Sykport

Previously

I didn’t reply; my breath was rapid and irregular and I was so frightened that I am not sure I heard his question. All I noticed was that the trees afforded an opening in the sky, and that it looked like a white haze was above everything.

“Dear God man, what happened to you?” He grabbed my shirt and tore it off, leaving my chest bare. “What are these lesions… and you’re jaundiced! I must get you to a doctor immediately!”

I grabbed his hand with my right hand and said, “I’ll be fine. It’s the black dots, sir; I think they’re trying to get inside me. They must have quit using my mouth and ears, and sought to burrow their way in.”

“You mean the gnats? I wouldn’t be surprised. They’re not what I was used to; they’re vicious now, violent beings,” he said, “But like I asked, before I saw your poor condition, you’re not supposed to be here. You’re too young to be a slave, and if I don’t recognize you it’s very likely that you’re a guest. Have you met Livingston? She was upriver from you, hunting a tiger or something.” The man spoke quickly, and sharply. His words were defined, and I believe he must have developed this skill in making speeches, where alacrity was a valued skill. I did not know what a gnat was, but understood what a tiger was.

I’d seen one as a child with my mother… my aunt possibly. Neither is related to me. But I digress, I had seen it in a cage, and it was weak. I don’t think there was a proper caretaker, and the food it was given was the same kind of food we ate. I remember its pitted eyes, that held an animal sadness. Why wouldn’t it? It was trapped away from its home, doing things it didn’t want to do, at the command of beings that had no care for its safety.

In fact, I could see that the tiger’s pitted eyes looked the same as the man’s. “What’s your name?” I asked. I was afraid I might never learn it, for some reason, I had a feeling like something terrible was going to happen and I’d never have another chance to ask. I was dreading another violent event; my meeting with the girl (who I suppose was Livingston) and then the attack of the lake monster; it all seemed to indicate that I had a third and final conflict.

“I am Arthur,” he said. “And you are?”

“Jack,” I said.

“I had a kid named Jack, once,” Arthur said, “I’ll get you to safety; away from these insufferable gnats. And who knows if the monster in the lake will elect to climb on the land to get to us.”

As if in reply (I suppose it may have been listening, and it may have actually been an intelligent response) we heard the great moan from the lake; like steel bending underwater. Arthur shook his gun at the water, and then helped me up. He began to walk towards the tree line, with my arm around his shoulder to keep me upright, but I shook him off and walked along without any difficulty.

The lake monster behind us made a wave in the water, but we continued into the woods and didn’t look back. As we trekked into the forest we heard one last moan, and then silence.

The gnats returned (the black dots that had harried me earlier) and I waved them off. But I could not see them biting at my chest like I had assumed. And when I looked at my arms and abdomen, my skin was yellowing. It was not long after I noticed this that I began to feel ill.

We trekked through the wilderness and came to a house which appeared like a roughly constructed hut. Arthur told me that it was his home and led me inside like a frightened cattle (which I may as well have been, with my fever rising and an aching in my right hand beginning).

Once inside I saw that the outside impression had been false. This was not a tribally constructed building, but was rather a more civilized abode. The walls inside were of a rigid material (I’d guess it was a thin layer of wood, but it was painted to look like something artificial) and there was a couch placed in front of a television set.

He led me across the carpeted floor to the couch and told me to sleep.

It is here I will interrupt my story.

My life before now, before being taken on the air vessel across an ocean I didn’t know existed, was mediocre.

My aspirations were to become an engineer, which was what most people wanted to do. Some joined the police, thinking that it would give them great power, but police were little more than delivery men, who carried prisoners about the engine to wherever the engine required them to go. There were automatons which served the purpose of the police in other areas, which likely served as better police than any flesh-minded man could hope to.

The engine was a land where nothing ever changed.

I have been told that in the developed lands on the eastern tip of Naureth, there sits a great country called Lyber, which is developing technologies and social programs at a quickening pace. Generations of fifty years ago were used to limited combustion engines and rifles which fired single shots and medicine that perhaps allowed an age expectancy of seventy or at the most eighty. Those who have survived from then now find themselves in a vastly different society; the cars run on solar energy, and windmills supply towns with a limitless supply of power. There are awesome weapons of terrible power which lay waste to entire cities in the blink of an eye, and medical advancements allow for near immortality (this may only be a rumor).

There is no such discrepancy in generations that live on the engine. Grandfathers will see the country much the same as it was when they were small, and their children, when of an advanced age, will see the same thing their grandfathers have always seen.

It is perhaps a sad ordeal, but it has produced a docile population. It is another reason why police are almost unnecessary. The violent elements of society have been killed off or sectioned away, so that there are peaceful people on the streets, with one or two dissidents (who act in a mostly peaceful form of protest in any situation).

I knew well of violence growing up; that it was unwise to stay out late, that you could be killed in areas that did not hold the engine’s scrutiny, that there were criminals who would never come to justice, existing on the borders of light that our society had created. If I am creating a paradoxical society, one which is both peaceful and extremely violent, please excuse me.

People on the engine do not include criminals. Criminals are like wildlife in any other civilized society (as in Lyber).

But I fall from my subject; I did not want to lecture you on the social abilities of the engine, even if I believe you may be reading this for no other purpose than to explore the inside of it.

I had always wanted to be an engineer, as I was saying, to discover the mechanical pieces of the engine. High Engineers knew the engine’s greatest secrets (and greatest lies) and were exalted for this knowledge. I wanted to be like them. I did not discover my inner workings until a few months before I spilled acid during that course in Chemistry, and it was then that I decided my life’s goal would be to see if I was anything like the engine.

It should be clear to you now, that I spilled the acid on purpose. I wanted to do something more. So I did something no one else would do; I revealed the engine.

Where were we?

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