Potlendh

by David J. Wallis

  “Oh!” E interrupted. “You’ve met a Unicorn? How wonderful. I’ve heard about Unicorns, but I’ve never met one. I wished that you had brought it.”

  “It’s a her,” Cassandra instructed him with an irritable noise in her throat.

  “—Guerrillas, Submarians, and we were hoping that we’d meet an Engineer,” Karen finished.

  “We had to leave our Unicorn friend behind,” Cassandra explained. “She built us a rainbow so that we could get here.”

  “Me, me, me, me!” E shouted to Karen. To Cassandra he said calmly, “We’ll have to do something about helping your friend.”

  “What is the name of this place?” Carl asked E.

  “How are you going to help Uniqua, the Unicorn?” Cassandra rejoined.

  “Portaland. By bringing your Unicorn friend to us.” Apparently, E could carry on two conversations at once, although I’m sure that if you or I tried to do it, we would get awfully confused very fast.

  “We have come to the right place,” Karen said excitedly. “You need to help the Submarians. They are in great danger.”

  “If you can help Uniqua then we’ll all be very happy. When can you do it?” Cassandra pressed E.

  “There is a right place,” E told Karen, “but then there are right places that can also be wrong places. Sometimes you can be in the right place at the wrong time, in the right place at the right time, in the wrong place at the right time, and in the wrong place at the wrong time. It appears that we both have come to the right place at the right time.

  “I’ll simply tell my brothers to send for her. We have this marvelous water-flying boat, you see. We’ll pick her up in no time.”

  E began to roll backwards away from the Group. “Let’s not dawdle. Come with me, and I’ll introduce you to my brothers.” Apparently, the Engineer did not expect our friends to object, for he turned the upper part of his body around to face the direction that he was traveling. Also, he had not considered that our friends were rather slow compared to himself, for he picked up speed as he moved forward until he was soon out of sight.

  “Well, that was rude,” Carl remarked. “You would think at the very least he could have given us a ride or something.”

  “Come on,” his sister said rather tiredly. “At least we can follow his tracks.”

  “Are you kidding?” Carl questioned her. “Look at the ground! It is completely covered with tracks! Crisscrossing this way and that! This whole place is nothing but tracks. He could make a dozen turns, and we would never know it!”

  “I suggest that we just pick the general direction he went off in,” Cassandra interjected. “After a while, he might remember us and come back.”

  “Or, he could just forget about us and not come back,” Carl complained.

  “Carl,” Karen turned on him. “This is not the time for us to fall apart. With Uniqua gone, we need to stick together even more and be a team.”

  “Be a team,” the Rabbits chorused, and they began to forge ahead, since no one else seemed to want to take the first step. Cassandra looked alternately at the Rabbits and at the children before she sighed and began to follow the Rabbits. “Some leader I’ve turned out to be,” she mumbled to herself. “I can’t even get us started.”

  “So, where do you think we’re going, anyway?” Carl asked his sister and the twins fell into step.

  “For now? That way!” And, she pointed ahead towards a huge expanse of land that looked so flat and empty.

  Carl was trying to visualize in his mind where they were by recalling the map of the Island that hung on a wall in the solitary building back at Lonely Field. He turned around a couple of times and noted a single mountain that towered high above surrounding hills and was the primary source of water that was slowly draining Submarine Lake, now that the sea portal was broken. He remembered that this land was fairly grassy, too. But here in Portaland, it was as if it were one giant beach, unbroken by any trees, hills, or buildings—just a fine, powdery sand that lightly covered a rocky ground. There was something, though, different about this place that he just couldn’t remember. I could tell you, of course, but that would ruin the surprise.

  “Miss me?” a familiar voice called out to them from behind. It was E who had somehow circled around them without being seen.

  Carl was the first to jump. “How did you—? Where did you—? How did you do that?”

  “Do what?” E asked.

  “Appear so fast!”

  “I simply followed my rails to this spot. I have perceived that you all are very slow creatures by habit. Therefore, I have deduced that you all must ride in my cart with me, so I can take you to the facility quickly.”

  Thus, the Group all crowded into the cart that Engineer rode in. They were rather crowded, and yet the first thing they noticed was that the body of the Engineer was a thick post centered within the cart. Later, they would understand that the empty space around the body of the Engineer was used to carry things such as spare parts and the like.

  Before the children could blink, E sped along the rails like a fast ride at an amusement park? Not a roller coaster fast, because the ground was very flat, and there were no rails that were raised above the ground. Still, the Engineer rode the rails at a very high speed that caused the twins hair to blow and the Rabbits’ ears to lie flat on their heads. Cassandra was so frightened by the ride that she hardly took a breath until they arrived at the engineering facility where all the Engineers worked and lived. As to the sudden stop, well, it was a wonder that all the riders were not thrown from the cart and land on the hard metal floor of the facility. Still, they were a bit bruised to say the least and were not happy about the sudden stop.

  “Where are we?” Carl asked, rubbing his ribs where he hit the top of the cart.

  “This is the heart of Portaland,” E explained.

  “We don’t hear any heart beat,” the Rabbits chorused.

  E thought this remark was rather strange. “Maybe because there is no heart beating,” he responded.

  “Then is the heart dead?” Cassandra asked, completely misunderstanding the meaning of E’s words.

  “No,” E said slowly. “There isn’t a heart. Why would there be a heart?”

  “Because you said that this was the heart of Portaland,” Karen remarked. “Our friends don’t understand that you mean to say that this is where all the work you do is performed. By the way, what kind of work do you do?”

  “I’m glad you explained that to me,” E said gratefully. “You see, we don’t have hearts ourselves. We are almost completely brain. Do you have a heart?”

  “Most certainly,” Carl answered, “but I think it might have stopped a couple times during the ride.”

  “What would happen if your heart stopped and did not start up again?” E asked curiously.

  “We die,” Cassandra retorted as if everyone knew that fact.

  “Die,” E repeated. “I do not understand the concept.”

  “It means we no longer exist,” Karen explained. “We won’t move any more. We won’t eat any more. We can’t talk to anybody any more.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—” Here Karen had to think a moment on how best to answer the machine. “Because if we were machines, we would run out of electricity and energy. The heart is like a pump or battery. No power, no life.”

  “Oh!” E exclaimed, understanding the concept. “We have had many deaths then.”

  “How many of you were there?” Carl asked.

  “Many,” E said. “We now number only four. But a long time ago, we numbered in the hundreds. Then, one by one, our friends and companions simply shut down. You see, we ran out of spare parts. And when our friends shut down and could not be revived, we used their spare parts to continue the existence of the remaining Engineers. I,” he added proudly, “am the living composite of fifteen of my former friends. I suppose you could say that they live on inside of me.”

  Carl, who was quickly getting bored with any kind of p
hilosophical conversation, started looking around the facility. He noted that there was neither roof above them nor any walls surrounding them. As he looked back in the direction from which they traveled he could not see the mountain. Now wait a minute, he thought. We didn’t travel that far. And that is when he remembered that this part of the Island was shaped like a great bowl, and that while he thought they were traveling on a level course, they were actually descending into this great bowl.

  “As to what we do,” a new voice said to them, “we are obviously Engineers.” C, another Engineer, rolled up to them. He looked somewhat like E in appearance, except that he had a number of odd, if not useless, protuberances attached to his body. These protuberances were very spare parts of those Engineers that had shut down and were appended by C to remember his departed friends and companions. And, of course, there was a large letter “C” stenciled on his front.

  “Yes,” Karen nodded. “But what do Engineers do?”

  “We run machinery. We make sure things operate like they are supposed to operate.”

  “Well, you’re doing a poor job then,” Carl criticized.

  “What do you mean?” This question came from a third Engineer who looked even stranger, if not more scary, than his two friends.

  “Now, M,” E began on behalf of the children, “they are our guests, and we must treat them civilly. It is not their fault that they do not understand the function of our facility nor appreciate how we keep the Island functioning perfectly.”

  “If they want to be treated civilly, then they must act civilly,” M growled back, shaking slightly which caused a great number of springs atop his head—his attempt to sport some hair, the twins believed—to jiggle and wiggle in a rather comical way.

  “But that’s just it!” Carl challenged. “You’re not doing your jobs, and the Island is not functioning perfectly.”

  Carl’s little outburst obviously upset the three Engineers visibly, and they began conversing with each other in a bizarre language of static noise, whirs, whistles, and beeps. When they came to a pause in their dialogue, E addressed Carl specifically.

  “I must agree with my friends and companions,” he spoke. “You are not acting very civilly. I am beginning to deduce that it was a mistake to bring you all here to our facility.”

  “When is the last time you checked you machines to see that everything was running perfectly?” Karen piped up.

  “Are you an Engineer?” C asked.

  “Are you an Inspector?” M barked.

  “No,” Karen stated the obvious. “Do I have to be one to know that ‘things’ are not running perfectly?”

  “Yes,” the three Engineers told her in unison.

  “Why?” Cassandra decided it was time that she asserted some authority. After all, with Uniqua stuck on the other side of Submarine Lake and that she was now supposed to be in charge, she wanted to at least act as if she were a leader.

  “Because only an Engineer or an Inspector is qualified to ask questions,” M growled back. “Do you realize what would happen if everyone were allowed to ask questions or to give opinions about our work? Why, we would never have time to do our work. People would be interfering, wanting changes or wanting new-fangled things! We Engineers know what is best for all the inhabitants of this Island, and we are very content—and very busy, mind you—just keeping things running the way they are supposed to. We don’t have time to listen to everyone’s complaints and suggestions of change.”

  “What if things aren’t working?” Karen asked.

  “We would know if things weren’t right, because an Inspector would tell us so,” E said.

  “Where do we find an Inspector,” Cassandra wanted to know.

  The Engineers did not speak for a time. It was almost as if they were embarrassed to answer.

  “Equals has the last few remaining spare parts of the last Inspector,” C told them in a rather low—probably sad—voice.

  “By the way, where is Equals?” M inquired. “I need him to look at something.”

  “He took the boat to pick up the Unicorn,” C responded.

  “Another one?” M grumbled. “We haven’t had visitors in a hundred years, and now they are popping up out of the sand like crabs.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t be so crabby, like yourself, if you just realized that things aren’t working right around here,” Carl declared, feeling like shouting. But normally when a person starts shouting at a machine because it is acting up or not working right, there is something more wrong with the person than with the machine. Yelling and screaming at machines will not fix them or get them to do better like it will with most human beings.

  “Are you an Engineer?” M shot back.

  “I don’t have to be an Engineer to know when things aren’t working right!” Carl exploded.

  “Are you an Inspector?” C asked.

  “Yes, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm,” the Rabbits chorused, and that brought the argument to a grounding halt. The three Engineers looked at the Rabbits in as much an amazed look as I believe machines can look.

  “We are Engineers,” the Rabbits expounded. “We are Inspectors. Things are not right and need to be fixed.”

  “You are not,” Cassandra whispered to the Rabbits.

  “Yes, we are. We are Engineers when we cut up vegetables, prepare the food, operate the oven, hmm-hmm. And, we are Inspectors when we check the fields for spoilage and make sure the table is set correctly for dinner.”

  “But that’s different!” Cassandra blustered, feeling that they were all about to be caught in a lie.

  “As Engineers and Inspectors, you may tell us if any thing is wrong,” E declared.

  “No, they may tell these people that they are wrong and everything is right,” M announced.

  “Everything is wrong,” the Rabbits told the Engineers, and that is when you could have heard a bowling ball drop into Submarine Lake.

  “Since you are Engineers and Inspectors, then we can tell you that there is a problem,” E admitted rather shamefacedly. “We do not have any spare parts to fix the problems.”

  “So, you mean that you know that the Submarians have a problem,” Carl accused, “and yet you haven’t been able to fix the problem! Those people are going to die!”

  “Why can’t you just make spare parts?” Karen asked in a rather calm voice of reason.

  Here again, the three Engineers appeared as to be embarrassed. “We do not make spare parts,” E presently explained. “We just use the spare parts to maintain the portals that control and manage the Island.”

  “Who does make the spare parts?” Karen pressed.

  “The Giants,” M told them bluntly, as that was his particular nature.

  “Well, then, why don’t you just ask the Giants to give you some spare parts and fix the machinery?” Carl nearly exploded.

  The three Engineers looked at each other and communicated for several minutes among themselves in their unique machine language of odd sounds and blips.

  “I mean, is it a matter of money?” Carl asked.

  E turned to the boy and explained in this way: “We do not use money or any other kind of currency on the Island. Often times we barter. You know, if you need something that we have we will give that something to you in exchange for something that we need that you have. The Giants rely on us to maintain the portals on the Island so they can use them, but we rely on the Giants to supply the spare parts so that we can maintain the portals.”

  “Talk about a Catch-22,” Karen breathed. By “Catch-22” Karen meant that the situation could not be easily solved because there were two problems involved, each dependent on the other. It would be like you have to take a bus to another city. You need a ticket to ride the bus, but you don’t have money to buy the ticket. If you had the money, you could buy a ticket; but since you don’t have the money, you can’t buy the ticket. And, if you worked for the bus company, you would expect the bus company to pay you. But if the bus company can’t or won’t pay you any money,
then you can’t buy the bus ticket to travel to the other city.

  “I see that I have arrived in the ‘nick of time,’” Uniqua entered the conversation. The Group turned as one to see the Unicorn arriving at the facility in the company of the fourth Engineer.

  “Uniqua,” everyone cheered—and with a great sense of relief, too.

  “Made a mess of things as usual,” Uniqua observed.

  “I think we just discovered the heart of the problem,” Karen said defensively.

  “Yes, I heard,” Uniqua responded. “After wasting a great deal of time, words, and effort, I might add. And have you come up with a solution?”

  “Not really,” Carl told her. “Can’t have a solution until you understand the problem.”

  “The solution is very simple,” Uniqua declared. “The Giants need only to provide the Engineers with the necessary spare parts. The Engineers will then fix the portals, and all will be right again on the Island.”

  Equals, who was by far the most simple looking of all the Engineers, having no spare parts whatsoever attached to his body, whistled in a high-pitched tone. “We cannot contact the Giants,” he said sadly. “The portal that connects us with the Giants is broken. In fact, it was the first portal to break.”

  “The solution still stands,” Uniqua said adamantly. “Someone must go to the Giants and pick up enough spare parts to fix their portal. Then the portal can be used to continue transporting spare parts to Portaland until all of the portals are fixed.”

  “Your solution needs a solution,” M grumpily pointed out. “Since we cannot travel outside of Portaland—you will notice that we need rails to travel—and since the portal is out of commission, then someone must travel to the land of the Giants and request the necessary spare parts from them.”

  The twins looked at each other, and the unexpressed thought of “Not another one!” passed between them.

  “We will gladly be your emissaries,” Uniqua told the Engineers. “But you must promise us that once you have received the spare parts to fix the portal between Portaland and the Giants, you must immediately fix the portal that governs Submarine Lake.”