The Apex Book of World SF 2

A Life Made Possible Behind the Barricades ^{Jacques Barcia}

Beyond the aethership’s window, Catalonia shone like a brass and crystal star, lost and alone in the vastness of space. Kilometric antennae cast to the void, flowers carved over its colossal hull and around the main station’s atrium, beautiful stained glass and asymmetric lines. Art. Home, if everything went well. It had always bothered Fritz, this tick-tock speeding up inside his chest. It knotted his guts, tightened his pneumatics. And, of course, there was the noise, the clocks emphasising his anguishes, excitements, dreads and delights, right there, for everyone to hear. But now he tried to keep himself calm, the glassy-cold window against his icy, metal forehead, the battle breaking the silence in the cabin with a sharp sound.

“Soon it’ll be over, dear,” Chaya whispered, half asleep and still under the blankets. “Just a few more hours and we’ll be there.”

“Yeah, I know,” Fritz whispered back, turning his head to his fiancée, giving her a silly, theatrical smile. “It’s just, well, you know I’m easily stunned by beauty.” He turned his back to the window and rested his gaze on the non-human girl. Stunning. She lay nested amongst baggage packed too quickly and clothes discarded in the rush of desire. A golem with roots for hair, all spread out over the pillows.

“I see,” she said, stretching and finally sitting up, letting the blankets slide over her earth-and-wood skin, her breasts suddenly uncovered. “And I know you love to dramatise, too. Look, Fritz, don’t forget that thing is a factory. And factories are always about smoke, sweat and the whistle at the end of every shift.” She scratched her brick-coloured forehead, chose a single root and used it to tie a ponytail. “Also, you should remember there’s a war going on”.

The war, the strike. Three years of insurrection. Fourteen months of controlling the best part of the aether mine-generator, Catalonia, as the Federalists had started to call it. However, even with rifles and deaths and Tesla-mortars, that sphere sucking mystical energy from the vacuum was the only place in the whole universe, or so it was told, in which a motolang and a golem could live without begging for the approval of their owner-creators? Even if it were true, it was something that’d never be possible anywhere on Earth.

He came closer to Chaya, gears grinding, engines almost frozen due to the cabin’s poor heating, and sat on the edge of the bed. Chaya’s face rested in her hands, as she did when she anticipated his over-romanticised tone. “There’s beauty in the word, camarada Chaya,” he said. “An untouchable kind of beauty, invisible to the eye. Something that exists wherever there’s solidarity and—”

“What about the barricades?” Her voice came cold and as hard as stone. “Behind the barricades there are humans that never stop being human. Except when they’re shot dead or die on the tip of a bayonet. That ain’t beautiful, you know? And it’s not beautiful when they sing The Internationale and look down on us because, in a way, they’re still our lords. They’re humans, Fritz. Unlike us.”

“What’s your problem?” he grumbled. “You chose to come along. You know this is our chance, Chaya, the only chance we have to build a life together. Any life. Be it good, bad, mediocre. What? You think we better get back to Mauritzstadt and serve House Goradeski?”

“They’re good people. You know that.”

“Humans. Lords. You’ve just said that. Your lords, your makers. And even if I’m thankful to Mr Goradeski for the decency of giving my goddamn punched cards back, I hate that bastard for not letting me buy you, for not letting me marry you.” Fritz stood before her, joints creaking, an angry tick-tock, tick-tock coming from beneath his brass thorax. “A sin, he told me.” As if I wanted that stupid rabbi’s blessings.”

Chaya punched the bed in anger, crushing the iron frame under the mattress. “Fuck!” The agonising screech of metal swallowed up their shouts. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed, okay? Look, I’ve escaped with you. I’m here in this aethership, remember? With you. I know Catalonia’s our only chance, but your dream may not be that sweet. And I love you too much to see you sad and let down.”

Fritz observed the copper lines framing the cabin’s velvety walls; adorned with so many organic motifs and engravings it was as if the room itself were alive. A completely unexplored jungle. Next to the inter-phone on the night table, Dr Cavalcante’s letter gave his tense coils some relief. His occultist friend, well-known in Mauritzstadt’s esoteric society, was serving as a field medic for Catalonia’s international brigades. His missive had ultimately persuaded both non-humans to flee. Fritz turned to Chaya, accepting the truce, or their particular way of making a truce. After all, she was right. Again. As always. He really was just an automaton that dreamt of open fields, broken locks, sunny days and people’s respect. He dreamt of being a hero, of freeing himself after fighting tyranny and oppression. But he’d never held a rifle. Not even to hunt with Dr Goradeski in the forests close to the Guararapes hill. His only duties were doing the accounts for his master’s riches and tutoring the heirs to the clan.

“It’ll work, Chaya. I believe— No, I’m sure it’ll work. Trust me.”

She did trust him. He knew it. It was written in her smile. But he also knew she was right. Life wouldn’t be pretty. They made love for a few more hours.

Though it was an aethership station, it didn’t behave like one. It didn’t breathe like one. There was no smoking, no mink coats, no comings and goings of serfs, luggage or hats. Except for the brassy majesty of the Nassau, a true aether leviathan, there was nothing in it that mirrored the luxury found in the ports of Mauritzstadt or any other Earthly empire. But there were people. Lots of people. A Babel debarking with Genovese and Madrileño accents, others being Balkan and Ottoman, all too confused to be distinguishable. There were expatriates from the Brazilian empire, too, and many Mauritzes. Men wearing cheap, brown cotton. Their bodies kept together only by loose, rusty screws, steam leaking from their joints. There were women, too, with severe eyes, coal-stained dresses and calluses, guarding what little luggage they possessed. But they were all smiling for they were pleased to step on firm ground. Not ground, exactly, but that alchemical crystal shielding the arcologies sailing the Earthly seas.

Fritz was overcome with vertigo when he looked at the curves in the station’s columns, each one preciously engraved in typical Art Nouveau style. He almost fell to the floor when, beneath his feet, he saw the city cascading down the inner walls of the sphere and, at the centre, the aether condenser, the heart of the factory, with its colossal tubes containing hundreds of pipes which, in their turn, carried thousands of pre-processed aether foam, so wild and volatile that a simple leak would open a metaphysical sinkhole big enough to swallow all God’s Creations. At least that’s what the Luddites said.

A mechanical arm waved over the caps of the volunteers coming fast in his direction. A whistle could be heard coming from the crowd. It was like an invisible teakettle leaving a trail of white puffs of smoke in the air. The immigrants started to give way as the steam got closer and closer. From them emerged a hybrid vehicle, something between a bicycle and a locomotive, a big wheel in front of a chimney and two small vulcanised pneumatics behind, too close to the stove heating the boiler. It made a hellish noise and Fritz couldn’t help but agree with Chaya when she said that the thing stank of garbage tea. On the top of the vehicle, the pilot pulled the brake lever and turned the handlebar to the left, forcing the machine to slide for some metres before stopping just a few inches in front of the frozen couple. “I call it,” shouted the man, forcing a dramatic pause, “the locomocycle.”

The automaton laughed at the pilot’s pomp and at his fiancée’s disgusted expression. “It’s beautiful, Emilio,” he shouted back. “Your design?”

“Every single rivet.” The man grinned behind a pair of pitch-black goggles that made him look like a juvenile insect wearing a waistcoat and greaves. There was a blue, spectral glimmer deep inside the blackness of his goggles. The crowd kept its distance from the locomocycle, mainly because its boiler gave off an unbearable heat. But they couldn’t stop admiring that automotive marvel. The man called Emilio stepped down from the vehicle, leaning his arm on the boiler. He faced the golem with keen interest. “Is she the lucky one?”

“That’s her,” Fritz answered, holding his lover’s hand, suddenly solemn.

“Did she bring the equipment I asked for?” His gaze was fixed on Chaya, who was uneasy at being scrutinised not only by the scientist’s goggled eyes, but also by the judging eyes of the women at the station, condemning the bourgeois style of her housemaid’s dress. Worse, she wasn’t precisely a maid, for in their eyes she wasn’t a woman, but a construct turned to life by the power of the one thing more terrible than the Holy Church: magic.

“You can speak directly to me, sir. I speak and decide for myself.”

“My dear,” Fritz intervened, “this is Dr Emilio Cavalcante, the one I told you about. Physician, engineer and member of the Order of Oriental Templars.”

“Former member.” Dr Cavalcante raised a mechanical finger as an exclamation mark, his gears spinning with the movement. “Apparently, my friend, the Order does not approve of my mystical theories, not to mention my political practices. And vice versa.” Dr Cavalcante moved two steps closer to the couple, closer to the golem. “Salud, camarada! Forgive me if I sounded a little bit sexist, but I was concerned with the equipment. You see, it’s not every day that—”

“Everything’s here.” She turned her back to the doctor and dragged two wooden crates, one in each hand, to him. The crates moaned, leaving deep scratches in the floor. She released the boxes and faced the insect in the way someone might look at an old, ill-kept and uninteresting daguerreotype. “That’s all I could get. Fifteen carbines, some Prussian pistols and not much ammunition.” The golem looked at the box to her left. “And here’s the equipment you asked for.”

Dr Cavalcante looked at the containers, but his gaze drifted to a point way beyond them, to a dozen crates being unloaded from the aethership’s rear. They were somewhat different and had red marks painted on their sides. “Yeah. Excellent. That’ll do,” the doctor said.

The motolang looked at his boxes and held his friend’s shoulder. “So, you think you can do it, Emilio? You think you can give us a child?”

Dr Cavalcante woke from his trance, extended his mortal arm and shook the motolang’s metallic hand. “Fritz, my friend, if I were you I’d be scheduling the kid’s baptism already. The only problem is to find a priest who hasn’t been fusilladed by the revolution.

Chaya had spent the last three weeks in Catalonia, but the city-factory still fascinated her. The wreckage sacs, the barricades on every corner, the low-fluctuation trucks painted with the revolutionary parties’ initials, and, especially, the strikers’ colours. Everyone, absolutely everyone, either wore red or black and red kerchiefs tied round their necks. Even the mechanoids, their gears exposed on their chests or shoulders, insisted on showing off kerchiefs, ignoring the high chance of an accident. And there were the brick-and-metal buildings carved by bullets, bent at angles that far-surpassed the plans of Gaudi, almost destroyed by Mauritzes’ mortars. However, most impressive was the fact that this place had become their home so quickly. Notwithstanding, it was her home. Sometimes there was no grease and she had to wind her husband, lubricating his gears with butter or fat stolen from the communal depot. And sometimes there was no food, which meant no leftovers for her roots. That was the siege, the embargo, the seldom-run blockade. As when they had arrived on the Nassau. But still, they enjoyed a normal couple’s routine. He worked as a carabineer at the front, and she’d patrol the streets on foot with her Luger. Both came back home at the end of the day, sharing the little stories that filled up their quotidian days. A routine that included almost daily visits to the basements of Hotel Florida.

She lay on a wooden table, an improvised stretcher with one foot shorter than the other three. Dozens of lenses and manipulators hung from coils and wires tied to the ceiling, all of them pointing at her body, analysing, accusing her. You’re an empty vase, a dead tree. The smell of ozone and gaslight unnerved her, especially after two hours of breathing electrical air and smoke, half-naked under the holophotes. Not to mention the fear she had of falling from the table. Every time she breathed a bit too deeply, the table bent to one side, stopping with a sudden thump, a sound that served as an exclamation mark to the many, omnipresent tick-tocks in the room. Some of those sounds were strange to her, but some were not. Inside the wall of darkness, Chaya could only see the blue poltergeist inside Dr Cavalcante’s eyes; Emilio, who had his goggles bolted to his face. It could be just fashion, or something far more sinister. He can see in the dark?

Suddenly, the clattering stopped. The lights came back on slowly, along with calmer, lower tick-tocks. Chaya could see the doctor walking to and fro in front of the analytical engine, exhaling gusts of white steam. He had some punched cards in his hands and was murmuring something to a machine hanging from his shoulders, a trump with a rubber tube linked to a rattling stenograph on his waistcoat, spitting metres and metres of hollowed-out paper.

“So?” Chaya sat up, relieved that the examination was over. “What does your oracle say?”

Emilio spoke over the brass trump, as he looked at the end of the room, at a table covered by a ziggurat-shaped tarp from which came the low sound of boiling water. “It says you ate chocolate today,” he said rather casually.

“Just a tip,” she smiled.

“It’s quite toxic for golems.”

“Just like a shot of cachaça, Emilio.” Chaya was putting on her dress, careful not to let the dark chocolate bar fall from her pocket.

“And just as hard to get these days.” Emilio turned off the stenograph and unfastened the apparatus from his torso. “You been smuggling? Look, Chaya, if people know you’ve been getting stuff from the Mauritzes, you’re gonna be in some serious trouble, especially if the committee hears about it. The way things are, this could end with an execution.”

“If I can’t eat chocolate, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” the golem said, a defying hand in her pocket. “I bought it at the station. Before I got here. On Earth.”

The doctor shook his head and gave a short, dry laugh. “Okay, then. But you’ll have to quit if you want to have a baby. That thing messes with your ecosystem, you know.” He finally rolled up the paper and attached it to the feeder’s tiny hooks on the calculator’s rear. As soon as he did so, the engine re-initiated its mad rattling: the sound of a thousand clocks speeding up to the end of time. The analytical engine ate hole after hole, a data banquet digested by coiled guts and dented wheels, calculating, calculating, calculating.

“What’s the deal with this committee?” She still couldn’t understand the politics of the strike in Catalonia very well. She knew there was an area controlled by three or four anarchist trade unions, but each city block contained many different groups. Left and right wing communists, or whatever name they called themselves, everything depending on whoever their leaders were. There were other groups she’d heard the communists call republicans, but they could also be divided into those who wished independence and those who wanted to be part of some Earthly empire. Of the anarchists, Chaya could only see the difference between those who wanted action without much discussion and those who sought consensus for every single thing, be it the restoration of a house or the fair distribution of rations. Anyway, the uprising made some areas in the factory free from the consortium that used to run the mining and aether processing.

Emilio sighed, looking worried. He cleaned his insect’s eyes with a ragged piece of red cloth and it seemed the blue that used to live in his goggles had dimmed. “Some far-off quarters have decided to form a ruling committee. The unions’ and the parties’ militias have been blended together and now they’re like a regular army.”

“Hey! That’s fantastic. They could send some people here so Fritz wouldn’t be so lonely at the front. Maybe he could take some time off.” Chaya bit the bark in her nails. That was excellent news, wasn’t it?

“Except they won’t.” He suddenly stopped cleaning his goggles. “It’s been a month since they formed the army and not a single man has been sent to the front. And they have guns. Lots of guns. Too many guns, actually, but not even a blunderbuss has made it to this side of the war.” He took a long pause to clean his mechanical fingers, using the same handkerchief he had used to clean his goggles. “People are saying there are spies killing anarchists.”

The tick-tock stopped, and in its place, the sharp sound of a siren filled the air. Emilio turned to the analytical engine, already spitting out another bunch of hollowed-out paper. He picked up the paper and brought it close to his face, carefully reading the data in those empty lines.

“So?” Chaya panted.

Emilio lowered the paper roll. He had a smile on his face. “Call Fritz. We’re ready.”

“Hey, Beans. Message for you.”

Fritz pretended he hated it when the guys called him names but, deep inside, he liked it. Beans was the only meal available on the front and to the militia’s fanfare, it came locked up in a rusty can. He couldn’t eat, of course, because of his mechanical physiology, but his camaradas in the troop said he had solidarity with the cans. Sometimes, a fat Yankee called Ernest would point a tin opener at him, saying he was hungry. Everybody would laugh. With the clocks inside his mind, he calculated that this attitude wasn’t prejudice, or mockery, but banter. He was the exhaust valve for the tedium, the tension at the barricades, the long wait for an enemy that never came despite the news of troops manoeuvring some miles ahead. He finally calculated, with some fair bit of precision, that he was one of the guys, too. After all, he had the same black and red kerchief round his neck.

They sat behind the barricade mounted in front of the old Chateclair casino, a well-conserved building by the war’s standards. His mates felt triply happy to see it still standing. The spot close to the neighbourhood’s limits used to be the entertainment district for the factory’s technicians and administrators. It’d be a shame if the next generation of workers couldn’t have access to that architectonic marvel. Besides, the docking tower for personal dirigibles made an excellent observation post. Fritz was fighting against a loose piston in La Sigaretta, the steam-powered machine gun guarding the brothel’s entrance, when he heard his name being called at the building’s foyer. This was the soldier’s third reason for being happy. The place was part of the postal service network, and its pneumatic tubes winding their way underground still carried, brought, and sometimes intercepted messages from all over Catalonia. He dropped the piston and hurried to the building.

“It’s from your babe.” Buenaventura winked, a letter in one hand and a wooden tube on the other. The boy was barely sixteen and was proud of spending his days watching the comings and goings of messages travelling in the pipe cathedral behind the counter.

In the message, Chaya said to come back quickly, everything’s ready. Obviously, he understood the message, as did Buenaventura and other two or three militiamen with whom the motolang had shared his hopes. He smiled, showing off the letter, trying to explain to those hardened men alchemical processes he could hardly understand. But they did understand the joy of that moment and would’ve opened a nice bottle of wine if they’d had one.

The first bomb destroyed the casino’s wall.

Fritz tried to free himself from the human wreckage over his body, tried to adjust his sensors, but there was only dust around him and a humming sound coming from the back of the room. It took him several seconds to recalibrate his optics and phones, but now he could listen to the shots and screams outside, and the moans of the survivors inside. He saw young Buanaventura crawling to the back of the counter, alive and in one piece. He decided to run to the street.

The second bomb exploded past the barricades, in the middle of the street, but Fritz couldn’t see if anyone had been hurt. He threw himself behind the mountain of sacks, between La Sigaretta and Ernest, who had just crouched after shooting through the wall of dust covering their position.

“Make this damn machine gun work, Beans.” Ernest roared, as he knelt and shot his carbine along with three militiamen.

“What’s happening? Where are they?” Fritz crawled closer to the machine gun. Bullets whistled over their heads. He was afraid the bullets would ricochet off him, hitting his comrades’ hearts. On his left, a soldier’s gun jammed and backfired, tearing the boy’s brass face apart.

Ernest reloaded his hunting rifle and looked up. “They just popped up and opened fire. They closed the passage down the street with floating trucks and then started throwing their mortars at us.” He locked the crank and closed his eyes as if praying. “For fuck’s sake, where’s that damn sentinel?”

Fritz managed to light the boiler, but he knew it’d be a long time before the high-pressure system could start working. Another bomb exploded, but he didn’t know where. If You look after the atheists, too, please make the water boil faster. He picked up his janizary-carbine lying close to the sacks, calibrated his optics and the pulleys in his arms and, jumping over the barrier, aimed at the enemy. Beyond a blood-red haze in front of the church, there were three black floating trucks blocking the end of the street. It seemed the trucks had their paintings rasped off. Those weren’t men from the Consortium, he was sure, nor from any other army he knew of. But there was something familiar about the soldiers throwing pulse grenades at them, holding brand-new, shining rifles. Tick-tock.

“Beans! Shoot!”

As soon as he got the lay of his gun, Fritz locked his aim at a soldier crossing the street towards a Stanley parked on the corner. Tick-tock, tick-tock. There were two more soldiers entrenched behind the automobile, a moving shield that could easily reach the Chanteclair.

“Shoot! Now!”

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

His instincts were part animal, part clockwork, and both made him keep the running lad in his sights until he got close to the steamer. The boy had his head low, his right hand covering the ear, protecting his head or praying it could hide him.

“Shoot!”

His first shot at something mortal.

He pulled the trigger a second before the soldier could leap to safety. There was a report and a blast at the boy’s neck. He fell dry, no screaming, his face crushing the car’s bumper.

Fritz crouched down an instant before a bullet hit the camarada next to him. Ticktockticktockticktock. He pushed the dead soldier away and once again bent himself over the sacks. He shot once, twice, thrice, suppressing every possible movement of the enemy line. He was covering Ernest, ready to throw another grenade, when he heard a low whistling noise. Another bomb exploded close to trucks, but the rise of the high-pitched sound made the troops freeze for a second.

“Fritz,” Ernest yelled.

“I’m coming, for fuck’s sake, I’m coming.” He dropped the carbine and almost threw himself over the steamgun. “Cover me!” The dangling piston insisted on slipping from his fingers, all damp thanks to the vapour leaking from the gun’s opened valve. Even with suppressive fire, enemy bullets kept coming in his direction. He had to keep his head low like the boy he had just killed. After infinite seconds, he managed to fix the piston into position, but it took him another eternity to find a wrench amongst the corpses. The whistle grew louder and louder and, as soon as he turned the screw nut, the machine gun’s long muzzle started to spin, steaming.

Ticktockticktockticktockticktock…

Fritz pulled the trigger, wishing someone had already placed the ammo belt into the feedway. The noise was so loud every soldier this side of the battle was thrown to the ground. It was the sound of a jackhammer crushing the wall of sacks, cars and people standing less than three hundred metres away. Drifting his range, Fritz watched the Stanley dissolve under La Sigaretta’s fire. The car was torn to pieces: wheels, chassis, seats. Bullets of hell-knows-what calibre pierced its hull as if it were made of paper. He slowly turned the gun to the enemy’s central position and thrust the black trucks away with the violence of a thousand lead wasps. He lost connection with time.

“Stop it, Fritz!”

The ventilation system had been down for more than two weeks now, so the steam had already turned into a muddy cloud made of smoke, dirt and blood. The troops behind the trucks broke up and ran away. Two soldiers trying to hide behind the blockade were torn apart by the hellish gun.

“Stop it, Fritz! This thing’s gonna blow!”

He was thrown out from the machine by Ernest and another militiaman he didn’t recognise. All three hit their backs to the ground, their voices screaming all right, all right, it’s okay, I got him. The tin soldier just stared at the city sprawling over him, failing to see any human beings walking the streets at the sphere’s opposite half. It seemed there was no-one at the casino’s tower, too.

They both woke up to the sound of the locomocycle roaring inside the hotel’s garage. They’d ended up falling asleep after a night-long procedure and were still bound together by wires, sensors and robotic hands. They could sense the smell of ozone and boiling chemicals in the air, and heard the sound of a thousand processing clicks from the analytical engine. Both had guns under their pillows.

“It was supposed to be my turn,” Fritz said, partly asking and partly answering. “I just turned off. Sorry.”

“No problem.” Chaya smiled. The only thing still beautiful in this godless world. “It’s all right.”

The door blasted open and they both pointed their guns at whoever was coming in. Emilio raised his free hand, the organic one, making sure the non-human couple could see his face and recognise him. “Thought you heard me coming,” the doctor said.

“The power of habit,” Chaya said, uncocking her Luger. “How’s the city going?”

“Empty. Except for militiamen, not many people are willing to walk the streets these days. Those who have food at home have no reason to go out. Those who don’t, won’t find any outside.” Emilio closed the door behind him with some difficulty. He had a small wooden box in his mechanical hand.

Fritz rested his gun on the improvised stretcher and tried to stand up. His joints creaked loudly. His body was all twisted and warped on the left side, especially his knee, though his right shoulder also cracked. “Any news from the front? How are the men doing?” Four days ago he’d been promoted to captain. Not that it meant anything, since the militiamen followed whoever they thought worth following rather than those with military rank. They’d been close to lots of bombs in the past few days, he and his friends, but maybe because he’d got used to the mortars or maybe because of the nature of the explosives, none of these had hurt him any more than the first one on the Chanteclair had. Actually, it still hurt. “Did they retake the casino?”

Emilio lowered his head and crossed the laboratory towards a tarp-covered table. The sound of boiling water came from it. Only when he walked past Fritz, did Emilio notice how injured his friend was. Gunshots, scraps, deep cuts. Were he human, he’d be dead by now. “No. No, I don’t. No news,” he said, pointing to the hidden table. “Last thing I heard was that the Committee issued some kind of edict saying the militias are now illegal.” The doctor looked over his shoulder. “They’ll find us. Sooner or later, they’ll take the neighbourhood. It’s over. Then they’ll make an agreement with the Consortium and life will be as it used to be before the strike. Or even worse. And I think you two should pack your things and go back to Earth now. An aethership will leave in about three hours. You’ve nothing to do with this war.”

“And you do?” The automaton was craving for an argument.

“Fritz, dear, I think Emilio might be right,” Chaya said. She tried to find some comfort on the stretcher, but the wires wouldn’t let her.

Fritz shook his head. He had his revolver back in his trembling hand. The bomb might’ve loosened some pulley in his shoulder. “We’re so close now. You said that. Besides, there’s nothing for us down there, on Earth. Nothing.”

Emilio and Chaya stared at him. The tick-tock in him seemed to have vanished, or at least couldn’t be noticed above the noises in the lab.

Dr Cavalcante sighed. “So, if we’re to finish this experiment, we better get back to work.” He pulled the covered table and brought it to the space between the couple. The myriad of cables, tubes and wires on the floor got stuck between the table’s rusty wheels. Emilio took the brown tarp off it, uncovering two once-green cylinders and a series of transparent alchemical glass vials the size of pressure pans. The vials were mounted like a ziggurat and were full of boiling liquids, each one of a different colour. The yellows were on the edge of the table and the blacks were actually extremely dense reds. There were also some transparent ones and others reflecting light in gold and silver patterns. At the top of the glass pile, there was a bigger, double-sized vial. It was completely empty and uncapped. “Okay, we’ve been through this before, but just to make sure you got it right,” Emilio said donning his waistcoat and the stenograph. “I’ll plug the drains into you and then attach it to the uterus up there and, and then I’ll link it to the aetheric fusion tank down here, as well. If we’re able to produce enough sephirotic reaction, well, we’ll proceed to surgery. Ready?”

They exchanged nervous glances and smiled, confirming their willingness to move on.

The occultist connected the suspended cables to the wires inside the non-human veins. He activated the apparatus by pressing a switch next to the control panel. Immediately, the prone bodies became stiff, as if they were being electrocuted. He ran to the aether cylinders and turned the valves only slightly to release a tiny amount of aetherfoam. The substance flowed through the tubes until it filled the fusion tank. He returned to the edge of the table and faced the control panel. It was diamond-shaped and over it was a gematria board, a stone abacus and a green phosphorus screen displaying the Tree of Life. Everything was connected by dozens of wires and cables leading to the analytical engine. Opposite him, the tank blending the non-humans’ essences span faster and faster.

“Come on. Come on.” They always failed in the first step. Calculations were correct and there was an obvious resonance between the two lovers. But in all attempts throughout the weeks, the tank had worked as a centrifuge, not mixing, but separating the essences from the aether.

The first two sephirotic houses shone in the monitor when a pale light started to emanate from the tank.

“Yes.” Emilio jumped and punched the air and, when he looked again, the third house was alight. “No, no, no. Too fast.” He found the controls for the mechanical arms under the table and quickly attached them to his own clockwork arm. Now he was like a puppeteer whose fingers moved spider-legs over his marionettes. The organic hand calibrated the analytical engine, moving the stones in the abacus. He lowered the robotic arms over Fritz and Chaya and, with his feet, he pressed a pedal to activate their drills and scalpels.

The vibration was felt, not heard.

Then a thundering noise hit the street several metres above. The blast almost tore the equipment away from the ceiling.

“No,” Emilio moaned and stopped to listen, “not now, please.” A second later another blast was followed by another quake and then machine-gun shots.

“Don’t. Even. Consider. Stopping.” Fritz had his arm raised, his gun triggered, and was pointing at the door. “Move on,” he said, knowing the doctor hadn’t considered stopping. He knew his friend craved paternity, too.

Fritz saw, right above him, a robotic arm handling a bright blowtorch and, on the table next to him, the shining scalpel hovering over Chaya. He tried to turn his sensors off, but it was too late. He felt the pain and the heat of the torch opening a big triangle in his belly, while his wife had a vibrating blade carving a doorway to her womb. Gunshots were closer now and already they could hear screams coming from Hotel Florida’s garage. The doctor, abacus forgotten, now held a pistol, too, aimed at the door. The face and mind of the now-captain motolang convulsed with pain, while Emilio tried to find the correct gear inside him with his spidery arms. At the same time, the doctor looked for a specific root in Chaya.

A blast blew out the door. A mechanical hand pinched the coils inside Fritz’s guts.

Fritz opened fire, but Emilio hesitated. The doctor barely had the reflexes to dodge the door flying across the room. It smashed the analytical engine’s glass walls. A man in black uniform raided the room with a rifle, but was blown away by three shots from Fritz, who was trying to get rid of the wires tangled with his body. The man fell to the floor still shooting his automatic gun, hitting lamps and steam tubes. “Wake up, Chaya,” he cried, pulling his wife to the floor, to a space between the stretcher and the multicoloured glass pyramid.

The golem opened her eyes to the dark fog and screamed as soon as she hit the ground. Immediately, she understood the situation. She grabbed the stretcher-table’s feet and lifted it, improvising a shield with its hardened wood. She dragged the table to the door while Fritz covered her, exposing his own body to shoot the guards at the door. She’d managed to block the entrance, but it’d take only a few shots to tear down the already splintering barrier.

“Emilio,” Fritz yelled.

The human had his back to the ground and was chewing off the cables from his mechanical arm. His left hand held the experiment’s samples and his pistol was tucked inside his trousers. A big piece of wood landed close to his head and splinters forced him to shut his eyes. He cleared them from wood, tears and condensed steam. A spray of bullets flew inside the room.

Chaya used the dead soldier’s gun to shoot the guards through a tiny hole in the barrier. “We have to leave, Fritz. The barrier won’t stand much longer.” She reloaded the machine gun with her last ammo clip. “Emilio, is there any other way out?”

He had stood up and was dodging the bullets, trying to stand in front of the control panel. “This is a basement, Chaya. There’s no way out.”

Fritz shot two more times through the crack, then stopped to reload. It was only then that he noticed the guards had stopped shooting back. He signalled to Chaya, who was prepared to spray another set of bullets. Then he looked at Emilio, who in a single movement opened the mixer, threw the samples in and locked it as fast as he could.

The only recognisable sound was that post-gunfight humming. Not even Fritz, nor the analytical engine, dared to break the silence. Maybe because they were both broken machines, afraid and with their guts exposed. “What happened?”

“I can’t see anything,” Chaya said, her eyes hunting for black uniforms on the staircase beyond the half-destroyed barrier. “It’s as though they’ve disappeared. Just stopped shooting.” She still heard some lonely shots beyond the layers of concrete, brass and asphalt above them. Other than that, there was only silence. But it wasn’t like the silence one heard after surviving a gunfight. It was much more like the silence before passing away. A calm, serene death that took its time before taking away its burden.

“Hey, Fritz, help me out.” Emilio was pulling a crank that apparently pumped up the fluids from the mixer to the glass vial atop the ziggurat.

Both non-humans exchanged looks. He slowly moved away from the door, counting on his wife for cover. “What do I do?”

“The mechanical arms are gone. Climb onto the table, and I’ll give you the tank. I need you to fill up the uterus on top.”

The automaton put his gun back in his trousers. He found an empty spot on the table and stood on it, trying to keep his balance. He stepped to one side and grabbed the mixer with one hand. A pale-bright whirlwind moved inside it with roots and gears dancing about. He grappled his way to a place from which to pour the liquid into the machine and finally bent his body towards the uterus, the sharp metal of his opened-up belly scratching the glass vials. He poured the tank’s contents into the uterus, already full with some kind of repulsive solvent.

Almost immediately, the mixture became transparent.

“Now, step down,” Emilio commanded.

“What?” Fritz was hypnotised. The two floating corpuscles were attracted to each other and, he could swear it, were blending together. But at the same time, they were multiplying. “Oh, Chaya! I think it’s working.” He turned smiling to wife, but her face was as hard as stone. She had her hands behind her head.

The low click as the gun was triggered woke the motolang from his dream.

“Down, Fritz.” Emilio was pointing his pistol at him.

The troops of the Committee had forced the barrier and entered the basement. A dozen or more, he wasn’t able to count. One of the soldiers walked around the table and grabbed the wooden box lying on the brown tarp. “What’s happening? I- I don’t understand.” Fritz was experiencing something like reverse omniscience. He could see that Chaya had surrendered, that the soldiers were receiving orders from Emilio, and that a wood-and-metal embryo grew inside the glass uterus. He felt diluted, ephemeral in his confusion. Inexorably incapable.

“It doesn’t matter. Come on, man, step down. Do what I say.” The soldier put the opened box at Emilio’s feet. There was a brass barrel mounted inside it. It was the same size as the uterus.

“You can’t do this, Emilio. Please.”

“Fritz—” he paused “—if you won’t step down, I swear, my friend, I’ll fire this shit off into your fucking head.”

Tick-tock.

“No! Dear, no!”

Fritz grabbed the uterus as hard as he could and threw himself to the back of the room. There was a sound of gunshots blasting and he felt two stabs in his back. Something heavy and metallic bounced on the floor. There were glass cutting cables and jamming gears inside his joints. Tick-tock.

He hit the ground, the impact deflating the balloons inside his chest. Oh, no. God, please no. The uterus is broken. He could feel the liquid spilled over him, flowing inside his open wounds. He embraced the vial with all the strength he had left. Tick-tock, tick-tock. He lay between the wall and the two fallen aetherfoam cylinders. He saw Chaya being shot four times in the back while trying to run to him. He saw the seeds in her eyes wither and die before she fell. Emilio and his soldiers were almost on him.

He made his decision.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

He drew his gun and fired it off at the cylinders. There was a blast and a glaring radiance like a star.

Silence.

Tick.

On occasion, a mortar. A dull machine gun talking in the distance was his only companion. Fritz climbed the stairs of an abandoned building at the heart of a deserted neighbourhood. The carbine had been turned into a crutch to keep his body straight. Each step needed more than the strength he had left in him. It was martyrdom. His body cracked, his joints creaked and he limped. His body was bent to one side, the cables that served as tendons were shattered. He could barely reach the crank in his back to wind himself up. He missed Chaya so badly. He had no clue as to what to think of Emilio.

The motolang dragged himself across the corridor to the room, his new home since the explosion back in the lab. The war was very distant now and would soon be over. He had turned from militiamen to refugee in the space of just two months, hiding as he could amongst the ruins of the revolution. It’ll have to do for now. He felt bad.

There was a rocking chair close to the window. The reactor was framed in it, and high above, he could see an aethership docking at the station. He still had no way of escaping. He had no money for the tickets and the bribes. Besides, the trip was too dangerous these days. Maybe in a few more months.

He tried to relax, rocking on the chair, the carbine over his lap. Roots and wires sprouted up from the cracks in his carcass. The place wasn’t exactly home, but he felt somewhat happy. Now there was another tick-tock inside him, a seed. In a glass vial embedded in his belly, he and Chaya shone together the way only impossible things are likely to shine.