by Wol-vriey
The eight-foot she-lion made no attempt to attack or restrain them.
“I am Big Jane Wayne,” she said. “Welcome, Alice Sin and Crank Robot. Her majesty is expecting you.”
“Where are we?” Alice asked, suddenly much more confused than scared.
The Puma shifted her battleaxe from her left to her right hand, scratching her cheek with her free claws before replying with a razor fang smile.
“Why, you’re in the Dallas Royal Palace,” she said, whiskers twitching with amusement. “Now come on, both of you – It is never wise to keep her majesty the Clockwork Goddess waiting.”
The Puma then pointed to the gun Alice had forgotten she was pointing at her.
“And put that thing away – you might hurt yourself!”
Slightly embarrassed, Alice reluctantly holstered her pistol. The three of them walked across the immense chamber toward the moving mechanical mountain, passing by Puma guards who stopped to salute Big Jane Wayne along the way.
Alice and Crank exchanged looks of disbelief as they followed along.
“Fucking oddest palace I’ve ever seen . . .” Alice said.
Chapter 4
The Clockwork Goddess
The huge mountain of machinery was Mech-Anna.
Her body was built of stacked mechanical boxes reaching forty meters high, interspersed with gears so large their individual cogs were bigger than both Alice and Crank put together, and hydraulic mechanisms so immense their pistons resembled the pillars of gilded mansions.
Mech-Anna’s massive body was filled with monstrous furnaces capable of heating the biggest boilers known to man. She was pierced at all angles by a complex webbing of ropes and ramps ferrying coal and rabbit engineers up to destinations well out of sight from the ground below.
A grid of giant pipes serviced her boilers with water from above. Jutting out from her at intervals were chimneys rising to openings in the chamber’s roof, venting her eminence’s emissions to the outside world. Ladders ran the full length of each chimney, and there were access doors for chimneysweeps at points along their length.
Despite all this, Mech-Anna’s most noticeable features were her large-scale renderings of the Texan coat of arms, complete with steamcoach-sized cow skulls, hung about her at prominent positions.
“At least now we know why she never shows herself in public,” Alice whispered to Crank. Still following close behind Big Jane Wayne, they climbed up a series of ramps and ladders to Queen Mech-Anna’s very top.
“
After some time, they finally reached the pinnacle of Mech-Anna. They stood upon a wide metal platform, surrounded on all sides by glittering chimneys, in and out of which rabbit chimneysweeps were busily climbing – brushes in hand, bodies black with soot.
From this lofty vantage, they had a perfect view of just how big Mech-Anna actually was – she must’ve stretched a half mile in each direction, an entire mile of monster machinery, clanking and sputtering and puffing without end.
In the middle of the platform stood a six-foot metal pillar. From its various facets projected a woman’s head, her left arm, and her right foot. These were apparently all that was left of Her Royal Highness Anna Busybody’s living remains. A mass of tubes and pipes pumped liquids into and out of the pillar’s base, keeping these scraps of flesh alive.
Anna’s unblinking eyes were shiny and wide – intelligently fanatical. Her facial expression was just as cold and regal as it had always been, back before her accident and subsequent augmentation with this monstrous mechanical body, when she became Mech-Anna.
“Alice Sin and Crank Robot to see you, Goddess,” said Big Jane Wayne, withdrawing a respectful distance.
Alice and Crank both bowed before Mech-Anna.
“
Mech-Anna laughed abruptly at this – an unnatural, but not altogether unpleasant sound.
“How are my sister Victoria and young brother Dudley?”
“Fi . . . fi . . . fine,” Alice managed to stutter.
“Are you scared of me, Alice Sin?”
Alice nodded. She looked out over her metal immensity, which only reinforced her fear of the goddess.
“Yes, I . . . I’m quite scared of you.”
“Good. You should be. It is wise that you are.”
Mech-Anna laughed again, totally throwing Alice with her sudden swing of mood. The Clockwork Goddess then pointed over to a nearby metal gurney, which had so far gone unnoticed by Alice and Crank.
“Bring him over,” she ordered Big Jane Wayne.
The Puma obediently rolled the table over to where the guests were standing. Both halves of Prince Jackson had been placed there together, lying side by side upon its cold metal surface.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it, that the first time I see my nephew in nineteen years, he happens to be dead?”
Neither Alice nor Crank said anything in response.
Mech-Anna laughed. “Not to worry,” she said. “I AM a goddess, after all. There are benefits to being a deity, you know, even if one is a rabbit-manufactured deity.”
With Big Jane Wayne’s assistance, she gently stroked both halves of Jackson’s head with her single hand. As if by some dark magic, his body slowly stitched itself back together along its split. Even his shredded clothes miraculously repaired themselves.
Jackson sat up, somewhat disoriented, but otherwise no worse for the wear. He looked around for a moment to get his bearings, noticed Alice and Crank standing there, and finally saw the face in the metal pillar before him.
“Hello, insane nephew.”
“Auntie Anna?” he cried. “Who did this to you?”
“I did.”
“Oh, Auntie,” he cooed, quickly recovering from the initial shock. “It’s so good to see you after all this time . . .”
Her face creased into a cold smile.
“Other than your habitual murdering of helpless women, it seems you’ve grown to be quite a fine young man, Jackie.”
“I’m sorry about the prostitutes, Auntie Anna.”
“That’s beef over the prairie now, darling.”
Jackson smiled his relief. “Thank you, Auntie Anna.”
“I’ve a proposal for you, Jackie.”
“Yes, auntie?”
“Will you marry me, Jackie – be the king to my queen? Join me in ruling Texas?”
Alice gasped at what she heard, concluding once and for all that insanity truly did run in the Busybody lineage.
Prince Jackson gasped as well. “Of course not, Auntie Anna. I can’t – you’re my Aunt.”
“I’m prepared to overlook our familial relationship if you are, Jackie.”
Jackson could only gape at the metal post from which his aunt’s head, arm, and foot projected.
“No!”
“And why not, exactly?”
Alice sensed the touch of nastiness that had now infected Mech-Anna’s mostly monotone voice.
“It’s against the law, for one!” Jackson squealed, his face turning pale.
“I AM the law here. Nothing is against me.”
“But Auntie . . .”
“Shut up Jackie!” her face snapped at him, its features turning fierce. “I know of your fascination with older women – aunties in particular . . .”
All at once, the blood flooded back into Prince Jackson’s crimson face.
“At least in our case, there will be no sex involved.”
Prince Jackson blushed so deep he turned purple.
“No!” he screamed.
“I’m not asking you anymore, Jackie. I command it.”
“But Mother won’t allow it . . .”
“I doubt she’ll mind exchanging you in return for peace between New York and Texas.”
“No!”
“You’re suicidal
ly tiresome, Jackson, which means you’ll make a perfect king . . .”
Mech-Anna frowned at her nephew’s adamant expression.
“However, you need to learn a thing or two about gratitude. You’ve been spoilt – had everything your way since infancy. Frankly, I find your quibbling over matrimonial trivialities – despite my bringing you back from the grave – to be grievously offensive. I think I’ll give you something to think about.”
She waved her hand at Jackson, instantly re-splitting him from his groin to his neck, leaving his head alone intact. He collapsed, writhing in pain like a worm on the platform.
“This is just one alternative if you insist on defying me further. I’ll give you five minutes to make up your mind.”
“I’ll marry you auntie!” Jackson whimpered piteously, feeling all the agony of being ripped in half, but none of the relief brought on by death.
“And no more tantrums – Is that clear?”
“Yes Auntie darling, I promise!”
“Darling is good. A man must treat his wife with respect.”
She waved her hand again, making Jackson whole once more.
“Now give me a kiss and sit down over there, darling – We’ll discuss the royal wedding later.”
Jackson meekly kissed her cold, clammy lips and walked off to sit on one edge of the platform, staring despondently out across Mech-Anna’s mile-wide bulk.
Mech-Anna now smiled at Crank.
“Half of my marital requirement is met, robot,” she began. “However, an android goddess like me needs a full complement of husbands – one for each of her natures. Will you wed me as well; be husband to my mechanical side?”
Crank bowed as deeply as his rigid joints would allow.
“
Mech-Anna smiled. “Good. You’re a smart machine, Crank, much smarter than Jackson. Go sit with him and try to talk some sense into him, while I converse privately with Alice.”
Crank bowed once again and left them as ordered. Alice wished that she could follow him as well.
Mech-Anna saw the look of fear on her face and smiled. “Now now, Alice, please don’t be afraid of me.”
“I’m sorry, your highness . . .” Alice began, “but it’s hard not to be, after what you did to Prince Jackson just then.”
“Only because he deserved it,” Anna replied. “He’s a pompous brat – needs to learn how to be a man. I’ll teach him.”
Alice wondered how Mech-Anna, being at least 99.999% machine, could teach her nephew anything about being human anymore, least of all about manliness.
Mech-Anna laughed. “Don’t be afraid of me, Alice.”
“But I came here to kill you . . .”
“And you still have your gun, or have you forgotten about it? Go ahead and kill me then, if that is your true wish.”
Alice didn’t have to consider Mech-Anna’s mountainous bulk, with its massive pistons and tubes and gears and airship-sized clockwork wheels, all of which dwarfed her to the same degree that she herself dwarfed an ant. She knew what the goddess meant.
Besides, considering Mech-Anna’s sheer size, Alice sincerely doubted that her brains still resided in her head, or anywhere within the metal pole she stood facing.
Unable to act or even speak, Alice looked down at her feet instead, feeling very sheepish indeed.
***
Though externally cold and impassive, Mech-Anna’s emotions were actually in great flux. As Alice had correctly guessed, her mind was no longer housed behind her face – it was the summation of the electrical impulses flowing through her million parts.
For years she’d been lonely, but acquiring two husbands would resolve that for now. Imminent shutdown still hovered on her horizon, however, terrifying the Clockwork Goddess in nightmares of binary emptiness whenever she slipped into standby mode.
She wasn’t scared of anything else, but Mech-Anna was scared stiff of Shutdown.
Shutdown. That black non-awareness of being. She’d almost slipped into it once, had been wrestled back from the brink of psychic obliteration just in time by the white rabbits.
And this war – this war to monopolize the coal, her very lifeblood, had only aggravated matters. Ironically, the more she struggled against her imminent Shutdown, the more she did to hasten it. The war had both increased the queendom’s need for coal and reduced the number of miners available to extract it from the ground.
Mech-Anna had not calculated the need to share all available coal with her armed forces, essentially halving what was available for her to consume. Most days since the war began, Mech-Anna’s power rating teetered between middling and low. With coal in such high demand, she now needed twice the fuel available, effectively starving herself in the hopes of one day feasting on New York’s reserves.
Realizing her miscalculation, the Clockwork Goddess grew desperate to end her ill-conceived war, but had yet to figure out a good (i.e. face-saving) reason for doing do. In past times she’d have thought of something easily, but her mind functioned less optimally with less coal to power it.
Mech-Anna had lived in a state of mounting panic for over a year now, prompting her to increase the savagery of her attacks on the northern queendom, since the only alternative to an armistice was victory. As this meant the diversion of even more coal to the army, things had gone from bad to worse for her. With the arrival of Alice in Texas, however, Mech-Anna found a glimmer of hope on her northern horizon.
She intended to present Alice Sin and her companions to the public as New York ambassadors suing for peace, so she could grant it and thus end the war. Her marriage to Prince Jackson would be presented to the public as a political gesture made to seal the deal.
Perpetually dogging Mech-Anna – typically a stern, implacable judge of her own intentions – was her father’s dream for the future she’d inherited. Still, with how desperate Mech-Anna had grown, daddy’s dream would have to take the political backseat to forging (at least a temporary) peace.
***
“Do I really scare you that much, Alice?”
“Most certainly,” she replied. “You’re like a mechanical dream impossible to wake from – infinitely powerful, yet infinitely restrained.”
The Clockwork Goddess laughed at this. Her metal bulk rumbled and rattled with mirth. Her hordes of rabbit engineers started to panic, conferring with each other as to how best to diagnose and fix her malfunction.
“You’re a crappy assassin anyway,” she told Alice. “You couldn’t kill Dudley, and you can’t kill me; the only person I think you’ve killed since starting your career as a professional murderess was Metal Feather, and she wasn’t even trying to kill you.”
“I didn’t know that . . .” Alice said in her defense.
“True. But that’s not the point.”
“What is then?” Alice was genuinely confused.
“I want you to give up fucking and killing people for a living.”
“What else can I do? I’m only good at sleeping with men for money.”
“No real change, there. Go back to New York City and marry my brother Dudley – he’s got more money than you could ever spend.”
“He wouldn’t want me, though . . .”
Alice explained to Mech-Anna all about Lord Busybody’s reaction to her ‘servicing’ of Count Honas Obese.
“He was jealous, that’s all. He’s in love with you, you know.”
“He’s in love with Marie.”
“Was in love with Marie. Besides, you’re much nicer than her anyway – In any case, Dudley’s in love with you now.”
Alice considered this a moment. “Divorce will make a scandal.”
“No need for divorce – Marie’s dead.” She pointed at Prince Jackson. “Little prince psychopath killed her.”
Alice looked dubious.
“You remember that kidney he came back with? After his little out-of-body experience?”
“You’re certain of this? Marie is dead? An
d Lord Busybody would have me?”
Mech-Anna laughed. “Just go home and apologize profusely – give him your special chocolate treatment, whatever. He’ll propose the next morning, guaranteed.”
Alice’s face fell.
“That reminds me,” she said. “Can you cleanse my system of his aging serum, just in case he doesn’t accept my apology, or worse still, goes back on his word to give me the antidote?”
Mech-Anna smiled at Alice. “Silly girl . . . There’s nothing in you to cleanse. Dudley gave you the complete antidote before you even set out.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“The shots he gave you,” Mech-Anna began, “the night you exposed Jackie as the Ripper . . .”
“. . . were a temporary fix,” Alice interjected.
“No – Permanent. You’re perfectly fine now.”
Alice was shocked. “Seriously? But why?”
“I already told you – He’s in love with you. He simply couldn’t stand the thought of hurting you any longer.”
Mech-Anna nodded at Big Jane Wayne to come over.
“Okay, that’s it,” she told Alice as the Puma approached. “Go home to New York and marry Dudley. Will you do it?”
Alice smiled. “I’ll do it. Like you said, being a noblewoman definitely beats prostitution for making a living.”
“Good girl. You’ll both be very happy together. And stop pretending you’ve no feelings of your own for him.
“Well, he is very nice . . .”
“Just admit you’ve fallen for him already.”
They laughed together a while, but then Mech-Anna frowned.
“Now to serious business,” she said. “This war’s gone on long enough. I’ll send Big Jane Wayne and a diplomatic delegation back to New York with you to speak with Victoria about ending it. I’ve decided to split Kansas and its resources with her equally.”
“That would be utterly wonderful, your majesty,” Alice said sincerely.
“Yes, it would. I’m tired of having to kill you lot to keep you away from my coal – we might as well just share it.”
“Thank you, your majesty.”
“It’s unfortunate that we’ll end up with fifty-one states, rather than daddy’s dream of only fifty, but still . . .”