Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5)

by D. W. Moneypenny

  As she got lower, she could see Bruce, Ping and Sam standing in the doorway. Since no danger was apparent, she straightened and took the rest of the steps to the ground floor. Approaching them, she asked, “What in the world is going on in there?”

  Ping leaned closer so he could be heard. “I’m not sure I explained earlier, but Bruce, apart from being your counterpart’s fiancé, is the manager of the fabrication shop. He now understands the circumstances of your presence, and has agreed to give you and Sam a quick tour. He has also agreed to forego any overt acts of affection toward you but understand if he slips and seems too familiar.”

  “I’ll try not to be defensive as long as he keeps his lips to himself,” she said, already craning her head to see what was inside. “Oh, I told Ping—the other one—we might be seeing the shop, and he wanted to tag along. I hope that’s okay. He said he would be right down.”

  As if on cue, his feet appeared on the staircase.

  The others watched his progress down the stairs and waited for him. Ping nodded to his counterpart on Mara’s right. Bruce stared at the scene with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.

  Laughing, Mara walked up to him, slipped her arm into his and led him through the doors. “I’ll explain it to you while you show us around,” she said. Over her shoulder she added, “Come on, you guys. Let’s see what’s going on in here.”

  Mara’s Ping turned to his counterpart and said, “Will you be joining us for the tour?”

  “I should go upstairs and check on Abby. I’ll stay there in case she needs anything.”

  “Don’t be surprised if she mentions something about a dragon,” Sam said.

  Ping’s counterpart nodded. “She has already broached the subject, and I have assured her I am no danger to her.” His gaze shifted to Ping, and he said, “I would be interested in sitting down with you and learning more about that experience, in addition to others. You’ve definitely had a more interesting existence than I have.”

  Ping nodded and looked around. “I’d be happy to, but I wouldn’t assume that my life has been more interesting than yours. After all, you’ve had a role in creating the realm in which you live. That sounds compelling.”

  Sam took Ping’s elbow and said, “Sorry to bust up this mutual admiration society, but we should keep up with Mara and Bruce, or they might elope or something.”

  The Pings chuckled in stereo.

  As Sam and Ping entered the shop, Ping’s counterpart closed the doors behind them.

  Mara and Bruce stood twenty feet away, looking up at a large steel vat, a bucket suspended above a metal-grated catwalk. When Sam and Ping got close enough to hear any discussions, Bruce pointed toward a vertical conveyor belt—the source of the grinding-chains sound—that scooped some black substance from a Dumpster-like container on the ground floor, hoisted it upward, dumping it into the vat.

  “As you can see, it picks up the ore from the container and takes it to the smelter,” Bruce said.

  “I don’t understand. Don’t you have to heat the ore first? Where’s the furnace?” Mara asked.

  He shook his head. “No need for an open-flame furnace. The walls of the bucket are injected with a high-temperature steam brew that Mara came up with. The ore melts inside the smelting bucket in just a few minutes, then we add whatever elements are needed and blend it together. We can make a wide range of alloys.”

  “That makes sense. If an open furnace were down here, the top floor of the house would be unbearably hot, not to mention a fire hazard,” Mara said.

  Bruce smiled and said, “Ping swears you are a different version of Mara, but you think a lot like her.”

  Sam scooted in closer and almost yelled to be heard over the rattling conveyor. “How do you dump—” The conveyor stopped, and Sam’s voice bounced off the distance walls and industrial fixtures that surrounded them. His face reddened, and he said in a normal voice, “I didn’t mean, how do you dump, meaning you personally. I meant, how do you dump the bucket once the metal is melted and mixed up?”

  Bruce pointed to a yellow rectangular box hanging from a heavy black cable running to the ceiling. “With the control box, we can move the bucket to wherever the mold is and pour the liquid metal into it. I’ll let you pour a batch once the alloy is ready.”

  “Cool,” Sam said.

  “If we have a production job, the bucket can be moved to the factory conveyors over there.” He pointed to their left, to the wall opposite from the double-door entrance. Almost two hundred feet away were two U-shaped conveyors that fed a third conveyor, leading toward a large bay door. “As a matter of fact, we’re getting ready to do a mider run. That’s always fun to watch.”

  He waved them forward. As they walked toward the distant conveyors, Mara scanned the vast room. It felt more like a factory floor or an industrial warehouse. She had a sense of the logic of the place, of this strange manor, and its design—a design she could imagine coming from her own mind, given the right circumstances. This side of the mansion focused on hardware, while the steam laboratory produced the software. The steam not only powered devices, it gave them their marching orders. She began to understand.

  To her right, a long straight counter, littered with hand tools, ran the length of the room. Beyond the bench were larger devices, like lathes, drill presses, pipe cutters, grinders and sheet-metal rollers. She would enjoy working here. Strange though, her counterpart seemed more involved with the steam lab than this place. One of the ways we’re different.

  “You said a mider run?” Ping asked. “As in you manufacture those little spider devices here in the manor?”

  “Exactly,” Bruce said. After they arrived at the floor-level conveyors, he walked to another yellow control box hanging from the ceiling and punched a large red button with his thumb. “First we have to lower the assembly line.”

  A loud screech rang out from the ceiling, causing everyone to cringe.

  “Sorry about that. I should get up there and lubricate the deployment arm.”

  The screech morphed into a hum broken up by several clicks and clangs as a brass framework fringed with dangling metal wires lowered from the ceiling and stopped three feet above the conveyor belts. Bruce pressed a second button, and the conveyors rolled to life, and the framework jigged back and forth above.

  Little brass pods appeared in a line on the conveyor, fed from a compartment at the far end. As they arrived below the jiggling framework, the strands of the now-swinging fringe attached themselves to the pods, seemingly at random, but, by the time they reached the end of the conveyor, each pod had eight new attachments.

  “You’re putting on their legs,” Mara said. She eyed the newly assembled miders. They unfolded their legs and lifted their pod bodies off the belt, moving up and down in a regular pattern, as if doing knee bends. When the bay door at the end of the conveyor rolled up, Mara expected to see a truck or a packing crew, ready to receive the new messengers. Instead she saw nothing but a short driveway that led to an open lawn.

  The miders jumped off the end of the conveyor belts, scampering through the large door and into the grass, as if making a break for their freedom.

  “Where are they going?” Sam asked. “Don’t you deliver them to stores or something?”

  Bruce chuckled. “They don’t need help getting to where they are going. They’ll wander around until someone gives them a message to deliver. That’s what they do.”

  After the process continued for ten minutes, pods stopped appearing on the conveyor, and Bruce punched a third button on his control box. “That’s the batch for this week.”

  “You do this every week?” Ping asked.

  “A week is long enough for the miders to get to where they should be, and it seems to be the necessary replacement rate,” Bruce said. After he punched a fourth and final button and released the dangling control box, the bay door rumbled closed. He turned to Sam and said, “You want to pour some hot metal from the bucket?”

  “You bet,”
Sam said. He and Bruce jogged to the far end of the room while Mara and Ping took their time, looking at various pieces of equipment.

  Ping pointed to a washing-machine-size box in the corner behind the work counter. “That could be a kiln. Pottery or statuary?”

  “My guess would be specialized tools or maybe fabricating things that resist corrosion. I can image that combining steam and metal for some things might be problematic. Ceramics might provide a more durable alternative material in some cases,” she said. Her gaze shifted to set of colorful cylinders with hoses attached to their tops. One of the hoses connected to a device like a blow torch. “Now I’d like to give that a try. I bet some of the steams in those cylinders do some funky stuff.”

  “I’m not sure how advisable that would be,” Ping said. “Might be a better idea to see what your brother is about to pour.” He tilted his head toward the far side of the room where Sam reached out to grab a yellow control box.

  * * *

  By the time they got there, Sam walked back toward the mider assembly line. The giant vat suspended from the ceiling creeped along with him, moving above the catwalk and toward a large platform.

  “Nice and slow, just keep your finger on the button until you get to the end,” Bruce said, following Sam. He glanced at Mara and winked at her.

  She and Ping fell in line behind them while all watched the progress of the vat until they reached the middle of the shop floor. The giant vat came to a stop.

  “Okay, we’ve got the bucket where we want it. Now let’s go upstairs to pour the metal. You’ll get a better view of what’s happening up there,” Bruce said.

  Waving for them to follow, he walked toward a rope that hung down from the catwalk. Once there, he pulled on it, and a ladder slid down with a rattle, ending with a solid bang when it hit the concrete floor. “You guys are okay climbing a ladder, right?” he asked.

  Everyone nodded, and he held out his hand, inviting them to climb.

  After reaching the narrow catwalk, Sam eased up on his toes to look over the rim of the shiny silver bucket and saw a glowing orange liquid. He felt heat radiating from it on his face. To the left of the bucket, he could see a mold mounted and braced on the platform, waiting to be filled with liquid metal. When Mara and Ping joined him, he pointed to it.

  The arc-shaped depression in the large rubbery sheet featured sweeping indentations throughout, giving it a skeletal aspect. It was at least fourteen feet wide and twelve feet deep.

  Mara frowned. “It looks like some kind of wing.”

  Bruce finished his climb and walked up behind her. “Very astute observation. It is a wing.”

  “You’re building an airplane?” she asked.

  He paused for a moment and then said, “Something like that. Let’s just say it’s a flying mechanical device.”

  “I’d love to see it. Is that what she’s putting together in the large tent in the back yard? I saw it when Ping and I landed in the copter.”

  Sam huffed. “You flew in a copter? No fair.”

  Mara ignored him and turned back to Bruce, still wanting an answer to her question.

  “I don’t know. It’s not my place to show people Mara’s work. She’d get bent out of shape if I let a bunch of strangers see her design before it was completed.”

  “Look at us,” Mara said. “We’re not just a bunch of yahoos walking in off the street. For heavens sakes, I am Mara. And these guys are family.”

  He looked doubtful. “Yeah, I get that, but I’m gonna need time to think that one over, maybe talk it over with Ping—the other one. He says you guys are going into town in a little while. I’ll talk to him while you’re gone,” he said. “Maybe Mara wouldn’t mind. I mean, this is the final piece to be assembled, so technically the thing will be done this afternoon.”

  “It’s liquid metal right now, and you are saying it will be ready to assemble later today?” Ping asked.

  “Frigisteam,” Bruce said. “Spray a little on the piece, and it’s instantly cooled.”

  “Of course,” Mara said. “Well, ask your Ping if it’s okay, if you don’t mind.”

  “Do I get to pour this or what?” Sam asked.

  Bruce pointed to a control box hanging two feet away. “Just push the top button. That’s all there is to it.”

  Sam complied, and they watched the bucket tip forward and pour a stream of hot glowing magma into the wing-shaped mold. As the orange liquid flowed across the ribs of the wing, Sam squinted at it, watched it fill the spidery etched surface like water flowing from rivers to streams to creeks. The surface of the thing was incredibly detailed. After five minutes, the bucket’s lip tilted back to level, and the mold was filled.

  From somewhere below, a familiar voice called out. “Mara?” It was the other Ping. “Your father will be here to pick you up in about fifteen minutes. You should change clothes before you go into town.”

  She looked at the Ping next to her and gave him a confused look. “I do?”

  CHAPTER 23

  Standing before the large walk-in closet, the other Ping shoved several pieces of clothing toward Mara, and she pulled back, repulsed at the thought of wearing whatever it was.

  “Are those leather pants? Do you want my ass to look the size of Nebraska? No. No way I’m wearing that. In no realm would I voluntary put that stuff on my body,” she said.

  “First off, this is not leather. It’s a flexible durable blend that you—well, she—invented that looks like leather, yet completely synthetic and quite comfortable. As far as your hindquarters, yours appear to be identical in size and shape to my Mara’s, and she made these”—he waved one leg of the russet brown pants at her, which flopped back onto his shoulder—“with the express purpose of covering said hindquarters in a way she found acceptable. The least you can do is try them on.”

  Mara walked across the large bedroom and sat on the end of the queen-size bed. “What is your fixation with my clothes? Nobody cares what I wear, least of all the big black cloud we are going into town to hunt.”

  “Mara, in this realm, you are the progenitor, the person responsible for the existence of everything. If you go into town dressed like that, they will think something out of the ordinary happened during your disappearance,” he said.

  “Something out of the ordinary did happen. I’m not your progenitor.”

  “They don’t know that, and, if people find out, a panic in the streets will ensue again. People will never leave you alone long enough to search for this Aphotis of yours. It’ll be like the chasms were appearing all over again.”

  Someone knocked at the door.

  “Come in,” she called, relieved for the distraction.

  Her father opened the door and stuck in his head. “You ready to go?” he asked.

  Ping waved his arms, still covered with clothing. “She refuses to wear her clothes.”

  Dr. Lantern opened the door wider and smiled. “There’s not much point going to town if you make a spectacle of yourself. You’ll just freak out the natives, and you won’t be able to help the police chief with his problem.”

  Mara sighed. “You’ve got to be the first father in the universe who thinks his daughter should wear leather pants in order to not make a spectacle of herself.” She stomped over to Ping and took the clothes while her father made a discrete exit.

  Ping pointed to the walk-in and said, “You can change in there while I get your boots. I believe they are under the bed.”

  “Boots?” she said. “Like combat boots?”

  Ping rolled his eyes and waved her into the closet. “Hurry. Your father has people waiting on him.”

  Inside the large closet, she found a small bench and a full-length mirror on the back of the door. She made a point of removing the Chronicle from her pocket and placing it on the bench next to the wad of clothes she’d taken from Ping. After taking off her polo and jeans, she plucked an off-white linen piece from the pile. A blouse. No buttons, just a slipover with a collar. Not a polo, but she co
uld live with it. She yanked it on, and it fit. Next, the pants. She hated the feel of them as she pulled them up. And her butt felt a pinch as she tucked in her shirt and buttoned the pants.

  She glanced into the mirror, turning to look at her backside. Way too big. What was the other Mara thinking? Then she felt something tingling up her legs and along her rear. Odd. With another look in the mirror, Mara swore she saw wisps of steam curling around her legs. She was just about to dismiss that thought when her butt caught her attention again. Now it looked great.

  Gotta get me some of this material before I leave this realm.

  She stared for a few more seconds until a knock made her jump.

  “Are you okay in there?” Ping said.

  “Almost done.”

  One other piece remained on the bench, also made of the pseudoleather stuff. Holding it up, she determined it was a vest—a button-up casino-dealer’s type vest. Mara shrugged, slipped it over her shoulders and buttoned it up. Tucking the Chronicle into her left pocket, she took another glance into the mirror and studied herself. Not bad.

  She stepped out in her stocking feet to find Ping holding a pair of matching boots that would cover most of her calves. She grimaced but didn’t argue before taking them to the bed.

  “You look very nice,” Ping said.

  “Thanks,” she said as she slipped on the boots, pulling up the side zipper on each. Standing, she noticed two wide parallel loops sewn to the outer right thigh of her pants, one near her hip and the second at mid-thigh. She slipped a thumb into the top one and asked, “What’s this for?”