Boom Time

by Michelle E Lowe

  “Aconite. Isn’t it lovely?” Violetta bragged, standing with her drinking glass in hand.

  She stole a glance at the vase on the fireplace mantel housing a bouquet of deadly purple flowers.

  The dying men struggled and gasped, and Violetta and her goons witnessed their deaths. Two more fell to the floor, while the last man hit the table face down, white foam bubbling from his mouth. The men twitched a bit and then it was over. Their wide, red eyes expressed their shock as death came for them.

  Violetta drained her glass and ordered, “Get that loud mouth to the next room.”

  As her goons carried Daniel’s corpse out, Doctor Dieter Fischer, entered. He’d been waiting inside one of the bedrooms.

  Doctor Fischer had once been an esteemed engineer and biologist in Germany who’d invented a slew of technological things. He also studied living matter. Violetta was fortunate to have found him.

  He was in his forties and of medium height with an average face that had several deep creases from constantly scrunching it when working. Doctor Fischer wore a black shiny apron over dark clothing. He examined the body as the goons carried it past him.

  “They’re not going to be of much use if their eyes and lungs are no good,” he reminded her.

  “I had them tested,” she explained while approaching. “They’re the best I can get. Funny, you never seem concerned about their brains.”

  “The brain is merely a control system,” he explained, his face gravely serious. “It tells the parts how to work and registers commands.”

  He turned and left for the bedroom, which had been completely renovated into a laboratory. Violetta followed.

  A jug of formaldehyde sat upon a work desk beside an open toolkit full of autopsy equipment such as a pair of rib cutters, a hammer with a hook end, a skull chisel, and many scalpels. On the same table was a metal box with a voltage meter and many dials and switches on it. Mounted atop was a tall glass tube with an electrical conductor running up through it and two E.F. Johnson insulators on either side. Also on the desk was an 1887-style Bespeak machine. Violetta had only ever read about them.

  Contributors had invented the Bespeak machine sometime during the 1870’s, but they were discontinued after the Second Machine War. The fact that Dr. Fischer had a working one was remarkable. The Bespeak was a box built of wood with clear glass walls on either side and a glass door. Inside was a fabrication fusing nozzle with a built-in cooling fan and a spool of thick black thread called Taulman alloy 960 coiled around it. It was bolted to one side of the outer machine. An Everyday battery was hooked up to the box. A flat sheet of metal rested on the bottom where something was taking shape.

  Violetta crossed the room and studied the contraption in motion. The fusing nozzle moved around in a precise order, forming an object out of the alloyed thread. It looked like a heart.

  “Why use human parts, anyway?” Violetta couldn’t look away from the heart as it was constructed layer by layer before her eyes. “Weren’t they completely machine-driven once?”

  “The very last of them, yes. But the secret of how it was done was lost when Metal Metropolis fell,” Dr. Fischer answered. “You are lucky I know how to use the bare minimum of human anatomy. What other organs I do need I can construct through my Bespeak. All I need is living lungs to pump clean air into the brain and the eyes, since sight cannot be duplicated—yet.”

  Two slabs were lined up in the center of the room. Violetta’s goons had placed Daniel on a table next to a metallic hominoid shell. The thing was open from head to torso. There was a cluster of wires and gears rotating in motion. The chest area was an empty space where oil hoses hung down, waiting to be connected to the artificial heart still being assembled. The inside of the head was practically vacant except for a single round jar where the brain would be stored within its own cerebrospinal fluid. Long, shiny hoses hung like loose wires over the edge of the cranium, their ends sealed inside a glass jar. The jar was connected to a bulb-shaped glass compartment called a “bump trap.” The bump trap kept the fluid inside the head from escaping. The bump trap’s connecting tube continued down the throat and fed into another glass chamber located behind the place where the heart would be placed. The chamber was nearly oval shaped with a flat bottom. A stem protruded from the bump trap near its peak. Tubes were connected to the glass piece below. Violetta surmised it was the chamber for the lungs, and that the tubes would be linked to the heart and would pump synthetic blood into the lungs.

  “And speaking of which,” Dr. Fincher went on, “you will need to make certain their artificial tear tank has fluid in them. Otherwise, the eyes will dry out.”

  What he was referring to was a flask-sized container filled with artificial tears fastened behind the forehead where tiny connecting valves would occasionally drip the liquid into the eyes.

  Four others shells, resembling this automaton shell, stood against the wall. Each of them was the same height and constructed of pure nickel, iron, and tin. These Living Automaton shells were reminiscent of what Dr. Fischer had created during the war, when the German government put away their moral compass and hired him to build soldiers. Dr. Fischer had lost his license when it was discovered that he was recreating Machine People, something that had been outlawed since the end of the Second Machine War. These five were what he had smuggled into America before the fighting ended. Their crania were shaped like dummy heads, perfect ovals with triangular noses that gave them almost scarecrow-like features. It was just something to make them seem more human. They did, however, need the rectangular gap that was their mouth in order to breathe.

  “Air will be sucked in through the stem of the throat and into the living lungs,” he explained as if she’d asked.

  Seven-inch swivel joints, bolted at the collarbone and the side of the head, would assist with moving the head around. The gears in the joints rotated with the movement. The automaton bodies were very unconvincing as humans. They were more like curvy boilers than a person, with ball joints at the shoulders and hips connected to the nickel made legs. The ankles were joined to the blocky feet by screws to give them a little flexibility, but never would the automatons have the capability to run.

  Dr. Fischer put on his work goggles and picked up his skull chisel.

  “When will they be ready?” Violetta asked him, eyeing an open book sitting on the desk.

  “Two weeks, as long as I’m not disturbed,” he answered, approaching the cadaver with the tool in his hand, its thick cord dragging behind him.

  What they were doing was highly illegal. Punishable by death, if caught. There weren’t many scientists such as Dr. Fischer around anymore. Most had been arrested and executed after the Great War.

  “You won’t be,” she promised, flipping to a page with a diagram of a human body drawn on it.

  The pages were tanned with age and rough at the edges. The tome was over a hundred years old.

  “Be careful with that,” Dr. Fischer cautioned, standing by Daniel’s head. “Those are original medical documents by Emma Rojas herself.”

  Twenty

  A Cold Hard Truth

  “And you didn’t see his face?” Leon Clark asked his head chef, Tony. They were standing by the bar. Broken glass, napkins, and a few personal items left by panicked patrons littered the floor.

  After they were able to establish that there were no gunmen inside the kitchen, Zoe Dixon ordered that no one leave the speakeasy. She had Tony—the only person who had gotten a clear enough look at the young man strolling through the kitchen—to examine every white guy in the house. There were only a handful of white men in the club and the head cook claimed none of them was the one he had seen.

  “Yessir, I did, but we were very busy when he come through,” the chef explained nervously. “I only caught a glimpse of ’im. All’s I can say is that he was young and had green eyes.”

  “He did?”

  The chef nodded. “Yessir. Bright ones, too. Ain’t no other white fellow that I saw afte
r the lockdown had eye color like dat.”

  “He must have slipped out before I ordered for people to stay,” Dixon said with heavy regret in her tone.

  “What about you, Dixon?” Leon huffed. “Notice anyone with sparkly green eyes?”

  “I don’t know about that, but I did catch sight of a young cat with a jane dancing on the floor earlier in the evening. He was of average height with dark hair.”

  Leon snorted despite the anger swelling in him. “Were you preoccupied watching his date?”

  The red in her cheeks visibly glowed through her dark skin.

  “And you say that he was ‘looking’ for Dixon?” Leon asked Tony.

  “Yessir, Mr. Clark”

  “Who was their server?” Leon asked Dixon, suddenly leaving for the kitchen and heading for his office. “Does she remember seeing anyone meeting the chef’s description?”

  “Taffy told me there was a young couple who had vouchers. Said the cat was a cake-eater.”

  “I didn’t ask if he was good looking,” Leon snapped. “What else?”

  “He left her a whopper of a tip. His date was French.”

  “French? Did the man have an accent?”

  Dixon was quiet as she mulled over about what Taffy had told her. “No. She never mentioned any sort of accent. Just your regular New Yorker.”

  He glanced around at the state of his kitchen. It was a mess with spilled food and fallen chef hats. The pot where some sort of bomb had gone off was blackened, and burn holes had eaten through the tin. The way the staff had described the explosion, he figured the intruder had used the elephant statue. He wasn’t dealing with just some stupid sap. Then he spied something else on the floor. Pieces of crumpled and crushed metal.

  As quickly as his damaged lungs allowed him to, Leon hurried over and crouched down, wheezing as he did.

  “What is it, boss?” his bodyguard, Carl, asked.

  Leon recognized what it was even before he picked up the twisted body.

  “My bugs,” he whispered, a flush of cold panic washing over him.

  He entered his office and stared, crestfallen, into his tank. All he had left were his caterpillars, which had been incapable of escaping.

  “My goddamn praying mantis!” he shouted, then threw the mask over his face when his lungs seized up.

  “You still got your ants, boss,” Carl tried consoling him.

  Ignoring him, Leon went to his desk. He was reaching into his pocket for the key to his desk drawer when Dixon announced, “It’s already unlocked.”

  Leon snapped his head up, his mask pressing to his face. To his dismay, the drawer slid open. Everything was there, even his little black book, which he assumed was the reason why anyone would dare to infiltrate his office. There was a lot of information documented in the ledger. Whoever had broken in could have been looking for anything. The fact that the book was still there gave him a bit of solace. Perhaps the intruder hadn’t the time to find what he was searching for or had simply overlooked it. Then he eyed the empty spot on his desk where the elephant statue used to be and remembered what he thought only moments ago inside the kitchen. The thief wasn’t an idiot.

  He wondered who had sent him. His thoughts turned to Kelly Quinn, but, like Clark, the Irishman wanted to maintain what he’d already built and avoid any bloodbaths, if necessary. It still didn’t mean that he trusted Quinn—or Romano, who had eyed his book when she’d visited him. Both, however, seem to be trying to pitch him against the other, perhaps to start a gang war. Something Leon could do without at the moment. He was raking in loads of cash and now, with the submarine operational, he could send people straight to Saint-Pierre Island to collect all the alcohol a mini-submarine could hold. He stood to make more money than he’d know what to do with.

  “I want the intruder found, and I want to know who he’s working for and what he was after,” Leon ordered Dixon. “I’m putting you in charge of it.”

  Metropolis was a masterpiece, Pierce thought. The elaborate sets of the futuristic city and the pleasure garden, along with the visual effects, impressed him beyond words. The great escape the main characters engineered while trying to save the children from floodwaters caused by the destruction of the Machine Heart had his fingernails digging into the seat. Pierce knew he’d see it again.

  The movie ended and the lights came up.

  “That was a fantastic show, eh? Wonder if that’s how the world is going to look in 2026,” Pierce quipped to Lucy, sitting beside him.

  “I enjoyed it. Thea von Harbou was inspired by the Living Automatons and the city they had built.”

  The Machine People. Pierce remembered reading about them in the library.

  “You don’t say. The Beloved Rogue is coming out next week. Would you care to see it with me?”

  She grinned at him fondly. “You really enjoy moving picture shows, don’t you?”

  Pierce snorted. “Aye. S’pose I do.”

  Nearly the entire audience had exited the theater, leaving only them and the ushers, who were coming in to clean up.

  “We ought to clear out. We’ll catch a taxi or dimbox or whatever you call ’em here.”

  “Isaac,” Lucy said, putting a hand on his arm just before his arse left the seat.

  He sat down again and looked at her. “What is it, love?”

  She stared intently at him and then surprised him with a quick kiss on the mouth. It was enough to make him giddy.

  “I . . . I . . . um, had a swell time tonight.”

  “Glad you came out,” he admitted. “I don’t think I’d have had much fun with anyone else.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Aye,” he whispered sincerely, stroking his thumb gently over her cheek.

  He then kissed her, a right proper one that he missed having with a woman. Lucy returned the kiss, the taste of wine on her tongue. Her alluring perfume filled his senses with pleasure. Her silky hair between his fingers got his blood pumping. Apparently, she was just as excited as he was. Breathing heavily, she pushed him away.

  “I’m not coming home with you.”

  Her outburst caught the attention of the ushers down yonder. Pierce half smiled and waved at them. Lucy blushed and tucked her hair behind her ear.

  “I mean it,” she put in, returning to her natural soft-spoken tone. “I have to look after myself.”

  “Luce,” he said gently. “Love, it’s fine. I only wanted to share a kiss with you.”

  He meant what he said, but he still felt disappointed. Being around Lucy was really quite lovely all on its own, but he was also a young man who did think and hope for such things. Oh, well. Perhaps it was all for the best.

  “Bank’s closed,” came a voice from the aisle behind him. “No more smooches for you, Chaplin.”

  Pierce looked over. “Frank? What the bloody hell did you say?”

  “He told us to stop making out,” Lucy clarified.

  One their way to the theater, Frank had lovingly stated he wasn’t their damn chauffeur, and that if they wanted to go to the picture show, they’d need to take a taxi home. Pierce had written down the address he’d found in Leon’s little black book for him to bring to Kelly. There was no reason for Frank to be here now.

  “De boss is with me,” Frank explained bluntly. “He’s waitin’ in the car.”

  Pierce sucked in a breath as he stood. “He’s here? Why?”

  “We’re heading to de boathouse. He wants youze along. C’mon, get your ass in gear, huh?”

  Pierce knew he couldn’t argue. It would only eat up time that might prompt Kelly to come strolling in and catch him with Lucy. He dug into his suit jacket pocket for his billfold.

  “Lucy, darling. Here’s some cash for a ride home. I’m sorry, but I have to go.” He placed the dough into her hand and gave her an innocent kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you soon, eh?”

  Pierce hurriedly followed Frank out through the lobby. “Why does he want me coming along? Is he unsure about the address?”


  “No. The addresses youze gave was right on the nose. He just wants youze, too, all right?”

  Pierce didn’t think he’d gain much else out of Frank, so he decided to wait to see what Kelly had to say. Pierce sat across from Kelly in the spacious back seat of his large automobile.

  “Am I in trouble?” he asked the mobster boss.

  “Trouble?” Kelly chuckled. “Not in the least. After Mr. Garcia gave me the address, I sent people over to stake out the boathouse. They informed me over the Sparky that they saw Clark’s bootleggers loading crates into a truck from inside it.”

  “Is the submarine there?” Pierce asked.

  Kelly grinned. “It is, indeed. My men seized it after everybody but the guards left. The goons never saw it coming.”

  Bloody hell! A lot had happened since he was in the theater.

  “Who will operate the thing?”

  From the front seat, Frank snorted loudly. “Best count you out, Chaplin? Youze can’t even drive a car!”

  Pierce twisted around in his seat to glare hatefully at him.

  “We caught the submarine operator,” Kelly admitted, drawing Pierce’s attention to him again. “He was nabbed while leaving for his car, which was parked in the marina lot.”

  Pierce’s eyes widened. “You’re joking. That’s brilliant! So, you’re taking me to have a gander at it, too, I reckon?”

  Kelly flicked his lighter to light his cigarette. “You can say that.”

  When they reached the marina, Kelly ordered Frank to drive on and meet him at some location that Pierce had never heard of. He and Pierce then walked quickly over the pier to where a man dressed in a long wool coat stood, holding a machine gun. He was stationed beside a boathouse that was far larger than Kelly’s. It seemed Kelly’s whole crew was there. Pierce had no idea who most of them were, so he hoped the gunman was on their side.

  “Mr. Quinn,” the man greeted his boss, opening the door for him. “It’s the boss,” he announced to whoever was inside.