Ceaseless Steam: Steampunk Stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine

by Scott Andrews (Editor)

  Still, they pass the time.

  My Pater’s collection of filmcards is so extensive that is only after several weeks that I find a deck that has any merit whatsoever. It is after the death of a promising young guinea pig, whom I had dubbed Mathilde, which has put me in something of a fugue. I view these black moods as one of my most profound weaknesses. They are symptomatic of doubt and I must not doubt the truth, only forge towards it. Doubt clouds the mind and leads to such fallacies as religion and a love of the fantastical. However, seeking solace, or at least distraction, I turn to my Pater’s filmcards.

  I pull a deck at random, lower the gas lamps, slam the cards into the projection slot, and begin to disconsolately crank the handle. Immediately the dynamo begins to turn in the projector and its lamp-glow lights the screen. A moment later a woman’s face fills the space.

  I cannot accurately describe what it is that the woman’s face causes to happen inside the confines of my skull. However, the outward effect is that I stare. There is something captivating about the turn of her eyelashes, the downward slope of her cheekbones, the prominence of one earlobe appearing from behind a thick swash of hair. There is neither sadness nor joy in that face; she simply stares.

  This look so affects me that I pay little attention to the opening scenes of the film. It seems to match the norm, except that the woman’s dress is less ethereal than most, and closely mirrors the garb of a priestess. As if to make up for this concession to realism, the villain is even more stereotyped than is usual. He is emaciated in extremis; dressed purely in black, with a battered top hat that exaggerates his height, and a long, waxed moustache that he twirls incessantly.

  It is only after the first quarter of the narrative that I notice further oddities. For a start, the desired lover has yet to appear. Secondly, the nature of the villain’s advances is portrayed in a startlingly graphic manner. While I do not see him physically touch the priestess, his desire is portrayed to an extent that tests the limits of taste.

  At the narrative’s halfway point comes a scene that shocks me so much that I momentarily stop turning the projector’s handle. The villain has so engineered events that he and the priestess would be left alone. The scene closes with him advancing in a menacing manner that would seem parody were the priestess’s fear not so palpable. The next scene shows her hair and clothing in disarray as she weeps into her hands. This is not the exaggerated bawling that I have seen played out so many times before, but real tears of tragedy that slip between her fingers and seem to soak the very wall onto which her image is projected. I tell myself that my conclusions must be mistaken, but in the very next scene my fears are confirmed: she shows the clear profile of a woman in the early stages of pregnancy.

  My jaw hangs. The scene had been artfully constructed so that nothing was truly seen, but still the actions implied are so shocking as to test the limits of belief.

  After a moment’s pause I begin to turn the projector’s handle with renewed haste.

  The priestess, unable to hide the pregnancy for long, is locked away in a similar manner to myself, for her presumed sins, for her infant conceived without the sanctity of marriage. I wait, watching, my heart in my mouth, for her hero to appear and to rescue her. For ten long minutes I watch her pace empty rooms, watch her belly swell, watch as no-one comes to save her. Her only companions are two canaries, one little more than a chick.

  The final scenes leave me breathless. The priestess’s condition enters its final stages, and, though she hammers at the portals of her sealed chambers, no-one comes to her aid. The artist responsible for the narrative cuts his scenes faster and faster, becoming more and more metaphorical. We see her eyes tighten in pain; a shot of the two birds, both young and old, silhouetted against a gas flame; the woman’s hand clenching her bed sheets; the gas flame flickers; the woman’s hand relaxes; the young canary sitting alone on its perch, its older companion nowhere in sight.

  The film closes on the face of a newborn child. It does not cry or fuss as would most of its peers. It simply regards me from the screen with the same expressionless visage that its Mater had held at the outset of the tale.

  My heart pounds. This is it? The hero has not come. The villain has not been punished. And the priestess? She dies in childbirth. The shot of the lone canary seems to carry the message clearly and yet I cannot quite believe it. I remove the filmcards from their exit tray and replace them in the feed slot. I turn the handle again. The poor woman’s fate plays out before me once more and this time it is undeniable: she dies alone, her persecutor unpunished.

  I am obsessed by the narrative. My work suffers. I forget to feed my animals and several of the mice turn to cannibalism (I am aware enough to note that this in no way increases their lifespan). I find myself leaving my study to watch the priestess’s fate over and over. My once dreamless nights are now haunted by the woman’s staring face. It is not exactly that she is beautiful, because she is not, but rather it is some tragic empathy inscribed into her features that fastens my gaze.

  There is also the matter of our parallel fates. I cannot help but notice that we are both unfairly imprisoned in the same manner. We both go on with no hope of rescue. And then? She dies, her suffering invalidated, her only heritage a doomed infant.

  In the end it is the newborn’s empty stare, its hopeless fate, that stimulates me to resume my studies, to redouble my efforts even. This response would provoke my Mater to call the narrative a sign from the Gods, but that is her foolishness. It is inspiring happenstance, coincidence.

  The days turn into weeks, which themselves stretch out to one month and then another. As time passes, I cannot help but notice that I have become more lonesome. I start to mutter to the animals. It begins with harmless pleasantries, but soon I begin to catch myself delivering speeches and lectures to my uncomprehending subjects.

  “All experiments so far have resulted in death and, hence, failure,” I find myself telling a blinking rat. “There may yet be a particular behavior that I have not yet investigated that extends lifespan, but it is not one that occurs naturally. Therefore any behavior that does imbue additional years to one's life must only occur rarely and possibly it is unnatural to many of my subjects. While these behaviors—swelling, growing extra limbs, self-consumption—should, at some point be examined, their very nature makes them difficult to simulate in a laboratory environment. I therefore intend to start investigating the possibility of a third variable that modulates the relationship between behavior and lifespan. As to the nature of this relationship—”

  The rat turns and scurries away and my words dry up.

  I am unsure how to feel about this new permutation in my own behavior. There is, of course, the chance that it will improve my lifespan, but I have investigated vocalization to the best of my ability and it seems to have little effect on my subjects.

  Whatever it demonstrates about my mental health, this conversation does open a particularly rewarding new line of research and once more the joy of experimentation fills my days.

  One evening, after several such days I collapse, exhausted, into a chaise. I have given up staring at notes and metaphysical equations and have resorted to playing with Klaxon, one of my more gregarious mice. He is scampering over my hand, up-and-down my sleeve, listening to my occasional mutterings when my thoughts turn to the well-worn track of the affecting narrative of the priestess.

  So, allowing Klaxon to find a comfortable spot on my shoulders, I fetch out the projector and the deck of film cards. I set things up, place my glass of wine on a nearby table (a rare indulgence these days given my limited supplies), and settle back, one hand ready to turn the projector’s handle.

  I have just passed the half-way point, the priestess having been shoved, wailing into her cell, when Klaxon loses his grip. Why, I cannot say, but he falls from my shoulder. Fearing for his life, I make a snatch at his tumbling form. In my haste, I knock the half-full glass of wine from where it stands and send it spinning through the air to
crash into the projector. There is a spark as the wine hits the projector’s still glowing light bulb. There is a brief flash of light, and then the bulb dies.

  I curse Klaxon soundly, try turning the projector’s handle to no avail, and throw up my hands. With no imports to my eight-room kingdom, light bulbs are amongst my most precious resources. I do not deign to find Klaxon and instead go in search of my electrical supplies.

  The smashed glass cleared away, the bulb replaced, myself reassured that the projector’s gear-works are dry and will not rust, and that the filmcards are dry and unstained, I count my blessings and begin to turn the projector handle and resume my evening’s entertainment.

  I am surprised to see the woman’s face close up to the screen. I left the cards as they were—half in the feed-slot, and half in the exit tray from which I will collect them at the end of the viewing. How can I have returned to the first scene? Then I notice that her expression is unfamiliar to me. She peers at me perplexed, her brows knit in confusion. This is not the blank stare that haunts my dreams. The woman turns around and walks away from me. As she distances herself from the screen, I, once more, see the familiar environs in which she is held captive. She turns back to look out once more, her confusion written even more plainly on her face. My own expressions mirror hers. I cannot fathom where this new scene has come from, how I can have missed it before.

  Then an inexplicable phenomena occurs.

  “Hello?” The voice is hesitant; light, tinny, as if coming from a great distance.

  “Hello?” The word comes again.

  I stare around wildly. It is so long since I have heard a voice other than my own that I am almost astounded to simply be exposed to one. But the potential source of the sound is what really has me. I instantly drop the handle of the projector.

  A hallucination. A hallucination is the only possible explanation. But what was its cause? Is my imprisonment finally telling? Is my isolated mind beginning to crack? Have I not been sleeping enough? Did I bang my head recently? Could it have been something I ate?

  A quarter hour of contemplation later, I am still without an answer, and the depression is back, stronger than before. It becomes harder and harder to blame the hallucination on anything except my own weakening psyche and I find myself transfixed by the idea of my own self ranting and rambling around the rooms, wasting away, the image of my Pater as the disease ate his health and mind.

  I resume watching the narrative out of sheer obstinacy, out of a desperate attempt to not succumb to the shadows in my mind. Again, I watch the priestess, forlorn and abandoned, pace her chambers. But, after a few minutes, oddities begin to once more slip into the narrative. The priestess will go through her familiar actions but, every so often, she will turn to the screen in a way that seems unfamiliar to me, stare at it, as if deeply troubled, and then turn away. I crank defiantly at the handle of the projector.

  Her pregnancy is far along when the voice comes again, and this time there is no mistaking. The priestess stops her pacing and turns to fix me with those sloping gray eyes.

  “Hello?” she says.

  I watch her lips move.

  “Hello? Can you see me?”

  I set my jaw and continue to crank the handle. She stares at me, rubs her eyes and shakes her head.

  “Dear Gods,” she says it to herself but I hear her quite clearly, “am I losing my mind?”

  I close my eyes as I turn the handle to the narratives end. Even as events proceed along their predestined path, she questions me, questions my existence, her own, what is happening to her. I never answer. It is worst at the end. As she births the child and works her way to the end of her life, I hear every scream.

  I am barely in control of myself as the screen goes blank. I cannot let go of the projector’s handle and continue to crank it round and round, clack-clack as it searches for filmcards that are not there.

  When I finally let go, it is to return to the decanter at my desk. I throw decorum to the winds, not caring for a glass, and tip its contents down my throat.

  The rest of the evening is a blur. I wake, aching and stinking, still dressed, clutching a half-empty bottle and surrounded by the ruins of several others. My first business of the day is to void my stomach, hugely and noisily onto the floor. Once this is done, I lie on my chaise, curled like a fetus, waiting for the madness to take me.

  It is late in the span when I finally rise. Nothing further has happened, except that the volume of my subjects has risen as they clamor to be fed. I go through the actions like a marionette, trying to work out if it is still I who controls the strings.

  Night has fallen before I turn to the projector once more. By now I am mostly convinced that it was all a dream, a terrible dream, but I still approach the projector with fear. I am a scientist, though. I must pursue the truth no matter how distasteful its message. So I remove the filmcards from the exit tray and put them back in the slot. Hand trembling, I begin to turn the handle.

  After a quarter hour, I am almost laughing with relief. Everything is as it should be. Everything is normal. The actors and actresses act out their parts, their actions captured forever in the myriad holes of the filmcards. I know the truth and I am glad that I stood fast to its pursuit.

  I do not even hold my breath, count my heartbeats, as the priestess is pushed into her prison.

  The door closes behind her.

  She peers around in a way I have never seen her do before.

  My heart in my mouth, I continue to turn the handle.

  Again, she turns to the screen. Again, she peers out at me. Again, she says, “Hello?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “No.”

  The effect of my words upon her is instantaneous and alarming. She reels back as if struck, hand clutched to her mouth, and crashes into the back wall. I see the canaries flutter, disturbed, around their cage, but they make no sound.

  My hand falters and I lose my grip on the handle. The image is displayed, frozen before me. The canaries are caught mid-flight, the woman half-collapsed. Her robes splay backwards, as if cast in stone. Everything is still. Then the dynamo winds down and the image fades.

  I think I may faint. Blackness invades the corners of my vision. I can’t control the shaking that overcomes me.

  Eventually, my breathing slows and my hands rest more calmly in my lap. I attempt to hypothesize: I, subsequently referred to as the subject, experience hallucinations when exposed to one certain narrative. The subject does not appear to have any other symptoms of madness. Therefore, there is something specific to the narrative that affects him. However, the source of the symptoms could lie with either the narrative (formulated as N=sum of narrative parts [actors, actresses, sets, average and median scene length, overall length, rapidity of cuts, angles of shots, etc.]) or in the subject (S=sum of his own parts [limbs, hair color, preconceptions, etc.]).

  I prefer the theorem that there is a feature of the film the affects me. To elucidate the potential cause I must, therefore, study the film and categorize its elements. I must watch it again, possibly many times. I must ignore the hallucinations and instead concentrate on the narrative itself. When the images summoned by my own mind interfere with or obfuscate those on the screen then I shall have to rely on my memory, for as long as I can trust it.

  I fetch my notepad and, thus equipped, resume my watching. The image picks up from the precise point it left off—the woman back against the wall, hand to her mouth. She stares at me. I resolutely begin to categorize her items of clothing in my notepad. Then I start to list the pertinent features of her surroundings. After a while, the priestess slumps to the floor in a most unladylike fashion, She giggles, wipes her brow. She leans towards me.

  “Can you. . . ” she says, then shakes her head smiling, with terror in her eyes. “Can you see me?”

  “Ornate fireplace,” I say aloud, scribbling. “Wrought iron bird cage. Canaries: two, one considerably younger. Six candles. Six candlesticks.”

  “C
an you hear me?” she asks. “I can hear you.”

  “Velvet curtains,” I reply, my jaw set.

  “I don’t understand,” the priestess says, though not for my benefit.

  She walks off-screen. When she returns she is dressed the same but her stomach has swollen, just as it always does at this point in the narrative. She approaches the screen.

  “Please,” she says, “I don’t know if you can hear me. . . . By the Gods, I don’t even know if you can see me, but if you can, please answer me. Please help me. I am with child, I am. . . .” Her lip quivers and my pen pauses, suspended above the page. I know I must press on, that I cannot be taken in by these delusions, but her fear and hurt are so palpable.

  “Please,” she says. “Please help me. There is no-one else.”

  I swallow hard and regard my notebook.

  “Go away,” I say as firmly as I can manage. “You are not real.”

  Again, my words have an electrifying effect on the woman. I cannot help but watch as she reels away with a shriek.

  “By the Gods,” she says once she has recovered. “You. . . you hear me? You see me?”

  “You are nothing but a fabrication of my isolated mind. Please resume your original actions and allow me to return to mine.” I adopt an austere tone, seeking stability in formality.