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Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: Clockwork Quills
ISBN-10: 1623750741
Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9781623750749
In the bowels of a massive factory, slaves live and work under the gaze of cruel robots called Watchers. Their lives are short and harsh and meaningless. Until the day a door opens where no door should be, and some of the slaves escape into the corridors. Gradually the true nature of the factory is revealed, a truth that might change everything and throw open every door.
Excerpt
First came the screaming, the sound of some monstrous thing crying out from the darkness. Then came the babbling, a boy wordlessly pleading for help, and one sound melted into the other. Bik fled from it, fighting his way out of the dream, but the noise chased him, turning at the end into the blare of the morning alarm. Finally, he opened his eyes in the dim, red light and heard it echoing off the metal walls, a singular note, high and harsh.
On that particular morning, Bik’s limbs felt sore, so he dared to linger for a few seconds, gazing up at the ceiling.
He had rolled off his bed mat in the night, and the cold floor was beneath him. He heard boys moving all around, stifling yawns, stretching, moaning, sniffing and coughing.
The rumble of the Watcher’s wheels finally roused him, and he sat up. Bik saw it out of the corner of his eye, that lumbering shape. The Watcher entered the Sleeping Room through the archway, returning from whatever strange errand it had been about, and stopped in a corner near the Refuse Hole. A boy relieving himself finished quickly and dashed away. The Watcher had a shiny, cylindrical body, fat wheels for feet, a flat, circular head with dead eyes, but it was the arms that the boys paid special attention to, long segmented arms made of polished metal rods with cloth bulbs for hands. Those were the killing hands, and they were ever poised, ready to strike.
“One minute until work,” the Watcher said. “One minute.”
Bik rose, smoothing out the coarse fabric of his robe. It hung heavy from his shoulders, a tattered bit of cloth full of holes. Then he rolled up his sleeping mat and moved it to the wall. As he turned back around, he noticed that a second Watcher had joined the first. They waited silently at the corners on either side of the archway.
“That one died.”
Bik heard the voice at his shoulder and glanced over. Lus stood just behind him, wiping his nose on the short sleeve of his robe. Lus was a tiny thing with a thin face, big eyes, and thin lips. He was also the oldest boy in the world, after Bik. He had a little patch of brown hair right in the middle of his head, and it stuck straight up this morning.
“What are you talking about?” Bik asked.
Lus pointed toward the far corner. Bik saw boys moving about sluggishly there, rolling up bed mats, rubbing sleep out of their eyes, but one was still lying down. One of the younger boys—Bik didn’t even know his name—had not left his bed. He was on his back, arms spread wide, legs twisted awkwardly to one side. Sleeping, Bik thought, until he realized the boy’s eyes were open.
“Died in his sleep,” Lus said. “Best way to go.”
“Yes,” Bik agreed.
He wondered if the boy even knew he was dead. Maybe he still thought he was dreaming, even now.
“Did you know his name?” Lus asked.
“No,” Bik replied. “He’s not very old. He never did talk that I know of.”
Other boys had begun to notice the dead one now, and they eased back against the walls, sliding mats out of the way.
“Fifteen seconds until work,” a Watcher said in that flat, tinny voice. “Line up. Line up.”
But the other Watcher spotted the dead boy now and, with a little jolt, started across the room, his wheel-feet creaking. The boys kept well clear of him.
“I don’t want to watch,” Lus said, as he kept right on staring.
“What does it matter?” Bik said. “Stick boys die, don’t they?”
Yes, they all died, all of them except Bik and Lus. Bik was the oldest person in the world, and he took a measure of pride in that. He had outlasted them all, and he would outlast any others who came. The Watcher rolled up next to the dead boy, unfolded one of its long, segmented arms and probed the body with its bulb hand. Bik heard the soft crackle of electricity and saw sparks moving between the hand and the body, but the boy did not respond.
“Dead,” the Watcher noted, emotionless.
Its wheels spinning in opposite directions, the Watcher turned around. A small compartment opened near the base of its cylindrical body, and a long, thin hook protruded. It sank the hook in the dead boy’s thigh and started back across the room, dragging him.
“No blood,” Lus noted. “He’s been dead a long time.”
“Dead most of the night, I guess,” Bik said. “Maybe he just forgot to wake up.”
“Maybe he got stuck in a dream,” Lus said. “Maybe he’s still there now, and he forgot about this world.”
“That’s not so bad, then,” Bik said.
“Not so bad,” Lus agreed, and Bik heard a plaintive tone in his voice.
The Watcher dragged the body over to the Refuse Hole in the corner, spun again and slid the body into the hole. The hook pulled free and went back into its compartment, and the body dropped down into that bottomless black. Bik heard it falling, sliding along the damp sides of the hole. A few seconds later and the dead boy was gone.
“Another dead means you will all have to work harder today,” the Watcher said, rumbling back over to the archway. “Line up now.”
The stick boys moved quickly to form the line. Bik counted them. Thirteen. That was the fewest number of stick boys that had ever existed since the beginning of time. And these ones were weaker than those from former days. Indeed, Bik had never seen such a sorry lot. Other than Lus and him, they were all sickly, toothless, bald and scabby.
“Maybe it’s the end of the world,” Lus said, shouldering his way to the front of the line.
“Don’t talk like that,” Bik said.
“They don’t bring in new boys anymore,” Lus said, speaking right over Bik. “Remember how it used to be? Sometimes you’d wake up in the morning, and there’d be a new boy in the room. That doesn’t happen now. Soon there won’t be anyone.”
“Shut up with that kind of talk,” Bik said.
When Lus started to say more, Bik reached up and clapped a hand over his mouth.
“That kind of talk leads to trouble,” he said. “Shut up.”
There were two Watchers. Bik remembered a time when there had been three of them, but the third one had fallen asleep one day and never woken up. For days, it had stood in the Working Room near the end of the table, its arms folded neatly at its sides, saying nothing, doing nothing. And then one morning, they had walked into the Working Room and found it gone, as if the Watcher had vanished into thin air. Of the remaining two, Bik could tell them apart because one had a rather large stain in the center of its cylindrical body, a blackish mark that looked like the mold that sometimes grew in the corners. The other one had a small bend in the upper segment of its right arm. In his mind, Bik thought of them as Stain and Bent, though he never said these names out loud. Indeed, he never addressed the Watchers, rarely spoke of them in any capacity and tried to think about them as little as possible.
Stain now rumbled down the line of boys, first one way, then the other.
“Be diligent,” it said. “Do not take breaks. Work hard until eating time and you will avoid punishment. Go.”
And with that, Stain rumbled back over to the archway and continued into the corridor beyond. Bik took the lead and started walking. He knew the secret of this place, and that was why he had outlived all the others. Obey first and obey fastest. He understood it, and most of the time Lus understood it. All of the noisy, shuffling, sniffling Youngers who failed to learn it found themselves dropping down the Refuse Hole soon enough.
The short hallway led into the long, low place called the Working Room. It was one of the four places that existed in the whole world. The Sleeping Room, the Working Room, the connecting hallway and the Refuse Hole. Bik didn’t care for any of them, but the Working Room had its own particular miseries. No sleep, no dreams, no veiling darkness hiding the dead circle eyes of the Watchers. Just work, work, punishment and no talking.
On the far side of the room, a long indentation in the metal wall held a shallow tray. Piles of rocks filled the tray almost to overflowing. A table sat in front of the wall covered in small bowls of bright blue polish and coarse scouring pads. Bik’s place was on the far left side of the table. A faint blotch on the smooth floor marked the spot where he spent his days, a blotch made by the slight movements of his own feet. Bik took up his position, stood up straight and faced the table and tray. Lus moved up beside him.
Boys took their places along the table, but there were many gaps now. The table had space for twice as many. Bent and Stain circled around and began to pace back and forth behind them, the quiet rumble and squeak of their wheels a constant background noise. Lus started to say something—Bik heard the first little sound and quickly signaled for him to be silent. Lus was in a strange mood today. He knew better than to talk during work. Bik gave him a poisonous look and pointed at the table.
“The tray must be empty before the work day can end,” Bent said, its flat, circular head making a soft whirring noise as it shifting slightly from side to side. “No talking. No sitting. No pausing. No resting. Or there will be punishment. Begin.”
Bik reached across the table into the indentation in the wall and pulled the first large stone out of the tray. It was fist-sized, cold and gray. He clutched it in his hand and picked up the scouring pad. The stones were covered in a hard rocky shell, and it took a lot of vigorous scrubbing to get it off. Bik dipped the scouring pad into the bowl, got a good portion of the blue polish on the end and went to work.
As the gray crust melted away, the beautiful stone beneath was slowly revealed, a shiny purplish rock, translucent and smooth. The dim yellow lights overhead seemed to catch inside the stone, producing a faint glow. Bik worked hard to get every single bit of grime off the stone, and already his hands hurt. There were many, many stones left in the tray, but such was life. He had spent every single day of his existence at this table, scrubbing stones, so the work was instinctive. He fell into the rhythm mindlessly, half-awake but ever aware of the moving shapes of the Watchers behind him. Bent and Stain paced throughout the morning.
But Lus kept intruding on the rhythm and bringing him back to himself. Bik was so used to seeing Lus work beside him that any deviation from normal behavior stood out. This morning, Lus was moving slower than usual, making little faces, knitting his eyebrows and moving his lips as if mumbling. Bik was tempted to reach out and clap a hand over his mouth again, but he didn’t dare leave his work. The constant distraction made the morning feel much longer than usual.
Bik had only finished polishing twelve stones when the whistle sounded, signaling eating time. He tossed the scouring pad down, scraped his hands clean on the edge of the table and turned around. Lus lingered. He still had a half-polished stone in his hands, and he turned it this way and that, examining it.
“Eating time,” Bik said, under his breath.
“Eating time,” Lus echoed, setting the stone down. “Right. Should be more food for us, since we’re so few.”
“Shut up about that,” Bik said. “You know that’s not how it works.”
Bent and Stain moved back from the table, turned to face the line of boys and stopped, their black-circle eyes unblinking, ever watchful.
“Step away from the table and sit,” Bent said.
All of the boys had ceased working and turned away from the table. Now they moved toward the Watchers, one step, two, and sat down on the cold, metal floor. Lus, notably, was the last to sit, and Bik gestured for him to hurry. Once the boys were settled in place, Bent rolled to the end of the line. A slot opened low on its body, and as it approached, Bik raised his hands, palms up. A bit of food oozed out of the slot and landed in Bik’s hands with a moist sound. A small pink-gray gelatinous brick, it had an unpleasant chemical smell not all that different from the polish in the bowls.
Bik didn’t particularly enjoy eating. He lifted the brick to his mouth and took a bite, but it was only perfunctory. Watchers punished boys who failed to eat, and that was reason enough to do it. The food crumbled in his mouth into many small, damp pieces, tasteless. Bent moved down the line, giving each boy his food in turn. Lus held the food brick in his hands, staring at it for a moment as if he had never seen its like.
“Quit stalling,” Bik said. “Eat. You are being so strange. I don’t like it.”
As if the words had roused him, Lus raised the food brick to his mouth and took a bite, but he let it sit in his mouth for a few seconds before chewing.
“Everyone is going away,” he said, spitting little bits of grease and food.
“Stop it,” Bik said. “No reason to talk that way. No reason to think that way. Did you have a bad dream last night?”
Lus shook his head.
“Are you sick in your stomach?”
“No,” Lus said. “Sick here.” He touched a finger to the middle of his forehead, leaving a small grease mark.
“Oh, you are not,” Bik replied. “Eat. Eat!”
Lus crammed the food brick in his mouth and ate in silence for the rest of the meal. Bik heard other boys chatting quietly. Only thirteen left. Yes, it was true, but what was the point in worrying about it? Even if every other stick boy in the world went away, Bik and Lus would remain. They would be the last two, and maybe that would be better, after all. Bik couldn’t see any reason to get sick in the head over it. He cast a disapproving glance in Lus’s direction as he finished his meal.
Bent spun around on its wheels and moved back to stand beside Stain. Bik wiped his hands on the hem of his robe and listened to the soft, wet sound of the other boys eating. It was a sound he despised, but he didn’t dare cover his ears. Watchers might think he was trying to block out their voices.
Finally, a piercing whistle signaled the end of eating time. Boys rose, some quickly, some lingering. Bik seized Lus by the arm and pulled him to his feet.
“I can do it,” Lus said.
“I don’t trust you,” Bik replied. “You’re not acting right today.”
Lus yanked his arm out of Bik’s grasp and scowled at him.
“Well?” Bik said. “Act right.”
Bent and Stain came toward the boys.
“Back to work,” Stain said. “Empty the tray. Work hard until the last whistle sounds. Resume.”
Bik turned and approached the table. Twelve polished stones sat on the far edge, purple and shiny and full of light. He did take a small measure of pride in his work. To see the ugly gray rocks turned into beautiful shiny things. Yes, it was something. Bik reached across the table to the tray and pulled out a fresh rock. There were still so many left. It would be a long day. And tomorrow, the table would be cleaned, the tray refilled, and it would start all over again. Lus seemed to come out of his stupor, and the pace of his work picked up during the second shift. It helped Bik get back into the mindless rhythm and lose track of time, and for that he was grateful. Maybe he wouldn’t have to box Lus on the ears during sleeping time, after all.
A sudden commotion broke him out of his routine sometime later in the afternoon. First a series of sounds—a soft thud, the rattle of a bowl being jostled, an expulsion of breath. Then Lus started, bumped into the edge of the table and turned away from Bik to look at something. Bik tried to ignore it. Whatever was happening, it was no excuse to disobey. Nothing was ever an excuse to disobey. He had a half-polished stone in his hand, five more clean ones on the table before him, a scouring pad crushed in his right hand.
Lus swung back around to face Bik, wide-eyed.
“Another one dead,” he said. “Just fell down. Another one.”
Bik cringed at the loud sound of Lus’s voice, and he dropped his stone. It clattered on the tabletop, and he scrambled to retrieve it as it rolled toward the wall.
“Stupid,” he said. “Don’t talk.”
“He just fell down dead for no reason,” Lus said again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bik said.
He heard the rumble of Watcher wheels as they approached the line, and Bik dared a glance. He had to lean back to do it, a foolish risk, but he was disturbed by Lus’s overreaction. A stick boy falling down dead, why should that be cause for concern? He looked past Lus, past four other boys, and saw the dead one there on the ground. A tiny boy, his robe draped all the way to his ankles, his stick-arms poking out like bones covered in skin. Bent approached him, as Stain moved to keep an eye on the rest of the line.
But the boy wasn’t dead, Bik realized. He saw him twitch, moan and try to rise. It looked like his legs had simply given out during work. The boy on his left dared a quick glance and quickly returned to his work. Bik did the same, elbowing Lus in the sides to get his attention. Lus heaved a sighed and turned to the table.
“Get back to work or face punishment,” Bent said. “Get back to work immediately.”
Lus fumbled with his stone and dropped it. “Now he dies,” he muttered. “Right now.”
Bik grabbed the stone, took Lus by the hand and pressed the stone against his palm.
“Work,” he said, under his breath.
But even as he said it, Bik leaned back and dared another quick glance. The fallen boy had rolled onto his side and was trying to push himself up with his hand. Bent loomed over him. The shoulders of the Watchers were low, halfway down their long tube-like bodies. The triple-segmented arms went up, then down, then up and ended in fingerless bulbs of some coarse beige cloth. When unfolded, the arms had a reach of almost six feet, able to aim high or low. There was no escaping those burning hands when they had singled someone out for punishment.
“You have one more opportunity to stand up and return to work,” Bent said, the flat, circular head twitching slightly as it spoke.
But the boy moaned and his arm gave out. He fell on his face. The Watcher’s right hand shot out, and Bik quickly looked away. He heard the crackle and snap of the bulb hand hitting flesh, and he saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. Bik leaned forward and returned to his work, making sure that Lus was blocking his view. He didn’t need to see it. He had seen it before too many times.
The fallen boy gave the merest hint of a sigh. The next time Bik dared a glance, Bent was dragging the body away. The long hook was embedded in the boy’s forearm. Bik saw a bright red burn mark near the shoulder, still smoking, and he smelled the charred flesh. Bent would take the body down the hallway to the Refuse Hole, and the boy would go down to join all the others, the countless others, who had dropped down before him.
“Two in one day,” Lus said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bik said, returning to his work. “Get back to work and quit talking.”
Stain was close, too close, pacing behind the remaining boys.
“Keep working, sticks,” he said. “Keep working or join him. Work is the way to life.”
Bik took a deep breath and let it out slowly between his clenched teeth. Lus was still fidgeting, and he seemed on the verge of speaking. Bik wanted to smash the half-polished stone against his lips to keep him from doing so.
“The world is coming to an end,” Lus said, after a moment. “We’re all going to die.”
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