Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  And yet, his sister was now determined to make the machine her friend; and Tom, for all his inhumanity, seemed to be responding positively to her attempts to reach out to him.

  When they stood together, the mechanical man looked more closely related to his sister than Emilio did. Tom’s painted features allowed him to pretend to be something he had never been, and Viola’s mask let her pretend to have regained something she had lost forever. Perhaps her new face was the only way that she could reveal the insanity inside her head. But the Automaton’s intentions toward his sister were still a riddle to him.

  He grabbed the ends of the wires coming out from Tom’s shoulder and began to slide them into the arm. He wound the end of the wire around a clamp, then crimped on a metal bead before dropping them into place and screwing down the bolts that would hold the wires in tension. “I have a question for you, metal man.”

  “Please feel . . . free to ask whatever questions you would like, Mister . . . Armando.”

  “Why do you need me to do this for you? I saw how you can remake yourself, in the theater. Why not fix yourself?”

  “I thought you wanted to . . . finish me. This body is your . . . creation, and your vision.”

  Emilio nodded, and then felt foolish for thinking of the Automaton as a creature of flesh and bone while simultaneously reattaching his arm. “Because I thought that giving you the right body would bring you back to life.”

  “And it did. It allowed you to . . . discover the method of my . . . reincarnation.”

  He felt as if they were going around in circles. “So why can’t you finish it?”

  “I cannot . . . reconstruct myself. My . . . abilities are only for . . . repair.”

  Emilio shook his head. “But at the theater, I saw you—”

  “No,” Tom said, cutting him off, almost as if what Emilio was about to say had made him angry or upset. His tone was as smooth and cool as ever. “I do not remember much of what happened at the theater. That . . . body was not meant for me . . .”

  “But it was you. Angry and out of control, but still you.”

  The mechanical man gave no response. It was odd how similar in attitude he could be to Sarah, or perhaps her current unimpassioned attitude was something she had learned from her metal friend.

  Emilio lifted up the arm. It was heavier than he had originally intended it to be, but even with his new tools, he had still found it necessary to make the metal bones that ran down the center of it thick enough to allow Tom to effectively use them without having them snap or break during the moment of greatest stress. “Why don’t you try to finish yourself?”

  “After last time, I think I will become . . . what you make me.”

  “But what do you want to be?” Even as he finished asking the question, he wondered if he would regret it.

  There was a long silence before Tom lifted up his arm. “If you were to . . . lose an arm, or your . . . leg, would you still consider yourself to be the man you were before?”

  Emilio took a moment to consider the question. He had seen numerous men over the years with missing limbs. Many of them claimed to be veterans of one war or another. And whether that was true or not, whatever life they had lived as whole men had been stripped away from them. He peered down at his own hands and tried to imagine what he would do if even one of them were lost.

  With a missing leg he still might be able to work as he had before. He might even be able to build a mechanical replacement that would let him walk again. But if he were to lose so much as a finger, his world would be changed forever. Tom’s question made him feel uncomfortable, and that made the answer clear. “No . . .”

  “This,” the mechanical man said, waving his hand in front of his torso, “is my third . . . body. Even if my . . . heart were to have remained entirely intact, I would still be . . . different than I was before.”

  “None of us choose who we are when we are born.”

  “I’ve been . . . born three times. I never . . . chose.”

  “I think every man would wish for that kind of immortality, if they could have it.”

  “I do not. I am what I am . . . made to be.”

  “By who?”

  “By . . . Darby. By . . . you.”

  That might be at least a partial explanation for why the Automaton had suddenly shown an affinity for his sister. And perhaps also why things had gone so wrong at the Theater Mechanique . . . “Was that why you lost control,” Emilio asked with rising excitement in his voice. “Because you became something you were not supposed to be?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Tom, if I commanded you, would you finish your arm for me?”

  “This . . . body is new. I want to feel what it will be when it is . . . complete before I . . . modify it.”

  For a moment Emilio considered holding his tongue, but once again his curiosity had overcome his fear. “Tom, if men could repair their bodies, they wouldn’t just become what they were before. Do you see?”

  “I do not.”

  “They would make themselves better, or at least they would try.”

  “You think I can be . . . better?”

  Emilio nodded. “Hold on for a minute.” He walked a few feet, then rolled out the large spool of piano wire from where it sat in a corner of the room. “You want to be solid, I know. But if you could rebuild yourself in a new way, you could become your own man.”

  “I could . . . try. Darby created my original form with the ability to . . . modify itself as part of the . . . design. But your new . . . frame is more . . . ethereal.” He reached up with his working arm and took a pair of pliers from the workbench. “Perhaps if I became more . . . substantial. Perhaps if you would give me some . . . steel and . . . brass rods I could . . .”

  “You would try.”

  “Yes.”

  Emilio grunted as he slid the spool up and onto a slanted pipe. What he was proposing to Tom was clearly far beyond Darby’s original vision for the machine. But what would he have thought if he had lived long enough to discover that Tom could do more than just repair himself? What would the old inventor have wished for if he had discovered that Tom was capable of re-creating himself as well?

  He thought of the words he had seen etched onto the heart: “Human ingenuity is the art of seeing, and then making. It will never be enough to simply copy something. You must will your success into being.” He wondered if that had ever been something he might have considered his creation capable of.

  “Here, Tom,” Emilio said, holding out the end of the piano wire. “See what you can do with this.” He fed the wire into Tom’s chest until he could feel it make contact with the gears inside.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Finish yourself. Re-create yourself.”

  “I will . . . try.”

  The wire began to reel off of the spool, slowly at first, and then faster and faster as Tom pulled more and more of it inside of him.

  For almost half a minute the material seemed to be going nowhere, simply disappearing into Tom’s body. He could see it moving through him, and there was a musical hum, and as it grew louder Emilio saw that every wire that he had used to build the structure of the Automaton’s body was now vibrating simultaneously. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  The humming stopped. “I am . . . discovering myself.”

  Emilio laughed at that. “And what have you found out?”

  “I hope that you will not be . . . offended.”

  “By what?”

  “My . . . improvements.”

  The humming started up again, louder this time. As it reached a crescendo, there was a single “plink” from inside of him, as if someone were plucking hard on the Automaton’s strings. A second later Emilio saw one of the metal wires snap free, the end of the broken wire curling up into the air. Then another break, and then another. After a few minutes almost all his meticulous work had been snapped apart. “What are you doing?” Emilio asked, trying to hide his con
cern.

  Tom’s body hung limply in the frame, but his head turned to face Emilio, the blank, eternally staring eyes pointing his way. “What you . . . suggested,” replied the Automaton, his voice quiet and thin, vibrating softly through the few wires that remained. Then the last of the strings broke with a sharp “plink” and the mechanical man’s head slung forward, supported only by his frame.

  For a moment there was no movement at all, and Emilio began to wonder with terror what he would tell Sarah if Tom had once again gone away.

  Emilio leaned closer, moving his ear toward Tom’s chest, then jumped back when he felt something slim and cold strike his face. Jumping backward, he thought for a moment that he might have been cut, and rubbed his hand against his cheek, but nothing was wrong. Looking down at the metal body, he saw loops of piano wire growing from all over Tom’s limp body. They shimmered and twisted, like a thousand shiny metal worms growing out from inside him. The loops moved in a precise and regulated way, managing to fold over each other, and then around and back into his body.

  As the wires grew taut, Tom’s hands sprang to life. Fingers twitched and grabbed the strands of wire that peeked out from underneath his torso. His arms began to move, weaving the metal strands down into his legs. After a moment the growing hum began again, and the wire began to sprout out from the mechanical man’s feet.

  The newly reanimated legs pushed up against the floor and Tom rose up. The stand that had held him was stuck for a moment, and then crashed to the ground. Emilio was smiling now as he realized that the mechanical man was using the tension of the strings against his frame in way that allowed them to respond almost like human muscle. “Amazing!” said Emilio, and clapped his hands.

  Reaching up, the Automaton unscrewed the plate on the top of his head. Wires grew up and out from the holes, criss-crossing back and forth inside the skull. Emilio couldn’t help but notice the beauty of the pattern that was forming. And it wasn’t just his head: Tom’s entire body was now criss-crossed with patterns that made him appear as if a talented spider had spun steel inside him.

  Tom pushed the skull-cap back into place around the threads, gave it a twist, and the head lifted itself back up again. The movement was still inhuman, but almost shockingly fluid when compared to the jerky twitching motions of the Pneumatic Colossus.

  Tom reached out his right arm toward Emilio. The Italian stared at it for a moment, so entranced by the details of what the Automaton had done to himself, he was almost unable to notice that the mechanical man was offering to shake his hand.

  Tom’s arm shot out to meet his, and metal fingers tightened around the flesh of his hand. As their limbs moved up and down Emilio could feel the wires twisting and snaking across the metal palm. It was a shocking feeling, not only because of the cold unreality of the metal against his skin, but the realization that the frame underneath the sliding steel was his own creation. And rising up from the fear was a sense of pride. This was his creation, but it was only the seed of what the Automaton himself had created! Life had moved forward!

  “You are magnifico!” His earlier doubts were gone completely now. This was what Darby had seen in his science—the idea that knowledge itself could push the future forward. Emilio felt tears stinging his eyes.

  “You . . . inspired me.”

  Emilio laughed at that and pulled his hand free. “How do you feel, to be truly yourself?”

  Tom lifted up his arms and began to run his hands over his flesh. “The wire, is so . . . sensitive! I feel . . . everything!”

  Emilio clapped his hands together and ran toward the door. “I go!”

  Tom’s head turned. “Where?”

  He turned back to look at the mechanical man. “I go to tell Sarah that you are ready to see her now.”

  Chapter 8: Manifesting the Unwanted

  CHAPTER 8

  MANIFESTING THE UNWANTED

  After the attack in the park, Nathaniel had been forced to watch helplessly as Eschaton had slaughtered innocent civilians. He had also been witness to the capture of Anubis, along with the unmasking of his would-be savior.

  Eschaton had handed Anubis off to his men, who had wheeled Nathaniel into the back of a carriage and driven him back to the Hall of Paragons through the devastated streets.

  On the way back, the gray man had lectured him further, telling him that he was a lucky man; the first of a new generation of humanity, poised to be greater than his creator. “But you are not,” the gray man had said ominously, “quite finished yet.”

  After they returned from the park, he had been brought down to what had formerly been Darby’s laboratory underneath the Hall of Paragons. The large space had been almost unrecognizable except for the obvious perversion of the technology and experiments that it contained. Most ominous of all the new additions was a large chamber that stood next to a massive metal cylinder. Both of them had been covered with layer upon layer of black pitch.

  Darby would have been distraught to see what had become of his laboratory, but he would have been sickened by the monstrosity that Eschaton called “the Shell.”

  When the broken creature rolled into the light on a pair of twisted wheels, Nathaniel recoiled in a moment of genuine terror.

  “Don’t you recognize your old friend?” Eschaton asked him.

  He did recognize the creature. It was the same monster he had seen in the meeting room when Stanton had died, although it had obviously been somewhat repaired.

  At first he thought that what he was seeing was simply another parody of humanity; a mechanical man designed to look human the way Tom had been. But as he looked closer, peering beneath the metal exterior, Nathaniel realized this was something far worse: hidden just underneath the metal was black and ulcerous flesh. He was glad he had been spared seeing the face hidden underneath the metal mask.

  Nathaniel was still reeling, but why had Eschaton called the thing his old friend? As he looked at the metal shell and broken legs, it all came together. “Is that . . . Hughes?” The man had been turned into a sad parody of the Iron-Clad. To think that the most powerful of them had been reduced to this. “He’s a monster.”

  Eschaton nodded. “For a moment I thought you didn’t recognize your fellow Paragon. After he managed to stop you from trying to escape, I saved what remained of him by using the same application of fortified smoke and steam that I used on you, Nathaniel. Of course, I was only able to save some of him.” The gray man pointed to the wheels that Hughes had been attached to with tight iron bands. They had once been part of the miraculous self-powered chair that Darby had created. Somehow they had been attached to him in a way that allowed the wheels to simply follow his will.

  Eschaton gave a tight grin that revealed at least a touch of sadness at Hughes. “There’s not much of his humanity left, I’m afraid. Whatever process it was that Darby had intended, it clearly wasn’t meant for human flesh. It’s truly a testament to the power of this living metal that even these tiny remains of him survived.”

  He gave the pathetic creature a condescending pat, much like a man might give to an old dog. “But I do think he’s happier now than he was before. He wanted to walk so badly, and now he still can. Isn’t that right, Shell?”

  The creature whimpered slightly, the pathetic noise amplified by its metal casing.

  What at first seemed to be rising sickness and nausea flooded over Nathaniel like a wave. A moment later he felt seizures running through him, pulling his arms up tight against his bonds. Pain flooded through him as the ropes cut into his limbs, and for those long moments he had little or no control over his own body.

  “Are you all right, Nathaniel?” Eschaton maintained the same tone he had with Hughes.

  “I have no idea. You did this to me.” Nathaniel wondered how long he could continue to live in his current state. There had been no doubt in his mind that whatever Eschaton had done to him, the outcome would ultimately be fatal.

  He could feel that the specter of death was hovering nearby
since the Darby house had burned to the ground. Now he had been poisoned by a madman, and any claims that he would somehow be “purified” by what had been done to him were directly contradicted by the terrifying pain and nausea that travelled up, down, and through him.

  But if he was going to die soon, it also wouldn’t be quite yet. As the last of the spasms subsided, Nathaniel felt a terrible thirst come upon him. “Water,” he cried out. It came out more desperately than he had intended it to.

  “I’m sorry, Nathaniel, but my experiments may have rendered your physiology incompatible with Adam’s ale, and you’re certainly in no state to test it out.”

  “Bourbon, then . . . something for the pain,” he begged.

  Eschaton laughed. “Your commitment to liquor is admirable, Nathaniel.” The gray giant leaned in to take a closer look. “I’d be curious to see what effect it might have on you . . . and I can see the suffering in your eyes, my boy. But if you can be patient for a little longer, you may discover your desire for drink replaced by other concerns.”

  Once again Nathaniel felt a wave of nausea rip through him, but this time instead of a tremor he felt what seemed to be a sudden surge of strength.

  Using its power, he struggled against his bonds, tightening his hand into a fist.

  Eschaton stood back. “You see? It does take a while for the full effects to become apparent.”

  As Nathaniel pulled harder, a metallic smell reached his nose. It was strong enough to penetrate the thick chemical stink of fortified smoke that still clung to every inch of his skin, and not entirely unpleasant.

  He and Eschaton both were simultaneously entranced and terrified as metallic strands coalesced underneath his skin and turned his wrists to a shimmering silver. Nathaniel could tell that there was tremendous heat coming off of his flesh, but it didn’t burn him at all. The ropes that bound him were not immune, however, and they flared up and burned away.

  The gray giant had stepped backwards, but Nathaniel leaned up from the chair and grasped Eschaton’s neck. He could feel the hard flesh underneath his fingers, but his hands were still weak from being tied up for so long. He wasn’t strong enough to even make a dent in the stony skin.