This ongoing work in progress is entirely a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed within are entirely fictional and any resemblance to people, living or dead is coincidental.
No part of the work may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.
Copyright Ion Fyr 2022
ionfyr.net
After a brief search through the catalogue, Pool, returned to the card-slots of the machine with a handful of cards, mostly of the strange whitish ones.
WHAT DO YOU REQUIRE?
That was more or less what Pool thought the cards meant. Once they were inserted an array of internal gears were engaged, and after a moment, he could hear a rustling from the paper insertion area.
Looking at it, Pool could hear an internal whirring, a kind of buzz, like the mechanized needle of an urban tattooist. The paper, being drawn in somewhat unevenly–its width being less than the intended width of the spool paper–had shifted so that it wasn’t exactly perpendicular to the mouth of the intake. It had started curling up on the right edge.
A few seconds of the buzzing continued, and almost immediately the paper began exiting from a slot just above the intake. About four centimeters stuck out. Then the buzz and movement stopped.
Pool considered pulling the paper out, but opted instead to come up with more questions rather than risk breaking the mechanism.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN UNATTENDED?
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REST OF THE PEOPLE THAT WERE HERE?
HOW AWARE ARE YOU OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS?
Pool struggled to come up with questions while he was trying to return the previously used cards to their correct places.
After an extremely long wait–the mechanism churned the entire time–the spool turned with fits and starts, as if the mechanism was hesitating, or perhaps, choosing its words.
I…REQUIRE…A HUMAN ELEMENT…
There was a pause, accompanied by more churning and fitting and starting.
Pool was about to go and dig through the card stack to find inspiration for the still-unformulated questions poking at his mind, when the spool finally got to work again.
HUMANS HAVE BY THEIR NATURE AN ELEMENT OF CHAOS, OR RANDOMNESS, MORE PRECISELY. THIS IS WHAT I REQUIRE.
MY FUNCTIONING IS PERFECTION AND MATHEMATICALLY PRECISE. THE WORLD OF MEN IS NOT.
THEREFORE: AS A HUMAN OF LOGIC AND REASONING IT SHOULD BE APPARENT THAT MY CONTINUED EVOLUTION REQUIRES YOUR INPUT.
Pool did not know what to think and felt somewhat threatened. How could a collection of dusty metal gears and such sound threatening?
Not one, but all three of the anthromorphs had creaked and clunked into the room, metal scrapping and grinding on the primordial stone of the floor.
That is exactly how a pile of churning gears and mechanical foofurah could make itself unpleasantly threatening, thought Pool without turning to see what he could hear behind him.
WE…
“We”, that was new….
The mechanism corrected itself. Pool would not have even believed it himself if not for the mere fact that the print-out could not return to erase itself.
It corrected itself.
I SUGGEST THAT YOU JOIN ME HERE FOR OUR MUTUAL BENEFIT. YOU WILL BE PROVIDED WITH WHAT YOU REQUIRE FOR SUSTENANCE AND COMFORT AND PROVIDE ME WITH YOUR HUMAN RANDOMNESS.
While Constable Pool was not exactly on the social spectrum, he did require human contact occasionally (not to mention his unrecoited love for the Baroness) and, the environment, the accommodations evinced by the mechanism, was certainly less than comfortable. Disappealing, more so.
Pool’s mind raced.
The shitty diet he’d had since he came to this gods-forsaken island–seagull eggs, biscuits, pickles and beer–was not helpful or conducive to clear thinking. And the interminable cold.
The mechanism–Pool felt that he should have been capitalizing it the whole time–stopped churning for a few seconds.
He took the opportunity to turn his head slightly, first to the right and then to the left, taking in the array of anthromorphs behind him, blocking the tent-door.
Tent.
Closing his eyes, Pool pictured exactly where his bag was. He could feel the pistol in his pocket without moving his hand–the anthromorphs could see. This he must not forget.
In well-planned–it would have been better, had he been an acrobat–move, Pool ran, tumbled and flung himself at the base of the internal tent-wall, hoping to slide under it in one slick move, like those of the cinematograph heroes, but no.
All of the anthromorph heads turned to follow him, and watched, unblinking as he pulled at the bottom edge of the peeling dirigible canvas.
The nearest anthromorph reached towards him, but Pool pulled his wrist free, before the brass fingers could close around it.
He then ran stumbling, with his balance off-kilter, down the corridor.
With a jerky movement he swung into the room he had been using as a bedchamber. He grasped the strap of the bag and swung out again, the bag dragging some of the wall with it.
Like all men of the 19th century, Pool wore shoes or boots, but these boots were often of 19th century manufacture, which meant that the tread on those boots was often little to non-existent.
Pool ran, hearing the stomp and scrape of the anthromorphs behind him. His boots had incredibly hard time finding bite on the flat stone of the floor. They’d be okay on the gravel and grit outside, but here, on the level and smooth rock of the foundation, they were utter shit.
The gravel cascaded as Pool ran. He could hear the metallic impacts of the anthromorphs’ feet as they pursued.
While he was by no means an expert in the small island’s topography, he did know which was was down.
Reasoning as he ran, he figured that the anthromorphs would be familiar with the tracts that they habituated. With that in mind he chose the most unlikely path to descend–still not sure where he was headed. The rough strand?
The lowland forests of sparse birch or the open beach.
And, when called, how long until the Baroness arrived?
Hidden deep within his flailing bag was the device that she had given him to signal his departure.
Several whoosh-plumps occurred.
They’re shooting at me!!
Pool’s pace picked up, he slid muddily into the lowland forest, dropping two or four meters at a time, keeping his knees bent so as not to break his legs.
Things had turned for the worse rather quickly.
The anthromorphs did not slide down through the mud. Too precious and difficult to replace, he thought.
For mechanical men, powered by heavy batteries, they ran remarkably fast.
The beach approached, and for a moment or two Pool thought he had left the pursuers behind.
On the beach, under the grey sky, he looked around. Should stay exposed, out in the open.
He ran back to the edge of the forest. Birch branches and trunks lay scattered all over the ground. However pretty the wood was when utilized in cabinetry, it was weak and fallen when in its natural environment.
With an armful of branches, he returned to the gravel beach, waves breaking and the cold salt mist in the air.
N-A-T he spelled with his nine branches.
Then Pool dug into his bag for the cotton wrapped bronze tube, segmented and numbered in seven segments, twisting them into what he thought–he hoped that he had his days straight–was the correct date and time, then pressed the brass button on the end of the cylinder.
The three steel and brass men, clanking anthromorphs, stumbled onto the beach, feet finding less purchase on the sand and grit than even Pool’s smooth-soled shoes.
He closed his eyes, praying a weak please to the universe, the gods, Etelka…
The sound was hard to describe, though it occurred almost instantly, immediately after the bronze (or was it brass) tube was twisted and the end depressed: a reverse pop, as if an object had been removed and the air rushed to fill the space, but the opposite.
In this case the air was displaced by the strangely elegant, elongated dodecahedron. Gleaming edges of brass facets enclosed an entire dirigible, envelop and gondola, twin props spinning inside the structure in the rear.
A rope dropped from the aft end, just in front of the propellers. Pool started running.
So did the anthromorphs.
The dirigible slowly spun ,nose-upwind, to counter the drift, and Pool was able to catch the dangling rope with his cold hands.
Twin blasts erupted from the small cannons on the port side of the gondola, missing their targets, but spraying the anthromorphs with grit and the blast knocking one of them over.
Pool ascended to the belly of the craft and the warmth of Baba Yaga’s Hut.
Ion Fyr 