Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2026
“I told you Pool, I can sense you’re different. I don’t think your current version is the one I went to Siberia with. You smell different…actually, you don’t really smell at all, which is what is different, kind of like background odors and machine oil. The Pool from before had more of a funk, like unwashed clothes.”
“I always had my clothing cleaned, and I most assuredly remember Siberia, good food, dead dragons, a lonely, handsome archeologist in the woods…,” he said with emphasis. “That was me and I am he. I think you’re experiencing a bias because you know that Dr Daytime has exposed the truth of my nature, when you have no evidence that I wasn’t like this all along.”
“Bullshit, Pool. We both know that you first encountered a mechanical thinking machine on that island. You first encountered those crude anthromorphs there. Two and a half centuries later after plenty of R&D on their part, out you pop, completely—almost completely—looking like Pool.”
“That is not how it happened, Ms Tagore. I was there. I was trapped on that island by that…semantic engine, as the Baroness calls it, by its metal servants. This was in 1890. I escaped and used the temporal summoning device which the Baroness had provided me for that exact purpose, and like the beacon of a light atop a docking mast, it called her to my rescue. I did not spend two and a half centuries there, as you suggest. I should remind you that you weren’te there when they first came to my aid, but only later when we had again transited to this century, when we rescued you, before our fateful disarmament.”
“Quite the way with words, Pool.” She paused for a moment in thought. “You have a point though. There wasn’t enough time for them to perfect their anthromorph construction that quickly with that technology. This doesn’t prove you’re the original, only that at this point we don’t know which one of you is, and—who knows—there could be an army of you.”
The sand and dry silt faintly crushed softly under their boots as they walked. When they got to where Luc and Etelka were standing, Luc said, “Where you too fighting?”
“No!” Shouted Nila bruskly.
“A minor disagreement. Nothing to worry yourself over, Mr Maron,” added Pool. Nila’s glare was piercing, even shielded behind the lenses.
“It looked to me that you were fighting. Very heated,” said Etelka, who smiled behind her mask which shifted to acommodate, but then backed away from the remark when Nila turned to her. Etelka felt suddenly like a mouse before a housecat.
“Did you resupply my ammo?” Asked Nila of Luc and Etelka, but mostly Luc.
“Nearly every available mag compatible with the Kopf-Heckler that I could sift from the city. Several thousand rounds loaded and another case of rounds you can load yourself with your new fingers,” answered Luc. And to Pool, “and we’ve got a few guns for you as well, locks, stocks and barrels, as they say.”
Pool had only seen that phrase in cinematograph captions in the theatre. The Easterns, they called them. Popular for a while. Films about Muskovy’s violent settlement of the barren Eastern Lands. He, however, had given up such childhood fantasies and was now a city-man, through and through.
The utility truck was unloaded, with Nila and Pool’s limited luggage and sundry supplies shifted to Happy Funtime. Luc’s henchmen, for lack of better word, boarded the utility vehicle and after a brief private word between Luc and the foreman, they returned to the city.
“Did you get everything you wanted from the Hut, Etelka?” Luc asked.
She nodded. “Yes. All of the important engineering…along with the weapons, the espresso machine, foodstuffs and supplies and so on.”
“Good. We need to get going.”
As Nila climbed the ramp into the aft of the Happy Funtime Express, she raised her goggles, pushing her hair back like a hairband. Her eyes dilated instantly taking in the amassed hardware stripped from the Hut. She dropped her mask down below her chin slowly with the raw fingers of her new hand.
Against the vertical left wall of the cargo portion of the transport leaned the tabletop from lounge, with its map of Terra, but in front of that, lying stacked neatly on the floor and running the length of the cargo hold, were the 30 brass—or was it bronze—metal poles that had encapsulated the Hut’s envelope and gondola. The twenty triangular joints, into which the poles were screwed were piled next to the table top behind them. The poles and the table were secured with tiedowns, with a cargo net over the joints.
On the opposite side, there was a meter long plastic crate, still open, revealing the top of the time device. Another held the esspresso machine that Etelka obsessed over. Nila didn’t know how they would get it to work without the boiler from the Hut. Too bad. I’ll have to do without caffiene unless Luc brought some bottled coffee. Next to those were cargo nets pressing the various antique guns and cannons from the airship to the wall.
It turns out that Luc had indeed brought along crates of coffee, water and beer, all in their spun-metal bottles, as well as vacuum-packed food.
“Let me show you the living space,” said Luc as he squeezed by Nila, gently moving her to the side as he passed.
The waft of spiced-orange scent that came from his beard-oil reminded her of orange-pepper fried curd, or that deep fried chicken she had had in Buda…or was it N’aurelia, she wondered.
The others waited behind her, following only when she followed Luc to the forward part of the truck.
“It is fortunate for us that one of my people found this. The design is ideal for our trip,” he said as he led them through the door to the cabin. Nila followed Luc through. After her came Etelka, then Pool, then Attila and Beatrix.
Luc reached the other side of the crew cabin and turned like a tour guide, sillouetted by the external light coming through the cockpit window behind him. He held his mask and goggles dangling from his fingers.
“This was used as a long-haul truck, so it comes with four bunks, as you can see,” he gestured around.
“Surely you don’t expect us to double up, Mr Maron!” Uttered Pool, somehow flustered.
“No!” Said Etelka at the same time.
In the know, Attila and to a lesser extent Beatrix, smirked behind them.
Luc, happy with his lame joke and the shocked exclamations from his party, let them express their disapproval for a few seconds before assuring them that the plastic boxes behind them flanking the doorway were in fact folded cots.
“Let the ancient prudes have the bunks so they can sleep behind the curtains. I don’t care,” said Nila. I know you don’t care,” she said to Luc.
“My thought was that the cots would be backup for whoever was on watch—I think we should have a watch—or maybe supplimental arrangements for the other Pool and maybe for whoever is helping him in Singhapol, when we get there.”
“While I wouldn’t say it is safe here, it will be markedly less safe when we get there, and we have a couple days of travel even without unforseen events.”
“I appreciate your graciousness, Nila. I wouldn’t want to take your bunk, though. You are still recovering.” Etelka looked at her sympathetically.
“I’m recovered. I really don’t care where I sleep.”
After some more unheeded protestations by Beatrix and Attila that they would offer their berths to their hosts (Luc and Nila), the matter was eventually settled.
Luc the tour guide then showed them the cockpit or bridge, as Etelka insisted on calling it.
There were two grimy bucket seats, designed for a slighter frame and almost too small for the men. A dashboard of sorts with panel screens, all dark at the moment, below the sloped and abraded wrapp-around windscreen, which was tinted at the top but more clear below, dimming the sky above. Grubby sun-visors could fold down and block the upper portion from any angle.
Even though the craft could operate unter full automation only needing coordinates for the destination, there was a physical, telescoping steering column in front of each of the seats, angling upwards while at rest, or under autopilot. They consisted of a horizontal bar with a vertical joystick at each end.
Nila understood how it worked and looked around the cockpit while Luc explained to the 19th century audience that they worked in tandem and could control the roll, pitch and yaw and so on.
The thin carpet beneath their feet was stained with various substances. The stains were black and dark brown and smelled of oil and grease. There was one that was a sweet dipping sauce. Another larger one was definitely blood. So that’s how this boat was acquired. She was not devoid of sympathy and knew that Luc and his crew wouldn’t have hijacked some innocent’s delivery truck, but very easily could have taken it from some other more nefarious actors who might have.
“Nila?” Luc got her attention. “If we are all loaded, can you go seal the back door?”
She walked the rear of the vessel, past all of Etelka’s metal. The cargo hold was barely long enough for the edge-poles from the Hut’s elongated icosahedron, which Nila guessed were around 25 meters long when separated, but they didn’t take up much room. The space was mostly empty.
Looking out at the stripped hulk of Baba Yaga’s Hut she considered it. Marred by bullets and cannon balls and shot through by high velocity railgun rounds, the gondola looked much more battered and bruised without the icosohedron around it or the oblong of the inflated gas envelope abvoe it. It looked more like a derelict surface boat on a dried out river bed.
She could smell the rain coming as Luc had said. She gave it one last glimpse and flicked the door toggle with her finger. The skin was still raw and she felt something akin to a sharp pain, but it wasn’t pain really. It was dull, removed from immediacy. It was new.
Ion Fyr 