by Lee Bond
Mirabelle felt the weight of the moment settle across her shoulders. She knew what was coming.
Knew she couldn't stop this, e’en were she to try.
Regardless, the question fell from her lips. "What? What did you decide?"
"That on this extraordinary day, when Arcadians rage in our Stack, on a day when Enforcers arrive to see what will be seen, on the day that the Lady of the Weeping Eye and her Clan move through the levels like ghosts in the darkness, we would stand beside them. In front of them and behind them, so that no more innocents would die this day. We bear the mark of the Eye so our Lady may find the way to shed no more tears. We will do so for her. Word of your arrival has spread to the remaining levels. Your Clan will live. This, we promise."
Mirabelle watched the men bare their ink, on chests and arms and where the third eye might be and on legs and on hands. They chanted, low and wordless, stamped feet 'gainst hard floor, banged rifles on chests.
And just like that, the Clan grew in ranks.
Mirabelle, Lady of the Weeping Eye, she sighed. Long and low and slow.
Perhaps she could find her way to the promise she'd made her King after all.
Down The Rabbit Hole We Go
:I am reminded of an ancient fairy-tale, madam. Are you familiar with such things?:
Agnethea fiddled with the … well, she supposed they were the controls for the car in which she drove, but the machine mind had either disabled them or she were pushing them in the wrong order. No matter which way, the buttons and knobs and flashing lights and all were quite dissimilar to her only other true exposure to such things.
The giant brains of the moronic Kings and the slightly more sophisticated ones belonging to Garth’s ‘Gunboys’.
What a terrible night, that. The air not just shivering, but … vibrating, an invisible knife edge ‘gainst your heart, your throat, and any thinking you might do. Things … buildings falling from the sky to explode into others, crushing and killing her dream, bit by bit, block by block. She carried such ill will in her for King Barnabas Blake e’en still that were he to step in front of her –well, not at this precise moment, as that would make him capable of flight, and a flying One and Only weren’t so much a wondrous image as summat out of bad dream country- … the venomous lucidity of her hatred alone would poison and sicken him to the point of death.
Then she’d begin the actual punishment for his crimes ‘gainst Ickford’s innocence. For that’s what it’d been, in the beginning. Innocence. A genuine dream, a true hope, that once and for all, men and women and gearheads and Golems could finally find a place where they could all work together.
Agnethea dashed a hand against the soft leather seat next to her. It’d been working. And so well. For all of ‘em, e’en the dreaded greyskins, who by rights were straight and true just the same as any angry Golem. Only outside the borders of Ickford. The Golemnic Miasma as kept King from finding them too easily and that prevented King’s Will from stripping them to pieces had also acted as a gentle balm ‘gainst the worst in all their tarnished souls.
It’d been working perfectly. Until Young Luther and his bastardized Golems had arrived on the scene, sneaking ’round the backdrop, whispering vile words and performing even viler deeds on citizens suddenly too afraid to ask for the kind of help they’d always been able to call upon before that moment.
How dare he? How dare he? Young Luther’s frightened face, lips working like a fish’s trying to breathe in hostile atmosphere, eyes bulging with brutal awareness that he had all this time misunderstood nearly everything there was to know about Queen Agnethea the Vile. The sound of his neck snapping rated quite highly amongst the things that the Queen of All Golems –a nation of two, soon, she hoped, to be a nation of one and no more, forever- revisited over and over again.
The newly christened Pirate Queen Agnethea, owner of a stolen aircar and a mostly useless silvery sphere of a brain, realized she’d been asked a question while they floated down one of the holes drilled into the Stack by dreaded Enforcers.
“I’m sorry, mind, what did you ask?” Agnethea gazed out the window. From a distance, it were well hard to imagine how truly big the Stack was, or to gauge how thick the walls and floors ‘tween each of the multitude of levels really were.
And the Enforcers, wi’ their Trinity-given weapons, had cut through the thick metal as easily as a lone greyskin doing for an ancient Big King.
Such power. Would she prove as immune to these kinds of weapons as she had everything else thus far? ‘twouldn’t be too much longer, the Queen figured, before she’d be testing that theory out, hey?
:I did. Did your kind have fairy-tales?:
“Oh, aye, for the longest time, ‘til them fanciful tales did take upon a darker aspect thanks to yours truly. There were ‘Cobbler and Queen’, ‘The Fish Which Thought He Were a Man’, oh, and my favorite were a series of tales about a curious gearhead by the name of George, but you shan’t tell anyone about that last, as I were already a Golem by that time and a lady does have a reputation to protect, e’en if it’s one she’s trying to abandon.”
:I shall make no mention of it to anyone, milady:
Agnethea watched the walls of the vertical tunnel she were in disappear, replaced instantly by a vast, sprawling metropolis a thousand times bigger and a thousand times more complicated-looking than her own dear Ickford, and it took her breath away.
“By the King!” Agnethea breathed, all but pressing her face ‘gainst the window. The whole of the land were almost in complete darkness now, the juice in their personal engines almost gone, but here and there, her crafty eyes easily picked out hard points of light, folk standing brave and tall ‘gainst what came. “How many people here?”
:the last census indicates that each level possesses between one hundred and one hundred twelve million men and women of varying degrees of both Humanity and alien status:
The number slotted itself into Agnethea’s mind quickly. “And how many levels in this here Stack 17, hey?”
:official count is most likely inaccurate, but somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred, milady. Levels die, from time to time, with the occupants moving upward or downward based on their social status or connections to same:
“So.” Agnethea tapped a finger on her lip, thoughtfully. “Near about one billion living people here, in this Stack.”
An outrageous number. An impossible number in an even more ridiculous location. Why, back in Arcadia, Agnethea doubted the number of people living ‘neath King’s reign had ever been higher than half of the lowest she was looking at here, and they’d had the entirety of the island domain to run ‘round in. Fresh air, fresh water, live animals to eat instead of whatever it was that passed for the same in this enclosed … terrarium.
:yes. One of the smaller Stacks, I believe. The denizens of 17 –save those who live on the top floors- aren’t quite as prosperous as other Stacks:
“’Smaller than most.’” Agnethea wished she weren’t seeing this. Wished, in fact, she’d stayed dead, as she hadn’t quite come to grips wi’ what she probably were, now N’Chalez had done his magic ‘pon her. She were alive. Outside.
She’d been dead. Kilt that way by the Platinum King itself. The power of the decoding magic scripted into her by the Kin’kithal had stripped away all the connections ‘tween the individuals grains of the nanocloud’s essence, but it had also destroyed hers.
She’d been unknitted, she had, from top to bottom and so far down into the body that e’en the atoms as made her up had fallen apart, leaving nowt but a shell.
And now she were back and talking to silver orbs, orbs she’d been led to believe by Connie Hoopersmyth, ordinary folk couldn’t even touch wi’out being kilt stone cold dead before being turned into a puff of ash, let alone talk to wi’out machines to do most of the talking.
“And they’re all going to die.” The phrase didn’t come out as forlorn as she’d hoped. She’d already seen the death of one world and e’en though
the cast of lads and lassies out there as were hovering on the edge of death were so much bigger than Ickford or e’en all of Arcadia, it just weren’t in her to feel sorrow at their passing.
Was that all it took to lose the ability to mourn? A single world? Aye, yes, concepts like mourning and regret were new to her, discovered down the well of her blackened heart only in the last few years of her reign in Ickford, but they’d been there.
They had been. And now, here she were, sat in an aircar looking down ‘pon a single level of a multi-level Stack as was cut off from the rest of existence, filled wi’ people who were –no matter what she tried, not that she would- going to die. From starvation or dehydration or misadventure, or, more likely…
When she and the other Arcadians met down below, each wi’ a hand vying for Book, everyone, everywhere inside 17'd be done for quick as a kingfisher snatching fish.
Or were her inability to care summat more? Were it on account of what N’Chalez had done to her?
Pirate Queen Agnethea the … oh, well, she did need to find an adjective for her name, didn’t she just? No matter. The Pirate Queen Agnethea put hands ‘gainst head and pressed down on the sides of her skull with enough pressure to crack someone else’s skull like an eggy.
Too many questions. Not enough answers.
Only one person to answer them all. And he were out there, doin’ as he were always doin’. Stickin’ ‘is ‘andsome nose into things and causing trouble no matter which way he went. All for a good cause, ‘e claimed. On the face of it, destroying a shitehole so you could build summat better atop it were a good and noble thing. Made sense. She’d done the same thing, clearing land for foul Ickford, but there were differences.
A whole Stack had nearly a billion living, breathing people. A planet, therefore, had trillions. A solar system had that number well over again and again, and a Galaxy counted that number as nowt but a wee percent.
And a Universe?
Agnethea’s new brain told her that when you got that big, numbers didn’t count. Numbers ceased to have any meaning because when you were dealing with the entire physical expression of living souls in a Universe, the number was so vast and unwieldy it just weren’t worth the effort.
By that logic, it were well terrible to kill a planet, or solar system or even a Galaxy because you could still count those numbers. But killing a Universe was all right, because then, it were the same as doing nowt at all.
Agnethea still needed to decide what she were going to do about Garth N’Chalez. He’d done summat awful and terrible to her. Worse e’en than when King’s Will had transformed her into the first Golem; she’d taken that sip willingly, and the one after that, hey? She’d been so proud and excited to become one of the very first gearheads, hadn’t she just, that she’d swallowed that fiery razorwire wi’out thinking beyond she wanted it done.
N’Chalez, though, he’d taken what she were and turned it to his own needs.
Needs, Agnethea understand and e’en agreed with, that’d been important to fill.
If only he’d asked. If only he’d pulled her aside with those weird eyes and queer tattoos and said, ‘lissen, luv, you aren’t human, you haven’t been forever and ever and you’re part of the thing that King uses to control this world. I can reprogram you in such a way as to stop the coming nightmare. ’twill change you, and it will probably kill you, but by doing so, you will have saved everything and everyone until it can be done right’.
Agnethea would’ve said yes, once more, wi’out thinking, because that were the type of girl she’d been, hey? To do what needed doing?
Well, she were going to get her hands on Book and then she were going to think long and hard on what she were going to do about Garth N’Chalez, weren’t she just?
“Tell me of this fairy-tale you’re reminded of as we descend deeper into this hellhole, machine mind. I am most curious to hear about a story that summat as has never been alive in it’s life finds interesting. Also, 'ere we journey downwards, do go slow and cautious as thieves in the night, hey? No sense disturbin' them as're ahead of us. We shall go slow and quiet as gearheads tripping through Widow’s Peak Nest or Bolty’s lightning-licked castle, hey?"
:it begins with a young lady of FrancoBritish origin by the name of Alison. At the beginning of our tale, she is sat at the bank of a river … do you know … yes, I can see you do … she is sitting with her sister at the bank of a river by her home, with her sister. Some time later, a talking thing known as a rabbit, which is a wee … very well, yes, you know what a rabbit is as well. She sees a rabbit wearing clothes running, and she chases after.
From there, she falls down a long, long hole…:
Agnethea nodded. She could see now why this story was pertinent to her. She allowed the machine mind to continue telling the tale whilst she closed her eyes and did her very best not to think of the end of Ickford, the falling o’ The Dome, and Garth N’Chalez…
18. Samiel Decides to Turn The Heat Up Anyways
An eternity passed. They always passed, and Samiel wondered if –before the end of his grand effort- he’d ever become the thing he became after thousands and thousands and thousands more of years. He’d experienced it more times than his frail human mind –yes, still human, or close enough, no matter what anyone would say- could truly comprehend, yet here, when he himself, the true him, found himself in that body, in that place, it was … ghastly. Awful.
Time was not kind. It was cruel and it was implacable and while he controlled it with every thought in his mind, it was nevertheless a rough and unkind bitch.
The worst of it was the stretching. The widening. The ever increasing size of his body. Almost as if he was under some form of constant, continual motion, like he were an astronaut hurtling into space in one of those clumsy rocket ships from the early 20th century.
Samiel knew he wasn’t, though. He’d done the tests. Performed the experiments. And for those tests and experiments he wasn’t smart enough to do on his own, well, he’d arranged for others to do them for him, all without them being the wiser.
He wasn’t in motion. Any other motion than that which he put him through. The acceleration hammering into his body this far into an already far flung future didn’t exist. Couldn’t exist.
“Yet I am become stretched out.” The sounds coming from his mouth –stretched out almost to frog shape, lips pressed so thin together, mouth so wide it was dreadful- were barely intelligible; most of his head by this point was wrapped in tight leather straps and anything else he could bring to hand, to keep his precious skull locked in place and his brain right where it was. It looked –would look- comical to anyone not aware of his symptoms, but this far up The Line, he spoke to no one save his others selves, and even then, so sparingly they sometimes forgot he even existed.
It was worth it. The pressure of his presence in his own earlier selves’ minds had been known to create … ripples … in the time stream, necessitating serious work to unravel.
The rest of him fared similar abusive treatment by the invisible, unmeasurable, unquantifiable presence that apparently came with hurtling through time, and with precisely the same levels of awkward embarrassment. He was literally strapped down tight to the chair which he’d been sat in for thousands of years, though –and he was ashamed of it, oh yes he was, yes he was indeed- this was more for his own peace of mind than anything else; this far up The Line, when he wasn’t busy focusing on the more salient events needing his strict attention and control, niggling little saboteur-thoughts wormed their way into his brain, curling little insects of self-destruction, each microscopic bug-brain warning him that when he wasn’t being careful enough, he was going to go hurtling through space as well as time, a bloated, time-stretched mockery of a man and that for the rest of his presumably eternal existence, that’d be his life.
Floating through the void of space, the channels of time, growing larger and more spread out, fatter and fatter and rounder and rounder. Would he ever be free from such awful
growth?
So he was tied down. So what? Better that than the alternative. Why, for all he knew, those errant thoughts, those little whispers that came at him when he wasn’t busy … those could be all the contact from an even further version of himself, the him that was …
Out there. In the future. He had to be. Because The Line was still the way The Line was, which meant that there was an Ultimate Samiel.
So far. So … very far. That Ultimate Samiel, still waiting for The Line to be made right and proper, he, too, would be tied to the chair but mercifully, he was quiet.
Samiel didn’t know for certain, and wouldn’t go out of his way to find out for certain, because what if he was right? What if there was a him even further up The Line than Ultimate Samiel? What if there was a him loose in the cosmos, a giant balloon mockery of what he was, trying to quietly prevent that dreadful thing?
Samiel shifted a bit, felt the hard metal clamps and the tighter leather straps keeping him connected to the world somewhere beneath his feet grow taut and cruel, and knew all was good.
“Everything is fine, everything is locked in. I am me, I am here, I am Samiel.” The words slithered from his mouth. The sentiment was true as true could be. He was him. He was eternal.
The only things not tied down and not bound in expertly crafted leather straps or cruel metal were his hands. He’d tried working the keys of his various machines with leather gloves or metal gauntlets on, but the physical contact just wasn’t the same. Manipulating time streams through the machines that surrounded him on all sides like a comforting technological cocoon was just as much art as science, and what artist wore thick, heavy gloves?
No, he needed to feel the essence of history murmuring up through the keys, singing from the speakers, needed to touch the heartbeat of Existence as it thump-thump-thumped it’s way across the monitors tracking singular events. The lights were there for easier comprehension of the past, but it was the heartbeat that helped him get a better grasp.