The Ghost Engine

by Theresa Fuller

If only she could hide. She had been a fool for ever doubting him and she groaned inwardly. There was only one way she could think to make it up to him, to show him she trusted him. “No,” she said firmly.

  “No?” He frowned then paused in his scribbling and lowered the pen.

  “No. No time,” she lied brazenly.

  His frown deepened.

  “I— I have a few questions. I can understand not summoning a hot-air balloon because you don’t want to use up too much energy, but the blocks when I first came were exploding into buildings.”

  “Ah!” He straightened, looking pleased with her question. “Energy. After the second lightning strike, the one that brought you in, the Engine was flooded with energy. That was the runoff Gine used.” He slipped his pen away, took out some strips of leather, then shut the cupboard door and began attaching, one by one, the strips of leather to his outfit, as though repairing the damage to his suit.

  She stared at the floor. “So that explains why the train had travelled through such desolation. That was the normal state of affairs; but the trees back there?”

  “A distraction,” he answered quietly, as he continued to tear strips of leather into lengths.

  She frowned. Gine, trying to distract her from Charles must have been desperate enough to have gone to the extent of sacrificing energy. And when it didn’t work, Gine felt he had to take things in hand with the road lifting.

  “At all times you were safe.” Charles tugged viciously at the leather, engrossed in his wrapping.

  Safe but only because Charles had been nearby to stop, at the last second each time an out-of-control automaton with god-like powers. But his remark proved that Charles was still on Gine’s side, believing the best of Gine. If she had been injured she had no doubt that Gine would use that as an opportunity to treat her with energy. Though Gine had said otherwise, she wondered if he would even try to injure her.

  “I know you believe Gine is trying to hurt you. At this stage, I do not know what to do to convince you otherwise. Gine is clever, but Gine is only an engine. A computer. And we are smarter than he.”

  She eyed Charles curiously. It was almost as if he had read her mind.

  “Sometimes you can be fairly transparent, my lady,” he murmured.

  She glowered at him, but his words made sense and there was no malice in them. Or taunt. She hoped she was smarter than Gine, though her first and only conversation with Gine did not prove that. Charles was obviously smarter than Gine, but then Charles had beaten her to her goal of being the world’s first computer programmer, but that was not his fault. He had sped up his research, pushed it beyond safety and sanity because he had to survive. But she didn’t want just to survive. She wanted to escape.

  “If anyone knows Gine, it is you. After all, Gine is in your own image,” she challenged.

  Charles shrugged self-deprecatingly, but his eyes glinted with pride. “I hope the Almighty Himself forgives me for that, but it was none of my doing. I am, of course, terribly conceited and filled with delight that Gine chose my visage. Gine obviously knows a good-looking fellow when he sees one.”

  She crossed her arms. “You’re the only fellow he’s seen.”

  Charles rubbed his chest, feigning hurt. “You really know how to wound a fellow, don’t you, princess?”

  She ignored his comment. “One thing I don’t understand. If Gine is the Engine, and you are his creator, then why can’t Gine give you the answer you want? Why can’t he let you out?”

  When Charles’s face flushed, she knew she had hit a sore point.

  He sighed heavily. “Ah, that’s simple. Gine doesn’t want me to leave.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  CHARLES WAS TRAPPED.

  For some time, Berd had suspected that Charles was not in control of the Engine.

  Yet, he had seemed so Godlike in the beginning.

  “This is why we had to come all this way to the Store. To get the settings Gine won’t give you,” she whispered.

  Charles swept a lock of black hair off his forehead, leaned back against the rounded wall, and clasped his pale hands over his stomach. In the dim yellow light, she saw the laborious movements of his chest, rising and falling. By now the air inside the car was staler, but then the car had been built to carry one occupant, not two. Even Charles’s black leather outfit seemed to have lost its normal sheen.

  They had been in the car too long.

  “When I programmed Gine, I made it part of his operating system that he’d always do whatever it took to keep me alive. Made sense. Still does,” Charles said, staunchly meeting her gaze.

  She had to find out if ‘whatever’ included killing her. “You programmed Gine. You programmed Gine without the use of operational cards…” For, had she not spoken with the Engine itself?

  Charles looked away for a moment as he stretched his long legs, apparently finished with his strips of leather. “I programmed Gine, but so is Gine.”

  This did not make sense. “Pardon?”

  He met her gaze again, but this time held it. There was some emotion in his deep blue eyes she could not read. “Gine, you see, is learning to teach himself. You understand programming, right?”

  “I know a program is basically a set of instructions. And there are only three types.”

  “So you will know that all programs are made of a combination of these structures: sequence, selection and iteration.”

  There was no condescension in his tone, if anything he was speaking to her as an equal. This was the first time a man had ever done that to her regarding her pursuit. She couldn’t help but preen slightly. “‘Sequence’ meaning to complete the instructions a user gives, ‘selection’ involving a decision and lastly ‘iteration’, which means to repeat an action a finite number of times.”

  “Or infinite,” he added softly.

  “Infinite?” Her heart skipped a beat. She pulled the meaning deeper into her. Infinite repetition, if done unwisely, could mean the possibility of the program never ending. When her eyes met his again, she read the answer. “How is that possible?”

  “Recursion.” Charles rolled the word on his tongue. “I made the control structure for Gine recursive, to protect both him and myself.”

  Berd pressed one hand against the wall, steadying herself. A shiver ran through her, but it was not because of the metallic coldness. “That’s an endless loop. Gine has to keep repeating that instruction again and again. Ad nauseum.”

  Her stomach tightened. Charles had programmed Gine to teach himself, just like a human being. On one hand it made sense, because if Charles were ever to be incapacitated, having someone, or more precisely something, who could do the thinking for him was the only way to preserve Charles’s life, but on the other hand, to know Gine would keep doing that action infinitum – would make it harder to stop Gine.

  Gine: a being not created by God but one who could think and generate ideas, and act in an independent capacity. And who would not give up his objectives. Ever.

  In doing so, Charles had moved away from the world of engines and machines. He had become like a god. A creator. For only God could create life. Maybe in the future, such things would become normal, ordinary, but for now it was revolutionary. Blasphemy, even.

  Gine was more than a computer. He was more or less a sentient being, but without reason. A monster, like the ancient Titans.

  She had thought Charles was explaining all this to her in the hope they could work together, yet this sounded more like a warning.

  She looked up to find Charles studying the door. His face was sombre. “We are almost at the bottom. When the car stops, the door will open automatically. A word before we go. Pray do not judge Gine too harshly. Instead, think of him as a human child. Still learning. Still prone to making mistakes. At least he has a sense of humour.”

  She almost hit her head against the back of the wall. “Sense of humour? That is what you call the darkness that almost swallowed me! A jest!”

  Charles
shrugged, but he was dead serious. “Of course, there are sections of the Engine that are dangerous. Would you walk in front of a moving train? You came to no harm. Gine sent a messenger to warn me.”

  “Gine is an engine. An engine! Why are we even referring to Gine as a ‘he’? It’s an engine! An ‘it’. Not a ‘he.’”

  Charles’s face hardened. “He saved your life more than once. He could have allowed you to be electrocuted.”

  So he truly believed Gine was alive and sane. She had seen Gine, too. But ‘alive’? And ‘sane’? This felt like a bad dream. One thing however, she had to get clear. “Gine had a reason. You tell me. Tell me what Gine is trying to do. If all you say is true then why did Gine save my life?”

  The door clicked open.

  Hazy golden light swung into the car, along with life-giving fresh air and the scent of fresh-cut pine so strong she was dying to sneeze. Her nose watered. The humming droned loudly in her ears. Before she could move, Charles was out the door, gone with not even a backward glance or a ‘by your leave’ or ‘let’s work together’.

  If anything, Charles’s action convinced her that he was not keen on answering the questions that mattered. He must truly think women indeed the weaker sex, despite his earlier spiel. No doubt he expected her to wait until he, the great hunter-gatherer, returned. Or perhaps he was going to warn Gine.

  She stumbled out the door, expecting to find herself surrounded by gigantic monsters.

  Outside, the humming, pressed in on all sides, causing her to feel as if she had been stuffed into an invisible pillow. It reminded her once more of how alone she was.

  But she wasn’t alone.

  Charles stood a few feet away, facing the car, his face white. He was staring at something behind her, his mouth slowly opening as he raised his head. What he was staring at must have been extremely tall. Monstrously tall.

  She whipped round.

  The waterfall of energy that had earlier on clouded them in ethereal blue light was gone. Only the bright green enamel of the plateau met her eyes. Flat like polished glass. Unscaleable.

  “Finished,” Charles muttered.

  Berd nodded, understanding. If the waterfall was gone, then it meant one thing.

  The Engine had run out of energy.

  They were doomed.

  ***

  The air around them pulsed. But slowly between the beats, Berd heard a sound.

  The chaotic chimes of a thousand church bells tolled by the damned. She caught a glimpse of a celestial stream of stars, glittering as they hurled themselves over the top edge of the empty waterfall.

  The bits were back.

  “Run!” Charles yelled, slipping his calloused hand into hers. Warmth filled her. He ran, tugging her along.

  “But the car? Surely we would be safe inside.”

  “No energy. Door won’t close.”

  That was good enough reason for her. Berd stumbled after Charles, but all she could think of was how beautiful the bits looked as they skimmed down the side of the plateau. A pack of glowing silver wolves following a trail...

  But wolves were predators.

  And if the wolf-bits were predators, she and Charles were prey.

  She turned to find him smiling, but she was not surprised. He liked these dratted bits. Once again this reaction, like his reaction back in the hot air balloon stumped her. At least this time round, he was running in the opposite direction of the bits.

  “The bits, see them, my lady?”

  “Of course I see them!” It annoyed her that they constantly had to make conversation as they ran. “How can you smile at a time like this?” she choked out.

  “Because we’re still alive,” he shouted, his face flushed with exhilaration. “We have a chance. When I first saw the waterfall had receded, I thought we were done for. I knew Gine had used up energy creating the forest above. I flatly refused to believe he had used it all.”

  Charles’s confession made sense. He was smiling because they still had a chance. She seemed to be making progress in understanding him.

  The distance between them widened as their arms stretched out. Berd battled to keep up with Charles. If only their fingers were locked. It was all she could do to make sure her hand did not slip out of his grasp.

  “You— you saw the waterfall vanishing as a sign?”

  “I thought it was the end. The Engine had run out of energy. We were done for.” He jerked his head at the silver stream hunting them. “Obviously, we’re not. Gine simply moved the energy so we can’t return up the plateau. We’ve a chance if we can reach the book stacks. Come on!” Charles whooped with joy and ran faster.

  If only she could be as confident as he. Her mouth was dry, a stitch was coming on, and they were a hundred yards away from the nearest book stack. Somehow she had to make it.

  The bits reached the bottom of the plateau.

  “Do you wish a problem to solve, my lady?” he cried out almost joyfully at her.

  He was mad! “Surely, running for our lives is enough!” Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure her ribs were about to crack. Perspiration loosened her grip on his hand. She clenched her teeth at him in annoyance.

  “Ha! I have rather an interesting one on hand: which book stack holds the settings we need.”

  He had to be jesting! “What do you mean, you don’t know?” she wailed.

  Charles gave a hearty laugh when he saw her face. “I’m not God, my lady! Even though you may think I am.” Then he winked and veered away from the nearest book stack. His grip on her hand continued to loosen. Now it was only their fingers clutching.

  The nerve of that man! Berd was sure her heart would not hold up much longer. The second book stack was much farther away. She was barely able to keep up with his long, untiring legs.

  Run. Run. Run.

  The bits were halfway to them.

  Charles seemed engrossed in his own dilemma, unaware of her plight.

  “Look around at the volumes of book stacks. In one is the answer, only I am not sure which.”

  “Don’t jest!” She wanted to weep, close to collapse as pain radiated up and down her legs.

  “Wish I was!”

  There were hundreds of book stacks. The whole horizon was littered with these towering monsters and the air seemed to spiral above her head each time she peered up. The stacks cast deep pools of shadow on the ground; the icy wind buffeted her face.

  They passed the second book stack.

  The bits were almost upon them now; a blaze of white lightning snaking across the surface of the plains. Blue sparks smacked into the ground, releasing the scent of charred pine.

  “Faster!” Charles yelled as he headed for the third book stack. “Blast! There’s so much I wanted to say to you, so much. Look, if I’m not back, whatever you do, do not ingest any energy. My suit is made from the leather of the battery beasts. They were once black. Black. Not silver. You were right. The energy will change you. Whatever you do, do not allow Gine t—” He yanked her forward, but their hands were so delicately connected that it was that little bit too much. Berd lost her hold on him. She lunged, desperate to regain it, but tripped.

  The terrifying music of the bits drowned out her shriek. At the loss of contact, Charles twisted. He saw her go down and dove to catch her, but it was too late. She landed with a jolt on the ground, skinning her elbows and palms. She rolled, hard metal smacking her ankles and joints.

  The world was spinning as she tried to rise. She was vaguely aware of bits whirling dizzyingly over her head, lethal, silver, one-pound cannonballs. The scent of gunpowder and iron was strong in the air when in a flurry of leather, arms and legs, Charles crashed into her. As she lay stunned from the second impact, she felt him tuck her knees under her, then wrap her arms around her legs.

  “We have an hour to search. Meet back at the car. Regardless of whether you’ve found the answer. Or not.”

  The last thing she remembered was Charles pushing her head between her knees
. She smelt the familiar aroma of the leather hide he wrapped around her, and felt its thick, soapy texture against her bare skin. Then it tightened around her, cocooning her in a ball of leather.

  With her ears shielded by her arms, his voice sounded muffled. “I’ll draw them off! Just run!”

  Then everything went topsy-turvy.

  He had rolled her away from him.

  She gagged, but a moment later, she was unrolling. She shook her head, horribly dizzy. The smouldering, charred piece of leather lay beside her on the ground.

  But the air around her was clear. Clear of noise, clear of bits.

  Charles had wrapped her in the leather hide to protect her when he pushed her out of the circle of bits.

  He had sacrificed himself for her.

  And now she was free.

  Even as she rose, bits whizzed blindingly over her, leaving smoke trails of black and gold. Again the scent of gunpowder spiked the air, now laced with sulphur.

  Desperate, she needed to know what had happened to Charles, but the bits were circling her once more. If she did not run, she would be trapped.

  “Run! Elizabeth!” Charles’s voice called out.

  She turned and ran towards the nearest book stack.

  He continued to instruct, but his voice was melding into the sea of noise from the bits whistling round him, becoming more chime-like, as if he were being absorbed. “Promise me this. Promise me you will meet me here in an hour’s time and if I am not here, you will proceed to the Output!”

  “Promise!” She dared a glance behind her, but Charles was nothing more than a mass of brilliant blue-and-white particles.

  Tears blurred her vision as she turned and raced for the nearest book stack – a towering structure to her right.

  Charles’s voice grew softer and softer behind her. “Run! Elizabeth, I lo—”

  A guttural roar filled her ears.

  Charles’s.

  Berd screamed as she twisted back to look. An explosion of white and yellow flashes! Fragments of dots and dashes. Then smoke. Then nothing, as the smoke cleared.

  Nothing.

  There was nothing to see.

  Nothing, except brilliant blue-and-silver bits circling the spot where Charles last stood. Wolves hungering for scraps.