by Ryan Tang
She put the sword right above the head.
"That's enough for now."
She let out a long breath.
"Whew! That was close!"
Alice pounded the dash and cursed.
"Aw, man!"
Jon smiled. He was panting loudly from the excitement.
"That was fun!"
Alex put her sword back into the ground and closed her eyes. The Eternium Veins flashed. Her sword dissolved and seeped through the floor, returning to the colony's core.
She reached out a massive hand and helped Jon's machine to his feet.
She returned the mace to his hand.
Jon smiled.
"I'll put the machine back."
"It'll come back to you when you need it. I don't know when, but it will come. Once you're ready. We can practice on the simulator until you can command Eternium again."
"How do I beat what you did? When you knocked me off balance and pinned me."
Alex thought for a moment. Then she smiled and shook her head.
"Look, we can sit all day talking about it, but it's best demonstrated. We'll get you in the simulator so you can practice. But first. Before we give back your machine."
She pointed around her.
"Let's get these fucking walls down."
Jon and Alice hooted in excitement as the boy raised the weapon and smashed it hard against the black wall.
It crumpled, and light began to shine in.
"Man. Fred was always talking about this. He kept saying the walls would come down one day and I didn't believe him. It happened when we were playing at Paragons too. He'd take his model and pretend it was tearing down the wall."
Jon brought his mace back again and smashed it through the darkened panels of the broken false sky. The true night sky shone down on them, black and filled with stars.
"And now it finally happened. We never could have gotten it done without him."
BOOK 2: THE BROKEN HANDS
"Ready?"
Emile grinned from the pilot's seat in the center of the cockpit.
It wasn't really the pilot's seat anymore. It was technically the original, but it no longer controlled the machine. Similar luxurious cushioned chairs sat throughout the hollowed-out false Paragon. The Paragon carts were automated, designed to slide through the sky along the high wires they'd installed together. Technicians at the newly built transportation office manned the emergency brakes.
Alex's students chattered excitedly all around her. Today, the wired Paragons were packed to the brim. The whole colony would ride together before building Alex's new home, the very last one they needed to complete before the rebuild of Plenty was finally over.
"Ms. Alex's house! It's time to build Ms. Alex's house!"
"I can't believe it! So fast! We finished so fast!"
The wired Paragons were adapted from Stock's false machines, the beautiful fakes that closely resembled the legendary Paragons of Old Earth but could barely hover 10 feet in the sky. The shells had been hollowed out completely and filled with seats. They'd built windows in the arms, legs, and cockpit in the torso, so the riders could stare at the beautiful scene beneath them and marvel at the gorgeous home the citizens of Plenty had built together.
After Plenty overthrew the vicious tycoon Irl Stock during their grand battle in the library courtyard, they'd discovered hangar after hangar filled with false Paragons. Stock's corporation, Southern Robotics, had carefully built the 50-foot tall humanoid robots to resemble the legendary machines of Old Earth. The counterfeits shone as bright anything could shine without Eternium, but without the holy metal, Stock's false Paragons couldn't even stand on their own two feet. They had to lie flat on their stomachs, and they couldn't move their limbs. The arms and legs had to be set in place like they were action figures.
To compensate for his machines' shortcomings, Stock bribed the corrupt Governor of Plenty to enforce draconian house height policies, restricting all homes built in the so-called lower Blocks to a height of eight feet or less. Everyone other than Stock's handpicked favorites had been forced to live in squat ugly cubes, all packed tightly together.
Alex stared outside the window and smiled.
The cubes were gone now, along with every other stupid restriction Stock and Governor Waters had forced upon them. They'd been replaced by an eccentric beauty that was entirely unique to Plenty. As an aspiring historian, Alex had studied the societies of Old Earth, humanity's doomed birthplace, as well as the culture of the Mad Nobles, the sinful tyrants who'd once ruled mankind with an iron fist. The bounty of Old Earth far outstripped Plenty's meager resources, but Alex had never seen anything so special before, not even in the faded pictures of Old Earth's sea.
The librarian could tell who lived in each building just at a glance.
The base of the building to her right was built with bright red bricks. The traditional appearance spanned the first two floors. Flowers were planted carefully in windowsills, yellow on the left side and blue on the other. A balcony with a rocking chair stuck out of the second floor. The house was a perfect fit for fastidious Mark, who'd spent years managing the colony's library. He'd briefly taken a break from sorting books and organizing events to perfect the timing on the wired Paragons. The scheduling improved each time Alex rode the wired carts. Mark's meticulous handiwork was obvious.
Back in the days of Director Stock and Governor Waters, the Library Spire had always been pitifully underfunded. They had five librarians to man a tower that stretched for miles into the sky. But Stock had fallen, and his vaults had been opened. Mark was showing everyone what he could do when the world was his oyster.
Mark's rustic bricks gave way to the next four stories, which consisted of four brightly colored circles stacked one on top of the other. Alex didn't know Caroline particularly well, but she was always at the library chatting with Mrs. T and Margaret. She must have been in her sixties, but she had four young children she doted on. The circles were colored sort of like a rainbow. The first was purple. The next one yellow. Then green. Then blue. The appearance was both comical and endearing. She must have let her kids choose the colors.
The last three floors looked a whole house had been stacked on top of the rest of the building. Caroline's rounded circles spread out into a square platform, from which rigid poles descended to the colony floor to hold everything in place. The house had been directly ported from Block 1. However, the insides, which had once been built with sleek white walls and circular doors in an attempt to impress Stock, had been completely remodeled. Leanne lived there with her son Nico, who attended every one of Alex's classes in the library. Alex liked Nico a lot. The bespectacled boy was brilliant, and he wasn't afraid to let people know it. He always had something to say.
Alex could hear him talking right now.
He sat in the left arm with a gaggle of other students. He was excitedly telling them about the new story he'd read, which described a Paragon sniping duel that'd lasted for over a month. The story was one of Alex's favorites. The patience and willpower required to stay inside the humanoid's machine cockpit for a solid month jarred her each time she read the story.
The buildings to the other side of her were the same – whimsical styles piled up on top of each other. In a literal sense, the new buildings were mismatched, but in another way, they were perfect. Just looking at them caused her brain to buzz with pleasure. They were Plenty through and through.
One tower loomed high above the rest. It was the only one they hadn't built. It'd been left behind.
Most people speculated that the Mad Nobles had built the twisted Eternium relics left on every colony. However, Alex had recently developed a new theory, one she still needed to find the time to research. She thought the Library Spire might have been built by the rebels who'd overthrown the Nobles. After all, there'd been a monster imprisoned inside. If it'd been up to humanity's deposed rulers, the goddess of Ignorance would have roamed free. The Nobles had worshiped those dreadful cr
eatures as gods.
Plenty's Library Spire went miles and miles into the air. It twisted and turned, bending in shapes that were only possible because of Eternium. There were sections where the tower looked vertical.
The shelves were filled with books piled high from the floor to the ceiling, and there was an internal layer – what Alex called the book-corridors – hidden within the shelves. There were passageways, even whole rooms, built out of books. Alex had always thought the Spire would be the strangest building she'd ever seen. She always thought it was the building she'd love the most.
But the apartments were just as strange, and she loved them just as much.
Emile poked her.
"What are you smiling at?"
"Just..."
Alex waved her hand out the window, at a loss for words.
Emile laughed.
"Yeah!"
Her friend was smiling too.
Suddenly, a massive hunched-over Hands Paragon sprinted across the colony floor, moving at shocking speed despite its awkward gait. The strange troll-like machine, designed by her friend Jared, was the exact opposite of Stock's false Paragons.
Stock's machines were beautiful, but ultimately useless. Using them as wired carts for Plenty's transport system was the best purpose the survivors could find for them.
Jared's machine seemed bizarre, but the hunched over posture and armor-free design was the only way to create a Paragon that could fly without Eternium. The Hands Paragon could soar high into the sky and could move with speeds approximating those of Old Earth's legendary machines. The enormous hands and feet were perfect for colony construction and rescue missions. In times of peace, it did everything a Paragon needed to do. It was why they were able to reconstruct the colony so quickly after Stock mined the colony's core for Eternium, which had caused great earthquakes that'd threatened to tear Plenty apart.
The only thing it couldn't do was fight. The troll-like machine carried no weapons, and when put on the defensive, it was as brittle as it looked.
"Wait up! Wait up!"
The cars jerked to a sudden halt.
Jared and Duncan climbed hastily out of their machine. The cockpit door of their cart opened, and a ladder descended to the floor. The two men huffed and puffed as they clambered inside.
"Shoot! Sorry guys. We were busy getting some more work done."
Duncan shook his head and cursed.
"I thought the experiment was going to work too. Turned out it was another waste of time."
Then he shook his head and smiled.
"Next time! Next time!"
He seemed a little surprised to say it.
Jared grinned.
"Yeah. We have all the time we want."
Without Stock's draconian deadlines, which had almost always resulted in frauds like the false Paragons, the two engineers finally had the freedom to pursue genuine results.
Jared and Duncan were trying to reproduce Eternium, the holy metal of Old Earth. The former Southern Robotics engineers and their colleagues were spending almost all their time in the lab. There was a personal edge to their work. Stock had always derided his engineers as fools who held him back from success and glory. Every one of his workers knew it'd been the other way around.
Eternium had been the pride of humanity in the days of Old Earth. They used it to create the Paragons and the space colonies floating high in the sky. The legendary metal resonated with the human soul to perform unimaginable wonders. On the night of Stock's ritual to sacrifice Plenty and ascend to godhood, the Eternium in the Library Spire had rushed to Alex's aid. Alex found herself piloting the legendary machine that'd launched out of the Library Spire, fighting a duel against Stock with the colonists' lives on the line.
So far, Alex was the only person on the colony who could consistently summon a Paragon from Eternium. Her friend Leanne had a rudimentary ability, but so far all she'd managed to do was muster a few loose Paragon parts.
After the rebuild was over, Alex intended to research how her techniques could be passed on to everyone else. But that was only one piece of the puzzle. Until engineers like Jared and Duncan discovered how to forge fresh Eternium, they'd be restricted to temporarily borrowing the holy metal from the Library Spire and the colony's core.
Jared pulled out his tablet and shouted to the transportation center.
"Alright. Ready!"
Mark's excited reply was so loud it echoed through the cockpit. Alex and Emile giggled. They'd never heard Mark sound so happy before.
"Go! Go! Go!"
The Paragons glided silently through the air.
The cheers began. They were so loud Alex could hear not just the people inside of her Paragon, but her friends and neighbors who were riding in the wired machines behind her.
This was their victory lap.
They were going to see all the wonderful changes they'd made. Then they'd return to the Block 7 courtyard to build Alex's home and complete the colony's miraculous restoration.
Alex cheered with all the rest of them.
Her exhilarated shout resonated in the air, joining with everyone else's relief and happiness.
____
The mass casualties of Stock's conspiracy, combined with their newfound ability to build high in the air, meant that almost everyone on the colony had congregated their homes together. The Blocks around the Spire had been rededicated for residential and commercial purposes, although the shops and restaurants weren't properly commercial because they didn't take any money. It was an innovation taken from the lost citizens of Block 12, the first victims of Stock's crimes. As a boy, Stock had killed half a neighborhood with an idiotic experiment gone wrong. To cover up his son's mistake, Stock's father had locked away an entire Block for over fifty years. In the pitch-black darkness, the prisoners had realized they needed to stick together. Now, after the Southern Robotics crisis, the rest of the colony realized the same.
As they whizzed past the multi-colored apartment buildings, Jared and Duncan chuckled as they pointed out particularly strange shapes to Emile.
They'd insisted on the strangeness. As heads of the reconstruction process, they wouldn't let anyone get away without the home of their dreams. When someone sent Jared a modest design, he checked with all their friends before accepting it. If there was even the slightest hint of something else they wanted, he would do it for them.
As they flew by a home that looked like a crumbling clocktower, Jared pointed it out and shook his head.
"That one was the hardest of all! We had to put poles inside every wall of the house to make sure it looked like it was always falling apart."
He turned to Alex and chuckled.
"The mom said her kid got it from a fairy tale you read her. Kept me up all night."
Alex smiled. It must have been Gigi's house. She was the one who'd loved that story most of all. It was from a time before the Paragons. Scholars inelegantly referred to the time before the discovery of Eternium as "Old Old Earth." Historians still threw fits about how it was impossible to tell what was real and what was a legend. There was a storyteller back on Alex's home colony of Diligence who'd insisted that knights really had fought dragons.
As a girl, Alex had always laughed at him, but now she believed him. After all, Paragons really had fought dark gods. She'd done it herself.
They continued soaring through the air, passing by the very edge of Block 8. A Hands Paragon knelt low to the ground as it filled in a train tunnel and removed the remains of the station. Stock had used the train tunnels to mine the colony's core. After recovering from their brainwashing, his freed workers never wanted to go near the tunnels again. Considering the colony's trauma, the air wires were the best alternative. Everyone was thrilled to use Stock's fraudulent machines for such a joyous purpose.
At the very edge of Block 8 was an enormous restaurant built in the shape of an upside-down stew pot – Margaret's favorite cooking device. The pot was gigantic. The handle, which stood over ten feet
in the air, was lined with windows and served as deluxe seating. The colonists took turns rotating through who got to use it. The pot contained enough seats to host the entire colony.
Alex smiled as she made her way out of her carriage in the torso and toward the left arm. The full seating would be necessary for tonight's celebration.
She saw Margaret and Mrs. T huddled tight together in the back, glaring at each other over a game of cards.
"Margaret, how are the kitchens going?"
Margaret was the director of Plenty's Spire, but she was also one of the most talented cooks Alex knew. Like everyone else, she was now bouncing back and forth between different projects. As exciting as the colony's rebuild was, it required every inch of their talents.
"Good! Good! Everything's set up, and I'm almost done training the new chefs. You should expect to see me back at the Spire soon!"
Margaret drew a card and peaked at it. Then she shook her head in disgust and tossed her hand face-up on the table.
"Five legs. Again. What the hell am I supposed to do with five legs?"
She shook her head as Mrs. T laughed.
"What the hell are you doing putting so many legs in your deck?"
The card game Eternium was named after the legendary metal. The game of strategy had survived the fall of the Mad Nobles. The players built their decks beforehand and battled against each other to assemble the strongest Paragons possible.
Margaret feigned anger as she gathered up her cards.
"I've had enough of losing to bad luck for now."
She turned and called to a man at the far edge of the cart.
"Walter! We're passing over the food production lines. I thought you were going to give a tour. What happened?"
Alex peeked out the window.
The car soared over greenhouses and open factory lines that buzzed and clicked as mechanical arms gathered fine cuts of meat.
Walter was a fat and sweaty man who jiggered whenever he spoke. He trembled as he responded from his lazy recline on his pilot's chair. His stomach drooped off the cushion, and his legs splayed on the floor.
