What Lies Beneath The Clock Tower: Being An Adventure Of Your Own Choosing

by Margaret Killjoy

  “Comrade Difference Engine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s go.” Difference Engine walks past you, opens the door, and strides into the hallway, leaving you little choice but to follow. She turns a corner and opens an unmarked door. Behind this is a large room occupied by three dozen of the shorter people, mostly gnomes.

  Comrade Difference Engine walks to a strange looking boiler set into the back wall, takes a ceramic mug, and operates a spigot on the boiler, pouring a dark liquid into the cup.

  She takes a cautious sip, then a hearty swallow. She looks up at you and says: “I’m right uncivil before coffee in the morning, and you’d taken my usual bed. I’m sorry.”

  Go to One Hundred and Nine.

  One Hundred and Three

  “A’gog!” you shout. “The torch!”

  “What?” A’gog asks.

  “You have to light the torch! It’s our only chance!”

  The torch is lit and suddenly you can see. It’s as though the room is made of ice, without seams or masonry, without hard edges or corners. The room is an irregular circle, and perhaps a dozen kabouters sit at a table that protrudes from the floor on chairs that are, of course, a part of the room as well.

  But unlike a cavern of ice, this room is flammable, and within moments the walls are burning. Sergei shouts something at you that you haven’t time to ponder.

  “Run!” you shout, but you needn’t have. Everyone in the room understands what to do.

  You flee down the hallway and out into the city, the flames on your heels. By the time you’re out onto the street, other buildings have caught fire, and you run madly towards what you hope to be the rope ladder and your escape. Your long legs help you outpace your pursuit—and with it, your comrades.

  You never turn to look back. You find the ladder and scramble up it, your muscles angrier than they’ve ever been. Three-quarters the way up the ladder, you turn, expecting to see the city in flames. But instead, the fire has mysteriously gone dead. Then it occurs to you—a fire needs oxygen, which is in limited supply in the cavern. After scorching a good bit of the city, the fire suffocated. Light-headed, you rush to the top of the ladder and through the hatch before you join the blaze in death.

  Suddenly, oxygen fills your lungs after the thin, fire-choked air in the city below, and you pass out.

  When you come to, you wish you’d perished below. But you strengthen your resolve with alcohol and crawl until you come to a hallway.

  You wander the tunnels for hours before you find the steps to your tower. The passageway under the stairs slams shut behind you, trapping you in the world above, and you make your way to your room before falling unconscious once more.

  Then, the next morning, you wake up quite sober and deliriously unhappy.

  “There are more than 10,000 of us who live in this city, and now we will all die.” That is what Sergei had screamed at you as you’d fled. You weep.

  Worse, you’ve lost your hat.

  The End

  One Hundred and Four

  “You don’t have to do that,” you say to her as she drops the rifle and ties her cane across her back.

  She doesn’t respond. Instead she crawls out onto the rope and begins to descend. She makes it about halfway before the she is spotted and is shot with a beam of purple light. She holds on for a few seconds as her mouth expresses excruciating pain, but eventually she drops down to the cobbles below.

  For some reason, you don’t hear her hit, though you see it. Grimly, you watch through the spyglass as she lies unmoving on the pavement, bones splintered and piercing her skin. Then you realize that you’ve been seen, and soon the air is alive with beams of pain that seek to find you.

  Fortunately, they appear to have no effect on the envelope or the basket, so you untie the tether and drift slowly away.

  You’re uncertain where to go. You decide to leave the city, but after that, you’ve few ideas. All you have is a balloon, a rifle, and your sorrow. You desperately miss your flask of brandy.

  And yet, the world awaits.

  The End

  One Hundred and Five

  You return to the council and sit once more upon the throne at the behest of the councilgnomes.

  “You’ve seen a bit of the city. Not as much as you’ll be seeing in the days to come, of course. But enough to understand who we are. Enough to understand our motives, I hope? To know that we seek only to educate, to illuminate. We want to work with the goblins, and we hope you’ll help us do that.”

  To tell the council, in all earnestness, that you intend to help find some kind of compromise between their interests and the interests of the goblins, go to One Hundred and Thirteen.

  To tell the council everything you know of the goblin’s plans to attack Hak’kal, such as the strange device in your clock tower, go to One Hundred and Fifteen.

  To pretend to work with the council, but instead spy on them and report to the Aboveground, go to One Hundred and Seventeen.

  One Hundred and Six

  “Very well then,” you say, “you’ve sold me. We’ll wait a couple of days.”

  You hadn’t been talking much on your hike, mostly because you’d been exhausted, and quite unhappy about the forced period of sobriety. But you spend two days or so talking to keep the darkness at bay.

  “I learned about these tunnels from my namesake,” Sergei tells you. “A clever man. Taught me Russian and English, and taught me everything I know about guerilla warfare. He escaped Russia, made it all the way to England. He’s a writer there now. I think you’d like him.”

  “What was his name?” you ask.

  “Sergei,” Sergei says.

  “Oh,” you say. “Right.”

  You tell him all about your life, about looking up to your brother—the wild-eyed revolutionary—but being, by and large, more enamored with absinthe and sin than pistols.

  “Well, if he saw you now, he’d be proud of you,” Sergei says, and those words make you feel both warm and lonely all at once.

  Eventually, your stock of torches is renewed and you cross two continents with Sergei. The great conveyor is like something out of a factory, a belt set across wheels. But it runs for a thousand miles, and you are on it for a week. Sergei explains that it is powered by a Stirling engine run off of heat from cracks in the earth. You keep your ignorance of such mechanics to yourself.

  Eventually, you come to the underground shore of a vast sea, and a town populated by humans, goblins, gnomes, and kabouters—all of whom seem to live in peace with one another. A beautiful stranger walks past, and you beg Sergei to stay in exile here, in this fantastical place, well lit and on the shore of the most impressive sea you’ve ever imagined.

  “If we ask the townspeople to hide us,” he says, “they will. And then the gnomes will come, and everyone here will die.”

  “Oh,” you say, and charter a small boat powered by a propeller that even Sergei can’t explain to you. The trip goes slowly, but it is peaceful out on the water. The fish make for fine eating, and the crew of the boat has excellent taste in wine.

  Nearly a month later, you reach the opposite shore, and the crew of the ship wishes you luck, gifting you with beautiful—if strange—clothes and three bottles of wine.

  You emerge from the tunnels and are blinded by the light.

  “The sun is so bright,” you say, “like I would never have imagined!”

  “It is nighttime,” Sergei says, “I think you’re talking about the moon.”

  “Oh,” you say, and eventually your eyes adjust. It’s a full moon, the ground is covered in snow, and in the distance is a small village.

  “Is that where we’re going to live?”

  “I figure so,” Sergei says. “The Hak’kal Aboveground has connections there. They will shelter us.”

  “How long do we have to stay?” you ask.

  “Until this blows over,” Sergei says.

  It takes forty years before news reaches you. Se
rgei has died of old age a decade past. One night, as you sit before the fire, content, finishing your translations of A’gog’s journal, a young gnome knocks on your door.”

  “Mr. Gregory?” he asks, in English, a tongue you haven’t spoken aloud in years.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m from Hak’kal,” the gnome says.

  “I suppose you’ve come to kill me?” you ask.

  “Oh, heavens. Oh heavens no. I’ve been sent to tell you the news.” And tell you he does: your actions had become legend, and you’d become a folk hero. Finally, two goblin generations later, some young kabouters joined them in their battle, forming a Sergei brigade, and they stormed Hak’kal. The colonialist government was ousted, and worker’s councils that represent all the underground races have formed in order to manage the caverns.

  “You’re a hero, Mr. Gregory,” the gnome says.

  “A hero?” you answer, “no, my young friend. I am an old man, a terrible drunk, and thrice divorced. If there was ever a hero, his story is here.” You hand A’gog’s diary to the emissary.

  “Will you come back with me to Hak’kal?”

  “Oh, oh dear. I’ll come, but just to visit.”

  So once again you cross the underground sea. But after attending a brief ceremony in Hak’kal—a city so war-torn so as to look more like a natural cave than a city—you find your way back to the town on the water’s edge and find yourself work as a fisher, where you stay until your natural death, many years later.

  The End

  One Hundred and Seven

  You shove Emile across the street with surprising force, knocking him over in the process. But a moment later, the leaping assailant lands her wrench just where his head had been. Which is, quite unfortunately, where your arm still is.

  You have only a moment to think about the pain, fortunately.

  “Vas te faire encule, porc-dog,” the goblin says, snarling. She brings her wrench around and up into your genitals, dropping you in surprise, then she stabs the end of the wrench into your eyes. Shortly thereafter, your brain is utterly destroyed, and you die.

  You die in the process of trying to keep a slave from liberation, you die in defense of colonialism and all that is proper, all that is tea and biscuits and empire. In short, you die the worst possible death one could possibly imagine.

  The End

  One Hundred and Eight

  “You lowly mushroom!” Gu’dal yells at you, “You pestilent gnome-fornicator! You, you… you child of unmarried parents!”

  You drift away from the scene of the slaughter, numb. You pile more and more fuel upon the flames, drifting up to where the air is so thin you’re unable to focus on your guilt at having survived the battle, your sorrow for losing. The swift winds of the upper sky drag you quickly away, and when you eventually run out of fuel and descend you are at the edge of abandoned farmlands, near a great forest.

  It turns out that goblins cry tears of blood, and Gu’dal’s face is as macabre a sight as any you’ve seen.

  But stoically, she marches into the forest and returns dragging a dead deer. You make a fire and eat, still silent.

  Then you sleep for the whole of the night and much of the next day. When you awake, Gu’dal has gathered fuel for the balloon.

  “Where to?” you ask.

  “I don’t think I’ve a home to return to. And I’ve the feeling you haven’t either.”

  You nod.

  “Then it doesn’t really matter where we go, now does it? Our lot will be cast with the winds.”

  You smile, something you rarely do while sober. You’ve a rifle, a balloon, and a fierce goblin for a companion. The world awaits you.

  The End

  One Hundred and Nine

  Comrade Pneumatic H. Fourteen invites the two of you over to an intricate stonework table. The ceiling of the cafeteria is arched, like a typical subterranean bar.

  “Why are most of the hallways and buildings down here built to human scale?” you ask the gnome, “They must seem gigantic to you.”

  “No, no,” Pneumatic responds, “when you live your life underground, you learn to appreciate vertical space. If you can jump and hit your head on the ceiling, it’s too low. If your feet have to touch the ground when you’re sitting on a chair, it’s too short. That’s how we gnomes design.”

  “Alright,” you nod.

  “Any other questions?” Pneumatic asks.

  “Why’d you risk rescuing me?” you ask.

  “Know what they do with humans?” Comrade Difference Engine responds.

  You shake your head.

  “You’ve heard the voices from the dark sky above, yes? The operas and ballads and bawdy drinking songs in all the languages of the above-worlds?”

  You nod. “Only humans know how to work the machines then? Or they use humans to gather the musical recordings somehow?”

  “No. There are no machines. The ceiling is draped with a hundred birdcages. In each cage squats a naked human, singing for their supper.” Difference sips at her coffee, failing to conceal her anger.

  “I don’t believe it,” you say, because you don’t. It is simply too much. The gnomes seem so cheerful and kind, present company included.

  “It’s true. They enslave the goblins, they enslave the kabouters…” Difference notices your look of confusion. “The kabouters are the blind ones. They see by echolocation. The gnomes brought them here when they first built the city. They’ve been slaves to the gnomes for their entire cultural memory.”

  Eleven gets up from the table and returns with large bowl filled with a gray paste. Each of your companions takes turns with a metal straw, sucking down breakfast. You try it, and it’s not as bad as you fear. The texture makes you want to puke a little, but the taste is complex and lovely.

  “So now that you’re here, how would you like to help?” Pneumatic asks.

  “Well, I’ve got a couple ideas,” you say, even though you don’t.

  Everyone looks at you expectantly and you attempt to rattle your brain into thinking.

  To say, “Have you any photographic equipment? I’ll create daguerreotypes of the cages and wield them as evidence. Once the press spreads the word, the government will be forced into action.” go to One Hundred and Fourteen.

  To suggest that they return you to the surface, so that you may enlist the help of the subversives you know through your brother, go to One Hundred and Sixteen.

  To ask to see what in Hak’kal might be susceptible to sabotage, go to One Hundred and Eighteen.

  One Hundred and Ten

  You take a step back and watch as the goblin lands her wrench directly on the crown of Emile’s head, caving it in with a single blow. She casts the blood off the head of her tool as though it were a sword—by giving it a quick swish through the air—and takes off running, deeper into the engineering district.

  No one follows. Everyone is too stunned. No gnome cries, no goblin cheers. Somehow, the general peace is unbroken. But, of course, for Emile, who lies dead at your feet.

  Clearly, things are not as simple as the council has led you to believe. You take a flask out of your boot and drink deeply before wandering back towards the council building.

  Go to One Hundred and Five.

  One Hundred and Eleven

  “We have stories like that on the surface,” you tell Sergei. “We tell our children about vampires and other horrors, of people that eat people and hide from the sun. And we tell our children to obey, to always stay in sight. And when they grow up? To obey the police, to always stay within civilization or they’ll be eaten by bogeymen. And it’s nonsense. So no, thank you for the warning, but I’ll be quite content to be on our way, to get to my cold exile in frozen Siberia.” It occurs to you that you’re being quite harsh, but you haven’t eaten much, haven’t had a drink days, and are quite frustrated.

  “Have it your way,” Sergei says, and you continue on.

  You hear feet stampeding towards you, and a screech goes out
in the dark.

  “That wasn’t me,” Sergei says.

  But you can’t answer him. You have been eaten by a grue.

  The End

  One Hundred and Twelve

  You pull on a leather glove and throw burning fuel down onto the gnomes gathered below. Soon, the balloon begins to sink.

  Gu’dal looks at you and smiles. You crouch next to her, up against the wall of the basket, waiting to take the gnomes by surprise.

  When you hit the ground, the gnomes rush you. The first over the wall of the basket is stabbed through the throat by Gu’dal, the next is blinded when you shatter the smoky glass of his helmet.

  You grab a dropped lightrifle and begin to fire. But of course, you are soon overwhelmed. When you die, bludgeoned by clubs and rifle-butts, your last sight is of Gu’dal, viscously lashing out with cane, blade, and teeth, killing those who enslaved her people. Pain dulled by adrenaline, you smile and fall into death.

  The End

  One Hundred and Thirteen

  “I would hate to see bloodshed,” you tell the council. Because I’m quite squeamish is a bit that you keep to yourself.

  And so you spend the next five days hashing out plans to reform relations between the gnomes and goblins. The goblins are to be paid wages for their work, and they will be able to elect a single councilgoblin from among their ranks—in an observational post. You advocate strongly for several key points that would otherwise have been left out of the plan, such as a guarantee of food for every goblin who is physically unable to work.

  You have to make compromises, of course. You had hoped they would include the freedom of travel for goblins, but it had been shot down. In exchange, they conceded to grant leave to qualified goblins, amounting to one day in every five-day. No small thing, you decide, self-assuredly.

  When the Goblin Liberation Act is signed into law, you are allowed to co-sign “on behalf of goblins,” and your heart swells with pride.