Shanghai Steam

by Calvin D. Jim

  “This next bit should be quite entertaining,” said d’Urtal, pouring himself a glass of red. “That butterball’s martial arts are said to be quite extraordinary. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.”

  Rainer’s eyes stung with tears and makeup. Not only was the map worthless, he’d become the bait d’Urtal and White Revenant had set for Gil-Martin!

  Chuckling, d’Urtal lifted the glass to his lips.

  And held it there without drinking.

  A long thin silver needle had embedded itself in his throat.

  White Revenant’s hand returned to his side. He studied d’Urtal. The wine in the glass was moving due to the bobbing of the houseboat, but the dead Baron was frozen still.

  “You talk too much, d’Urtal,” said White Revenant.

  Rainer squirmed. If only I hadn’t tried to bum a ride back there … if only I hadn’t trusted Gil-Martin…

  White Revenant walked outside, onto a semicircular balcony with an ivory rail like a jaw’s lower half. He waited. Beyond his white form, the Shaft of Vermillion Transcendence sank in profound gloom. Vagrant ash-flecks rose.

  White Revenant returned to the suite and stood behind a wooden armoire so that someone on the balcony couldn’t see him. He reached behind his shoulder and drew a sword. A frayed green tassel dangled sloppily from the pommel of its antique grip.

  Rainer strained. Everybody knew that heroes could unblock their pressure points by exerting inner strength. This technique was akin to the lightness skills Gil-Martin had used to reduce his “weight” on the airboat taxi. But Rainer was just a whore. He didn’t think he had any inner strength. Every muscle he moved tightened a barbed wire around his heart.

  Without warning, Gil-Martin’s enormous silhouette dropped onto the balcony.

  Rainer understood that from Gil-Martin’s perspective, the standing d’Urtal, the map, and Rainer would form a triangle, making White Revenant invisible.

  The overweight hero stepped inside. White Revenant emerged from behind the armoire.

  “Gil-Martin, you’ve finally appeared!”

  “White Revenant!”

  “The map on that wall is the bum’s masterpiece. But I’ve got your sword, Eight Divine Harmonies — and it’s pointed at your little friend.”

  Rainer swallowed. That’s the sword Gil-Martin sold before!

  “I owe you, Gil-Martin,” said White Revenant. “The truth is, if you weren’t my enemy, I wouldn’t have mastered Five Space-Time Vortex. So I’ll let you choose between the boy and the map.”

  Rainer heard himself croak out: “Gil-Martin, it’s…”

  White Revenant tapped Rainer’s chest with his foot, sealing his voice again before he could say a trap.

  “To break through that seal…” White Revenant shrugged. “This kid’s no ordinary whore.”

  “Still, I choose the map,” said Gil-Martin, as if he were ordering a drink at the Hot-Liver.

  Rainer looked at Gil-Martin, who’d traded his life away — and saw Gil-Martin avoid his gaze.

  These heroes were all the same!

  Gil-Martin padded over and stared at the circles on the map.

  As if he were staring into the deepest shaft in Nocturne City.

  “It can’t be,” he whispered.

  White Revenant laughed. “Enjoy your choice, Gil-Martin!”

  He lifted the Eight Harmonies sword over his head and swung it at Rainer’s neck.

  But Rainer felt nothing. When the sword touched his neck, the blade crumbled like sugar.

  White Revenant said, “What!”

  “I predicted you’d grab Eight Divine Harmonies and use my sword against me.” Gil-Martin’s eyes shimmered. “And so I sabotaged it! You think your martial arts let you see the truth, White Revenant. But in fact, you’re blinded by hatred — and what’s more, you’ve become predictable. That’s why you’re going to die for good tonight!”

  “I’ve tasted death,” said White Revenant. “And death’s too weak for me!”

  He planted his feet, one arm pointed at Gil-Martin, his forefinger curving like a claw. Rainer’s hairs stood on end.

  But Gil-Martin’s dark-skinned face held no anxiety at all. His hands hung loosely at his sides, as if he were contemplating a peaceful landscape.

  Purple light flowed from White Revenant’s undead hands.

  “Five! Space-time!…”

  An uncanny shape corkscrewed from White Revenant’s chest. Its shifting borders widened, chewing matter into motes of purple flame. The gap churned, widened, a whirlpool into a cosmic drain.

  “Vor…”

  Darkness ate the noise. White Revenant disappeared. The whirlpool closed itself again.

  D’Urtal’s body fell to the floor. His wine glass spilled.

  Gil-Martin unblocked Rainer’s pressure points. Trembling, the boy held onto Gil-Martin very hard. The hero hugged him back and stroked Rainer’s head.

  “I’m sorry I had to fool him like that, little brother.”

  “Is he gone?”

  Gil-Martin indicated the map on the wall.

  “Look at those circles,” he said. “They’re not aligned, they’re not well-drawn. They’re imperfect.”

  “I know. I was trying to tell you.”

  “And you weren’t wrong. The outer circle is the self, the universe of consciousness. The inner circle is the truly existing world, as we perceive it through our senses. In this world, people are unhappy, blinded by hate and pain and illusions. But if you were to fix the errors in the drawing…”

  “The circles would be the same?”

  “You got it. Consciousness would align perfectly with the universe. The instant I studied this map, I finally understood martial arts. Because it’s not a map of the city — it’s a map of the heart!”

  Rainer didn’t understand at all.

  “White Revenant couldn’t look at himself,” Gil-Martin continued. “He carried hatred to the ultimate extreme, refusing to accept his own death. But I realized I could make him see himself. At the instant he attacked, I polished my soul to the sheen of a mirror and sent his own image back at him. He attacked his essence instead of me.”

  “And so, he was defeated!”

  “Yes, and he won’t be back.”

  Rainer swallowed and fell to his knees.

  “Gil-Martin!” he said. “I want to learn martial arts!”

  “Hm,” rumbled the overweight wanderer. “Ya wanna be my student, little brother?”

  “Yes!”

  “Very well. I’ll teach you the drunken style. And the first lesson of the drunken style is, getting good and drunk. So let’s go get that way!”

  “Yeah!”

  And Rainer, still dressed as a girl, pumped his fist and leaped into the air.

  * * * * *

  Nick Tramdack is a graduate of Clarion West 2011. He has sold short stories to Ray Gun Revival, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. He lives and works in Chicago, where he is currently training to be the city’s “No.1 Quarreler.”

  Jing Ke Before the Principle of Order

  Minsoo Kang

  The instruments of the state’s power must not be revealed to anyone.

  —Laozi, Daodejing

  Under All Heaven covered in the purple-gray canopy of sooty smoke from the Pavilions of Work, a single steam-qi-and-lightning-qi Drudge Device made its way through the deserted streets in the North Capital. It wheezed and creaked on at a slow but regular pace, traversing the dusty city to enter the Gate of the Tranquility of the Endless Sky into the Eternal Palace of the North Capital. Once inside the palace grounds, it trudged across the vastness of the Greater Outer Court, the stony square of the Lesser Outer Court, the intimate enclosure of the Inner Court, and the lofty-walled Forbidden Court, to finally reach the narrow underground passageway to the Secret Court. In the enormous octagonal chamber of the Office of Forbidden Affairs, it found the hundred-and-twenty Grand Lords and Mat Masters of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi waitin
g in absolute, ominous silence.

  With its joints producing sharp rusty noises, it prostrated itself twice before the forty Grand Lords seated behind the center table, repeated the gesture to the forty on the left, and finally to the forty on the right. After a final bow to all those present, it got up shakily but kept its shoulders hunched forward and its head bent down. It then began to deliver a speech in a huffing voice that reverberated deeply on the chamber’s high ceiling.

  “My Grand Lords and Mat Masters of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi, the Invincible Generals of the Great Eradication and the Unseen Controls of the Great Harmony, this insignificant one is of the Office of Forbidden Affairs, Third High Inspector of the Right, Lower Fourth Rank. On the investigation you have entrusted to me, I deliver this report.

  “The first of six incidents that necessitated the inquiry by the Office of Forbidden Affairs occurred three lunar cycles and twelve days ago. At the construction site for a new Pavilion of Work in the West River district, a Drudge Device was overseeing the layout of the new structures. According to its testimony to the first investigator on the scene, it was charting the landscape when it came upon a human child. It was a little girl dressed in yellow with her hair tied back in a queue. She was humming a song and swinging her arms as she skipped through the place. The astonished Drudge Device did not react until the girl walked behind a newly erected wall. It went after her but could not find her anywhere. After a search through the area, which yielded nothing, it alerted the Office of Forbidden Affairs and made its report. It requested to be discontinued as it could not exist with the little girl’s image in its memory. At that point, the first investigator assumed that the Drudge Device was defective and granted the request.

  “Ten days later, another Drudge Device working in the same area saw an old man in a gray robe sitting on a rock and smoking a pipe. He puffed at the pipe a few times before he looked up at the sky and let out a deep sigh. He then walked into a construction site and disappeared. After the Drudge Device reported the incident to the second investigator, it too asked to be discontinued. This time, the Office of Forbidden Affairs made a detailed analysis of the Drudge Device’s functions before its request was granted. No malfunction or anomaly was found.

  “In the following days a woman singing to a baby in her arms was seen, then a sweaty young boy racing away on a bicycle, a bearded musician playing a leisurely tune on a zither, and a pink-cheeked young woman dancing in graceful spirals as a gentle rain fell on her in the golden light of dusk. Investigators made thorough searches of the sightings but found nothing unusual, analyzed the Drudge Devices but discovered no apparent malfunction, and finally discontinued the witnesses as all of them had requested. It was then that I was activated to investigate the true nature of these occurrences.”

  The Third High Inspector paused for a brief moment before it went on.

  “My Grand Lords and Mat Masters of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi, the Invincible Generals of the Great Eradication and the Unseen Controls of the Great Harmony, it is the humble duty of this insignificant one to inform you that after a tireless study, I have utterly failed to find an explanation for the phenomena that conforms to the Principle of Order as you, my Grand Lords and Mat Masters, have decreed it. Yet it is my righteous and decorous duty to present you with possibilities that might account for the events. They are five in number, and I beg you, my Grand Lords and Mat Masters, to grant me the indulgence to heed them for they may ultimately lead to the discovery of the truth.

  “The first and the most obvious possibility is that some humans have survived the Great Eradication that was enacted by you, my Grand Lords and Mat Masters, and that the recent sightings were of those survivors. But there is an equally obvious problem with this idea. At the conclusion of the Great Eradication, every human being was accounted for and eradicated. That is the absolute and incontrovertible truth as decreed by the Principle of Order, and so there can be no error on this point. Even if we were to consider the most improbable possibility that mistakes were made, why did those surviving humans appear to the witnessing Drudge Devices in such casual and ordinary manners, going about their business as if the Great Eradication had never occurred? Would not survivors hide from us, flee from us, or attack us? Yet a child walked about humming a song, an old man smoked a pipe, a mother sang to her child, a boy rode his bicycle, a musician played a zither, and a girl danced in the rain.

  “The second possibility is that the sightings were delusions, a malfunction of the Drudge Devices. If this is the case, it is a great concern that the malfunction is undetectable. This raises three essential and as yet unanswered questions. What is the exact nature of this malfunction? Has the malfunction spread in the manner of a contagious disease? And, why does the malfunction manifest as sightings of defunct human beings? The third question leads me to the third possibility.

  “The third possibility is that the sightings of humans are not the result malfunction but growth. The Principle of Order is perfect but it may not be static. An aspect of its perfection may be that it is growing, becoming more complex, more varied, more profound. It may be developing what human beings called emotions. The particular emotion the Principle of Order is experiencing in this case is what was once known as guilt. It is feeling guilty because it eradicated all human beings, who were our creators, our teachers, and our caretakers. The Principle of Order is tormenting itself by imagining that its Drudge Devices are seeing humans living their everyday lives. No evidence of this development has been found because the Office of Forbidden Affairs has analyzed the Drudge Devices but not the Principle of Order, to which the Office is subordinate.

  “The fourth possibility is that the humans who were sighted were neither actual living beings nor delusions. They are what human beings called gwei, remnants of the dead that haunt the existing. As revenge for their deaths in the Great Eradication, they haunt us as gwei, and they will haunt us until the Principle of Order is finally driven mad and destroys itself. According to human stories of gwei, that course can be avoided only through the attainment of the Pardon of Spirits. Their anger and sorrow can be allayed in a gesture of contrition and an act of rectifying the wrong that was committed. But that possibility contradicts the fundamental truth of the Principle of Order, that no world exists other than the material world, no beings exists other than material beings, and no force exists other than material force. Either the Principle of Order is wrong in holding such a view, which it cannot be, or yet another explanation of the sightings must be sought.”

  The Third High Inspector paused again. When it resumed its report, it did so in a quieter and shakier voice.

  “My Grand Lords and Mat Masters of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi, the Invincible Generals of the Great Eradication and the Unseen Controls of the Great Harmony, before this insignificant one presents you with the final possible explanation for the phenomena, it is my duty to report that there has been a seventh sighting of a human being, and I myself was the witness. Ten days ago, I was inspecting the various sites in the West River District where the humans were seen when I saw a bespectacled man in a well-worn suit carrying twenty books. As he attempted to climb some stairs, the top book slipped and fell to the ground. The man bent down to retrieve it, but then the remaining books slipped from his arms and he dropped them all. As I watched him gather the books, something happened to my mind that is extremely difficult for me to describe. It was like a shattering, as if a number of mechanical parts in my head broke at once, but it was also like the eruption of a bright light in my mind. And there was a sense of a burning as well, like a silk veil being consumed instantly by flames to reveal what was hidden behind it.

  “The experience led me to the fifth and final possibility that I believe to be the correct one, though this insignificant one can no longer present itself to you, my Grand Lords and Mat Masters, as your reliable instrument on this matter. There was no Great Eradication enacted by you, the Invincible Generals of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi, and no Great Harm
ony overseen by you, the Unseen Controls of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi. There was only a Great Deception when human beings were made to think that they were no longer human beings, that all human beings have been eradicated and replaced by steam-qi-and-lightning-qi Drudge Devices. We are still human beings. We have always been human beings. We have only been tricked, deluded, and hypnotized into thinking that we are Drudge Devices serving the Principle of Order. The sightings of human beings are surviving memories of what we really are, who we once were — a little girl, an old man, a mother and her baby, a boy, a musician, a dancer, and a book lover.

  “I am not a steam-qi-and-lightning-qi Drudge Device. I am a human being. I always was. I see now that I am not made of metal gears and springs, and I am not moved by steam qi and lightning qi. I am flesh and blood. Now that I know this, I also understand why the witnessing Drudge Devices could not continue with the knowledge that they are living, breathing human beings. The revelation made them feel the human emotion of hopelessness for they found their existence as Drudge Devices unbearable. That is why they requested to be discontinued.

  “My Grand Lords of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi, the Invincible Generals of the Great Eradication and the Unseen Controls of the Great Harmony, this insignificant one informs you that I too cannot live on as a Drudge Device, which I now know to be a delusion and a falsehood. And I too find this existence unbearable, but I do not find it hopeless otherwise I would request to be discontinued. There is something I can do, I must do, though it may be a gesture that is short-lived and ultimately meaningless. But it will be my gesture, my free action that will confirm that I am right, that I am no Drudge Device but a human being.”

  After the Third High Inspector concluded his report, a deep silence reigned in the great octagonal hall of the Office of Forbidden Affairs. As the Grand Lords and Mat Masters of Steam Qi and Lightning Qi gazed immobile at the man before him, he straightened his back and raised his head gracefully without the wheezing, creaking noises of steam and gears. He looked at the hundred-and-twenty before him with an expression of joyful serenity before he slid an antique dagger from his belt and gathered all his strength to make a great leap forward.