by Steven Bohls
The scroll showed a large pile of junk. Lyle checked the proportions and gasped. Jed squeezed in even closer and felt his eyes bug, too. The shape on the page was scaled to be nearly three thousand feet tall and seven hundred feet wide at its base. Lyle leaned closer and realized that all the junk was the same: lawn mowers. It was an enormous pile of lawn mowers.
“These blueprints,” he said. “I don’t understand. What is this?”
“Our new guardian,” Calliope said.
Lyle squinted at the blueprints again. He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. According to this,” he said, touching a spot on the page, “whatever this thing is, it’s over half a mile high? That’s as tall as a mountain.”
Calliope nodded slowly. “Yes. It is. A mountain that you will bring to life to defend our home.”
Lyle stared at her. “A mountain?” he repeated. She nodded again. “A whole mountain? That’s impossible. I can’t lift an entire mountain with that.” He motioned to the spark on the table.
“We don’t want you to lift the mountain,” she said, “we want you to control it.”
“Control a mountain?” Lyle asked.
Calliope smiled and nodded again. “Can you do it?” She gently placed her hand on his shoulder.
“I—I don’t know. Maybe. But…I’d need hundreds of life sparks—maybe thousands. Perhaps if I wired them together to generate more power.”
“Lawnmower Mountain is our top priority. You have full palace funding and any assistance you require.” The queen’s smile broadened. Her face was so gentle and kind. “We’re counting on you.”
“I’ll do my best,” Lyle said. He glanced over at the blueprints again. “Why lawn mowers?”
Calliope hesitated before answering. “Aside from their obvious offensive potential, we decided that with such power, precautionary measures must be taken,” she said. “If we successfully turn an entire mountain into this city’s guardian, then that kind of power would be truly terrifying. No one person should wield such dominance unchecked. The lawn mowers are our safeguard.”
“Safeguard how?” Lyle asked.
“They will be wired together. Should the palace court deem it necessary at any point, we can simultaneously activate them as a self-destruct protocol. The blades will grind the guardian itself to dust if need be. But I hope it will never come to that.”
Jed felt the weight of responsibility on Lyle. An equal measure of pride, excitement, and prestige stormed across the gearsmith’s face as he stared into the queen’s golden eyes. Jed tugged off the spectacles as the vision faded. He held them gingerly, wondering why Shay had suggested he watch that vision.
Hoping for answers, he quickly adjusted the dials to the next memory in the series that Shay had given him: 16-16. Color returned to the spectacles as he placed them on his face. Once again, he stepped into Lyle’s memory as a silent, unseen observer.
Lyle
Jed and Lyle were back in the workshop, but the space was different. Time had passed. The glass windows above were sprayed with cracks, and some had broken entirely. The gold city below was ravaged. Black char coated the crumbling rooftops. In the distance stood a mountain.
Lawnmower Mountain was finished.
Lyle’s workshop was in disarray. Half-finished projects lay scattered about the room. The once clear glass desk was spotted with grime and cluttered with tools. In the center of the desk lay a golden skeleton. Sparks filled its chest. Thick cables plugged into the head. The cables snaked over the edge of the table, along the floor, and out the window—all the way to the base of the mountain.
“Set the coils to forty-eight cycle charges,” Lyle said to no one in particular. People scrambled around in the background, pulling levers and plugging cords into sockets.
“Fire on my command,” Lyle said.
He motioned for action. A beam of light shot from the ceiling and struck the sparks in the golden skeleton. Lyle watched Lawnmower Mountain through the window. “Come on,” he whispered. Jed could see the anticipation and hope building in Lyle as the mountain began to rumble. But just as some of the lawn mowers started to move, sparks burst from the golden skeleton and the mountain fell still.
A knock tapped at the door. Lyle rubbed his eyes and called behind him. “Come in.”
Queen Calliope entered with her guards. “The Ninth Legion has fallen,” she said. “Another four thousand soldiers are dead. The palace has lost nearly an eighth of our forces. We need the guardian. Now.”
The sweetness that Jed had heard in her voice was gone. There was no gentleness or kindness. It had been replaced with panic and fear. She glanced at the table, examining the golden skeleton. “Why is it a child?”
“It’s special,” Lyle said, resting a hand on the skeleton’s golden head. “I built it with the capacity to grow—not only physically, but in capabilities as well. It has a unique gift to adapt, to grow, as more sparks are added to its core.”
“This isn’t time for…elegance,” she said. “We need results.”
Lyle nodded quickly. “You’re asking me to animate an entire mountain. This vessel can do it, but it needs time to grow. And…I’m going to need more sparks. A lot more.”
Calliope turned to her chief scribe. “Recover the sparks from the soldiers and bring them here immediately.”
“Yes, my lady,” the scribe said.
“You’ll have your sparks,” Calliope said to Lyle. “Now get my mountain working.”
Lyle
Memory two now exhausted, Jed had to keep watching. He quickly adjusted the memory spectacles to 19-3.
• • •
There was barely anything left of Lyle’s workshop, and the countryside was in ruins. On the glass table before Lyle lay the golden skeleton. Now its body was densely crusted with life sparks.
“Well?” Calliope said.
She, like Lyle, had a haggard and tired demeanor. But there was something different about Lyle in this vision….His eyes seemed darker and more filled with obsession. Wires ran from his head and into the golden skeleton’s.
“I’m trying something new,” Lyle said. “I’ve fused my own spark to the vessel’s so I can more precisely control it.”
Lyle flipped a switch and concentrated on Lawnmower Mountain. Energy rushed through him, then through the cables connected to the golden body. Lyle opened his hand and lifted his right arm. The mountain rumbled, and a section of mowers began to lift, rising up in the shape of an arm.
Lyle risked a glance at Queen Calliope. Her eyes widened, and she began to smile. A loud pop echoed in the room and a surge of electricity blasted back through the cables. Lyle shrieked as the energy electrocuted his head.
“Ahhh!” he screamed, ripping the cables from his skull. A blast knocked him backward and he lay there, clutching his head. The power died, and the mountain fell still once again.
Calliope’s expression melted into despair. “We’re doomed,” she said.
Lyle shook his head and unsteadily tried to rise. “No. Wait. There might…” He swayed in place, massaging the burn marks on his head. “There might be another way. I’ve been working on something else—a contingency plan in case I couldn’t get the mountain working.”
“Something else?” Calliope said, a frustrated anger creasing the delicate gold in her face. “We stand on the precipice of annihilation and you’re working on ‘something else’?”
“Hear me out,” Lyle pleaded. “I’ve found a way to replace the soldiers we’ve lost—”
“Do you have any idea how many soldiers we’ve lost?” she snapped.
“Ninety-four thousand,” he said.
“And we’ve given every spark to you! You hold our entire civilization in your workshop, and you’ve been working on side projects! How could you do this to me? To our people?”
Lyle stared at the ground. Fury burned in his face. His left eye twitched erratically as if it no longer worked properly. The more Calliope spoke, the less he seemed to hear. Jed had
never seen this in him before. It was as if the electrical shock had damaged him in some way.
“Look at me,” Calliope said sharply. “The humans are insatiable. They’ve plundered our wealth and technology, but it’s not enough; it’s never enough for them! Now they’re slaughtering our people—shattering us into bits of golden scrap that they use for trinkets and useless machines. The gears of our brothers and sisters are being used to power turbines…turbines! We are merely a resource to these monsters. They don’t see us as living creatures; they see us as tools. If we can’t stop them soon, we’re all dead. There are barely five thousand golds left in the world. We have no army, and soon we will have no home. We trusted you. I trusted you. You assured me that you could do this.”
“I still can.” His eye twitched awkwardly again. “I’m close. I promise. But I—”
“No!” Calliope said. “I’m shutting down your operation. Kolador Tash has been developing his own solution. He claims he can activate the mountain without sparks.”
“Tash? Tash is a fool!” Lyle said, slamming his fist into the table. Calliope jumped at the uncharacteristic burst of anger. “He doesn’t know the difference between a flux jumper and a neutron displacer! I’ve seen his plans—on more than one occasion. Sure, he can animate the mountain…for two weeks, four at best. I’ve run the numbers. In less than a month, his design will blow every capacitor in the mountain. It’ll be a dead hunk of metal! He’ll ruin everything! He’ll waste years of effort from thousands of golds who sacrificed their lives building the guardian.”
“Four weeks of operation is four weeks more than you’ve given us.”
“I can do it,” Lyle pleaded. “Just give me more time.”
“You’ve had your time, and you’ve failed.”
“No. You must see what else I have. I can—”
“Enough,” Calliope said. “If all we have is four weeks, then maybe it’s time to evacuate. You will find somewhere else—a place where no one will find us.”
“We shouldn’t have to run,” Lyle said. “We should be the ones slaughtering them! Just hear me out and you’ll see that we won’t have to go anywhere.”
Calliope stared at Lyle as if she no longer knew him. “Bring all the sparks to the palace by nightfall.” She opened her mouth as if to say more, but she shook her head and left instead.
The room was silent. The workers stood perfectly still.
“Out!” Lyle shouted. “Everyone out!”
One by one, workers scrambled away. When the room was empty, Lyle sank to the floor. He rubbed his twitching eye, but when it didn’t stop twitching, he slapped the side of his face over and over and over, until the eye finally went still.
Jed stood silently by, watching to see what Lyle would do next. Lawnmower Mountain was astonishing, but he understood the urgency of the situation, too. And somehow Lyle had gotten his sparks working, hadn’t he? Jed himself was proof of that.
“I’ll show you,” Lyle muttered to himself, opening his eyes and staring at the far wall with steely resolve. “Tash, Calliope, all of you. I’ll save you from yourselves.”
As Jed watched, Lyle clambered to his feet, locked the workshop door, and walked to a large wooden crate. He pushed the crate aside and opened the trapdoor hidden below it. Stairs led into darkness. Jed hurried to follow as Lyle made his way to the bottom of the tower. Light flooded the space as Lyle switched on a light. A hall of iron and copper corpses met his—and Jed’s—eyes.
The corpses were patched together with wires, plating, and workshop scraps.
Jed recalled what Lyle had said about life sparks and dread. The golds required an entire spark to animate. Humans, on the other hand, required barely a sliver. Once he patched up their fleshy bodies with metal scraps, he’d managed to awaken every one of these bodies with a single, shattered life spark.
As Lyle walked in the middle of them, the corpses began to shift. Dead eyes began to open.
“Admiral?” the body nearest him said. “We’ve been quiet like you asked, but we’re bored. Do we get to kill something yet?”
Jed watched a wicked glint form in Lyle’s newly darkened expression.
“Yes. It’s time,” Lyle said. “You get to kill a lot of things.”
Lyle
Jed hesitantly set the spectacles’ dial to the last memory.
He found himself beside Lyle as they flew at the front of his undead armies. The sky was black with smoke and death. Townships burned at the edges of the horizon. Directly ahead, dreadnoughts bombarded a township with shatterkeg volleys. A whistling sounded overhead. Jed ducked as a wing of falcons soared above them. Dreadnoughts fired shatterflak into the cluster of ships, obliterating them into bits of scrap.
“Focus fire on the township’s center,” Lyle said to one of his dread lieutenants.
The shatterkeg volleys shifted in unison and pelted the city. Jed watched as the township cracked into two halves and fell from the sky.
Lyle nodded coldly. “Send a message to the fleet,” he said to the lieutenant. “We will leave two ghostnoughts to gather the dead. The rest of the fleet will move on Sunset Port immediately before word reaches them that we’re near.”
Jed ripped the spectacles from his face. He couldn’t watch any more. The death…the screaming…the smoke.
“I need to leave. Now,” he whispered just loud enough for Sprocket to hear from his backpack.
“Dowwwn to junnnk,” she responded.
Jed made his way to the dark training box. He gripped the lever that Lyle had used and pulled.
The box’s floor creaked apart, spilling dim light into the space. Light glittered over the junk piles below as the sun rose from behind its horizon. He’d been inside Lyle’s memories for longer than he’d thought.
“Well,” he said to Sprocket. “Here goes.”
With a deep breath, he cinched the straps on the backpack and leaped from the Endeavor into open air.
Jed
Jed fell toward the piles below. Fear blasted through him. What was he thinking? What if he couldn’t activate the sparks? Wind whipped past his face as he stared, terrified, at the blur of junk. Morning sunlight glinted off the metal, making their edges look even sharper.
He tried to activate his sparks, but his fear made it impossible to concentrate. He could imagine Lyle’s voice snickering at him, telling him that if he’d only used his special key…
SPLAGHETTI rang in his mind, and right then, he remembered what the S stood for: self-reliance.
“No,” Jed said aloud to the deadly piles. “I don’t need some rusty key. I’m strong enough without it.” Heat exploded through him as his sparks blazed to life. Pulling energy from the mutiny sparks, he pressed against the ground below until he slowed and landed softly.
Heroism. “H is for heroism, Sprocket,” he said over his shoulder. “I think jumping out of a flying train toward certain death counts, don’t you?”
“Funnn,” Sprocket buzzed.
Jed looked up in sky as the Endeavor flew on without them.
As the morning sun continued to rise, he scanned the sky until he spotted a small township floating in the west. Small was good. Small would help him hide from Lyle until Shay could pick him up.
Staring at the distant city, he smiled to himself. He was ready for a little I: insanity.
He mutinied himself into the air, pushing diagonally against the junk below. Wind rushed past his face. His hair fluttered in the breeze. Stomach clenching with the momentum, he almost immediately regretted his brash rocketing upward. But the feeling was so empowering. It was as if the whole world were his to explore.
“We’re flying!” he yelled to Sprocket. The words felt impossible. Unbelievable. Exhilarating. Liberating.
The clouds hanging overhead were puffy, white, and inviting. Excitement buzzed through Jed as an idea taunted him. He dove back toward the ground. Then he flared his sparks. Metal squealed and compressed below him, smashing together to form a small crater. He pulled
more energy from his mutiny sparks. His body changed directions and shot into the air. He mutinied against the junk, rocketing higher and higher.
The momentum carried him into the clouds.
“Oooh!” Sprocket’s tinny voice squeaked from Jed’s backpack.
He wished he could float there forever. In the peaceful clouds, away from everything.
But then he sank back through the clouds and plummeted toward the earth.
His heart thumped nervously as he wondered whether he had enough power to slow his fall. As soon as he could sense the junk he began mutinying his body away from it. Gears and capacitors heated with the effort, and he barely slowed.
Panic welled inside him as he tried to pull more energy from the mutiny sparks. He slowed a little, but he’d accidentally depleted his sparks from the jump to the clouds. He cringed as the junk below sped toward him.
“Come on,” he said through gritted teeth, forcing as much power from the mutiny sparks as he could.
Energy drained from him, and instead of feeling heat, there was an overwhelming chill of emptiness.
It wasn’t enough.
An all-encompassing pain ripped across his flesh as he slammed clear through a toppled wardrobe. His golden body punched into the junk like a bullet hitting water. Skin ripped from his arms, legs, and face. Pain seared through him, and when he finally stopped tearing through the scrap, his body felt like a crumpled soda can.
Jed groaned and tried to move his arms. They were tangled in a vacuum cleaner cord and pinned underneath a bookshelf. His legs wouldn’t move either, but he couldn’t even see what was holding them in place.
Everything hurt.
He lay there motionless. His head throbbed, his bones ached, his freshly torn skin burned.
“Sprocket?” he mumbled, trying to look over his shoulder at the red backpack. He’d hit the junk face-first, so maybe she was okay on his back.
