Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman

by John Theesfeld

  As the horde became manageable once again, Mother Moth shouted at us, “Get out of here!”

  “I can’t leave you here with them!” The Strongman shouted back as he threw a Gaster from his back and into the wall.

  Em remained stern, “Get out! You’re the one they want! Go!”

  We fought off our last Gasters and The Strongman ushered me out of there by the back of my collar. He kicked down one of the hallway doors and into one of the rooms from the hallway we went. The room was kept for tool storage. It was small and crowded with junk, but contained a window with a fire escape. He ripped the pane from the wall in his excitement when just sliding the window up would have sufficed. Through the hole in the wall to the rickety, makeshift fire escape. It seemed to be more of a clock access route for repairmen, than anything else. We ran down the metal stairs, I could feel The Strongman’s weight shift the metal from the brick wall with every step. The bottom was an architectural crevice which was adorned with gargoyles and other beautifully carved stone and iron works. An ambient glow from the street below provided enough light to see where we were running.

  I looked back from where we came to see a Gaster emerge from the hole in the wall and take to the fire escape like a slithering snake. He threw something at us which fell terribly short. It exploded with a flash and plume of smoke. He had more. They seemed to be some sort of chemical bomb fashioned to explode on contact. He threw another, coming closer. The smell of the smoke was putrid. I believe one of the chemicals contained in his bombs was sap from the juniper lily herritaga. If one of these bombs exploded close enough, it would have the pungency to put us fast asleep.

  The Strongman turned, pushed me to his side and fired upon the Gaster. The bullet tore into the vile man’s bomb stash he carried at his side. The contents of his satchel exploded all over him, the bright whiteness of it all was terribly blinding. The cloud that did ensue would be something of a problem.

  “Nice shot, indeed, old chap!” I boomed, impressed with his aim. “Now, hold your breath and run.” I took a deep breath and pushed him away from the billowing smoke. We both picked up the pace to escape the awful, thick cloud that just grew and loomed. It seemed to hang in place and swell in size. The explosion and chemical reaction was still taking place, burning terribly.

  More Gasters were upon us, chasing us down. Chattering their teeth in bursts of energy. “Ready?” The Strongman asked vaguely.

  I asked back, “For what?”

  He pointed to an airship hovering below, “We’re gonna jump.”

  I looked to the airship. It was at least five stories below us. I had little time to think about it as I felt myself lift off my feet as The Strongman took me over his shoulder and became aetherbourne. We hit the side of the small airship with a tremendous force, puncturing it. As the hot gases escaped, the airship descended at a fair pace. Hitting the ground with a jarring crash, we were on the street and alive.

  I can not be completely certain, but as we fled the scene, I do believe I did hear the sound of Gasters smacking into the cobblestone one after another.

  We took to the back alleys and streets, unseen by anyone. We spoke not a word until we were behind the front door of his flat, the safehouse, several floor up in a lower class high rise. The trek across Rust Waters took ages. His building was run down and dilapidated. The building had no lift and we had to hike up seventeen floors to his flat which was no more than a small room.

  Inside it was dark and rather dull. I took off my coat and hat, placed them on the single bed where I sat down. It seemed this was it. There was a kitchen of sorts, the bed, a lavatory, a wooden chair, and a closet. The Strongman grabbed two glasses from the sink and cleaned them. He filled them with spirits. Something strong, but smooth.

  “Calm the nerves,” he handed me a glass and then sat down on the chair.

  I took a sip and then another, “Wasn’t expecting Gasters tonight. At least, not to be chased by Gasters.”

  “Those chattering sods bother me a great deal,” The Strongman said.

  We sat in silence for a moment before I spoke up, “What is it like for you before a fight? Tonight, for instance, you excused yourself early to prepare. And I looked at you before the fight started, you seemed distant. Calm and at ease.”

  "Some guys turn into animals," he said, "they lash out, they bark as loud as they can. That’s all they’ve got." He spoke quietly, slowly, without great certainty. He had an innocence about him. "It's like the high-wire acrobaticles say, 'Don't look down' and that works for me. You look down, you might panic or grow anxious. So, I don't look down." He took a swig from his glass.

  Soon enough, the bottle was dry.

  I told him recent tales of the Steamship Roberts and how much he would have hated the experience. We talked about different places we’ve been to on the continent and debated whether anything was beyond the coastal waters of orbis minor. The conversation turned to our trip at hand and I showed him all my notes pertinent to what was ahead of us.

  I told him about the encounters with GhostWurks and how they were trying to get to That Certain Gentleman.

  “I can’t believe you don’t know the guy’s name, doc,” The Strongman laughed.

  “I’m certain I know it,” I countered, “I just can’t remember it. I’m sure it will come back to me eventually. The thing is, I don't remember being introduced properly. Memory can be a bother.”

  “So, why’s Ghostwurks so interested in an artsy antique collector?” He didn’t understand and I wasn’t absolutely certain either.

  “He seems to be a seeker of truth, of history, of philosophy,” I tried to explain. “He must have something of interest to them that can hurt someone of importance somewhere.”

  “Arborsquids are bastards,” he spoke of GhostWurks being attacked by the tree-dwelling squid at the estate. “I got caught up with an arborsquid once. I was in the woods by Thorne Fields. Bastard scooped me right off my feet. I tore him to shreds because that’s what a strongman does.”

  “Aye,” I raised my glass. And I remembered, “Oh, he had a houseman, a butler, his name was Rendleshine. Mr. Rendleshine. I never caught his first name. He did seem of the brawler breed. Would you perhaps know him? He’s an older fellow.”

  The Strongman though about it, forming the name Rendleshine over his lips, “Doesn’t ring no bells.”

  The Strongman put a small blanket down on the floor, his jacket on top of his shoes for a pillow, and laid down on his side, slightly curled up. I, sitting on the bed, my legs stretched out, took my monocle off and placed it in the pocket on the chest of my shirt.

  We continued to talk into the night, quietly, until we both fell asleep soundly.

  22

  The Gaslight Parade and Bazaar of Miracles and Tinkering, an annual to-do that culminates with a glorious parade of sculpture, steam, and gears. It is an overall festival of light and magic. Also, another reason for the citizens to get brazenly piston hammered.

  I remember my father, Sir Jonathon Monocle, treating me to the parades as a young boy. It was different then; the metros, the people, but only just noticeably. The sense of frontier-ism and colonialism that pervades through our culture now was far, far less. I believe this is due to our ever-growing bureaucratic system. The ClockWork Foundation and subsidiaries have become synonymous with a machine full of gears and cogs with no real purpose. Just redundancies and spinning wheels. A machine once built for a purpose, but after many redesigns for efficiency, all that's left is a clunker.

  Strange, that which latches on to memory.

  I remember a fire breather, a man from GasWorks, Gasters as they were termed, but rather, the non-violent kind. He marched in the parade with several other Gasters, all hidden behind their decorative gas masks and charred clothing. Though, the fire breather was different. I couldn't tell at the time and I'm not sure to this day if he was their mascot or their leader. Perhaps he was just different. Strange.

  He tantalized the crowd with his p
yrotechnical mastery, but I could tell even at that young age that this Gaster was victim to the fumes of the refinery factory in which he worked*1. His eyes raged wild behind the grimy goggles of his mask, his body pocked and marked by burns. He wore little; occupational/hobbyist hazard for fire breathers that one could go up, so to say, in flames and potentially die. This Gaster wore nothing, but raggedy, singed shorts. He was hairless, every follicle torched from his skin. His scars deep.

  As he was passing by, the teetering-on-insane Gaster stared at me directly and I shuddered something coldly evil down my spine. I suddenly felt alone on the sidewalk, my father gone from my side. He stood there motionless for what felt like an eternity. He walked over to me with his arm extended, offering his hand, palm open. His smile peeked out from a tear in his mask and it was similar to that of a crocodillian, welcoming, but filled with many sharp teeth that were all too off-putting. The fire breather seemed to have filed his teeth to sharp points. His eyes were that of sharkatainia on the scent of fresh blood; solid black, yet vibrant with a certain madness.

  I locked up like friction-damaged gears three times rusted over as he sidled up next to me and took a knee on the ground. He lifted his modified gas torch which resembled a fairytale wand fashioned from a pile of junk from the scrapyards. He held it outward in front of us.

  He whispered in my ear in a raspy tone, "Make a wish... Blow out the candle..."

  And he blew into the blazing end of his wand releasing a swarm of flames into the air above our heads. Immediately as the flame plume reached it’s peak, the parade and the revellers were all back. We were swarmed by hideous clowns. He blew another plume of flame. As soon as the warmth from the flames touched my face, it was gone. Before it was gone, the fire breather was off, back into the parade. The clowns were gone.

  I have reoccurring dreams of the fire breather incident, in fact. I just relive the memory every time. This night, though, was different. As I lay sleeping my mind churned throwing me back in time. There I was, happening like it always did, but this time I broke away and followed the fire breather through the parade.

  The Gaslight floats and vehicles and automatons stretched high above my head ominously as my dream warped my memory. I was catching up to him I could see. Though, it seemed that no matter how close I neared, the fire breather stayed just out of reach.

  I stretched out my arm, my fingers extending as far as they could and even growing, elongating before my eyes. When I finally made contact, he turned. In an instant I could see the fire breather had changed into That Certain Gentleman. As this realization hit me, he blew fire into my eyes and face and I woke up panicked. For certain, I was not wanting to experience burning alive, even within a dream.

  There I was where I last left myself, upon a frumpy old mattress within the confines of The Strongman’s humble home. It was still night, quiet except for The Strongman’s muffled snore from where he slept curled up on the floor.

  I thought about the dream. It lingered in my mind as I tried to fall back into sleep. My mind drifted to the thought of the Bazaar. Along with the Gaslight Parade was the Bazaar of Miracles, a thriving carnival of shamsters, hucksters, and hoaxers all trying to sell their brand of snake oil. While not fair to the honest peddlers and inventors who attend, a good thing is always ruined as the sub-mediocre and blatant trash mongers leech on. There are the few firing cylinders in the machine, so to turn a phrase, usually sponsored by some Foundation Works or other. A big seller, even to this day, are ocular gain alterators: Bizarre mechanized headware/headwear that goes around or over the ear or ears and either cover one or both eyes depending on preference. Some are just monocles, others spectacles, and the trend over the past few years has been goggles of various fashion.

  I, in fact, own a few different stylized ocular gain alterator monocles. I carry a few different alterators in my field kit. Most just allow telescopic sight. An alterator monocle of this type is good for observing animals at far distances, but I have on occasion used it to snipe a target from a great distance. Not to allude that I have killed men in this fashion, for I have not, rather hunting game and stunning specimens for tagging purposes.

  Another of my favorites has been one Dr. Smalls invented for me. I do believe we are years, if not decades, away from harnessing the power of electricity. Though, Harold seems to be on the precipice of something rather large in his studies. He has found using copper and the concentrated juice of grappleberries there is a chemical reaction unlike that which he has seen before. By encapsulating the two he creates a small power source, very powerful, but very short lived. Through the alterator he engineered for me, it uses these batteries of electrical power to flash a pulse of energy out before me. The glass of the monocle has been altered and modified and tinkered to see that invisible flash and what it reflects off of.

  What good is this? One might ask, as did I.

  Harold took me off campus to an alleyway at the edge of University City. The alleyway was flooded with steam and blanketed with smoke from a series of run down exhaust ports. Harold equipped his ocular gain alterator and fashioned it to my head.

  “Go ahead, walk to the end of the alleyway,” he suggested.

  I looked at him puzzled.

  “Don’t look at me,” he grabbed me by the back of the arm and lead me to the alley, “look down there.”

  The alterator hummed gently and throbbed intermittently. Each throb was a pulse being sent out ahead of me. In my monocle, upon each burst of brief energy was the outline of everything in that alleyway before me, the cloud cover no longer an issue. For brief, sporadic moments I could see what could not be seen.

  How one can find themselves sidetracked. Even on their way to sleep.

  Ah, the Bazaar... And then beyond the few interesting bits from various tinkerers, there was little to be enjoyed at the Bazaar of Miracles and Tinkering. One had to wade through a cesspool of scam artistry to find decent presenters of novelty.

  Automatons, Matons, Wormatons, Clockwork this, Steam-Driven that. All cheaply made distractions. There were medicines from the far eastern bay, nothing more than tomfoolery in a bottle. The Makers and Tinkers, they made our world, but so much gets muddled and tainted.

  My mind still clung to the thought of gasters. Being chased. Being haunted. From the Lamp Lyte into my dreams. Nightmares. Terrors. It did free my mind of thoughts of GhostWurks until I reminded myself that I hadn’t thought about GhostWurks in some time. We needed the metro to our backs.

  23

  He nudged me awake. Slowly. A push. A tap. A triple tap. A bigger push.

  "What is it?" I managed to ask, my voice barely making its way from my mouth.

  He whispered, ever so softly, as if he didn't want to wake me, "We have to go to Giuseppe's."

  I opened my eyes evenly and gently peeled the covers away. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my oculars. Wanting to let the morning ease itself out of my system I yawned with such force that I groaned. I stretched my arms outwards. I curled my toes. And I stood.

  "Today, we go see Giuseppe," I smiled and nodded.

  The room was dank and warm; uncomfortably so. I suppose humid. It smelled. Neither good nor bad, just a lingering odor. Perhaps boiled meat was what I was smelling. A touch of mold. The odors of booze and smoke and seavenly remained stuck to our clothes from the night prior.

  The shade was pulled down below the pane. A very minute amount of light shown through a tear at the edge of the shade. It was piercing. You could see a tiny washed out line on the wall across from the shade where the sunlight traveled upwards from the morning and then throughout the day.

  Beyond the tear in the window shade, there was very little about the room to get happy about. Everything seemed gray and brown. Just shades of gray and brown. I suppose shades of grime, is really what I was looking at. The Strongman, when not on the road performing in the sideshow or with a circus or carnival, made this his home. The room, the decor, the tone, the feel, the mood, all of it, was reminiscent o
f a circus car: Small, cramped, dingy, and a wee bit smelly.

  The Strongman was already dressed and ready to go. Like the decor of his flat, he was dressed in brown pants and a gray shirt. Perhaps the colors of the carnival or the lights of The Lamp Lyte drove him to keep a home in which he could refresh his palette. In any case, he sat patiently on an old, rickety, wooden chair with his coat folded in his lap as he waited for my old bones.

  "I am aware that you’re ready to go, but would you mind if I made a proper cup of seavenly?" I winced as I asked. I knew he wanted to get a move on and take to the road and rails, but I felt myself falling back to sleep. I needed to be more alert; to get the gears turning in my mind. A nice cup of seavenly tea would do just fine.

  The Strongman grumbled and adjusted his weight in the chair and the rickety-crack of the old chair reverberated throughout the room. "I guess Giuseppe ain't goin' nowhere,” he muttered.

  I grabbed a kettle from the cupboard. And I do mean THE cupboard. Above the grill-top stove. And by stove, I mean the heater for the room and the stove used for cooking. The Strongman's humble home was a miserable cube surrounded by another several hundred miserable cubes inhabited by at least, if not double, that amount of miserable bastards.

  I removed the kettle's lid. "Oh, my!" I was completely caught off guard. I seemed to have found a sleeping mauzenhoff there inside the kettle. He awoke, squinting, looking up at me.

  "Hey!" He squeaked, shaking his little furry fist at me. “What is this? What’s going on?”

  Mauzenhoffs were always an interesting little oddity to me, enough to have spent a fair portion of pages of Bewilderness on the subject. Little rodent people. Strange and weird. They have no desire to live among us or really interact with us. They would just rather live within the walls, in storage compartments, in the rubbish yards. Everywhere their brethren of rats and mice do live. To each, their own, I do believe.