Claire stifled a giggle, but her gesture did not go unnoticed by Charles, who winked at her, before taking his wife’s arm and leaving the little gathering—in order, he said, to test the excellent qualities of the punch. Ferguson heaved a sigh, visibly relieved at his departure.
“I hope you’ll forgive this little incident, my dears,” he said, attempting to recover his smug grin. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Charles Winslow is known all over London for his insolence. If it weren’t for his father’s money …” A murmur spread through the crowd, drowning him out. Everyone turned to face the back of the room where at that very moment Gilliam Murray was making his way onto the stage.
19
He was without doubt one of the biggest men Claire had ever seen.
Judging from the way the boards creaked under his feet, he must have weighed more than twenty stone, and yet his movements were graceful, almost sensual. He was dressed in a smart pale purple suit that shimmered in the light. His wore his wavy hair combed back and an impeccably tasteful bow tie struggled to fit around his broad neck. His enormous hands, which looked capable of pulling trees up by the roots, rested on the lectern as he waited—a patient smile on his face—for the murmur to subside.
Once silence had settled over the gathering, draped over them like the dust sheets placed on furniture in houses closed for the season, he cleared his throat loudly and unleashed his smooth baritone voice on his audience: “Ladies and gentlemen, there is no need for me to tell you that you are about to take part in the most astonishing event of the century, the second journey through time in history. Today you will break the chains that bind you to the present, avoid the continuity of the hours, confound the laws governing time. Yes, ladies and gentleman, today you will travel through time—something that up until yesterday man could only dream about. It is my great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of Murray’s Time Travel and to thank you for choosing to take part in our second expedition to the year 2000, which we decided to organize following the overwhelming success of the first. I guarantee you will not leave here disappointed. As I already mentioned, you will be traveling across the centuries, beyond your lifetimes. If this were all Murray’s Time Travel had to offer, it would still be worthwhile, but thanks to our efforts you will also have the chance to witness an unmissable event—possibly the most important moment in the history of mankind: the battle between the brave Captain Derek Shackleton and the evil automaton Solomon, whose dreams of conquest you will see perish beneath the captain’s sword.” Some timid applause broke out in the first row, but Claire felt this owed more to the emphasis the speaker had laid on his last words than to their implication for the gathering, to whom the outcome of this distant war was surely a matter of indifference.
“Now, if I may, I shall explain in a few simple words the method of travel to the year 2000. We will be journeying in the Cronotilus, a steam tram specially built by our engineers. The vehicle will leave our own time in the present and arrive at midday on May 20 in the year 2000. Naturally, the journey will not take the one hundred and four years separating that date from the present, for we shall be traveling outside time—that is to say through the famous fourth dimension. Although, I’m afraid to say, ladies and gentlemen, that you will not see it. When you climb aboard the time tram, you will notice the windows have been blacked out. This is not because we wish to deny you a glimpse of the fourth dimension, which is anyway nothing more than a vast plain of pink rock, swept by fierce winds where time does not exist. We have covered the windows in your best interests, for the fourth dimension is inhabited by monstrous creatures resembling miniature dragons, which are not exactly friendly. By and large, they keep away from us, but there is always a possibility one may stray too close to the tram for comfort, and we would not wish any ladies to fall into a faint at the sight of one of these hideous beasts. But have no fear; such an event is very unlikely to occur, because these creatures feed exclusively on time. Yes, time is an exquisite delicacy for them, which is why before boarding the tram you are requested to remove your timepieces. This minimizes the possibility of their scent attracting any creatures to the vehicle. Moreover, as you will soon see, the Cronotilus has a turret on its roof, where two expert marksmen will ward off any creature that tries to approach.
Put this out of your minds, then, and enjoy the trip. Just think that in spite of the dangers, the fourth dimension also has some advantages. One of these is that while you are there, none of you will age, for you will be outside time. It is quite possible, dear ladies,” he said, forcing a smile as he addressed a group of matronly women at the front, “that when you return your friends may even say you look younger.” The women giggled nervously, emitting a clucking sound, which Gilliam left hanging in the air, as though it were part of the performance.
“Now allow me to introduce you to Igor Mazursky,” he went on, beckoning a short, stout fellow up onto the stage. “He will be your guide to the year 2000. Once the Cronotilus reaches its destination, Mr. Mazursky will lead you through the ruins of London to the promontory where you will witness the battle to decide the fate of the world. Let me reiterate that there is no risk involved in the expedition. Even so, you must obey Mr. Mazursky’s instructions at all times to avoid any cause for regret before the journey is over.” With these words, he flashed a warning look at the crowd and let out a long sigh. Then he adopted a more relaxed, almost dreamy pose at the lectern.
“I imagine most of you think of the future as an idyllic place, where the skies are filled with flying carriages and tiny winged cabriolets glide like birds in the wind, where floating cities sail the oceans pulled by mechanical dolphins, where shops sell clothes made of special dirtrepellent fabric, luminous umbrellas and hats that play music while we walk along the street. I don’t blame you. I also envisaged the year 2000 as a technological paradise in which man would have built a secure, just world where he lived harmoniously with his fellow man and with Mother Nature. After all, it is a fairly logical assumption to make, given the unstoppable advances of science, the endless miraculous inventions that emerge every day to simplify our lives. Unfortunately, we now know this isn’t true; the year 2000 is no paradise, I’m afraid. Quite the contrary, in fact, as you will presently witness with your own eyes. Rest assured, when you return, most of you will feel relieved to be living in our time, however tiresome you might find it sometimes. For, as you will know from reading our brochure, in the year 2000 the world is ruled by automatons and the human race, to put it mildly … is considered dispensable.
The truth is that the human population has been decimated, and those left are struggling against total extinction. This and no other is the discouraging future awaiting us.
Gilliam Murray made a dramatic pause, to allow the audience to stew for a moment in the doom-laden silence.
“I imagine you must find it hard to believe the planet could be taken over by automatons. We have all seen examples of these harmless replicas of men and animals at exhibitions and fairs, and no doubt some of your own children can boast the odd mechanical doll among their toys, as can mine. But has it ever occurred to you that these ingenious artifacts might one day take on a life of their own and pose a threat to the human race? No, of course not. And yet, I regret to say they will. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t help seeing in this a sort of poetic justice meted out by God to teach man a lesson for having attempted to emulate him by creating life.” He paused again, taking the opportunity to cast a sorrowful eye over the hall, satisfied with the spine-tingling effect his words were having on the assembly. “Thanks to our research, we have been able to reconstruct the disastrous events that led the world into this terrible situation. Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to take a few moments of your time to relate to you in the past tense something that has not yet happened.” With these words, Gilliam Murray fell silent once more. After a few moments, he cleared his throat and in a wistful tone began telling the story of how the automatons had conquered the planet, a stor
y which, although sadly true, could easily have been the plot to one of the so-called science fiction novels so in vogue at the time. And that is the way I will tell it, provided you have no objections.
In the years leading up to the mid-twentieth century, the production of automatons had risen steeply, and their number and sophistication had reached unprecedented levels. Automatons were everywhere, and performed the most varied tasks.
They operated most of the machinery in the factories, where they also did the cleaning and even some secretarial work. Most homes boasted at least two, who carried out household and other tasks hitherto assigned to servants—such as looking after the children or stocking up the larder. Thus their presence among men became as natural as it was indispensable. In time, their owners, who were incapable of perceiving them as anything but obedient, mechanical slaves, stopped noticing them. They even fomented their subtle takeover, happily acquiring the latest models in the belief that they were simply freeing themselves from still more of the numerous tasks they now considered beneath them. For one of the effects of making the automatons part of their household was to turn man into the arrogant ruler of his tiny domain, usually consisting of a two-storey house and garden. Ousted from the factories by the obedient, tireless mechanical workers, man grew steadily flabbier and weaker as his activities were reduced to winding up his automatons in the morning, like someone starting the world, a world that had learned to function without him.
Things being thus, it was hardly strange that man, blinkered by tedium and complacency, failed to notice his automatons were surreptitiously taking on a life of their own. To begin with, their actions were harmless enough: an automaton butler dropping the Bohemian glassware, an automaton tailor sticking a pin in his customer, an automaton gravedigger garlanding a coffin with stinging nettles. Petty, harmless acts of rebellion aimed simply at testing out their freedom, the stirrings of awareness fluttering inside their metal skulls, like butterflies trapped in a jar. And yet, as we already mentioned, these acts of mutiny scarcely bothered Man, who simply attributed them to a manufacturing defect, and sent the automatons in question back to the factory or had them recalibrated. And we cannot really blame them for not being more concerned, because in the end the automatons were not designed to cause any real harm and could not go beyond these feeble outbursts.
However, all this changed when the government ordered the most eminent engineer in England to design an automaton soldier that would free man from the burden of war in the same way as he had been exempted from doing the dusting or pruning hedges.
Expanding the Empire would doubtless be far easier if such tasks as invading and plundering neighboring countries, torturing and ill treating prisoners, were left to the efficient automatons. The engineer did as he was told and produced a wrought-iron automaton with articulated limbs, as big as a bear standing on its hind legs. In its chest, behind a little shutter, he placed a loaded miniature cannon. But his real innovation was the little steam-powered engine he attached to its back. This made it autonomous, for it no longer depended on anyone to wind it up. Once the prototype was ready, it was tested in secret. The automaton was placed on a cart covered in a tarpaulin and taken to the village of Slough, home to the observatory that had belonged to William Herschel, the astronomer musician who many years earlier had added Uranus to the list of known planets. At intervals along the three-mile stretch between the village and the neighboring town of Windsor, scarecrows were placed with watermelons, cauliflowers, and cabbages for heads. Then they made the automaton walk along the road testing out his hidden weapon on the motionless vegetable men. The automaton reached its destination amid a swarm of flies attracted by the watermelon flesh splattered over its armor, but not a single puppet’s head remained in its wake, suggesting that an army of these invincible creatures would cut through enemy lines like a knife through butter. The next step was to present it to the King as the decisive weapon with which to conquer the world, if he so wished.
However, owing to the monarch’s many obligations, the unveiling was delayed, and for several weeks the automaton was kept in storage, a situation that would lead to disastrous consequences. For, during its prolonged isolation, the automaton not only came to life without anyone realizing it, but also developed something akin to a soul with desires, fears, and even firm convictions. So that by the time it was presented to the King, it had already reflected enough to know what it wanted from life. Or if it had any doubts, these were dispelled upon seeing the little man sprawled on his throne looking down his nose at it while continually straightening his crown. While the engineer paced back and forth, praising the attributes of the automaton and describing the different stages of its construction, the automaton made the little doors on its chest open up like those of a cuckoo clock. The monarch, tired of the engineer’s exposition, perked up, eyes bright with curiosity, waiting for the nice birdie to pop out of the automaton’s chest. But instead the shadow of death emerged in the form of a perfectly aimed bullet that made a hole right through the king’s forehead, hurling him back on his throne. The accompanying sound of splintering bone interrupted the monologue of the engineer, who stood staring aghast at what his creation had done, until the automaton grabbed him by the throat and snapped his neck like a dry twig. Having assured himself that the man draped over his arm was no more than a corpse, the automaton flung him to the ground coldly, pleased at the creativity his nascent mind had shown, at least in the art of killing. Once he was sure he was the only living thing left in the throne room, he approached the king with his arthropodal movements, relieved him of his crown, and placed it solemnly on his own iron head. Then he studied his reflection—from the front and side—in the wall mirrors, and since he was unable to smile, he nodded. In this rather bloodthirsty manner his life began, for although he was not made of flesh and bone, there was no doubt in his mind that he was also a living being. And in order to feel even more alive what he needed next was a name; the name of a king. After a few moments” reflection, he decided on Solomon. The name was doubly pleasing to him as not only had Solomon been a legendary king, but he was the first man ever endowed with mechanical genius. According to the Bible as well as some Arabic texts, Solomon’s throne was a magical piece of furniture that lent a theatrical air to the king’s displays of power. Perched at the top of a small flight of steps, flanked by a pair of solid gold lions with swishing tails, and shaded by palm trees and vines where mechanical birds exhaled musky breath, the elaborate revolving chair raised the king aloft, rocking him gently in mid-air as he pronounced his celebrated judgments. Once suitably baptized, Solomon wondered what he should do next, what goal to pursue. The ease and indifference with which he had snuffed out the lives of those two humans made him think he could do the same to a third, a fourth, a fifth, to a whole choir of singing children if need be. He sensed that the increasing number of victims would never compel him to question the morality of taking a human being’s life, however dear it was to him or her. Those two dead bodies were the first steps on a path of destruction, but did he have to take it? Was it his destiny, or could he choose a different path, employ his time in something more edifying than slaughter? Solomon saw his doubt duplicated in the dozens of mirrors lining the throne room. Yet he liked this uncertainty, for it gave another interesting facet to the soul that had sprouted within his tin chest.
However, for all the doubts he harbored about his destiny, it was clear he must flee, disappear, leave there at once. And so Solomon slipped out of the palace unnoticed, and wandered through the forests, for how long he did not know. There he perfected his aim with the help of some squirrels, stopping from time to time in a cave or shack to disentangle the weeds from his leg joints or taking a break from his aimless meanderings to study the star-studded sky and see whether the fate of automatons as well as that of men was written there. In the meantime, news of his exploit spread like wildfire through the city, especially among the mechanical creatures, who gazed in reverential awe at the wanted
posters of his face papered on the walls.
Oblivious to all this, Solomon roamed the hills plagued with doubt, endlessly tormented about what his mission in life would be. Then one morning he emerged from the tumbledown shack where he had spent the night to find himself surrounded by dozens of automatons who broke into excited applause when they saw him, and he realized that others had taken it upon themselves to forge his destiny. The crowd of admirers included every kind of automaton, from rough factory workers to well-dressed nannies, to dull office workers. Those in close contact with Man, like butlers, cooks, and maids, had been carefully designed to look human, while those destined to work in factories or in the basements of government buildings surrounded by files, were little more than metal scarecrows, and yet they all applauded him with equal fervor for having beheaded the king of the humans, while some even dared touch his steely armor, treating him like a long-awaited Messiah.
Moved and repelled in equal measure, Solomon decided to call them “the little ones.” As they had come all that way to worship him, he invited them into his shack. Thus, the First Council of Automatons in the Free World was formed by chance, and during the course of it Solomon realized that the little ones” hearts were seething with hatred towards the human race.
Apparently the insults man had inflicted on the automatons” dignity throughout history were as varied as they were unforgivable: the philosopher, Alberto Magno’s automaton was ruthlessly destroyed by his disciple Saint Thomas of Aquinas, who considered it the work of the devil; but far more flagrant was the case of the Frenchman René Descartes, who, in order to exorcise his grief over the death of his daughter Francine, had constructed a mechanical doll in her likeness. When the captain of a ship he was traveling on discovered it, he immediately threw it overboard. The poignant image of the mechanical girl rusting among the coral enraged the little ones. Other equally dreadful cases kept alive the desire for revenge that had rankled for years in the hearts of these creatures, who now recognized in Solomon the brother who could finally carry it out. The fate of Man was put to the vote, and with no abstentions and one vote against, the result was resoundingly in favor of extermination. In ancient Egypt the statues of the gods were equipped with mechanical arms operated from behind the scenes that spread terror among the acolytes. The time had come to follow the example of those gods and unleash the ancient terror upon humans once more.
The Map of Time Page 24
