by Chris Capps
And yet, something about the new man troubled me. There was a certainty, unaccompanied by strength, that he seemed to brandish in even the few short sentences between us. Something about him was wrong - out of place. It called to mind the warnings we had been given as children.
Beware the well fed man.
Simple. True. Crassus had very little brutality within him. He was gentle, and it showed through his emaciated body. The stranger, though gentle in speech, was not thin.
“Our tribe has no need for a leader yet,” Thunfir said suddenly, “The Thakka have not been seen straying too close to our border, and most other travelers just end up staying here. As it is we have no need to make decisions. I don’t think I speak out of line when I say the Plexis gives us all we need. In its way, perhaps the Plexis is our leader as well.”
The nod of general agreement I had been expecting didn’t come from the others around us. Instead, there was a ghostly hollow silence. But it was a silence loaded with an unspoken question. Are we following a machine? Even Thunfir reacted by looking conspicuously at me as though the words had snuck out from somewhere hidden within him. The stranger didn’t seem much surprised, only pleased. He smiled mirthfully,
“If it’s the machine that’s in charge, I’d like to speak with the machine.”
Of course we laughed.
The next time I saw Crassus, it was once again in our little apartment. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a piece of paper folded in front of him. From the troubled look in his eyes, I had the sudden impression that he had just finished speaking with the stranger, Euclid. I didn’t say anything, but twisted my hand in the air in a faint gesture of greeting. Crassus said,
“Remember when you asked me how a machine could build this place?” I nodded, of course. It wasn’t unusual to probe the mysteries of our still new home over dinner. He continued, “Euclid explained it to me tonight.”
I raised my eyebrows for a moment in mock interest, before the facts caught up to me,
“How could the stranger know? He only arrived here today.”
“He may have explained to you his unique talent,” Crassus said unfolding the piece of paper and looking down at it, “He does math. The answer was, in this case, hidden therein. Do you remember how I used the word drone before?”
“Of course,” I said setting the paper bag onto the table, “You say it near every day. The devices they sent to outer space to build the Plexis.”
“No,” Crassus stressed, “At least not at first. Most of the time they were up there, they weren’t building the Plexis. It would have taken thousands of machines, maybe tens of thousands to make this. Launching a factory of that size into space would have required more fuel than what history tells me the collapsing planet had amassed. I always assumed there was some other answer, yet another technology that had been kept from us by the obscuring hand of time. And yet that’s not the case at all.”
I walked to Crassus and sat down with my eyes on the small piece of paper weighted beneath his fingers. Was this the answer to the greatest secret the Plexis still had? How could a civilization on the brink of collapse design something in deep space so massive without human assistance? Immediately, my mind turned to the image of a rocket standing on a landing platform I had seen broadcast from the information terminals. If not launched into space to build upon itself, then what?
A notion entered my mind of a far off distant world - a thought I knew was impossible. I imagined a massive platform hovering in orbit where humans were living much like we were. They were on an automated factory ship, living day to day assembling massive plates of these paradise complexes to drop back to their home world, all while clucking their tongues and shaking their heads at the flames slowly crawling across the face of their planet. At the head of it all strolled a massive bearded man in elfish red moving from machine to machine turning dials and laughing mirthfully as his workers toiled in dronish ecstasy. It was a strange thought, one that was soon dismissed by the reality of my brother’s look.
Crassus pushed the piece of paper toward me. On it, there was a pyramid of rats. Exponential growth was the secret to building the Plexis. It had all started centuries ago, with one single drone. One made two. Two made four. And gradually, over six million drones began the process of harvesting and creating this paradise. So many had come from so few. The thought stayed with me for the rest of our dinner, which we finished in silence..
Exponential growth. Many, descended from few.
As the days wore on, my brother was talking more and more with the stranger, Euclid. I would often find them strolling the hallways near shops and scribbling down notes on scraps of paper. The two were hardly ever seen apart in those days, talking in their own nearly indecipherable language. It was difficult for most of the outsiders in our tribe to understand, but occasionally when I heard my brother's voice talking with Euclid I noticed a tone of fear. And yet there was nothing to be afraid of. I knew that. Now was the time to live a different life. I welcomed the time away from Crassus as we each pursued our own chosen work in the day, and conversed over an endless supply of food at night.
Time passed. In a small informal ceremony, Thunfir was drafted as leader against his wishes. Two weeks later, we saw the approach of a burning distant hill.
It was walking.
- - -
The city sagged on tremendous metal legs as it carefully picked its way across the landscape, always taking care to keep the plate atop it even. The constant boom and pop of the machine as it shuffled its way to the valley lip grew steadily as the smokestack topped beast closed in on the Plexis. The thick black smoke trailed upward, darkening the sky and filling the wind with the noxious smell of burned rubber and oil.
The city closed thirty yards with each shaking step, and soon it had traversed the gap halfway between the valley's edge and the Plexis, resting its back legs on a formation of rock. With a tremendous explosion high above, the city lowered itself and jerked violently. From its edge, metal sheets and bolted armored plating tumbled over the side and fell some ninety feet, spearing the Earth with rusted detritus around its circumference. After finally coming to rest, the smoke atop the beast stopped pouring up, and it bleated with a tremendous signaling horn. The sound echoed throughout the valley.
So vast. So impossibly huge. Indomitable. Unstoppable.
"Anquan. It's a spider city," Thunfir said glancing from his price tag adorned binoculars over to me. We were in a department store on the 19th storey, lying prone and staring through lenses out at the stationary creature. Thunfir had spent much of his youth out west where the Spider cities were more common in the desert, "No entourage." This was not a term I had heard yet. I grunted interrogatively, and then after a bit added,
"What's that?"
"Entourage? It's a term we used out west. The entourage tribes followed spider cities and picked up whatever fell off over the edge. And when the plate inhabitants needed anything from the surrounding landscape, they would inform their entourage and have it brought to them. Mostly food and slaves. They compete with one another and dream of being pulled up into the city proper."
"Does it ever happen?" I asked. Thunfir was staring at the feet of the city,
"Apparently it does. From what I understand the entourage tribes of cities don't stop following for any reason. And they're generally well armed. Not as well armed as the city vanguard, of course."
A spotlight from the walking city switched on and beamed into the windows of the Plexis, filling the building with a blue and red alternating light. Thunfir cursed and rose to his feet, the binoculars in his hand clattering to the floor.
"That's not good," he said grabbing a fur coat from one of the display racks, "They want to talk."
"To you?" I asked Thunfir.
"To me," he said gravely, "And you, Ebon. What weapons do you have?"
Naturally I had spent time building, and that meant I had more to trade with. While the Plexis' vast system of shops and fact
ories wasn't equipped to print weapons, a few of our more industrious fellow tribesmen had learned to forge them from the readily made materials it provided.
A hollow steel chair leg, for instance could be grafted to a wooden stock and elastic cord creating a zip gun that fired like a rifle, but had the priming mechanism of a crossbow. The guns had a propensity for breaking the first time they were used, sometimes exploding catastrophically into shards of splintered metal and wood. When it happened, this explosion rarely failed to injure the shooter. Other times they didn't work at all, or became more inaccurate with each subsequent use. They were also incredibly easy to build, as was black powder Serpentine. The result was, of course, a surplus of easily crafted and totally disposable firearms. Other than that there were also several hand crafted axes, clubs, spears, and the odd crossbow. Those worked with far greater predictability.
As did my hunting rifle. I snatched it up from my apartment as we left.
Outside, at the base of one of the spider city's massive legs, I stood next to Thunfir. Crassus and Euclid had likewise been summoned to make the journey. Each of us stood in silence with weapons slung over our shoulders, across our hips, or around our backs.
Thunfir pulled the two handed sword from his back and hoisted it over his head. With a bellowing warrior's cry he drove it into the brittle soil shadowed by the massive city. His voice rang out, and he sustained the scream, clenching his shaking fists in front of him. It was the sound a canyon would make if it had the heart for screaming.
Finally, with the sound echoing back to us off the city's steel belly, lights began blinking on one after another. Though it was still well into the day, beneath the girth of this tremendous structure it was as dark as twilight.
The lights emerged, swiveled, and focused on us. Far above, in the heart of this beast, there was a sound like cranks and gears whirring to life. From the white aperture opening above, a figure emerged. He descended, hanging from chains.
"My friends!" the jovial voice called down to us warmly. It was a man, suspended from a harness wrapped around his body and to every one of his four corpulent limbs. The man's heft was prodigious, a sight even more alien to us than the walking city. The folds of his dress swirled and billowed over every bloated cleft and slope of his beaming face. He turned his head from side to side as he looked down at us like a god.
It was the smiling face of a man who would never know suffering.
His hands twisted at thick wrists in excitement as the harness dropped him toward us. Shortly before his feet would touch the ground, however, the harness stopped. He was floating a foot from the cracked Earth with his knees bent, and cooing childlike laughter escaping from his red nose at some unspoken delight. He repeated, with his hands outstretched affectionately, "My little dirtwalking friends!"
Thunfir's steely gaze dwelled long on the swaying figure suspended slightly above us before he spoke,
"Are you master of the city that stands above us?"
"I am one of them," the man said, giggling benignly, "And you must be the leader of this wondrous item we see before us. Thunfir is it?"
He had spies. The revelation was well calculated.
"Thunfir," our tribe's proud leader said, "Leader of the tribe of Plexis. Beside me are Ebon the Builder, Crassus the Operator, and Euclid the Mather. What is your name?"
"My name is Kitchains," the fat man said, "You'll notice there is no entourage here to harass you."
"I was wondering about that," Crassus said, "I've heard of cities like this before. I thought they all had followers."
"For your convenience," Kitchains said, "They were destroyed six days ago, before we began the journey here. We won't be needing them any longer, and they would have made this whole process nearly impossible."
Destroyed. I looked to Thunfir, but his grim eyes were still on the suspended man dangling in front of us. If Kitchains intended to show malevolence through his prolonged giggling, it was lost on us. He seemed somehow naively unaware of what he had just said.
"You killed your followers," Thunfir said, "Why?"
"For you, of course!" Kitchains said once again spreading his arms, "You would have been chased down by those scavengers the moment you all left the Plexis if we hadn't made arrangements for your safe departure." He was still floating there, swaying gently in the wind. Thunfir finally broke his gaze from the strange man and turned to address us through the corner of his mouth,
"Leave the Plexis. He means to take it from us."
"It's not yours," Euclid said with an oddly dismissive smirk, as if confused by the audacity shown by Kitchains, "You can't truly believe we will hand it over."
"No," Kitchains said, his head coming to rest in his hand. There was a sudden boredom creeping into his voice. He winked, and continued, "And so you do have the option of being enslaved or killed. If you find that preferable, I do understand. It makes no difference to me."
Rage was welling up in Crassus. He had reached down to the ground and picked up a hefty rock, and pulled back to hurl it at Kitchains. Before I could stop him, he let the rock fly, and as it soared through the air I watched every chance at peace we may have dissolve. Just before the rock actually struck Kitchains‘ uppermost chin, time seemed to stand still. I decided in that moment that it was unlikely we would have ever gotten along. With a sickening thud, Kitchains let out a revolted scream and held his face with trembling hands. Inarticulately, he started shrieking at my brother, but was cut short by Crassus,
"It doesn't belong to you!" Crassus screamed, "You know nothing about it. You don't understand how it works - how it thinks. Fly back up to your city and tell them that you've seen your last day of peace. The might of Plexis tribe will come down on you like a hammer forged by the gods!"
Crassus had flown into a rage fierce enough to stagger all of us. With tears in his eyes and spittle flying wildly from his lips, he reached down and grabbed a clod of dirt and hurled it at the fat man.
Both of them were screaming now, pouring hatred out at one another in a dizzying display of animosity. It was the kind of unbridled hate only wielded by those unaccustomed to its bite. Crassus picked up handfuls of dust, gravel, and anything else he could find in the ground’s arsenal. Kitchains was bleeding from his chin all over his dress. The harness began pulling the fat man up as several lines descended from still more apertures opening up above us like a starry night sky. Ropes were pouring all around, and thudding to the earth. Men were emerging now.
"Run," Thunfir said pulling his sword from the ground, "This could have gone better."
The four of us began sprinting from beneath the spider city back to the Plexis. The sprint was long, and the popping behind us signaled the outbreak of wild gunfire. Our advantage was the distance we reached by the time the gunfire erupted. Also of considerable help was the fact that no one was actually trying to kill us. This was a warning, a show of power. The real extermination was yet to begin.
That night a massive canvas extended in front of the spider city on hydraulic arms. Images began pouring across the canvas, utilizing what I'm to assume was a projector on the other side. The canvas showed images of death and dismemberment across a wide period of time, each from a high up angle - approximately the height of a man standing at the edge of the spider city holding a camera. Occasionally the shots would become more intimate, showing the dismemberment and burning of whole families on a massive scale. It was ordered - technologically assisted implementation of man's most basic savagery.
As we sat on the 19th floor of the Plexis looking out into the sprawling spider city, Thunfir, Crassus, Euclid, and I spoke in darkness in the same windowed department store as before. For the first time in a while, I found it difficult to stop myself from shivering. There were no sounds to accompany the video feed sprawled across the screen, but our imagination was ample enough to supply the screams of burning villagers.
Thunfir had spoken little, and he hadn't dared look at the prescient projection screen in the distanc
e, showing everyone in the Plexis tribe the fate that awaited them thanks to their leader's inability to cooperate. Perhaps it was an attempt to demoralize the Plexis inhabitants, or to catalyze a bloody coup against its leader. Regardless, most of the tribe was now deep within the facility, arming themselves with simple weapons and preparing to die.
"Ebon, I'm sorry," Crassus said for the fifth time that night, "I'm so sorry. I don't know how I lost control."
I did. This was his home. He had never had one before.
I hadn't comforted him up until that point, instead letting silence heal the wound his ego now bore. It had worked well for a time, but now his voice was starting to crack again. I've never wanted to coddle my brother. Never wanted to take something important away from him that might help him survive. I simply looked at him with an eyebrow raised and said,
"Do you question my loyalty to this place? You said quicker what we were all thinking."
It would be enough. Crassus sniffed from the cold draft on the 19th floor and smiled faintly, returning his attention to the improvised rifles he was loading. Of course it was a lie, but it was the right lie. It was the lie that would keep him going through the night, the one that would allow him the sleep he needed to keep him sharp tomorrow. Writing between the lines of an advertisement pamphlet, Euclid looked up momentarily,
"Your brother's right, Crassus. We're not going to lose this fight."
That wasn't a lie. At least it didn't sound like one when I heard it then.
It rang true, like he had just diagnosed the walking city with a terminal illness - an illness that would save our lives.
"Why does that sound true?" Crassus asked, glancing over at our tribe's mather.