Condemnation

by Kell Inkston

  Contents

  Title

  - Chapter 1 -

  - Chapter 2 –

  - Chapter 3 -

  - Chapter 4 -

  - Chapter 5 -

  - Chapter 6 -

  - Chapter 7 -

  - Chapter 8 -

  - Chapter 9 -

  - Chapter 10 -

  - Chapter 11 -

  - Chapter 12 -

  - Chapter 13 -

  - Chapter 14 -

  - Chapter 15 -

  - Chapter 16 -

  - Chapter 17 -

  - Chapter 18 -

  - Chapter 19 -

  - Chapter 20 -

  - Chapter 21 -

  - Chapter 22 -

  - Chapter 23 -

  - Chapter 24 -

  - Chapter 25 -

  Substation 7

  #1: Condemnation

  By Kell Inkston

  Copyright 2018-2019 Kell Inkston

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For my little machine:

  I knew I could count on you.

  Pick up Book Two: Liberation!

  http://mybook.to/substation7book2

  Available November 20th, 2019

  - Chapter 1 -

  It’s faint at first, but it’s certain. Clare can hear that dreaded, steady sloshing from outside. Something is moving through the shin-deep water, heading straight for the academy building — her building.

  The girl blows frantically at the super-heated spot on her project, but to no avail; it’s still that sleepy, molten red — far too hot to work. She would add more spit to speed up the cooling process, but she's so dehydrated by now that nothing else is coming out. The absurdity is overwhelming, being surrounded by life-saving water that she can't risk going out to collect and use.

  The noise outside is gaining volume as it closes in on the structure, just as another, and then another sound join in from the opposite direction.

  "No, no, nononono-"

  "What is it, Clare?" whirs the machine, the object of her efforts.

  An abrupt shushing is all she spares as she removes her knife from the pack.

  "What are you going to do with... Clare, wait— I would not recco- Oh, dear…"

  With a deep breath, Clare cuts herself along her hand, causing a sharp wince and a tear to drop from her eye as the blood spills out. This should be thick enough to do the job. She gathers her blood up on the knife blade and spreads it along the suture, the surface hissing out with a growing intensity that quiets into a faint sizzle. That did it.

  As the meters dwindle between them and the increasing number of sounds outside, she hurries her project over to the pressurizer. She hooks it up and activates it at the lowest setting— a fleeting moment of triumph. Then the first and final bang resounds through the hall. The door flies open, revealing a green-managraphed automaton, blaring out with a violent, sickly gaze. It’s coming right for her, and there’s nowhere to run but to the window with the sloshing echoes awaiting outside.

  - Chapter 2 -

  Just a day earlier, things were very different.

  Dense, endless clouds roll overhead, muffling the sun’s gilded rays and reducing their lithe, warm energy. All that remains is a dead, cold, almost fluorescent filter of light— a perfect morning for taking a test.

  The classroom contains five rows of ten students each, with every victim gripping his or her pen like a lifeline.

  The proctor, sitting motionless at the professor's desk and with a supreme view of the test-takers, sets his eyes upon them like a living fixture of pure observation: waiting, anticipating the moment he catches that one stray glance, or that single passed note. Tests in the Royal Academy of Engineering aren't to be taken lightly, everybody knows.

  A certain, rather-attractive Kimley Gaunter nips at the inside of her mouth as she reads over the final question on the first page:

  "A quadrametric di-mana circuit with a torso cross-connection will display what following output in a frame 1 automaton?"

  With a deep breath, Kimley comes to the bitter realization that this, alongside half of the other questions on this exam, was not in the study material at all. She sneaks a blink-fast glance at the others in her row; mortified, disgusted faces stare down at their own pages.

  In fact, the whole room would be silent in their dismal state, if it weren't for the pencil strokes of one single student— all the way at the end and the back.

  Kimley isn't our heroine— but this girl is.

  Clare Airineth, academically years ahead of her peers but biologically two years younger, snaps out the final strokes to her answers— finishing the test at the speed expected of a Class Five engineer. With a wide, socially-clueless smile, she passes over the immensity of jealous gazes and makes her way down the steps from her row to the proctor.

  His sunken eyes twinkle with a sort of pretentious half-victory half-compassion when he takes her test into his wrinkled, pinkish hands. "Gave up alre-" the proctor falters, adjusting his glasses while perusing through the pages. "Ahh, well there's one in every class, I suppose," he observes, correcting himself with a raised brow. It takes him nearly a minute to glance over the test, but in the end, he’s satisfied with her work. "Yep: that's an A+. You have a nice day, Miss Airineth."

  "Thank you, sir." She bows her head, her sprightly blond cowlick performing a humorous, flippant wave over her generally well-combed appearance; her single green earring droops aside to do the same, albeit with a more respectful air to it.

  She turns to leave the classroom, sparing a glance over to her classmates. They all look at her with that mix of envy and grief; not hatred, because they wouldn't admit it, but certainly a desire that she weren't there with them.

  With the same, kind smile she inherited from her mother, she leaves them to their fate— certain that this is just the destiny of people who would rather have friends than have a comprehensive grasp of their study material. In a smooth swinging motion, she exits through the door with a true sense of excellence. She's notably younger than the others, and yet here she is, outdoing her peers in spades.

  She almost starts monologuing in her head, with the great King Victor congratulating her on the recipient of Class Five Head Engineer— but the young professor has been waiting on the other side of the door, leaning about coolly in his tweed vest and waistcoat.

  "Went well, I trust?" he asks, popping his pipe to the side of his mouth.

  She stutters. She'll never get used to the fact that the professor for this class is none other than Jack Elwood, the living rock star of the automaton engineering field.

  "W-yeah it... yeah, great, sir!"

  He nods at an angle with that expressive mix of charisma and certainty, perfected over years of tests. "Great. Your mom would be proud."

  She has no idea what face she's making at him, but is very hopeful that it includes a smile. "Thank you, sir! I'm sure she would be... she-"

  "I trust that your project is going to be just as impressive," he adds.

  There's a pause in the hallway, her green eyes steadily widening. "...The what, sir?"

  He arches his face in a way that creates in her the simultaneous urge to go right up to him and either kiss him, or punch him in the mouth so hard that it bleeds— a sort of semi-pretentious confidence that she cannot help but find both infuriating and attractive. He's got twelve years on her, and she knows she's too young, but she can't help imagining.

  "Your thesis project; I’ll be expecting it next Friday."

  "
Next..." the words cut through her like a saw.

  "You remember, from your syllabus, right?"

  She's quiet a second— a slow, lying nod is all that she produces for the longest time.

  "Y-yes. Yeah, the master's presentation thesis class. The one all final year master’s students have to do, of course."

  He leans his head down just a tad, sizing her expression up past his thin-rimmed glasses. "The one you've been working on since the beginning of the year, I hope?"

  Like a conduit of midnight, a cold sweat overtakes her.

  "Yes sir, naturally, I'm already done! It's on... infrastructure."

  He leans back with a smile. "Wonderful. You know, I'm really proud of you, too."

  Even being hit with a compliment like this does nothing to save her from the gut-wrenching horror of failure that has overtaken her. "Thank you, sir," she responds, her tone now functioning as a broken record.

  "Your mother was an amazing woman, a pioneer of pioneers, and it's worth restating that she'd be very happy to know how well you're doing."

  "Thank you, sir."

  He draws back, leaning on the wall and reaching for his pencil and algorithm-filled notebook. "I know your dad's just as proud; any father would be. You've got a Class Five ahead of you, Miss Airineth. The other students are good— but you're driven. That’s exactly how all the Class Fives are; that's what sets us apart. Run along now. Spend some time with your father. You're going to be very busy a year from now when you get that commission, after all."

  "Yes, sir, thank you, sir." Clare bows, backing away in the same movement.

  Elwood nods again. "Have a nice day."

  "Thank you." And at that, she finally feels secure enough in her formalities to leave the outer keep and hurry down the streets towards home.

  The moment she's out in the fresh air of the day and the shadow of the walls, she stops. One, two, then three deep breaths pass through her as she tries her best to calm down— but it's not helping. She has to get to work immediately; progress is the only way to fix this. She glances up to the rim of the wall, at those densely-armored guards doing their rounds— braving the cold weather for hours on end to keep watch outside and monitor the water level of the ocean. A reinvigorated sense of determination steadies her. She'll do it for people like them; she’ll invent something some day that can do it in their place- those were the kinds of problems her mother fixed, after all.

  Now strutting at a double-quick pace, Clare passes by the circulating crowds of humans and automatons— human-like in shape, but faceless and clearly more mineral than animal. Their glowing managraphs search about for their next objective; leading the mechanical brains with their magic-charged intelligence.

  She rushes by without so much as a greeting to anyone or anything, readily reaches the Royal Library of Engineering, and slips inside aiming for one of the underused and always-silent study rooms.

  She spends the next two hours pouring over ideas for a thesis, but to no avail. What contribution could she possibly make to such a readily-shrinking body of available discoveries? What's more, how could she have possibly forgotten about the project this entire time!?

  This will be the last problem of this caliber she has; it only gets worse from here.

  - Chapter 3 -

  It feels like only minutes have passed— and then she sees him enter the library as well.

  A young, dark haired and somber-featured lad with a solemn look of constant contemplation— his brows at a seemingly permanent raise in what she has only ever been able to assume is either confusion or concern. She raises her hand nervously to her best friend from behind her pile of books. He looks about, waves back, and joins her in the little enclosure of shelves.

  "Afternoon, Clare," he greets with a light, almost chivalrous trepidation.

  "Afternoon," she responds with a deflated bleat. "This is it, I guess," she scoffs— as though her life were the punchline of a twenty two-year-old joke.

  Waine sighs. "I'm... I'm really sorry you're going through this. When you told me over the rock I didn’t believe you at first. Sorry."

  Still with that empty grin, she looms further over the study table. Its sheen is as if an oaken pond reflecting back her monumental failure as a living creature— given such promise and so many opportunities to succeed, only for it all to collapse. "Yeah, well thanks for coming," she finally says. "I guess getting carried away was my end after all; you called it."

  He would chuckle and give her his usual playful shove, but this is no laughing matter. "Surely there's something you've thought of?"

  "It has to be an original contribution, Waine. If I can't think up something by tonight, there'll be no way I'll be able to do enough research to push it out in time."

  He brings up his knuckle and gently crosses it over his chin for a scratch. "Well, when I was researching for mine, I just asked myself: what is something important that no one's thought about? Maybe it's something the ancestors had that we've forgotten. Everhold's really old, after all— twelve whole generations now since the walls went up. What's something that people want to know about, something that effects them?"

  Clare stares deep into the desk, reflecting her thoughts off it with a fatalist contemplation— as if the question were written across its surface, and it were the most important question to ever be asked.

  "I said it would be on infrastructure. It has to revolve around that," she answers after a pause.

  He hums. “Uh… I guess you could try to make a recorder auto to survey the… structural integrity of the outside walls? I’m sure people would like to know what’s, like, out th-”

  She sighs, cutting him off.

  “What, is that illegal?”

  She nods. She knows quite a bit about Everhold law, considering her father’s profession.

  “Lemme guess, demons?”

  She nods again.

  Waine smirks. "So, what... logistic improvements? Routing?"

  "I don't... I don't know."

  "Well, that cuts down your options a little— but honestly, you could stretch the definition to mean anything." He sighs. "Have you thought about agriculture routing? Those autos could always do their job a little bit faster."

  She shrugs. "That's not my expertise at all, and that's what half the class' projects'll be about."

  He draws back. "Are you sure? I'd..." he looks across the library, making sure no one's nearby before he leans in. "I could give you my notes for my project. It had a pretty good side-line and it'd be an easy out. I've practically done the whole thing, but presented something else."

  Clare glances up to Waine. "You'd... you'd let me use your research?"

  He nods his head to the side cooly. He’s not particularly popular among her classmates, but he treats her the best by far. "Sure. You deserve it, and I wouldn't publish it if you needed it."

  "That's..." she smirks with a wince. "That's really, really nice of you, but it wouldn't be right."

  "Come on, if you don't come up with something to present you'll get kicked out of the academy. You'd be a Class Two!"

  "W-"

  "Do you want to be a barista for your whole life?"

  She looks away bitterly. "...No."

  He draws in with a firm gaze. "Then take my research. Make your own project out of it, present it, and become the Class Five we both know you deserve."

  "But I don't deserve it if I didn't do the wo-"

  "Clare."

  "..." She sighs, bites her tongue, and looks back to him. "Let me think on it."

  "Alright, fine," he smiles back. "Take your time, you wouldn't need more than a couple of days to put it together with my notes."

  She gets up and gathers her materials.

  "You're leaving?"

  She nods. "I need to go home. It's late."

  "It's barely four."

  "I gotta try to do this myself. I'll let you know, though."

  He stares her down a moment, and then lays back with a lean. "Well, alr
ight. You know what you're doing. You've always made your stuff work one way or another. Keep your chat-stone on you, though."

  "Will do. Thanks again."

  Waine scoffs. "Get out of here. Go think up a thesis idea." He waves her off with a shooing motion, his smile relaxed only until she waves back and leaves the library. He takes a deep breath. "Alright, good job, Mister Brightmoor— good job," he recites to himself with relief. He can already see them studying together late into the night, shoulder to shoulder.

  - Chapter 4 -

  Walking down the muggy streets of the residential quarter, Clare crumbles tightly into herself with both hands in her pockets.

  She hasn't the slightest clue what to do. Any proper magi-tech engineer would just do the work, or admit to their failure and do their best to pick up the pieces—, but Waine is offering her an easy way out. If she takes his notes and puts her name on it, she'll get her degree, get her guaranteed Class Four and that forty an hour pay; hell, she knows for a fact that the Class Five everyone teases her with wouldn’t be far off, either.

  "But she wouldn't do that," Clare notes coldly to herself, passing beside a pair of agricultural automatons on their way to the Mechanical Eighth within the Industrial Quarter— likely for repairs, she guesses. She smiles at them like she would a person, and they nod their heads back; they're wonderfully complex thanks to Everhold's solid foundation of magitechnology— but only the ones that need to be. Managraphy is expensive and time consuming, after all, so they're usually made only as intelligent and safe as their environment requires.

  With a misted, cold breath, she nods to herself with the decisiveness of an adult, despite her youth. Her mom won her commission fair and square; so will she. It won't be easy, but honesty, at least in one’s work, is the one policy that her mother definitely instilled in her. Her mom never backed down when it came to what she believed was the truth.