Condemnation

by Kell Inkston

  The pressure reaches its breaking point, and Clare's hears a snapping sound in her back. A new well of agony springs up in her swiftly numbing body as her legs go limp— but the wretched automaton doesn't stop there. It squeezes further, industrially pressing her lower torso into paste if she doesn't manage to stop it.

  Thinking fast, she thrusts her hand into the head frame to remove the plates— but they're locked in tight. She resorts to tearing them back one after the other, the plates crudely bending out from their frames before snapping off with a whining noise. She can feel the blood gathering up in places it’s not supposed to be— her torso so racked with a sore, numbing pain that it's almost impossible to perceive; but she can feel it— she doesn't have long, even with this burst of strength from what feels like nowhere at all.

  In the final seconds, Clare snaps back the final plate which holds the small bulb containing the ethergrain inside.

  "You're a fool!" the automaton shouts, reaching up to stop her just as she rams the knife into the bulb— shattering it instantly, and separating the auto from its strength. The frame of metal and circuitry falls over, taking her with it— and while she's spry enough to pull her upper torso away, her legs do not follow suit. She's pushed down with the fall, trapped again under the weight of one of these demented machines.

  She's left with the insects, and the ethergrain— just a little black speck of what could be just about anything.

  She is seething with venom—battered, torn, cold, hungry, practically naked, utterly humiliated, possibly crippled– but alive.

  Clare smiles, cries out, and then laughs; a carousel of emotion rotating through her broken frame.

  It's going to be different from now on, of course— that is, if she can get out from this.

  Using only her arms, she starts pushing up against the downed automaton in an attempt to free herself. She immediately realizes how vital it is that she can no longer use her hips for leverage. Everything below the waist is now completely numb— just a useless extremity of blood and nerves. It's not enough to free herself.

  She lays back a moment in thought, staring up at the vaulted ceiling. The crawling chaos of insects notes the returning calm and begins to head closer; perhaps she's dead.

  Clare glances at them, and looks at them with not disgust, or fear— but ambition.

  "Yeah, come on," she mutters crassly. "I'm not gonna fight back."

  The swamp of mindless consumption nears her slowly, more of a comfortable outward movement than a targeted attack.

  She scoffs at it now that she doesn't feel threatened by them. She figures that that mess all started from a few small bugs that crawled into the store-house, closed for so long; they eventually bred, ate each other, and fed off of the massive stores of preserved food over the period of... what she expects must at least have been decades. Now it's just a convulsing, mindless pile of calories— recycling itself over and over as it steadily, finally diminishes into nothing.

  Clare shines her clip light into the store-room— completely swarmed clean by the looks of it, its jars broken to pieces on accident from the years and years of insect travel. She's sure the mountain was even larger in its prime; if she had opened the door a few years later, there might not have been even a single one left alive inside.

  The pool of confusion and pincers nears her by just a meter now— and the source of her interest is revealed: hunger.

  Her knife, still gripped for life in her right hand, spreads across the approaching front row of insects— reducing them to a rough paste in only three passes. She scoops up the mixture without a spec of irony in her gaze, and licks it off the blade.

  It tastes beyond horrible— but her tongue tells her that its edible.

  "Yeah, see? I'm friendly. Come on back," she mutters with a scoff; she is pathetically pinned under the auto— but to them, she's a titan.

  The mindless horde spreads into their new space naturally, and she's given the chance to eat multiple times. Despite the bitter taste, they're juicy, crunchy— and she's pretty sure are also fortified with nutrients; she doesn't really care what kind by this point.

  She laughs under her breath between bites. This is what's become of her. A day ago, she was top of her class— looking forward to a fantastic career in magi-tech automaton engineering— and now she's pinned under an auto, eating venomous bugs that may very well be poisonous as well. She is staring out at nothing in particular now, when another light emerges down the hall leading out to the city. It's not deceptively green this time— but blatantly blue. It's not Carrie.

  Clare stares on with a fearless disgust— a certain, complete rejection to any sway death may bring. She's going to go out fighting. Positioning her upper body as best as her injuries will allow into a stance to stab with, she watches as the automaton comes forward— flooding the granary with a calm, dead, blue light. It just stares at her a moment from the entryway— far, far longer than an enemy automaton should take. She's never seen a model like this one before. It must be a custom, like Carrie.

  "Well?" Clare snaps.

  The auto clenches its fists.

  "What?!" Clare adds with a shout.

  "I have been waiting for you," a straight voice drones from the head plate of the slim, smaller automaton, "—for quite some time."

  "You have some nerve, referring to yourself as an individual,” Clare spits back, racking her mind to come up with any form of insult whatsoever. “You can drop the act and just get to it. I'm going to crush you no mat-"

  In an unceremonious snap, the auto's foot lands onto Clare's knife— pinning it to the ground. The next moment, the auto looms over her. Clare's certain that this is it after all— but she'll do as much damage as she can before she goes.

  "I would appreciate it if you don't try to cut me while I'm-" the auto starts calmly, but Clare has no interest in conversing.

  "Machines don't have the fucking right to talk to me! I’m a person, goddammit!" Clare screams, ditching the knife and using both her hands to pry open the faceplate. The automaton just lets her tug at it a moment, taking nearly a full minute before Clare draws back in dejection. Its faceplate is cinched down tightly— as if someone had designed it with managraph protection in mind: an automaton specifically made to handle this exact sort of physical struggle.

  "The... hell?" the girl begins to falter.

  The auto takes up the knife from under its foot, and places it gently back into Clare's hands, outstretched from confusion. "I was… instructed to expect you to be in... better shape than this. Are you okay?"

  Clare looks to her torso, reddish-purple with injury, and smiles.

  “Pfft, I’m fine.”

  The automaton’s managraph flickers in a way that might denote sass. “Really?”

  Clare picks up on the unexpectedly human level of expression and relents. "Ah... no, I definitely don't think so. I don't feel good at all." She says this just as a thin dribble of bile escapes her mouth. She promptly vomits onto the floor. Turns out, the insects are harder to keep down than she thought.

  "I was instructed by your mother to bring you all the way," the auto says plainly.

  Clare looks up, the intensity in her gaze converting instantly to hope. "W-... what?"

  "Of course, I think Carrie would be best for taking you physically— but if it’s already been lost then we'll have to make d-"

  "I... I know where he is."

  "He?"

  "Eh, it. I know where it is."

  "How far?"

  "The academy. "

  The blue-lit automaton looks out. "I should be able to take you, though I'm not designed for loads. Are you okay to go? Do you need anything?"

  "...Where's my mom?"

  "That's not important right now. I'm going to take you to her— but you need to concentrate. Do you need anything?"

  Clare looks aside. "I... I'm pretty... really hungry."

  The auto looks up into the dark halls of the granary and reaches to pick her up along w
ith her belongings. "That should be simple enough," it says— stepping forward and through the pond of insects, writhing wildly at the robot's entry.

  "There's nothing there. The insects ate it a-" No sooner does Clare speak, then the upright glimmer of a jar of preservatives shines off from one of the shelves within the lighting of the auto’s managraph. "Oh!"

  Approaching the shelf and positioning its ‘cargo’ such that the girl can reach the provisions, the machine hums at the label with a hint of disapproval. "Looks like jam– not exactly a good meal. I'm sure there's-"

  But Clare doesn't wait to snap open the lid and scoop the berry spread into her mouth with a voracious appetite— the makings of tears emerging within her eyes in sheer joy at experiencing sugar after what has seemed like months.

  "And there you go," the auto says with a hint of concern. "Now we need to go and get your ‘him’. The patrol will be here soon, I'm sure."

  The famished girl doesn't stop eating as she responds. "Thh pwtwol?" she asks.

  The auto nods, turning about for the opening. "This place is a different world if you're a machine. King Victor is a fool beyond fools to have allowed this."

  Clare quiets up, relaxing into the grasp of the lithe auto as best she can amidst all the pain she's feeling. "Is there... an end to it?" she asks after a swallow.

  The machine's managraph hums calmingly. Clare notices that she can't hear a registry within this one's head, unlike Mary’s other work in Carrie.

  "...Yes, and no," the machine says.

  She squints at the machine. "What do you mean?" she asks, hugging the open jar to her chest.

  "I can't explain and travel at the same time. Sound is the ruler of this world— and if we're caught off guard, I might not be able to save you."

  They're about halfway through the tunnel when the auto's managraph dims out to a near-black. Clare takes this cue to turn off her own light.

  "So if you were supposed to wait for me, why weren't you by the ladder when we entered?"

  "Not only is there more than one way up and down— but I also had to stay on the move. If they knew I was here, they would stop at nothing to destroy me."

  "Who?"

  "The machines— the other machines."

  "Why? What's wrong with them? Why are they like this?"

  "They've always been this way."

  Clare's features sharpen with confusion. "But that would mean they've been like this since they were built."

  "Correct."

  "But they wouldn't just randomly hunt people down when they have their managraph plates to follow. It must be an error in design."

  "They are not true machines. What you place in their heads tells them how you expect them to act; it is not what limits their minds."

  "Then what are they?"

  "...Do you remember that time your mom and dad took you to the zoo?"

  Clare squints an eye. "I was really young then... do you mean to say that the automatons are like zoo animals?"

  "No— I mean to say that they are the zookeepers. Now hush up, we're going out and we need to be quiet.”

  Clare's slim automaton steps back into the water with the girl in its arms— back into that great black city: The Previous Everhold.

  Continued in Substation 7: Liberation at mybook.to/substation7book2.

  (Read on for a note from the author.)

  Hi!

  Kell here, just wanted to thank you for reading through Substation 7’s first book: Condemnation!

  You’ll excuse the abruptness of the ending, but there’s quite a lot more to show you in the world of Everhold, and this really seemed like the best place to cut it off story-wise.

  You won’t have long to wait until the next installment, though, as from the time of this writing it should be out the twentieth of November!

  You can buy or preorder that here at: mybook.to/substation7book2.

  Want to read something else? Head over to https://kellinkston.com/ to equip yourself with some exciting new stories, set in the same universe.

  Until next time, thank you for your readership, and please watch out for automatons.

  All the best,

  Kell Inkston