Tesla Evolution Box Set

by Mark Lingane

  His idle mind led his feet to the western gate. Beyond it was the treasure trove of discarded junk.

  The guard, unfortunately, wasn’t having a cigarette, but sat behind the desk cleaning his fingernails with a long knife. Sebastian took up a concealed position across the road among some barrels and stared into the gatehouse. The dim light from the gaslights cast a yellow glow through the interior, giving everything a golden tint, except for the guard, who appeared jaundiced. The keys to the gate were on the man’s belt.

  By the doorway stood a stack of weapons resting against the wall.

  Sebastian concentrated and they fell over.

  The guard jumped out from behind the table and shouted. He stood in the middle of the room and scratched his head as he searched for what knocked over the armaments.

  Sebastian concentrated and the buckle on the man’s belt flew open. His pants fell to the floor, the keys scattering.

  Sebastian concentrated again and drew the keys under the desk out of view.

  The guard swore, reached down and pulled up his pants. The metal button appeared to have vanished. Holding his pants up, he waddled into the storage room behind the desk.

  Sebastian dashed into the gatehouse and unclipped the key from the ring. He scrambled for the gate and had it open and quietly closed before the guard came out of the storage room wearing a new set of pants.

  Sebastian sighed in relief and put the key in his pocket. He made his way out into the dark to the hill. The mound was dark against the night sky. A few gangs were scavenging through the cyborgs’ remains. Tonight was about the dead.

  He walked around the hill, slowly stepping it out, measuring. It had a two hundred and fifty pace circumference and was thirty feet high, he guessed. Whatever was under it was big. He ran his hand over the surface as he paced the circumference. The strange material felt strong but flexible. But that was all. The feeling he had sensed previously was no longer there.

  Sebastian continued around until he returned to the place where he had initially felt something from within. Once again, he felt strange harmonics ringing in his head, and he sensed a presence but couldn’t tell where. Something beneath the hill was trying to communicate with him. Some kind of animal.

  He focused his mind, attempting to detect something, anything, underneath the surface. Placing both hands on the material, he concentrated as much as he could. He swept down the body until he sensed a bright box, like a magnet, deep within the hill. He channeled as directly as he could into it.

  After he picked himself up, having been thrown twenty feet, he reflected on what he had seen.

  There had been a long tunnel that twisted and twirled as he fell, no, flew down it. Tiny points of white—like stars—flashed past him, traveling so fast they were a blur ending in a blinding flash of bright blue light.

  He felt the weight of the wings in the huge body as they slammed into the ground. He launched into the air at the same time as he breathed out a billowing fireball that engulfed a sea of marching cyborgs. A shriek, hidden, unseen and evil, pierced into him, pain gripping him as the beast collapsed to the ground. Marching feet, pounding rhythmically into the ground, grew in intensity until the sound was deafening. The world shook violently.

  Then all was black. From the darkness arose file upon file of metal men, not cyborgs as they were modified humans, but pure machines, steel skeletons, with no other aim but the termination of humankind. The vision faded.

  The strange machine inside the hill lay dormant but not dead, nothing more than a faint outline. The soil was shielding it, hiding it, protecting it. A machine—not alive, not living, not waiting, but aware. Hidden beneath a camouflaged cover so no one would know.

  He put his hands against the mound. “I wonder who built you. And what happened for you to come to this, resting alone amongst the rubble and junk.”

  He licked the wall and gagged. Definitely not soil. If it were a machine, it would need a power source. Where could I get one big enough? he thought. The tesla coils were powered by batteries.

  He could feel the beast tuning him in as he thought about the batteries. Harmonics buzzed in his head as the creature aligned to his thoughts.

  “That’s really weird,” he muttered.

  That’s really weird, came an echo in Sebastian’s head.

  “Should I be worried?” he said.

  Should I be worried? came the echo.

  Sebastian took an uncertain step away.

  Don’t go, came the echo.

  “I haven’t said anything yet.” He sprinted back toward the city.

  As he approached the gatehouse, he let his mind wander. He could sense the iron weapons beyond the wall and the faint outline of the guard. He concentrated and the swords by the doorway fell over with a loud clatter. The guard shouted and stood. Sebastian concentrated. The guard’s belt buckle flew open and his pants fell around his ankles.

  Sebastian heard an amazingly long stream of swear words before the guard disappeared into the storeroom. He took the key, unlocked the gate and slipped through the gatehouse as the guard came back out of the storeroom.

  The man’s face was bright red. “What are you doing, boy?” he shouted.

  “I was planning on meeting a young lady.”

  “Not tonight, you ain’t. Get away from the gate and go to bed.”

  As he passed the guard, Sebastian dropped the key. It floated gently under the desk.

  “Nikola, what’s under the material shield out beyond the gates? I know something’s there. I can feel it.”

  Nikola drummed his fingers on his desk, looking sternly at Sebastian. “What do you know about it?”

  “It’s a machine, but it’s not like anything I’ve seen before. I’ve seen devices like the ones Mr. Stephenson created. They dance, draw and do lots of clever things, but on a small scale. This isn’t just huge; it seems way more complex than other machines.”

  Nikola sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “The best way to describe it is as a failed experiment from a long time ago. After the reckoning, there were experiments. Things were invented that shouldn’t have been.” He paused for some time. Then he stood quickly. “I have a drawing somewhere.”

  He dragged his finger along the shelves of ancient books until he found what he was looking for. He extracted a heavy tome and placed it gently on the desk. He opened the cover and dust billowed everywhere. Slowly and delicately, he turned the pages until he jabbed his finger at a pencil sketch.

  “It was a war machine,” he said.

  “It looks like a dragon, sorry, a GSFB.”

  “In a way. It’s over four times the size of one. Its power is immense. It adapts to its environment, and can unleash vast amounts of firepower over long and short range. It can destroy a whole city.”

  “And can it communicate?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Could a machine have a mind?” Sebastian asked.

  “What we call a mind, no. Impossible.”

  “Could it do something like tune or synchronize with a mind?”

  “The complexities of the mind are impossible to replicate in a machine. There are a hundred billion neurons in the human brain, interconnected via trillions of synapses. A single firing neuron might communicate to thousands of others in an instant, immensely faster than any technology invented. So, no, a machine cannot have a mind. But some machines can imitate or pretend within a reduced set of operations to have the appearance of having a mind.”

  Nikola ran his finger down the page. “It’s always been our dream—mankind’s dream—to make a replica of ourselves, either like a god … or just so we can have a friend who won’t be mean to us. But it’s been an impossible dream.”

  Sebastian examined the drawing. It was similar to the ones he had drawn himself, terrifying and unstoppable. “How long have we been fighting?”

  “How long has mankind been fighting itself? Forever. How long has mankind been fighting the cyborgs? The best
part of a thousand years, on and off.”

  “Have we learned anything after all this time?”

  “Other than fighting is bad?”

  “But why is it still happening? Surely there must be some reason why the cyborgs are continually attacking.”

  Nikola shrugged but hesitated. “If only we knew. It has been the dream of every Steam Academy mayor to sit at a diplomatic table and talk peace. But they never want to do that. All attempts have ended in disaster. Now you can’t convince anyone to go. So we hide, hoping they’ll give up one day.”

  “But there’s always hope.”

  “But after a thousand years, it would appear not. There’s only endurance. And the cycle repeats, decade after decade, century after century, until no one can remember why. It’s what we’ve always done. And I’m sure the cyborgs are the same. They probably don’t know why they attack us either, other than it’s what they’ve always done.”

  Sebastian listened, but he felt it was all wrong. Someone had to hope for change. Without hope, there would never be any change unless something dramatic happened. “Can’t we use the war machine to stop it once and for all?”

  “Part of me would like to say yes. But if we invoke our machine, who’s to say they don’t have their own? Do we really want weapons that destructive roaming the world? We don’t know how the machine works. Not even how to give it power.”

  “It has batteries. Do you have any of those?”

  “I refer you back to my first point.”

  “What if we were on the edge of extinction?”

  “We’ve been there before and it didn’t help. It would be best to let sleeping dogs lie, Sebastian.”

  Acting by command of and in behalf of the Supreme Hive Commander and Support Facilitators, the peoples of the Hive declare the utter state of impoverishment and desperation. The Hive Imperial General Headquarters has issued at once orders to the commanders of all forces and all forces under Hive control wherever situated to unconditionally stand down themselves and all forces under their control. The time for war is over. The people are spent. Resources have been consumed. The water is gone. The Supreme Hive Commander believes that misunderstanding and generational institutionalized prejudice has led to a conflict that has seen no victor, only pointless death. The water crisis threatens to eradicate the remaining survivors, so the Supreme Hive Commander seeks to establish a treaty. Survival requires peace. Now is the time for the leaders to meet.

  Signed by the Supreme Hive Commander on this day at 09:04.

  27

  “COME ON, SEBASTIAN.” Isaac nearly lifted him into the air with his excessive enthusiasm. “You’ll never see anything like this again.”

  Isaac dragged the half-awake Sebastian by his sleeve through the streets until they came to the western exit. Isaac watched with a huge grin as the procession floated past. At the front of the parade, standing in the rear of the sparkling “chatty” car, stood Gavin, who was doing his best to look regal. Several dignitaries sat in the remaining plush red leather seats.

  “Why is it just him up there?” Sebastian said. “What about me?”

  Isaac raised an eyebrow as he glanced over to Sebastian.

  “I mean us,” he quickly corrected. “All of us teslas.”

  Melanie moved in beside them, elbowing her way through the crowd. Anyone who failed to step aside soon found themselves flat on the ground.

  “Gosh, look at him. He looks so dignified and handsome.”

  “I want the old Melanie back.”

  “Oh, come on, grumpy pants. Today is a good day. The fighting might be over.”

  “You’re not going?”

  She glanced sideways at him. “Er, no. Not this time.”

  “But you’ve got a knife.”

  “Well, it’s a city. A lady has to be prepared.”

  “And two pistols. A broadsword. A short sword. That long belt of bullets. And a sympathy card.”

  “You can never be too prepared.”

  “For what? The apocalypse?”

  “Or a prom date. Same thing really.” Melanie waved frantically at the departing steam car. Gavin finally noticed her and blew her a kiss. To Sebastian, it looked like she was about to explode. She caught the kiss and held it to her chest, then jumped up and down, lost in insane joy.

  He sighed and drooped his head. Even her, he thought. Even her.

  Then came the heavy artillery. Several large boxes on wheels rolled past. They were so heavy the ground shook as they passed. The small front wheels bounced over the cobbles, leaving the large rear wheels to grind slowly, crushing the stones and cobbles underfoot. The steam boiler chuffed away noisily, powering the oversized wheels and driving the horrible machines with their deadly array of cannons and weaponry.

  At the rear came the Zeppelins, floating magnificently, taunting the laws of physics. They were wonders of modern technology. Everyone was cheering and waving flags as the procession passed. Sebastian felt only dread and sadness. He had a deep feeling that something was wrong. Cyborgs wouldn’t give up unless you killed them. That would probably do it. Maybe they really had run out of water. But what he really worried about was that they trusted Gavin, and not him. He had told them the dragons were coming, but they believed Gavin over him. It really hurt.

  He looked over at Melanie again. She was crying, her face a mix of dread, pride, and longing. She’s turning into Bindi, he thought. His mind flashed back to her. What they needed was an army of Mervs. He suddenly felt a little sadness. He missed Merv and Sheila. And also, surprisingly, Bindi. He pulled her handkerchief out of his pocket. It was still wrapped around his mother’s letter. He held them and wished both his mother and Bindi could be there. It was an odd feeling.

  The procession left the city and headed off into the desert. The Zeppelins lifted into the air and performed a synchronized movement that had the crowd howling with enthusiasm. Certainty was assured with such deft control of a formidable force. That’s what the people were crying, anyway. Except for Melanie, who just seemed to be crying.

  Then they were gone. The city was quiet. The turmoil of the previous weeks vanished into the air.

  “We have won, C-C-Commander. Thanks to you.”

  Nikola shook his head. “You know my answer to that, Mayor.”

  “They c-c-come to us on bended knee and ask, for the first time ever, to talk to us. What a breakthrough. The world is about to change, because of you.”

  “Let’s not get too carried away here. One thousand years of fighting should not be swept away without serious consideration. There are many hurdles to overcome before I would trust them.”

  “But you have already hurdled them. You have c-c-crossed the finishing line. This is your time to take the adulation you have earned.”

  “I am but one cog, sir. We all played our role. Others gave more than me.”

  “We shall remember them, place their names on a huge statue, c-c-carve them in stone. I-I-I would very much like to ride out with you, Nikola.”

  “Trade, it is dangerous in the extreme. Even if you were the only able bodied man left, you are the mind of the city. Please reconsider. I’ll come up with a way around it.”

  “We have been at war, and I-I-I feel I-I-I have never c-c-contributed.”

  “You have done more for peace and prosperity than any man before you. Especially Barton, the fool. He’s been out of power for decades and he refuses to let go and now spreads poison and disquiet. You are the lynchpin required for peace.”

  “No. This time I-I-I c-c-come with you. They have requested the heads. That is me. What signal do we send if I-I-I do not go?”

  “Sir, it is blatantly a trap.”

  “You don’t know that for sure. This is my chance to make a name. I-I-I want to be the mayor who finally forges an alliance between two bitter enemies.”

  “Okay, I don’t know. But do I trust them? Never.”

  “You are a man who has faced them in battle. Your emotion is understandable. But thi
s time, I-I-I c-c-command you, er, C-C-Commander. You will take me with you. And you will not leave early. We will have a proper ceremonial parade. We must be seen to do this!”

  Nikola peered into the man’s milky eyes. He had heart, a good heart, but the enemy wouldn’t hesitate for one moment to rip it out given the opportunity.

  “What do we do if they betray us?”

  “I-I-I shall take my rapier. I-I-I was quite the deft hand at school, c-c-captain of the team.” He indicated the distressingly thin blade hung on the wall. “We shall give them a taste of c-c-cold steel.”

  Nikola didn’t know what to say. No certainly wasn’t an option; the man was the leader.

  And the conversation played over and over in Nikola’s mind. He should court martial himself for not being stronger. He should have said no. Now as the bullets flew overhead and the men around him fell, the mayor lay in his arms. A Zeppelin exploded, spreading fire and metal shards over the battlefield.

  “I-I-I did it?” Trade whispered.

  “Yes, Lincoln. You did. A victory on the field.” Nikola’s blood-drenched hands trembled as he held the man. A dragon roared overhead, billowing out a fireball. Another airship exploded. All he could hear were screams.

  “We showed them c-c-cold steel, didn’t we?”

  The frail man smiled. His chest slowed and his eyes drifted off into the netherworld.

  It was a trap, of course it was a trap. Sebastian had felt the battle, an immense surge of power, a great spike of towering light etched onto the back of his eyelids. He gazed into Melanie’s eyes and didn’t know what to say. For days he said nothing, as the city folk, filled with their initial enthusiasm, continued carrying on, confident in a peaceful future. Cheering to each other. Counting the days until the soldiers returned. Except he knew most of them weren’t coming home. What could he say?

  Sebastian searched until it hurt, closing his eyes and falling into the lower magnetic harmonics and reaching out into the desert trying to detect something, ignoring Albert’s warnings about going too deep. Nothing.