Fires of Invention

by J. Scott Savage

  One by one, the lights in that section of the city went out.

  2

  Trenton paced the small room, staring at the locked door. The electric bulbs in little brass cages on the wall were still dark, and the flickering gas lamp in the corner made his shadow waver like a frightened ghost. Even inside the security building he could feel the vibration of the emergency air exchangers, which had kicked on to keep the atmosphere breathable ever since the power went out.

  How could this have happened? He’d gone over and over the numbers in his head, but the calculations made no sense. He sat behind the metal table in the center of the room and sketched the figures with his finger again. The weight of the swing combined with his own. The speed and balance of the gear multiplied by the momentum and vibration. It didn’t add up. Even if he weighed ten times as much as he did, the pull of his swing should not have affected the gear enough to throw it out of alignment. And if it had, it was only a conversion station. There was no way his swing could have shut down the lights and fans.

  Yet clearly it had.

  Despite the stuffiness of the small room, he shivered. Right now people all over this side of the city were asking each other where the power went. Was there another accident? Who was responsible? And the answer to the last question was Trenton Coleman. Word of what he’d done would spread quicker than a gas fire. Soon he’d be as notorious as Leo Babbage, who’d exploded himself and part of an apartment building while illegally trying to improve a water heater.

  Neighbors would gossip with neighbors. The story would spread until even his own mother—

  He clenched his hands in his hair. His mother. This would kill her. How many times had she warned him that tinkering would get him into trouble? How many times had she made him sit at the table, writing line after line: We are all gears and cogs in a magnificent machine. When we do our part as it has been prescribed, the machine runs smoothly. When we do things differently, society suffers.

  They wouldn’t make her come here, would they? Injured in a mine accident years before, her crippled legs weren’t strong enough to walk more than a few feet at a time, and she had no one to push her wheeled chair. Her heart couldn’t stand the stress of hearing about this. His father worked in the mine, so he wouldn’t hear what had happened until tonight. But Trenton could imagine his mother darning clothes on the couch, a knock sounding, and old Mrs. Patsy down the hall asking, “Did you hear what your boy has done now?”

  The lock rattled, and Trenton sprang to his feet. When the door swung open, he was relieved to see it was only Angus’s father, Marshal Darrow. Maybe he could still talk his way out of this, and his parents would never know. But behind Marshal Darrow came Chancellor Lusk himself, dressed in a long, velvet jacket, wearing a monocle, and carrying a silver walking stick.

  His heart plummeted. This was serious.

  As the two grim-faced men entered the room, Trenton noticed a third figure behind them. He recognized the stooped shoulders and slightly bent right arm before the man stepped into the light, which revealed his coal-stained face.

  His father. No. Trenton’s throat tightened, and he started forward, but his father shook his head ever so slightly.

  “Sit,” Marshal Darrow said. He waited for the chancellor to take a seat before plopping his heavy frame onto the only other chair in the room, leaving Trenton’s father to stand inside the doorway.

  Marshal Darrow slapped a folder on the metal table, making it ring. He opened the folder and thumbed through the pages inside. “You have been formally charged with creation of an unapproved device, modification of approved equipment—”

  “I didn’t create a device,” Trenton said, sweat beading on his forehead. “It was a standard swing. I just connected it to the gear so my friends could have a ride. I swear, I didn’t make anything that hasn’t been approved for use.”

  “Vandalism of city-owned property, loss of power,” the marshal continued, ignoring Trenton’s explanation.

  He tried again. “I know how it looks. I don’t understand what made the power plant shut down. But I promise, it wasn’t because of anything I did.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve done the calculations a dozen times, and they don’t add up. I’d never have connected the swing if . . .” He looked from the security marshal to the chancellor. “Give me a piece of chalk and a slate, and I’ll show you.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Mr. Coleman said, speaking for the first time. “Perhaps a little impetuous, but he means no harm.” His pale blue eyes and the white skin where his mask had been were the only parts of his face not covered in coal dust. They must have brought Trenton’s father straight here from the mine.

  “We let you listen in as a favor, Ray,” Marshal Darrow said to Trenton’s father. “I haven’t gotten to the theft charges.” The marshal stared at Trenton. “Would you like to explain where you got the parts to make your—pardon my language—invention?”

  Trenton saw his father’s head drop and realized how much his actions had humiliated his family. This whole time, he’d imagined what people would say about him. But they’d be saying the same things about his parents—and questioning what kind of people could raise an inventor for a son. “I was only trying to let the kids have a little fun.”

  Chancellor Lusk crossed his legs and adjusted his pants with a quick pinch and a tug. He steepled his fingers in front of his chest, and, without looking at Trenton, asked, “You’ve taken city history in school this year?”

  Trenton nodded. Of course he had. The history of Cove was a required subject every year from first grade on.

  “Would you be so kind as to recount why our city was founded?” the chancellor asked, staring at a spot somewhere up and to the left. Trenton had to resist the urge to turn to see what the man was looking at.

  Grudgingly he repeated the facts he’d spent far too many boring hours in school memorizing. “In Outside Year 1939, the city of Cove was built as a safe haven for honest citizens fleeing the disease, destruction, and mayhem of a world spoiled by rampant technological advancements,” Trenton said, giving the textbook answer he and everyone in his class had memorized.

  “Technological advancements,” the chancellor repeated, savoring the words as though it was the first time he’d heard them. “Have you ever wondered why scientists, architects, and engineers continued to make bigger buildings, faster engines, and machines that spewed out toxins so thick the very air became unbreathable, when it was clear they were killing each other?”

  Trenton looked down at the table, where a few smudges remained from the calculations he’d made with his finger. “No, sir.”

  “I believe it was because they wanted to have a little fun.” He adjusted his monocle and looked at Trenton for the first time. “They convinced themselves that getting from one place to another a few minutes quicker, making a few more dollars, having more thrills, more laughs—more fun—was worth destroying their very world. Does that sound like a fair tradeoff to you?”

  Trenton shook his head, wondering what he could have been thinking. He’d tried to impress Simoni, and now, on top of everything else, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him.

  “Those who destroyed our world put the good of the one above of the good of the many,” the chancellor said. “They lined their own pockets at the expense of millions of lives.”

  Trenton felt sick to his stomach. The back of his shirt was damp with cold sweat. What kind of people would behave that way? They must have been monsters.

  The chancellor slid his chair forward and recrossed his legs. “What you did today was the same thing; you endangered our entire city. You took equipment that didn’t belong to you. Then you not only damaged one of the power distribution plants that makes it so everyone in Cove can eat and breathe—can live—you did it by creating a device that was untested, unapproved, and unsafe. Did you consider the fact that your device could have killed one of your classmates?”

  “I’m s-s-sorry,” Trenton moan
ed. Tears slid down his face. He was an inventor. He was every bit as bad as the people who had ruined the outside world so completely that the only safe place was the mountain into which Cove had been dug.

  The chancellor looked at Marshal Darrow and nodded. The head of security slammed the folder closed. “Your actions are some of the most serious crimes I’ve ever come across. Frankly, under the original City Charter, they would have been grounds for expulsion.”

  Trenton’s head snapped up. His mouth went dry. No one was forced to leave the city anymore. Being sent outside was a death sentence.

  “No,” his father cried, stepping forward.

  Chancellor Lusk polished the head of his walking stick—the image of a fierce-looking beast with a long snout and sharp teeth—and grinned. “Obviously, exile is not a possibility now that the city is sealed.”

  Trenton’s father visibly relaxed.

  Marshal Darrow held out an arm. “Despite the fact that you endangered my own son, who tried to stop you, I explained to the city council that you are young. That this was probably all a foolish stunt.”

  “It was.” Trenton nodded vigorously. “I didn’t think it through.”

  “True.” The marshal nodded. “Unfortunately, several members of the council brought up your past history of modifying devices. They reminded us that this isn’t the first time charges have been brought against you. You have a record of being—I’m afraid there’s no other way of saying it—creative.”

  His words hung in the air. Trenton couldn’t deny that in the past he’d tweaked things a bit to make what he’d viewed as improvements. Now he could see that those little mistakes had brought him to the point of committing a crime against the city. What price would he have to pay for it?

  Marshal Darrow waited a moment before saying, “Fortunately for your sake, the chancellor spoke up for you. He thinks there still might be a chance, however small, that, with the proper motivation and education, you could become a useful member of society.”

  Trenton felt a spark of hope.

  “Thank you,” his father whispered, clasping his chapped hands. “Thank you, Chancellor Lusk.”

  The chancellor’s narrow lips curled as he glanced toward his head of security.

  “Therefore,” Marshal Darrow continued, “you have been sentenced to six months of retraining.”

  Trenton’s throat seized like a fuel line that had been pinched closed. His father gasped aloud. Six months of imprisonment, hard labor, and forced memorization? He’d never heard of a child receiving such a harsh punishment.

  “But his schooling . . .” Mr. Coleman said. “He’ll have to retake the entire year.”

  Chancellor Lusk turned sharply. “He’s lucky to have any schooling to return to at all.”

  A sharp rapping came from the hallway and the door flew open. A man in a work helmet and goggles stood in the doorway, breathing heavily.

  “What are you doing here?” the chancellor snapped. “I told you I wasn’t to be interrupted.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Chancellor,” the man chuffed, trying to catch his breath. “I wanted to tell you that . . .” He put his hands on his knees and panted as though he’d been running. “We discovered what caused plant eleven to shut down.”

  3

  What are you talking about?” the marshal demanded, pushing himself up from his chair. “We know what caused the outage.”

  “No, sir.” The man shoved his goggles up onto his head, shooting an anxious look between Marshall Darrow and the chancellor. “That is, we think we may have discovered another—”

  “Outside,” Chancellor Lusk shouted, pointing to the door. “Let’s take this discussion somewhere private.”

  The three men walked out into the hall, locking the door behind them. Trenton met his father’s eyes for a second but couldn’t bear to see the look of disappointment there. “Has Mother heard?”

  Mr. Coleman shoved his hands into the pockets of his faded gray workpants. “I don’t know. But you can count on the fact that if she hasn’t yet, she will soon. Mrs. Patsy hates to let anyone beat her to delivering bad news.” He clucked his tongue. “What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Trenton said. He wanted to stand up and hug his father’s worries away, to see his bent shoulders rise a little. But he was afraid his dad would turn away.

  Trenton’s father rubbed a hand across one cheek and examined his palm. “The problem is not that you weren’t thinking. It’s that you were thinking too much. That brain of yours has no brake on it.”

  It was true. Trenton had tried to stop thinking—to focus on his homework and memorizing passages from his school texts. But his brain couldn’t stop asking, “What if . . . ?”

  His father sighed. “What was it this time?”

  “I was showing off for Simoni.”

  “A girl.”

  For a brief second, Trenton thought his father’s lips twitched in what could possibly have been the beginning of a smile, but it disappeared too quickly for him to be sure.

  He rubbed away the marks on the table. “What I did couldn’t have caused the plant to shut down.”

  “I know,” his father said.

  Trenton looked up. “You do?”

  “Knew as soon as they told me. That swing was foolish and dangerous. Someone could have been seriously hurt. But it couldn’t have shut down the plant. I did the math on the way from the mines, and the numbers don’t add up.”

  Trenton stared. His father was a miner, what did he know about math?

  Before he could find out, Chancellor Lusk and Marshal Darrow came back through the door. The man in the helmet stayed in the hallway.

  The marshal turned to Trenton’s father. “We have sort of a situation.”

  “What kind of a situation?” Mr. Coleman asked.

  Something seemed different about the two men. They looked less confident—almost nervous. What could have happened in the hallway to change their expressions so completely?

  Marshal Darrow shot a look at the man in the hallway and frowned. “There’s been an accident in the mines with one of the coal feeders.”

  Trenton’s heart leaped. “The power outage wasn’t my fault. I knew it.”

  The marshal glared at him. “Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t. You’ve still committed dozens of crimes.”

  Chancellor Lusk clasped his hands behind his back. “It appears that something has jammed the feeder belt to a power plant on level three. It is possible that this feeder belt incident—in conjunction with the device your son illegally attached to one of the conversion plant’s gears—caused the shutdown.”

  Mr. Coleman scuffed his boot across the floor, creating a black spot. “No offense, Mr. Chancellor, but the minute the feeder jammed, the power plant would have shut down. My son’s poorly thought-out ride couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”

  Trenton couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His father was a miner; he didn’t know anything about power-plant mechanics.

  If the chancellor was surprised, he covered it well. “Be that as it may, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation. Your son still faces serious criminal charges, not to mention damage to his—and your family’s—reputations. As much as I would hate to see your name dragged through the muck, he brought this upon himself.”

  Mr. Coleman stood silent, his jaw set.

  The chancellor smiled. “I, too, have a problem. Until the obstruction in the feeder belt can be located and cleared, a good portion of the city will be without power.”

  “It’ll take weeks to disassemble the feed belt and pull it out of the shaft,” Trenton’s father agreed. “The tunnel was made too small for a man to climb inside.” He stared at the chancellor. “But of course you know that.”

  What was his father talking about? What did feed belts have to do with the chancellor?

  Chancellor Lusk’s face hardened. “Indeed. The tunnel—dug according to approved specifications—is too small for a man to ent
er.” His eyes flicked toward Trenton. “But it’s not too small for a boy.”

  Trenton leaned forward. They were talking about him. About having him climb from the mining level on one of the belts that fed coal into the furnaces to figure out why it had broken. He could do it. He knew he could.

  “No,” Mr. Coleman said. “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous.”

  Chancellor Lusk nodded. “I understand your concern. It’s admirable how much you care about your son. I’ll deal with my problem on my own, then. I’m sure I can find another way to resolve the situation. You may tell your wife that she won’t see her son for the next six months. Hopefully no one will get the impression that your boy was at fault for them being without power for weeks.”

  Trenton jumped to his feet. “I’ll do it.”

  • • •

  Standing between his father and Mr. Sheets, the head of city maintenance, Trenton clutched the bars of the elevator car. He stared out of the cage as it clanked and rattled its way down the fifty-foot shaft drilled through the solid rock between levels two and three. Although he’d passed these cars hundreds of times, this was his first chance to ride in one. His eyes traced the grillwork of the door as it slid open and closed at each level, the lever the security guard pulled to engage the gears and pulleys that controlled their movement, and the cable disappearing high overhead. He imagined the cable winding around a metal drum. He almost thought he could make out the steady chugging of the engine that wound the drum—although it was too far overhead for that.

  Mr. Sheets noticed him studying the elevator’s mechanics. “It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

  Trenton nodded. “Does it use some kind of counterbalance to help offset the weight of the car and the people inside?”

  Mr. Sheets straightened his leather vest and whistled. “Learn that in school, did you?”

  “No, but it makes sense. The elevator would use less energy that way. Only . . .” He studied the cables and gears, analyzing the mechanics the way a cook might break down a recipe. “I don’t see any kind of backup break system in case the cable—”