The Engine

Previously

“So when do you leave?” Barbara asked.

“Soon,” I replied. “The engine wasn’t exact about when exactly, just said sometime today.”

“Good luck… Then… If I don’t get another chance to say it,” I could see that Barbara was sad.

“Why do you think this is a bad thing?” I asked. “I have a real chance at happiness, and you think that this is something to be afraid of. I know that without the engine’s protection that horrible things can happen, but, horrible things already have happened. Maybe I’ll find a cure somewhere. I just know that I don’t belong here,” I said, “You should be happy for me.”

“What if you die? And no one will ever see you again. Don’t you have friends?”

“I do have friends,” I said, remembering Ryan and Bishop. “But they will just think I was punished by the engine. I never got a chance to ask them what they thought of my mistake… But I think they would have not approved of it. Not at all. If I ever had friends in them, they are gone now.”

This somehow seemed to calm Barbara; her face lightened, her expression neutralized, “Then there is nothing you need to do? Nothing left unfinished here?”

“I have things to do,” I said, “But none of them can be done here. So no. Nothing is left for me.”

“You are very brave…” Barbara said. “I envy you your ability to see as clearly as you do. I would be terrified.”

And a red light suddenly flickered in our room, and then two men stepped in, dressed in clothes quite foreign to me. They wore long brown cloaks that covered black attire. Hoods were pulled over their heads until only the bottoms of their eyes were visible. “Jack Carentan?” One of them asked.

I nodded, and the one who had asked took my arm and led me from the room. I glimpsed back to see Barbara standing in the doorway. It seems odd that she had an attachment to me, and I wondered if she liked me. But I realized that in her heart, it wasn’t me that she was attached to; it was the idea I represented. The possibility of escaping held the allure. And that ideal, I guessed, probably ran through the entire of the engine. Likely even the engine itself. It seems likely; the engine performs the same tasks every day, over and over, never moving, always remaining anchored to one spot. In this case, anchored only to the continent it was built on. It is a slave, unwilling, but a slave nonetheless. And so, with the two cloaked men leading me away, I must confess I felt sorry for it.

I was led out of the building and onto it’s sloping roof, until once we reached the top, an airplane hovered over and extended a line for us to grab. The cloaked man who was holding my arm grabbed me now around the waist (he was definitely tall enough, and I discovered, strong enough) and took hold of the line so that we were lifted up by it. The other cloaked man grabbed hold of the bottom of the line, and we were pulled to the airplane.

The cloaked man who held me threw me onto the floor of the slightly shifting craft, and then jumped on himself. His companion jumped aboard too, rocking the airplane even more. It was here I lost my footing and tumbled out of the craft and into the air.

I sailed through emptiness for a few seconds and was given a great panorama of the surrounding area. It was steel, stretching to the horizon in every direction. I saw the floodlights that illuminated the ground weren’t even that high in the air and that they were only thin rods with light bulbs on the ends of them. A hand grabbed my foot and stopped my flight, so that I now fell downwards and swung on an arc, hitting the underside of the craft as I was pulled up.

I was hoisted onto the aircraft once more, and this time, was placed onto a seat, and strapped in by leather harnesses.

I felt a trickle of blood seeping down from above my right eye, and a drop fell in, and I blinked rapidly. I then noticed the aching pressure my head was giving me. The man who had been holding me before (it could have been the other man, I am not sure) took off his hood and revealed his face; old and worn by many years spent in a warmer climate than my own, and his companion removed his own, and looked younger, but still weary.

The old man spoke first, “creature” (he was actually calling me a creature, and while this was strange at first, it would soon become commonplace, once someone knew what I was) “you have been selected to be traded off at Sykport, on the western claw of Naureth, do you plead freedom?”

I tried to ask what he meant, but I felt a cracked tooth and suddenly realized that my mouth was in as great pain as my head. Instead, I mumbled, “I want to be free.”

The young man grabbed my jaw and turned my head one way and then the other. He turned to the old man, and said in a voice that was raspier than his face looked, “He’s sustained vicious injury. I suggest we try to heal him as soon as we can. Before we try to discover what he wants.”

The old man nodded, and the young man let go of my face, and walked over to a chest, swaying slightly with the airplane’s movements (we were now flying, I realized, over a body of water. Either the building I had previously been within was near to the ocean, or the airplane moved very quickly) and retrieved a vial and syringe. He injected me in the neck, and I fell asleep. I didn’t protest, because I figured that at that point, I had no choice.

Next

The Engine

Previously

The engine made a sputtering kind of noise before going silent. There was a sound like a blender running somewhere, but I couldn't tell what direction it came from, only that it was silent. Suddenly, the engine's voice filled the room, "You are machine, but also organic."

"Yes," I said. "So are you." I looked at the expanse around me, not expecting an answer. It was a wild guess, "Aren't you?"

"The people could be said to be a part of me, as they are responsible for my continued existence." The noise of a blender continued, almost comically, as though the engine were thinking. "You are no longer a part of me, as you are not human. I would ordinarily execute you, but your manufacture would be too precious to waste. There is a land that would value you much more greatly than I, somewhere south, past the never ending conflict of Ice and Fire, where machines battle machines and the humans are more often than not at war with themselves, if not at war with machines."

"What would I do there?"

"It is not up to I. You would be sold to either humans or machines, as you may pass as either. What they decide to do with you is their decision, and not mine." At this point, some of the porcelain tiles began to flash colors, and enough colors shown to create a map on the walls. It showed a great gray continent, with another, smaller one, below it. They complemented each other, the southernmost continent curling upwards at the west, where the northern continent ended. A blue light illuminated the curl, "This is where you shall be taken. I will meet with envoys from the south who regularly trade with me there. I usually only offer steel or weapons, but they will find you much more interesting."

"How can you sell me, if I am not a part of you?" I asked.

"If you stay here, you will forever be persecuted. The only way out is across the ocean, and you do not have a boat, or aircraft to traverse the water. I, however, do. You have a greater chance at survival on the southern continent, and while it may not be safer, you might find..." The engine sputtered into silence. A voice spoke from the doorway of the catwalk, and Barbara stood there.

"Happiness," she finished.

"Yes," the engine spoke. "Something I will never know, and something that will never be given to my working parts."

Next