by Lee Bond
That nothing was at the center of the mystery in The Dome. It was in the air around him.
It was connected to Cloud 2.0. What could it be? What purpose did it serve?
Garth took a ragged breath and put a hand over his heart. His capped fingers couldn’t feel the skin over his heart, but he was still able to feel its tremulous thumping; whatever the nothing was, whatever it was doing, however it was connected to the nanotech inside Arcade City, it wasn’t good.
“If,” Garth pushed himself away from the old, crumbly wall, “if gearheads and wardogs can sense that fucking shit, even on an animal level, no fucking wonder they’re…”
A snap of a branch brought snapped Garth’s head around. The deer. He grinned like a devil, brought those promised gear-shuriken to bear, and was off, thoughts of the Great Nothing not forgotten so much as willfully shoved into the deepest, darkest parts of him.
It would be some time before Garth had an opportunity to consider the mystery in fullness once more, and then, things wouldn’t be pear-shaped as completely, utterly fucked in every way, so basically, massive dildo-shaped.
Uber-Bambi bellowed an animalistic challenge. Garth N’Chalez responded with one of his own.
The hung was on!
***
Barnabas Blake walked through the town square of Blackened Moor Estate, nodding cordially to those few men and women who were currently abroad; as with most Estates, this hour of day was reserved for sitting around and resting, talking about their day so far or generally –as was the case of the man with a hat over his eyes on the park bench- sleeping. Estates were –had once been- the lifeblood of Arcade City in many, many ways, and though much had changed, Barnabas loved the scanty few opportunities he had to visit them.
There were so few places like Blackened Moor Estates left to Arcade City. Sharp worry told him the inner Estates had suffered terribly thanks to Erg’s rough entrance into the world and that truly filled a King with a peculiar kind of woe.
Through his connection with King’s Will, Barnabas had long been aware of Nicked Jimmy’s repeated efforts to punish the Warden on the other side of this Geared Door, so wrongly believing that Peemes was aware of the treachery that the King had –honestly- decided to allow the rabid gearhead’s ‘revenge’ because it was, without being too gauche, abso-bloody-lutely hilarious.
Still, Barnabas reflected sourly, perhaps it was time to admit that mistakes had been made all around. Had Jimmy not been given the run of his leash for as long as head, mayhap the accountant turned vicious looker and all-round murderous prick would not have run into Nickels, who in turn –thanks again to Kingly meddling- would almost certainly not have had so much Kingsblood slipped to him…
But had he intervened, had he smote Nicked Jimmy into ash and cinder for the first, fifth or fifteenth attempt at le mot just … Arcade City would know their King was still about, and with the end growing so close you could almost taste it, the last thing Barnabas wanted was for those fools who remained alive to even hope things would go back to normal.
Barnabas ran a hand across the Geared Door, sighing in deep contentment. He loved the Doors, loved their intricate connections, the way everything spun and spiraled and linked together and how, when it was opening, watching the scene was to witness Art itself unfolding. Next to The Dome itself, the Doors were amongst the only things left to bring tears to his eyes. Oh, the fun he’d had, building them things.
“You shouldn’t be touching that.” A voice thick with an accent hardly heard these days reached Barnabas’ ears.
King Barnabas Blake turned to see who’d approached him in the middle of his reverie. Eyes fell upon the broad-brimmed hat and the shining star on the man’s painfully immaculate sheriff’s uniform. Ah. The local constabulary. Barnabas smiled broadly. “Surely there is no law against it?”
Sheriff Bradford Lake stuck his thumbs between his belt and his pants and squinted a thoughtful eye at the broad-shouldered man who still hadn’t removed a scarred hand from their Door. “Well, sir, there is not a Law, per se, but I don’t generally allow people to touch our Door.”
Barnabas smiled pleasantly and removed his hand. He no longer needed to maintain physical contact; the moment he’d laid his hand on the door, the connection had been made and data concerning Erg’s perilous journey –and calamitous exit from- the walls of Arcade City’s shell were now being fully analyzed. It was the King’s sincerest wish that answers concerning Erg’s spectral persistence and saboteurish behavior would be forthcoming posthaste. “And why is that?”
Sheriff Lake took a step forward, shifting his hands from his belt to the irons at his waist. Maybe it was on account of how they were still reeling from Jimmy’s last visit or maybe it was because the old gaffer in front of him looked like he could snap a man in half … Lake supposed in the end it didn’t matter.
The snowy-haired man was making him nervous, and end of a day, that were that. While the guns were heavy and awkward for a man his age, well, he reasoned it wouldn’t be too hard to plink this old gaffer should it come right down to it.
Lake spoke matter-of-factly in that way you learned when you were sheriff so there’d be no mistaking his meaning. “Look, sirrah, I can tell you’re a stranger in these parts. You’ve the look of a smith about you but I didn’t see you come through the front with your equipment, so mayhap you’re just a traveler. A brave one, to boot, with the way of the world these days. If you’ve visited other Estates at the Doors and they’ve allowed you to fondle their own particular, then fine. Here at Blackened Moor, yon egress is off limits to townfolk and visitors alike.”
“That’s hardly hospitable.” Barnabas replied half-heartedly: his focus was almost fully on the data stored in The Dome. The problem, it seemed, was not with the Dome mechanics, but with Erg.
An unknown tension, with him since the moment The Dome had chimed and driven everyone in Arcade City to their knees, abruptly fled. Erg1 had been a madman, driven that way by his initial encounter with the Outside Door and further complicated by a century of incessant manipulation by Trinity Itself. There were hints of trailing after one of Trinity’s pet projects, one of those strange –not to mention deadly- paradoxes the machine mind not only allowed to exist, but actively protected. Digging as far as he could, Barnabas learned that whoever –or more likely whatever- ‘Kant Ingrams’ had run into had caused further … imbalances to the ‘Priest’s mind and powers.
No wonder The Dome had gone cataclysmic! Erg had been about as far from being a proper CyberPriest as was possible whilst still retaining the powers of the order! His passage through The Dome –and thus through the entropic bubble- had been about as stately as a volcano erupting through a straw! The remaining CyberPriests were as they’d always been: bumbling, inept fools hungering for the absolution of nothingness. When they clapped their hands on the Doors that’d always been designed for them, they’d fall into The Dome with barely a whisper.
Well, weren’t that a relief! He’d been half-afraid them other ‘Priests would wind up the same as old Erg, a bit of undigested spiritual matter clogging up the arteries of The Dome’s most august workings. Oh, the damage he’d envisioned when them other foolish brothers came a-knockin’! Why, to tell true, he’d honestly feared they might yank down the whole dome with their boisterous entrance!
Barnabas raised his hand in apology to the irate Sheriff. The man had one of his bulky clockwork guns half-drawn, and the King held little wish to be shot. The resulting embarrassment would likely be one Blackened Moor would not survive. “I apologize, Sheriff. It has been a long few weeks. I shall take my leave of your wondrous Door.”
Sheriff Lake watched the old man leave, but did not take his hands off his guns until he saw the last whisper of white hair disappear around a corner. The moment he was certain he were alone, Lake let out a breath he’d been holding most carefully. Arcade City was turning into a mite strange world, yes it was, and you just plain old couldn’t be too careful with strangers.
<
br /> ***
Garth looked at the shattered deer antler in his hand. He couldn’t believe the beast had taken that heavy gear –not so much a gear-shuriken but a cog-discus- across its wonderful thirty point crown without so much as missing a beat. About the only thing the heavy buck had done as it’s glorious diadem had literally shattered off his head was make a noise that’d sounded suspiciously like ‘fuck me sideways’ in deer-ese before high-tailing it stage left, post-haste.
The ex-Specter turned blacksmith’s apprentice dropped the horns and started scratching at his back. He’d been itching like a motherfucker since he’d fallen over the wall. Just his luck. Poison Ivy or some other weird poisonous Arcade City murder vegetable.
“Does this joint even have doctors? Like real ones?” Garth muttered irritably. He sucked a tooth as he considered bailing on the massive deer, right hand still digging at the itch across his where his right shoulder blade would be if it wasn’t under cover of gears.
Fuck it. He was too far from camp now to lug a fatass deer like the one he was hunting across a flat plain. The thought of hiking a four hundred pound plus corpse up the tree ramp that went over that wall struck him as the least fun he’d have all day. No, he’d track down more rabbits or something.
“Jesus fuck.” Garth pressed harder against the itchy skin his capped fingers could reach, wishing he’d thought to include brass fingernails. Holy crap was his skin …
“Shit.” Garth stopped scratching and looked at around warily.
He’d chased the buck into a tree-ringed clearing. Overhead, sunlight was filtering in through the heavy canopy, turning the scene mythical. If one of his old hippy pagan friends from back in the day –during one part of the War against the Heshii, lots of old religions had made a resurgence, with Nature Worship figuring prominently for far longer than had been tolerable- were standing beside him, she’d be going on about wondrous energies and how ‘close’ Mother Nature was to this place.
Something was close, all right. Nothing remotely natural, though.
“Shit. Shit.” It … it had to be here somewhere. His back wouldn’t –couldn’t- be itching for any other reason. Garth licked his lips and looked at the direction he’d come from, wondering what to do. “Shit.”
In typical fashion when it came to things involving either the King or his so-called ‘Will’, dear old Barnie had been about as useful as a helpfile for a nuclear reactor written in Klingon. Backwards. After realizing his maundering prevarications –never quite a lie, never quite an admission of total ignorance- had been a stone’s throw away from kick starting another argument, the smith had finally relented by admitting he’d never met anyone tattooed by an angry Gearman.
And the because Barnie was Barnie, he’d finished his lame apology by reminding Garth that he’d already said all he’d really known about the tattoos some time ago, and that was that you couldn’t get too close to a Kingspawn point before a Big King showed up and stomped you flat.
Since Barnabas’ intimate knowledge of the lay of the land had kept them from coming anywhere near Kingspawn points, there was no way of telling if itchy skin was some kind of early warning system, or if it was too fucking late already.
“Shit.” Garth took a few steps back the way he’d come. The hot itch neither grew nor diminished in fervor. He was really going to have to get his head in the game. Old him would’ve never missed the fact that the itch originated beneath the shoulder cap of his armor from the get-go, and Specter him would’ve never fucking mistook that itch for scratches from falling down a goddamn wall or poison ivy.
Garth took a few tentative steps in a random direction away from where he’d entered the clearing.
The leaves covering the forest floor started bouncing like they were resting on a tightly pulled drum skin.
“Of course. Of fucking course.” Garth flipped the clearing the bird and watched in misery as a Kingspawn point was revealed unto him; the fucking thing was rising inexorably up out of the earth like he’d suddenly fallen into a z-grade Indiana Jones knockoff, with the ‘point playing the part of Mysterious Hidden Idol Revealed to Dashing Yet Stupidly Suicidal Hero to the fucking hilt.
Almost as if someone was scripting the scene, those lovely shafts of light trickling through the overhead tree canopy connived to fall upon the Kingspawn point the moment it was fully revealed in all its hissing, steaming clockwork perfection.
“Seriously?” Garth wanted to smack someone. Preferably himself, though with the power arms, that might wind up messy. “Fuck me sideways. I am literally the stupidest person alive. ‘Hey, let’s ignore telltale signs that I’m risking my life in favor of daydreaming about a hippy chick I totally failed to bone’. Fuck. Just … fuck.”
Well, there was nothing to do now but go up and get a good glance at what a fully operational Kingspawn point looked like.
If he was quick enough and got to it before the Big King arrived, there was every chance he could either short-circuit the machinery –which would hopefully prevent the steampunk Godzilla from appearing- or he could take a good long gander at the circuit boards: on the off chance he survived the Fight of the Century, it’d be nice have working knowledge of a functional board.
Stoically prepared for the worst, strains of Indiana Jones’ theme song playing in his ears, Garth got as close to the Kingspawn point as he dared.
Garth wiggled his lips thoughtfully when he clapped eyes on the pedestal. Given the towering oak trees forming what could almost be described as a protective ring around the Kingspawn point, it was a safe bet that this particular point hadn’t been used in well over three hundred years, which was … beneficial. Nicked Jimmy had let on that commonly used spawn points had been known to whip up a Big’Un in less time than it took for a gaggle to set themselves up properly.
One left fallow for so long should –conceivably- take a good while to get up to full steam, so to speak.
The Kingspawn point itself was pretty standard, Garth supposed, for the sort of thing it did. As it powered up, lights flickered here and there through the meshed grillwork of the raised dais. Contemplating the spectacle, it dawned on him that –once you subtracted all the fancy gears and grillwork and filigrees and baroque bullshit- it wasn’t anything more than a super-simple old-school palm scanner, though much, much taller.
Fully revealed a few seconds later, the wrought iron base of the pedestal was five feet a side, with a series of steps leading up to the actual summoning device itself. Gearheads standing atop the thing would be well over six feet off the ground, making it a perfect mini-stage for summoners to astonish onlookers with their bravery.
Musing on the reverence Arcadians must’ve treated summoning Kings with for thousands of years, Garth climbed the small flight of steps, ears and eyes ever trained on impending disaster. Stepping onto the heavy iron foundation of the machine had set the thing rumbling like a whole warehouse of v8 engines; the heavy thrum of vast motors deep beneath the earth’s crust straining to reach full power rose through the balls of his booted feet. From how the engines strained to draw power through whatever passed for pipes in the spawnpoint’s inner workings, Garth surmised there was a bit of time left before things got truly grotty.
That being said, he’d already fucked things up pretty royally by paying no attention to anything except what was between his ears, and … yeah. Big King en route.
That wasn’t going to happen again. The last thing he wanted was for this Big’Un to come at him while he was gawking like a fucking tourist.
Garth shook his head. “Next I’ll be lookin’ to take a friggin’ selfie with it. Jesus.”
As he reached the thick glass hand scanner held in place by a heavy copper frame and truly massive wingnuts, Garth had a fully formed image in his head of impromptu parties held around these contraptions, with whole Estates trooping out to watch fledgling Kingkillers conjure themselves a King, reveling in the challenge of trying to do for their cybernetic sovereign, back, back, back before Kingsbl
ood had taken unholy root in those who fought for fame and glory. A simpler time, and by virtue of their being less Kingsblood flowing across the land, surely a better time.
Seams of incandescence were illuminating circuits set into the base, while the lights inside the copper and brass mechanism itself no longer flickered impatiently. The thrum-thrum-thrum of whatever powered the Kingspawn point so deep below was now up and running full tilt.
“No one’s seen you power up so slowly in thousands of years, I bet.” Garth ran a loving hand across the glass scanner. For all that he was destined in five minutes -or five seconds- to be running for his goddamn life, there was an awful majesty to the device.
Garth gripped one of the wingnuts between thumb and forefinger and tried spinning it loose. It didn’t budge. “Wish I had my hammer with me. Bang this fucker right open with it.”
And then, because he was an idiot and the realization of what was most likely going to happen now that he knew he was an idiot, “Holy fuck. I need my fucking hammer. Shitshitshitshitshit. Shit.”
Garth jumped from the raised Kingspawn point, hit the ground funny. Pitching unceremoniously forward with an awkward bellow escaping his lips, a slimy underlayer of leaves that’d previously resisted the tympanic vibrations assisted him in the unfortunately comedic act of sliding forward fifteen feet. Zooming along like a fat kid on a Slip’N’Slide, Garth thanked everyone from Buddha to the Engines of Creation that no one was around to witness the Engineer at his most moronic.
Then he bumped into something. Doing the mental equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting ‘la la la I can’t hear you’ Garth opted to take stock of his spiritual and physical well-being before he confronted anything … unwanted.
All systems came back ‘as good as you’re gonna get, so toughen up, champ’.
Awesome.
