by Owen Stanley
The Promethean
Owen Stanley
Copyright
The Promethean
Owen Stanley
Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental
Copyright © 2017 by Owen Stanley
All rights reserved
Editor: Vox Day
Cover: Steve Beaulieu
Version: 001
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
The Missionaries
The LawDog Files
Castalia House
Epigraph
YOU will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
—Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Author’s Note
Christminster University is organized in a federal structure. The University Administration, which is like a Federal Government, awards degrees and organizes teaching in the various Faculties and Departments. These choose their Professors, Readers (Associate Professors), and Lecturers (Assistant Professors). The undergraduates live in separate Colleges, which are analogous to the States of a Federation. They have their own statutes, governing body (the Fellows), buildings, and endowments, and the Professors, Readers, and Lecturers of the University are also Fellows of Colleges, where they may act as Tutors to the undergraduates.
In Britain, a Dame is the female equivalent of a Knight.
Chapter I
Harry Hockenheimer was depressed. This would have surprised those who knew him, because he was a 39-year-old billionaire in the best of health, and he was normally a beam of sunshine radiating a warm glow of optimism on everyone around him.
Fair and rather chubby, he had something of the large, amiable baby about him, but this concealed an excellent scientific and business brain, and an extraordinary inventiveness. Chemistry and biology at MIT had founded a career in materials science, which had taken him into fabric design, cosmetics, and perfumes. He had made his fortune from a wide range of companies in these fields through his knack of bringing his scientific skills together with the artistic talents of the designers he hired.
His latest range of lingerie, for example, combined an ingenious use of lateral arch principles with a unique fabric that united feathery elegance with unparalleled coolness and support. It had swept the world from Paris, where the gendarmerie were routinely called in to protect his fashion shows, to darkest Africa, where convoys of trucks bearing his precious merchandise were regularly ambushed and pillaged by the desperate natives. But he was still depressed.
As he looked at himself in his Tru-Vu mirror while shaving, on this particular April morning he could not shake off a sad sense of inadequacy, of promise unfulfilled. Around him, his personal bathroom was a shimmering pavilion of the finest marble and polished granite, with exquisite fittings by Negretti & Grolsch, who only allowed their technicians to install them in homes of the highest class. But today everything was all weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.
When he came down to breakfast on the terrace, with its breathtaking view of the Pacific from the bluffs above Santa Monica, Lulu-Belle, his pretty, blonde, and curvaceous wife, noticed his sorrowful mood. She had been raised in a poor family in the Appalachians, and when, after a few years as a successful country singer, she tired of showbiz hassle, she had been glad to give up her career to marry dear Henry Hockenheimer, whom, quite apart from his money, she actually adored. She had a heart of gold, and, unlike many women in her situation, she was not particularly extravagant. The house was worth fifteen or twenty million, to be sure, but in comparison with Harry’s wealth she felt that it was really quite modest, almost suburban, and she did not consider herself to be materialistic the way some of their friends were.
In the Hockenheimer home there was nothing crazy like bowling lanes, or a theatre, or a waterfall in the kitchen, or a 30-foot TV, or elevators lined with alligator skins, or a garage full of rare vintage cars, or even much vintage wine in the cellar. And the infinity pool was really quite small, considering. Her one and only extravagance was the $250,000 Wall of Candy, a shining row of giant glass jars in stainless steel casing, and filled with every conceivable kind of candy which she couldn’t resist, because she’d had a sweet tooth ever since she was a kid.
She had Margarita the maid bring Harry a glass of his favourite mangosteen fruit juice with crushed ice to make him feel better, and tried to find out what was bothering him. He finally admitted, after some pressing, that he felt he hadn’t really achieved anything worthwhile or important.
“But that’s just dumb,” she replied. “You must be one of the youngest billionaires around!”
“So what? Billionaires are a dime a dozen around here.”
“But you didn’t just think up some crazy app and sell it for a fortune, like those geeks in Silicon Valley. You’ve made real stuff that’s changed people’s lives—certainly women’s lives.”
“Yeah, but loads of people produce the same kind of stuff, maybe not as well styled, maybe not as popular. I need to come up with something special, something amazing, something in a totally different league! I’m not getting any younger, my 40th is coming up, and I feel like I need to make my mark on this world before it’s too late.”
Harry’s problem was that he lived in the California Wonderland, where even the craziest, wildest dreams are constantly turned into very lucrative reality. In an older, more industrial city like Pittsburgh or Chicago, or Birmingham or Manchester, he would have been proud of his solid products, personally laid them out on the counters of his stores, told his customers to feel their quality, and confidently taken them round to trade fairs.
But surrounded as he was by bewitching fantasies of space travel, and supersonic trains, and driverless cars, and virtual reality, he felt his pedestrian accomplishments were diminished by comparison. He drove off in a sombre mood to his research centre, checked his mail in the office, and then went to his lab, where he told his staff not to disturb him, as he was inspecting the prototype of a brand-new mannequin that had just arrived. This was not the old-style rigid plastic dummy normally seen in store windows but one so convincing that it could easily be mistaken for a real person. It had an artificial, silicon-rubber-based human flesh, Super Satin, which he had personally designed and produced in one of his factories in L.A., and as he examined it, the seed of a revolutionary idea began germinating rapidly in his mind.
With all the latest developments in robotics taking place everywhere around him, and now this realistic dummy, perhaps he could combine the two to produce a robot that would convincingly pass as a human being? It was his science background that had got him into the fashion business in the first place; these days computers could take care of the brain side
of things, and he could afford the best techies around to put it all together. This project might be just what he was looking for—something far more adventurous and distinctive than anything he had ever produced, or even conceived, so far—a supreme personal assistant, outstanding in intellect and physique, a robot capable of functioning at a vastly higher level than just keeping an appointments diary and answering the phone.
He—for of course it would have to be a he—would be an advanced business, economics, and technology adviser and a personal bodyguard as well, who could keep his employer up to speed with the latest research developments and market trends, a kind of superman. He wouldn’t just be a box with dials and lights and switches but would look exactly like a real live individual, able to sit at a table in a meeting and actually join in the conversation. If Harry could somehow pull this off, it would be a real first in the market, a first on the planet, and something that would make his name go down in history. But it was a very big “if,” and he knew that he might be trying to do something that was impossible given the current state of technology.
He went back to his office and buzzed his PA, Jerry Tinkleman, to join him. He had chosen Jerry with some care: he prized loyalty as well as intelligence in a PA, and rewarded them well, but Jerry also had the distinctly rarer quality, at least in that part of the world, of approximating a normal human being he could rely on.
Harry ran his initial idea past Jerry, who agreed that they would obviously need to explore the practical possibility of the project before they could consider going ahead with it. Even if the robot did turn out to be feasible, there was the question of where they would build the prototype.
“Yeah, that’s true. We’re going to need some highly specialised talent, and the question is where we hire it. There are more roboticists in this part of the world than you can shake a stick at, but if I start nosing around in the Valley, the word’ll get out what I’m doing before lunchtime. This is a project that needs to be kept under wraps, because if it doesn’t come off I’m going to look like a real jackass, and that won’t do my reputation any good with my shareholders or my competitors.”
So where would he go to explore its possibilities, and then hopefully build it?
His own facilities were busy with his current products, and in any case they were mostly unsuitable for the project he had in mind. He was also too well known to be able to keep a project like this a secret if he tried to do it here in California. To keep a lid on things until he was ready to reveal his crowning achievement to the world, he would need to locate the project some place else. It needed to be English-speaking. Canada and Australia were too limited in specialist resources, and anyway, it might be useful to be reasonably near Europe and a number of his suppliers and consultants. They soon concluded that England would probably fit the bill, and Jerry started making his arrangements to fly over there to see what the possibilities were as soon as possible.
Lulu-Belle was very concerned about her poor Harry and she had the chef cook his favourite dish, Lobster Thermidor, then selected a fine first-growth Bordeaux to go with it, both of which were waiting for him when he returned home that evening. By the end of the meal Harry was in a very good mood, but he was far too careful to reveal his new idea to Lulu-Belle. Much as he loved her, he knew that as soon as he told her anything about it, she would be chatting to all her friends, and in a day or so the news of his project would be all over southern California and the Bay Area. So all he said, over his cigar and a brandy, was that he might have to go over to England in a little while to see some people on business.
“The only problem is that if it comes off, I may be away for a while, and I don’t want you to be lonely, honey.”
Fortunately, Lulu-Belle had recently been discussing the idea of a girls-only vacation with a few of her married friends and had been looking over the travel brochures. There were a number of nice little excursions on offer, like a month’s safari in Africa by private jet, cruising in the eastern Mediterranean on a luxury yacht, sailing by tall ship through the Southern Ocean with one’s personal butler, and a few others. So she was far more accommodating than he had dared hope and said that they could probably both do with a change of scenery for a few weeks.
Without further ado, they both started making their separate plans.
Chapter II
After a couple of weeks, Jerry returned to California to report on what he had discovered. There was a small very up-to-date factory for sale at an airfield with substantial office and residential accommodation of a couple of good-sized apartments as well. It belonged to a computer company which wanted to move to a more industrial location and still owned most of the airfield. It had also kept up the runway, which at the moment was rented out for drag racing. The airfield was located out in the countryside in Cornshire, in the south of England and had good rail and road connections to London. “There’s a small village nearby, but the only locals seem to be a bunch of peasants, the kind of vegetable life who have never heard of you and have no interest in what you’re doing, and wouldn’t understand it if they did.”
Harry’s intention was to use this kind of facility for the assembly and testing of the prototype of his robot, all of whose components would be supplied by specialist manufacturers. Once he had a finished product, he could unveil it to the world in a blaze of publicity, which he would carefully orchestrate. But then it would be much more efficient to move the process of mass production back to the States, where he could control it more easily and possibly use some of his own facilities as well. The main thing at the moment was to keep the whole project an absolute secret from everyone in California, which is why he had told no one in his company about it, except Jerry, who was sworn to complete silence on the topic. The cover story on which they settled was a vague reference to a possible takeover of a British company.
So one evening Harry took off for England with Jerry in his private jet, a Challenger 350, to size up the situation and hopefully sign the deal, and by mid-morning the next day they had arrived at the airfield. They were met there by one Charles Fortescue, who was handling the sale of the property. He was a portly figure, although only in his thirties, and wore the tweed suit and well-polished leather brogues of someone well-accustomed to dealing with wealthy clients who wanted properties in the countryside.
“Good morning, I’m Charles Fortescue, your estate agent.”
“Estate agent? I thought I was here to buy a factory, not a mansion.”
“Ah, yes, I should have remembered. Realtor is what you Americans would call me, I suppose.”
Fortescue drove them the short distance to the factory in his Range Rover, where they spent some time appraising the various buildings, which were very modern and highly satisfactory. Once outside again, they had a walk around the airfield, and Harry announced that he wanted to buy the whole airfield, for privacy’s sake. He asked about the drag racers using the runway, and Fortescue assured him there would be no problem in terminating their leases.
As Jerry had told him, the airfield was out in the countryside, with just a few scattered farms in the area, and the local village of Tussock’s Bottom, which was very small, with a population of only around a hundred and fifty souls. While Harry knew that English place names could be weird, he felt that “Bottom” had some rather disturbing connotations, and he asked if Tussock might have been some notorious local pervert. Charles only laughed and explained that in this part of the world, Bottom just meant a small valley. Opinion was divided, however, on who or what Tussock had actually been.
Dull and boring people asserted that tussock was simply a species of grass prevalent in the area, Poa nemoralis, whereas the more open minded were certain that he had been Nathaniel Tussock, a notorious sixteenth-century rake-hell with a dozen concubines who had reportedly populated most of that part of Cornshire with his descendants.
In the course of their walk they noticed, several hundreds of yards from the factory, a tatty little shed with a washing l
ine, and close to it a large workshop with old boilers, cylinder castings, and other rusting relics of the steam age lying in its yard. It turned out that the workshop and yard belonged to Adge Gumble, a local steam traction engine enthusiast and restorer, while the little shed belonged to the Tussock’s Bottom Knit and Chat group. These were senior village ladies who like to sit and chat on Thursday afternoons in their little shed and knit woolly jumpers for deserving causes.
Harry immediately declared that he would be happy to buy out Adge and the Knit and Chat group, but Fortescue explained that that would not be possible.
“You see, Mr. Hockenheimer, they’re King Alfred’s Men, and they’re occupying a portion of the King’s Piece, which was given to their forebears by King Alfred in 879 A.D. as a reward for their bravery in defeating the Danes in a local battle.”
By now Harry was starting to feel rather punch-drunk with folklore, between the village’s bizarre name, the promiscuous forebear with a harem, and the little old ladies who were also, somehow, men. “Okay, tell me the worst,” he groaned.
Charles explained that during World War II, a part of the King’s Piece was taken over by the Royal Air Force, together with a large chunk of ordinary farmland, to build the airfield. But after the airfield was handed back to the original owners at the end of the war, the five acres on the south of the airfield that were part of the King’s Piece reverted to King Alfred’s Men.
“I don’t see the problem then,” said Harry. “I can still buy them out. It’s only a question of finding the right price.”
“Sorry, but you can’t buy out King Alfred’s Men because it’s not their land to sell. They only have a lifetime tenancy, and it would take an Act of Parliament to break up the King’s Piece. But they won’t cause you any trouble,” Charles added, reassuringly, “especially if you happen to like steam engines or knitting. I tell you what. Why don’t I take you for a drink in the local pub and introduce you to some of the locals? It’s nearly lunchtime, and Adge Gumble’s a regular. He’s a decent bloke, and if you buy him a pint, it’ll make it much easier to iron out any problems that may crop up with his traction engine business.” They went off in Fortescue’s Range Rover to The Drunken Badger, an old pub nearby with a mouldy green thatched roof that was the local meeting spot and had been kept for years by the genial Ken with fat Shirley his wife. Fortescue offered to stand Harry a pint of beer, but when Harry surveyed the range of drinks available, his heart sank. There was no prosecco, no white wine, indeed, no wine of any kind, as the pub had for generations stocked only local ales, the favourite of which was Old Stinker. However different palates were known to prefer Smoking Dog, Swine Snout, Wife Beater, or even Holy Terror, the most alcoholic.
