could finally relax their strict laws on house height. There would be no fear of a crash when his Paragon became the new standard.
And to further increase speed and performance, he made another critical adjustment.
His machine had hardly any armor. Only the cockpit and the most vulnerable joints were protected.
He had no intention of using his machine in battle. Humanity hadn't fought in a war since fleeing earth. War was the furthest thing from anyone's mind.
Humanity needed Paragons that could build out the colonies. None of the colonies had been expanded in years, even as the population had grown and grown. When it came to construction, his machine possessed the strength of a thousand people.
All mass-produced Paragons had a codename. Jared called his machine the Peacetime model.
____
The previous engineer finally cleared out, still mocking Jared under his breath.
"Naked troll. Heh. The bigshot's kid built a naked troll."
Jared squeezed the soaked fob again. He'd already completed these tasks many times before in testing. It was just a matter of making it official.
The well-dressed technician gave Jared another disdainful look. This time, he was sneering with the other side of his mouth, and his thin mustache rose in the opposite direction.
"Well, let's see what you can do."
The rope descended. Jared took a deep breath then grabbed on. He reminded himself once again that he had no reason to be nervous. He had already done the tests many times before. There was a loud mechanical whirl as he was pulled towards the massive cockpit. The hatch opened, and Jared stepped inside. He'd built the cockpit to be exceptionally large so that it could comfortably carry up to ten additional people. If his machine was ever used for rescue missions, he didn't want to carry injured victims outside in his hand. He wanted to bring them to safety as comfortably as possible.
Jared sat down in front of the controls and smiled. The controls were the best part. They were simple, intuitive, and easy to use.
There was no fiddling around with all sorts of knobs and levers like on the simulator. The built-in computer could handle most of the work. If he wanted the Peacetime model to be widely adopted, he had to make it easy to use. His Paragon didn't need an Alex to pilot it. He remembered how she'd had snatched him out of the air the last time they played in the simulator. Their whole team had screamed with joy. With his machine, even a total novice could catch someone without killing them. Anyone would be able to step into the cockpit and operate it with only the smallest amount of training - the Peacetime model even came with a preloaded manual.
"Start."
The technician was openly bored. He'd spent over a month watching machines keel over.
Jared's Paragon sprinted over on all fours and lifted the crate easily in a single massive hand. The other arm shifted to the middle to balance the machine better. The Peacetime model galloped across the room, supported by all three limbs. For his part, all Jared had to do was point and click. Just to show off, he threw the crate high in the air and caught it with the other hand, balancing it on a single finger.
"Pass..."
The shock in the technician's voice was the best compliment he could give.
The rest of the steps were just as easy as the first. He completed the tasks without a single snag.
With his test completed, Jared stepped out of his spacious cockpit and grabbed the rope as it lowered him back onto the floor. His smile was plastered on his face. He was grinning so hard his cheeks were starting to ache.
He'd completed all four tasks before anyone else could even figure out how to make their machine stand upright.
Soon he'd be teaching Director Stock how to pilot his machine. The Director always insisted on driving the prototypes himself for public demonstrations. And after that, the Peacetime model would enter mass production!
Jared thought that even the sharply dressed technician was looking at him with newfound respect. He now knew that Jared was more than just another rich man's son.
Jared gave the tech
nician a polite nod.
"So, is there anything else I have to do?"
"Well, I just need to..."
"Hey! Are you Jared?"
Yet another technician he didn't recognize sprinted towards him. Jared tried his best to be friendly and amiable to everyone he met, but Southern Robotics was a very big company. Nearly three-quarters of the colony worked for Director Stock. It was impossible to keep track of everyone. This man had a thick mustache and rimless spectacles. His gray hair shot up haphazardly from his skull.
He bounced anxiously on the balls of his feet as he hastily repeated himself.
"Hey! Are you Jared?"
Jared nodded.
"Yessir."
"This one's for you."
The man held a paper out to Jared, and hurriedly left as soon as he took it. A large stack of identical papers was wedged tightly against the messenger's arm.
The paper was thick, cream-colored, and faintly scented. Jared knew what it was at only a glance.
He felt a thrill of ecstatic excitement.
Only the absolute elite engineers, the best of the very best, made it into Director Stock's Inner Circle meetings. For someone of Jared's age to attend was entirely unheard of. His father had made the Inner Circle at 45, near the end of the Irl Stock Sr.'s tenure, and even that age was considered incredibly young.
Director Stock must have found out about his test!
Jared shot the technician an excited glance, but the thin man only gave him a bewildered shrug.
"We just finished! I didn't have time to say anything!"
Jared glanced curiously around the room. Perhaps the session had been recorded?
He took another look at the invitation and let out a yelp of surprise.
The meeting was in less than thirty minutes!
He hastily thanked the engineer then awkwardly hoisted himself through the circular door. He broke into a power walk as soon as he got to the other side. Running would be undignified, but he needed to get to the conference room as fast as possible.
The Director had deliberately built Southern Robotics's new headquarters to compete with the Library Spire in size and splendor. But without Eternium, he had no hope of building three miles high. Instead, the headquarters were massively sprawled out. The entire compound, including the Director's residence, took up a whole tenth of the colony's space. From the outside, the building was just as impressive as the Spire. But from the inside, it could sometimes be a real pain to get to where he needed to go.