This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death

by Неизвестный

  The man grinned. “Like clockwork?”

  She nodded. “Exactement. Isaac is named after Sir Isaac Newton, and with good cause.”

  There was a snort of derision from beneath the blue mask. “Un anglais,” he spat.

  Juliette smiled. “Nobody is perfect, monsieur.” She looked down at the controls that jutted from Isaac’s back through tiny holes in his shirt. “Newton showed us that the world, the entire universe, operates by a strict set of physical laws. These laws are consistent, and they are comprehensible, and, most important,” she stressed, as she manipulated the automaton’s delicate exposed gears with great care and practice, “they are predictable. As predictable as clockwork, in fact.”

  She placed one hand on Isaac’s shoulder and pressed a metal button on his spine with the other. His eyes flicked open, and the man flinched at the sight of them. Juliette knew them all too well; they were the purest white, carved from ivory and shaped and polished for weeks until almost as clear as glass. “We are all automata, monsieur; you, myself, Isaac,” she said. “Our bodies are mechanical creations, wound at birth, following our creator’s will and purpose. And, as such, our inevitable conclusions are already written.”

  She pressed a second button, and with a faint whir, the automaton raised its quill into the air and moved it over the man’s upturned hand on the desk. Juliette watched the fat man’s eyes through the holes in his mask and saw that flicker of concern she’d seen so many times before there.

  Then, in a single smooth motion, the point of the quill was plunged down into the fleshy pad of the man’s index finger and out again. He released a yelp of pain and snatched his hand back, the finger going straight to his pouty painted mouth.

  “Oh, excusez-moi,” Juliette said, her expression disingenuous. “Didn’t I mention that death is always written in blood? Your blood, to be precise?”

  Isaac lifted the quill to its mouth, which opened, revealing a silvered tongue. The automaton pressed the point against this tongue three times, as if wetting it in preparation for writing, a crimson smear left on the shiny surface. Then its mouth closed again, and it lowered the quill to the desk, close to its other hand. That hand turned, revealing a small scrap of paper, and Isaac began to write upon it with the quill. In a matter of seconds it was done, and Juliette walked around to the side of Isaac and picked up the paper. She folded it in half without as much as glancing at it and offered it to the man with a small dramatic flourish.

  “There you are, monsieur,” she said. “Your future.”

  He hesitated only a moment before taking it, but longer before opening and reading the note. When he did, his eyes widened and he laughed. Then he looked at Juliette closely.

  “You know, mademoiselle,” he said, a nasty gleam in his eyes, “I know the Swiss clockmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz quite well. I’ve enjoyed his company several times in court.”

  “Really?” she asked innocently. “You know my father?”

  “I know Pierre Jaquet-Droz,” he emphasized. “He is an old man. You seem terribly young to be his daughter,” the man persisted.

  She smiled at that. “I’m not as young as I look, monsieur.”

  He leaned toward her. “How does it work?” he asked her.

  “I told you—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “How does it really work?”

  She looked at him carefully, glanced around the room, the other guests still oblivious to the drama unfolding, each caught up in their own private scandals. Then she sighed.

  “The primary mechanism is the movement of the right arm,” she said in a defeated tone. “Getting the quill to jab the finger without actually injuring it, moving it to the right place to ‘taste’ the blood, then down to the paper… everything else is smoke and mirrors.”

  “I thought so!” The host of the grand masquerade, the man paying her wages, clapped his fat hands like a child, thrilled with his own cleverness. “It doesn’t actually write, does it? The casing is far too small for such an intricate mechanism.”

  Juliette shook her head. “The message is prewritten in invisible ink, a substance sensitive to light. Once the left hand reveals the paper, the text turns red. The movement of the quill conceals this.”

  “An excellent trick,” he declared, and grinned. “Never fear, mademoiselle, your secret is safe with me.”

  “Merci, monsieur,” she murmured, head bowed.

  He looked at her again, still smiling. “I was wrong earlier, wasn’t I? You are wearing a mask.”

  Juliette shrugged. “This is a masquerade, after all.”

  “Just one suggestion,” the man said. “Something to improve your act.”

  “Oui?”

  He crumpled the piece of paper in his hands. “Be a little more creative with your death predictions. Almost everyone here got the same message. And perhaps make them less obscure.”

  “I don’t understand,” Juliette said.

  He snorted again. “All we got was a name, child. One I recognize, incidentally, a doctor I happened to engage some years back to help investigate Mesmer’s claims of animal magnetism. I doubt that’s a coincidence.” He winked beneath his mask. “After all, if your precious Isaac had proven to be genuine, I was considering employing him again to look into it.” He laughed, then tossed the scrap of paper to Juliette, who caught it out of pure reflex.

  “See Jean-Luc as you leave,” he ordered her. “He will see to your pay.”

  “Merci beaucoup, votre majesté.”

  “Hush now, child,” he hissed, looking around with panicked eyes. “Mustn’t spoil the mystery.” He smiled again, took her bare hand, and bowed to kiss it. “Au revoir, Mademoiselle Jaquet-Droz, or whatever your name might be,” he said, his fat painted lips unpleasantly warm and wet against her skin.

  “Au revoir,” she responded with a curtsy.

  Then he released her and was gone, back to the masquerade, immediately surrounded by lackeys and sycophants. Juliette watched him go, waited until he was lost in the colorful whirlwind of fabric and flesh. Then she opened the crumpled piece of paper and read it. It made no sense to her, but regardless, it filled her with a terrible foreboding. She turned to the automaton. “You know what, mon amour?” she asked it. “I believe it’s time we left Paris.” She glanced out of the huge windows of the ballroom, at a flicker of lightning in the sky there. “There’s a storm coming, I think.”

  She wheeled Isaac toward the exit with some haste, past the blithely dancing nobles, who ignored her as she went. Behind her, on the tiled floor, the scrap of paper lay open, a single word on it, written in a splash of bright-red royal blood.

  Guillotin.

  * * *

  Story by Martin Livings

  Illustration by Aaron Diaz

  NOT APPLICABLE

  I REMEMBER MASHED PAPER AND LEAVES clogging the storm drain and the sun glaring off the glass of the windows across the street, the windows black where the glass was gone. They had us lined up against the wall outside the store, and they moved down the line standing close and questioning us one by one. Jeremiah was two people ahead of me in the line, but I was careful not to look at him. I kept my eyes on the rotting leaves in the street and waited.

  We never should have risked going out in the open, but we heard they had apples in at the store, and batteries. We needed the batteries most. The building where we were staying then had no power, and we’d been staying in the dark since the last batteries died. So Jeremiah and I set out, five minutes apart and on different routes, to see what we could pick up.

  As soon as I came around the corner I saw the lineup and knew it was a trap. I thought about bolting, hurrying past or just turning around and getting out of sight, but one of them smiled and crooked his finger at me, beckoning me over. I went.

  There were three of them in their black uniforms, no badges, no guns, no insignia except the little silver dagger pinned at the collar. These were not police, not army or even Immortals. They were Fulfillment Bureau men. Eac
h of them carried a knife in a sheath. I remember thinking we could rush them, we outnumbered them, we could kill them and get away, but even as desperate as I was, I knew it was hopeless.

  Two of them moved from person to person, questioning everyone with their faces close and their voices soft. The third hung back watching, holding a flat black box in his hand. When they got to Jeremiah I listened close, staring all the while at the delicate patterns of cracks in the concrete. I could hear the answers but not the questions. I heard him rattle off the name and date of birth on his forged papers. Then there was a question almost whispered, and he mumbled, “Gunshot.”

  One of them sucked in his breath, then said loudly, “This one needs to be careful.” I glanced up and saw him pat Jeremiah on the cheek. “It’s a dangerous life for you, isn’t it? You’re going to get yourself in a lot of trouble.” He leaned in close enough to stare up Jeremiah’s nose and whispered, “What are you going to do to deserve that gunshot, I wonder?”

  Then he moved on to the woman next to me, and the other Bureau man came up to me. He had thinning hair, squinting eyes, and a wide mouth. He licked his lips and cocked his head to the side to question me. I gave him my fake name and my fake date of birth and when he asked my cause of death I told him the truth.

  He lifted his eyebrows and jutted his head forward and said, “What was that?” When I repeated it he grabbed my arm and ripped the little card out of my hand to see for himself. Then his eyes bulged out and his lips peeled back from his teeth. He said, “Take a look at this,” and held out the card.

  The one who had questioned Jeremiah came over. He had a soft face and he held his mouth pursed like he was getting ready to whistle. When he read my death he looked me over, slowly and carefully. Then he smiled. “Well, now,” he said, “that’s a first.” He giggled and looked at his colleagues. “That’s a first, I say.” They chuckled. He continued, “We’d better check this one.” Before I could move, he had my arm in one hand and his knife in the other. He looked into my eyes as he made the cut, and I stared back into his.

  He gestured to the third one, who came up and pressed a vial to the cut on my forearm to catch a drop of blood. Then he plugged the vial into his black box and waited. With a beep, the box spat out a slip of paper. The three of them huddled to read it, then smiled again. “This one’s going to be with us for a long time. We’re going to get to know each other real well, aren’t we?” The one with the knife wiped the blade on my shirt and they moved on.

  The person after me was shaking, pressed up against the cardboard-covered window behind him or he would have toppled over. When they asked his death he stammered out something. The one with the knife out raised his eyebrows and said, “Come again?”

  The man goggled and gasped, “Not applicable!”

  With his lips pressed tight, the Bureau man drew a long breath through his nose. “Death doesn’t apply to you? Are you sure about that?” He lifted his knife to just below the man’s eye and held out his other hand for the man’s reading. He glanced at the printed card and flung it to the ground with disgust. The three agents moved on and the man next to me slumped back against the glass with his eyes closed and his skin pale.

  Next in line was a woman wearing a red scarf. “Cancer,” she said when they asked how she would die.

  “Cancer? You’ve got to take care of yourself, make sure you get to the doctor for checkups. Have you been to the doctor recently?”

  “Yes,” she said, and she sounded confident. “Just last month.”

  “Good,” said the one with the knife. “And did the doctor find anything wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Good, that’s good. You’re safe for now, then.” He laughed. “You just have to watch out for the sudden kind of cancer. Do you know about the sudden kind of cancer?” I closed my eyes.

  There was a shriek, and when I looked again the woman in the scarf was in the street in front of us. The one with the small eyes had her hair in his fist. The one with the soft face was looking at me. When he caught my eye he said, “Watch this. And you too,” he added with a gesture to the man next to me. “Watch what happens to people who think they’re safe.”

  I watched. The one who did it seemed bored; he seemed to have his mind on other things. One quick flash of the knife and that was it. They left her in the street with her red scarf pooled around her head.

  They bundled Jeremiah and me into the back of their van. The others they let go with a warning: “Don’t think that NOT APPLICABLE keeps you safe.”

  They brought us to an old school surrounded by chain-link fences. The links were rusty, but the barbed wire that topped the fence was gleaming like new. The silent one with the handheld reader led us up to an empty classroom, closed the door, and walked away. We listened to his footsteps clicking down the hall. When they were gone I tried the door.

  “Locked,” I said, and rattled the knob. “From the outside.” I didn’t think they made them that way in schools.

  Jeremiah asked, “Why do they have us here?” I turned to look at him. He was standing in the middle of the room and his face was sagging like a warm candle.

  “The prisons are full.” I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. It took him a second to remember we didn’t know each other, but then he shook my hand and gave his fake name. After that he was more professional.

  Still he seemed like a weight was pressing on him over the days we were there. We both knew we weren’t likely ever to walk out of that schoolyard again, but he had his GUNSHOT to deal with. When they let us out in the yard we could see two of them pacing the roof, rifles in hand.

  I had it easier, I guess. I knew they wanted to keep me around. So I walked the circuit of the yard all day, from the building to the flagpole flying the Speaker’s red-and-black banner, then to the corner with the mailbox and back to the building. Every once in a while I saw a curtain move in a window of the apartment building across the street, but the streets themselves were empty.

  There were dozens of us milling around, leaning against the walls and rocking back and forth on the swing sets, but for the most part we didn’t speak. Everyone just looked up with frightened glances as they passed each other. I kept my mouth shut. The less I talked, the less I needed to keep my story straight. Anyone could have been working with them.

  It was harder at night when they shut us up in the classroom again. We couldn’t talk there either, but I could see Jeremiah sulking and sweating in the opposite corner. He was hardly eating the bread and beans they brought us, and every day he seemed to slump a little lower. I tried ignoring him and ignoring the cold that poured in through the gaps in the window sockets, just sitting there and hoping he would stop talking. But he kept asking questions. Once he tried asking me what was going to happen to us.

  “They’ll let us go eventually,” I answered. “If they wanted to question us, they’d be doing it already.” It was true that we rarely saw the Fulfillment Bureau. The guards on the roof and the ones who brought us our meals were rank-and-file Immortals. But every once in a while two or three Bureau men would swoop in with their black jumpsuits and silver pins. They would pluck someone off the playground at random and bundle them away. Once we saw the squad that brought us in. One of them gave me a wink, then slipped his arm around the shoulders of a trembling little man in a hat. They walked off. The man in the hat never came back. No one ever did.

  I was walking with Jeremiah in the yard one cloudy day when we heard a sharp boom like nearby thunder and felt the ground shudder under our feet. He stopped suddenly. “What was that?”

  I looked back at him. “Probably a car bomb,” I answered. He frowned. I went on, “It didn’t sound that close. We’re fine.”

  But then there was a much louder explosion, much closer, and we barely stayed on our feet. People started running and shouting. The two men on the roof had stopped pacing and stood looking off in one direction. I could see smoke rising over the rooftops. A half dozen guards trotted out the f
ront door and disappeared around the corner in the direction of the blast. I started looking around for shelter, and movement in one of the windows across the street caught my eye.

  The curtain pulled back and I saw a familiar face staring back at me. He held up a hand with the palm flat down and pushed it down in a quick gesture.

  I grabbed Jeremiah by the wrist and dragged him after me to the nearest shelter, a playground structure of tires propped together near the corner with the mailbox. I ducked behind it and pulled him down flat on the ground next to me. “What’s going on?” he shouted, but before I could answer the air tore open with a crash that ripped the air from our lungs and sprawled us out gasping on the concrete.

  I hauled myself up choking on the thick smoke that was suddenly blowing everywhere. The mailbox was gone and the fence links twisted back from a gaping hole. More white smoke kept pouring up from the broken ground. I shouted, “Run!” and bolted for the opening. Jeremiah was beside me, but then there was a lightning crack and he pitched forward. Gunshot. I saw him fall headlong into the death that was always waiting for him, and the curtains of white smoke pinched shut around me, and I ran.

  Choking and sobbing, my eyes burned raw, I ran with no idea if I was heading away from the prison or back into the arms of the guards. A shadow appeared and grabbed me by the shoulders. I screamed and tried to twist away, but it said, “Let’s go!” and I knew the voice. I followed it through the smoke and the shadows of buildings.

  We stumbled along the alleyways, and the smoke seemed to trail after us for blocks and blocks, shutting out the air and muffling the far-off noise of guns firing and the high, lonely sound of a siren. We ran through the gloom of an underpass, ducked into a culvert, and popped out into the open air on the edge of a little stream through an industrial wasteland. All around us we could see banks of piled garbage and tufts of brown grass, and across the fields were factories and warehouses abandoned for generations.