Word Count: 66,733

“You’re not human!” Ames shouted, backing away from the man and startling Graham.

“Excellent observation!” Variable said. “But incorrect. I most certainly am human, but I am in a fetch. Have you never seen a fetch before? This is quite a common model; I must look like fool for wearing these rags. My apologies to you both, but it is my duty to tend to those who come through the portal. You’re the first in a long time.”

“Fetch?” Graham said. “I’ve heard that word before. Ames, stop shaking – I think it’s safe. It’s odd, but safe.” Ames looked at Graham first and then at Variable, who she would continue to find odd throughout their stay in Cydia. She, too, recognized the word – fetch. “Ford said it,” Graham said, “talking about Cydia. He asked if I was using a fetch. Variable, sir, where are we?”

“Right now? You are in City Square, the largest building in the vicinity. Come, come with me, I shall show you around – you won’t regret it! We rarely ever get visitors, it’s been hundreds of years I’d say, and so I would love to take advantage of this glorious moment.”

That’s twice they’ve got it wrong, Graham thought. “No, I didn’t want to know where in town we were – what planet are we on? If it seems like a strange question to ask, know that my friend and I have been through quite a bit recently and just aren’t sure anymore. If you think we’re crazy of have amnesia, that’s fine, just tell us where we are.”

“Crazy? Of course you aren’t, there are many planets to be from. This is Cydia! It is by no means a humble world so do not assume that its people are humble. I can explain more as we walk – both of you, come!” Variable began pacing across the bridge to the exit. Graham and Ames reluctantly followed not knowing whether the strange, silhouetted being was malevolent or benign. Ames in particular walked with cautious steps, not wanting to make the wrong move in a strange world – she was, Graham thought, the toughest woman on Talos to attempt to rescue him from a genocidal prison, but confronted with a world filled to the brim with technology beyond her comprehension put her into a pseudo future shock; her mind could not handle what she saw – it was so far removed from anything on Talos that it appeared to her as magic, and magic did not exist.

Crossing the bridge proved difficult for both Ames and Graham, but obviously not for Variable, who had done it many times over. The distance from the bridge to the ground shocked the two world travelers; in fact, there was no ground in sight, signaling that City Square was both infinitely tall and infinitely deep. A drop off the bridge would be fatal – Graham began to think that if “fatal” had multiple degrees, a drop from the bridge was more fatal than a drop from off one of Lanford City’s trains, which rose high above the city’s district wall. But perhaps more frightening than the distance down from the bridge was the utter lack of any sort of fence to contain travelers within the path.

Eventually they all crossed the bridge and walked out the exit; both Graham and Ames now knew they had not seen even half of a fraction of Cydia’s true visage, for in front of them was a city only a portion of the size of Lanford, yet infinitely grander. Skyscrapers rose into the heavens, or what heavens there were left to be above the skyscrapers; they were already close to space. Graham felt a notable difference in the amount of gravity on Cydia; either the group was very far from the center of the planet – which was likely - or the planet was incomprehensibly small – also likely, given the size of the city. The city, though it had tall buildings and flashing lights, looked as if it could fit on a large rock.

Graham would soon find out how correct his assumptions were. Not far had they walked before the edge of the city was clearly in view, and indeed the entire metropolis floated upon a rock – a buoyant chunk of terra hovering above a gaseous purple mixture, with no visible ground below. Variable led them down a stoop of perfectly carved metal stairs.

“Watch your step,” he said. “And don’t worry about the drop over there. We’ve got a barrier in place, so you can’t fall off the border. Though I don’t know why you’d be worried if you did – all for the better, I say! Ah, but I’m getting far ahead of myself. Where are either of you two from?” Had his face been visible, Graham and Ames would have seen his questioning look – beyond the silhouette was a truly curious man who had waited eons for a presence to exit the portal.

Ames, eager to conquer her fear of Cydia and seem more impressive at adaptation than Graham, who did not seem to be scared in the slightest, spoke first. “I’m from Talos. I don’t know how far it is from Cydia, but it’s my home. Specifically, Lanford City. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.”

“Talos, eh?” Variable said, facing away from the group and continuing to walk forward. “So, you’re one of them,” he said, much quieter. “Sorry, I don’t know much about Talos, but I’ve certainly heard the name before. What about you?” he asked, referencing Graham.

“Earth,” he said after some slight hesitation. Wary of the type of reaction he’d hear about Earth –for the advanced people of Cydia were obviously in tune with the workings of a few other planets outside of their own – he almost regretted mentioning that he was from Earth. Variable’s reaction reinforced his opinion.

“I sure haven’t heard that one for a while! If my memory serves me well – and it does, mind you, because I was a part of the collective for a while – we had many dealings with Earth a long time ago. I remember being around for those. Interesting times; glad to see you back. Well, not you, of course, but somebody from your planet.” They had left the stoop in front of City Square and could not turn around and look at the structure on its own. It dwarfed every other building on that floating island exponentially, and its purpose was almost clear to Graham. He thought it might be an interstellar elevator, like they had been planning to build on Earth in Japan. Such an elevator would begin on the ground and extend outward into space; NASA and other space administrations could use this elevator to easily bring parts into space. Although the plan did not consider human travel along this “space elevator,” its designer did one day intend to modify the elevator to include space tourism.

The challenge, of course, was making space tourism safe – the elevator had no problems remaining safe, but the risk of falling down to Earth was great. Without a steady orbit, humans would plummet back down to Earth no matter how far away they got, until some other heavenly body’s gravity captured them. Either way, the prospective fate for the space tourist was grim. When Graham had tumbled into Talos, the situation had not been resolved, and the space elevator hadn’t even been build – he doubted that only a few weeks later it was somehow constructed and in operation, which is why Cydia’s City Square was such a marvel; they had perfected an art that, during those very moments on Earth, Graham’s people could only dream of.

Variable moved onward, towards the city limits, which were not far off from the stoop – everything was tightly packed and condensed on the floating island. In the distance Graham could see other floating islands, sparkling with light of their own, indicating other cities floating around a massive gaseous space. He wondered if there were any beings living within the gas, in the clouds and between the storms, if it such a life was too dangerous for even a Cydian. Variable seemed to have no fear of death, based on how easily he had walked across the fenceless bridge.

Graham felt more likened to Cydia than he did to Talos – technology, while much different, felt more similar to Earth. Earth, he gathered, was the median of Talos and Cydia, the realm with the “comfortable” level of technological advancement. He wondered if variable hid his face under the artificial silhouette skin because he was truly miserable on Cydia – but, then again, on every planet, in every age, in every life, there was misery somewhere. There was misery on Earth for Graham as his friend moved away, as his family slowly dislodged him from their network, as electricity began to die out and the economy began to crash.

And there was no doubt that misery abounded in Talos – and not even more so Graham imagined that the people in Talos, specifically Lanford City, were suffering most of all.

This was why it was not hard for him to imagine that Variable, too, must be miserable. To wait out one’s days for someone to tumble through an interstellar door, to wait hundreds of years, and hence through multiple generations, must have been hard on the man. Graham could only imagine his pain prior to being called to the portal, and his sheer excitement upon discovering that two foreigners had stumbled out of it.

The path leading up to the dense city was dark and foreboding, and as they moved further away from City Square the light dimmed down and eventually all was lost in pitch-black darkness. In response to this sudden darkness, Ames and Graham pivoted around to look at the bright lights escaping from City Square, hoping to adjust their eyes to the dark light. But before this could happen, Variable tapped each of them on the shoulder, startling them and causing them to jump upward in fear.

“No need to be afraid, it is only me. I am taking you to a place where you can stay, travelers. If you need anything, simply ask – do not worry about payment, we can discuss such matters later. For now, I have a gift for each of you. Although you cannot see it, you will be able to shortly.” Variable reached into his tuxedo pocket and pulled out two slim pairs of frameless glasses, and then handed one each to Graham and Ames. “Please put these glasses on. You are probably shrouded in darkness right now without need. These glasses will enable you to see.”

Graham felt around and took the glasses, then put them on – he was never accustomed to wearing glasses; having a foreign object rest upon his face was a strange feeling; the same went for Ames as well. As soon as the glasses were on, Variable came back with more orders: “Rub your finger across the top of the lenses. The glasses are electronic; they’ll boot up once you run your finger across the top.”

Graham did so, and suddenly the logo of an operating system flashed across both lenses. Within another millisecond after this animation the glasses had successfully booted up. New objects appeared in Graham’s field of vision, including several street lamps that, in truth, were not lamps at all but floating spheres of lights.

Oddly enough, the light from these spheres bounced off of objects and provided light to the scenery around him. Graham was not sure what he was seeing; he removed the glasses, and the floating spheres of light disappeared. He put the glasses back on, and they came back – but the glasses were not a screen, and the lights did not travel with the glasses. Graham was confounded. Elements of reality suddenly popped into existence with the glasses on; it was bizarre and unreal. Graham put on the glasses and looked back at the City Square building. Suddenly, there were billboards around the building advertising several products Graham had never heard of, and probably wouldn’t be able to understand.

Ames was having trouble figuring out how to turn the glasses on. Her fingers fumbled around, and several times she thought the glasses might be broken. She asked where the steam went, and nobody could properly explain that the steam did not go anywhere, for there was no steam involved in powering the device, as there was no steam involved in powering the taser-like devices that the knights had had back in Lanford City. Still, despite this comparison, she struggled with the glasses. Eventually, she managed to turn them on – according to Variable, one had to activate the glasses for the first time with their own finger, as their fingerprint would be recorded for security purposes. This fingerprint scanner was far more accurate than any scanner currently found on Earth, enough so that it not only picked up a person’s fingerprint, but also any electromagnetic impulses given off by the finger – the purpose of this second feature would soon become apparent to Graham and Ames.

Once Ames had gotten her glasses up and running she relapsed back into shock, but recovered far quicker than before, indicating that she was getting used to Cydia – at least what they had seen so far of it, those two small glimpses of Cydian life. Variable continued to lead the way now that both parties could see in the darkness, yet never bothered to explain how the glasses enabled these extrasensory perceptions. Like the strange taser device found in Lanford, these glasses, too, were a complete mystery, and a mystery that neither Ames nor Graham had time to solve.

Graham did not mention his objectives to variable yet, wishing to strengthen his relationship with this lucky first Cydian. Variable was silent for the majority of the trip into the city, acting only as a compass to guide them to a safe place. The city glowed far brighter with the advent of the glasses than without, and both Ames and Graham constantly took them off and put them back on to make sure they were not hallucinating the brightness of Cydia.

“These are amazing,” Graham said. “There is nothing like this on Earth – nothing even close. Variable, why are you not using them? How did you see in the dark?”

Variable, who had become accustomed to the silence and, with the silence between he and the travelers broken, spoke with a certain anxiety in his voice, “I don’t need the glasses; my body has them built-in, you could say. I can never turn them off, though, as a result. Keep walking with me, please; it’s not much farther to our abode. You will be able to meet several of my colleagues, who will help you adjust to our world a little bit more if it suits you. If not, you can feel free to lounge about.”

They had not traveled much farther before Variable realized he had forgotten something. “Shit,” Variable recited in anger, then mumbled quietly, “something is wrong if I forgot we need to take the light tram.” He moved forward with caution, wondering if he’d forgotten anything else, for to forget anything in his condition was a sign of horrible things to come – Variable, and everyone like him, did not simple forget their memories; no, their memories had to be erased, which was cause for much alarm inside Variable’s mind.

The further they walked into the city, the smaller the tar roads became, until eventually spaces in between skyscrapers were narrow slits fit only for one person to walk through, as thin as the hallways had been in the Black District back in Lanford. Luckily Graham was used to this, and it did not bother him. But it clearly bothered Ames.

Ames spoke silently to Graham, “You don’t find it weird that we’re blindly following this man?”

“We don’t have a choice; we’re lost here and he’s the only guy who knew about our existence. He knew about the portal. He knew about Talos, and he even knew about Earth.”

“I meant trust – how do we know we can trust him?”

“We don’t, Jessica. But we’re in no position to be choosy right now. We’re lost and weaponless in a strange place, and he’s the only man who has offered us help.” Graham began to get the feeling that even if he had said all of this loudly, Variable wouldn’t have noticed. In fact, variable was beginning to pull away from the group. He walked faster and faster, and Graham began to fear that he and Ames would lose him in an upcoming crowd of people.

The fear expanded when the crowd turned out to be a crossroads. There were no vehicles in Cydia, only a huge pedestrian walkway at the center of the city, branching out like tree roots to the outer reaches of the floating island. Variable walked faster, his suit flapping in the breeze caused by his sheer speed.

Through the pedestrian walkway they crossed. Graham and Ames bore witness to several of the strangest looking creatures, all decidedly human, yet at the same time decidedly inhuman. There were several characters bearing resemblance to Variable, and more characters who had a different appearance, but amongst their group the same. The more Graham looked at the groups of people walking through the walkway, the more he began to believe that the bodies on Cydia were as a fashion accessory, that plastic surgery had advanced far enough that the entire body could be molded freely, into any shape or form one desired.

Variable stopped and turned around. “I am sorry, my friends, but it seems I miscalculated. We need to take the light tram to my abode if we are to get there in any decent time. There is a terminal just up ahead, so please keep following. I realize my walking speed is very quick. I can lower my pace if you’d like.”

“No, there’s no need – we can keep up,” Graham said.

“Good, good. I also understand this must all be sudden to you, but it is my job to do this, you see, even if it is not a very exciting job, and one I have not done for the longest time. I must admit I’m a bit rusty; I’ve never dealt with foreigners before. Which is odd, because I am sort of like a foreigner myself!”

Variable cheerfully led the way underground to an area that looked like a New York City subway station. Graham was exceedingly familiar with the subway system, but variable reassured him that, coming from Earth, there was no possibility that he would be familiar with what he was about to see. They dove further downward into the island; Graham worried they might pop out of the bottom and fall to their dooms, but this never occurred. Instead, the metal stairs emptied out into a large, open room with a tall ceiling. In the center of the room was a thick line of light that passed from an electron gun at one end through a prism on the other. At regular intervals the line of light had strange bulges where the path traced by the light became circular, as though large beads had been strung along a thread of light.

Variable stepped up to one of the bulged of light while Graham and Ames stood motionless at the bottom of the stairs. With a confident wave, variable urged them to move closer, and to step into the bulge of light, assuring them that it was perfectly safe and harmless – and, like obedient tourists, Graham and Ames unconditionally believed him.

Word Count: 63,444

Inconspicuously, Ford flipped a switch on the control panel he’d been working at, and continued talking. “You’re the only sick persons in this room. I am saving the planet! The Oceanic Confederacy is saving the planet. We have been able to manipulate your Cydian technology, Mr. Graham, and transform it into our own specialized science. As I speak construction is beginning on several more metropolises akin to our great Lanford City. These cities shall stand tall as a testament to our own advancement, as Lanford stands tall today, but have a much greater purpose. These power plants are equipped with extra technology, as you’ve no doubt witnessed – but beyond even that technology. They are literal propulsion engines, of the inter-dimensional sort, built with manipulated technology from your world. And when construction is complete, we shall use the cities to jettison us into this new dimension! It is ours for the taking; nobody inhabits it. I see you are speechless, or does your fetch have a malfunction?”

Graham stared at Ford; this exchange of sanity and madness lasted several seconds before Graham spoke up. “I understand everything you’ve said, except one: I have never heard of Cydia.”

Hearing this, Ford seized up – had he said all of that to the wrong man? Ford had already been nervous, but now there appeared quite visible sweat upon his brow, and he wiped it off with an equally sweaty hand, which did nothing in the end. Graham and Ames could see that he was becoming concerned for his safety, that nothing was convincing the two rebels that his life was worth sparing – and he could not understand why, for he believed in his motives and thought they were the right path for Talos.

“You… you are not from Cydia? Then,” he said, pausing and stuttering with nervousness, “where are you from? There are no other worlds to be from! Not unless…” he stopped speaking at once, interrupted by Graham.

“I am from a land called Earth, and I’m not the on—” Graham stopped talking; something to his side was rumbling. He turned and looked; Ford smiled, for the switch he’d flipped was beginning to have effect. When Graham turned to face the rumbling noise, he was facing what should have been the elevator wall he and Wheat had been strapped to, but it was no longer the same wall – now it was a similar wall, but instead of harnesses against it there was now a door. Upon the door was a lock now in the process of unlocking itself.

It looked almost exactly like the lock Graham had developed for Curie. And it was solving itself, just as it had on that fateful night so many weeks ago.

Graham froze and stared at the lock. “What’s going on? James, hat’s going on here? Why aren’t you moving?” said Ames, hoping to snap Graham out of his trance. But Graham could not remove his eyes from the lock – it was so strikingly similar to the one he’d built, and it scared him. While the lock distracted the two, Ford climbed upon the control panel and grabbed the corpus clock with both hands. With a hearty thrust he tossed the clock at the stupefied Graham and Ames.

The lock whizzed by, in between them, and hit the wall across the room. It shattered into thousands of tiny mechanical parts and pieces. The Chronophage that had once stood proudly at the top of the corpus clock was the only piece left unbroken, otherwise the clock was entirely demolished.

In the frenzy caused by throwing the clock, Ford bolted in between Ames and Graham, managing to get out of the door before Ames could fire her gun. She ended up firing at a closed door, while Ford escaped and ran to the boiler room with the greatest speed. Ames had to force Graham, still staring at the lock that so closely resembled his design, away from the observation chamber so that they could chase Ford. “You idiot! He’s getting away! Stop staring at the door; we can’t allow him to escape. He’s a danger to the entire world. Do you hear me? The whole fucking world! That doesn’t concern you?”

Graham snapped out of his trance. “I’m sorry. There’s something about that lock; it’s very familiar. But I can explain later – let’s go. I think I know where he went. If anywhere, he couldn’t have gotten beyond the boiler room. You’d need the strength of two people to open and shut those doors.”

Together they ran back through the passageway and into the boiler room, not prepared for what they saw. Ford had climbed upon one of the steam processors and was leaning of the edge, looking down upon the active melting pot and his two pursuers, who in turn were looking up at him.

Graham and Ames ran off of the deck where the melting pot stood and looked at Ford from afar. Before Ames could say anything – particularly about shooting him down if he did anything rash to surprise them – Ford began to speak to Graham.

“Earth… I have not heard that word in a long time, Mr. Graham. It has not been mentioned for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years on Talos. Your presence here is fate, truly. Then I must be subservient; my plans are meaningless – but I will not let them go to waste. The others will never know of you. When the knights have found you and Mrs. Ames here, and my body in the cauldron, they will destroy you. Even though I am finished, so too are you finished.”

Graham shouted in retaliation: “You bastard! The lock in the observation room, how did you get it?”

“Ah, the corpus lock? It is an old thing, developed years and years ago for inter-dimensional research. For the longest time, Cydia has been the only other world I knew, and I made the grave mistake of assuming you were from that place. Ignore those assumptions – how wrong I was! But rest assured, I will not be around to make any more of those mistakes. You needn’t shoot me. As I’ve said, I have witnessed the downfall of Lanford’s society – I have seen our world decay and crumble, and I have sped it along in order to ensure a safer future. Perhaps it will be in the far future, but sacrifice drives progress. Never has a society moved forward without first making the greatest sacrifices. In fact, I do believe that was how Talos was born in its current incarnation. Terribly flawed, it is.

“But the Confederacy will have to go on with the plan without me – and without you two, of course. I daresay knights should be coming to inspect the closed room any moment now, and so I bid you adieu. While society crumbles, I shall watch you from hell!”

Ames and Graham, wide-eyed, jogged backwards as quickly as they could, for no sooner had Ford finished speaking did he jump headlong into the melting pot, only a few meters away from the top of the steam processor. He did neither screamed nor made a single noise. In an instant he was completely submerged in the lava and half his skin melted off – even if he had screamed, there was not enough time between his entering the cauldron and his death for the scream to be heard.

Nobody mourned his death – not Graham, not Ames, and not any of the residents of the continent of Lanford, who did not even know of President Ford’s existence. His was not a democratic presidency, but a presidency shrouded in mystery, and now in a timely suicide. His body now fueled the very devices he had always hoped to build. But Graham could not help feeling awkward about the whole event, as though he’d heard Ford’s voice before – somehow he’d known about the man in his dream, but he knew he hadn’t met Ford before his experiences in the observation chamber.

“His voice…” Graham said, slowly. “I heard his voice.”

“Heard whose voice? What are you talking about? We should get out of here, James.”

“No, not yet! I heard President Ford’s voice, the knight I was pulled into Talos. It must have been a portal or something, I don’t know – but behind the door, there were two voices talking nonsense, and his was one of them! It feels so clear in my mind, I’m so certain it was his voice; but whom was he conversing with? I don’t remember what they were talking about, dammit!”

“James, the knights are coming! If we don’t get out of here now, we’re going to get killed. We can only handle one or two, not a dozen. Stop thinking and start running – anywhere.

Graham turned to Ames, “Yeah, you’re right. We’ve got to get out of here, and now,” he said with a voice far more nervous than the late Ford’s. “We need to get back to that observation room. I think there’s something there that will help our escape, but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you not. Just follow me back. We left before it opened, but if I’m right, you’ll see what I mean.” Together they ran back through the passageway and forced their way into the observation chamber as knights began to storm the boiler room below.

Graham’s assumptions were right – the lock in the observation chamber had solved itself, and the door upon which the lock was affixed was swung wide open. The innards of the door seemed to suck away all of the light in the room, but Ames and Graham could still see through the gigantic glass window pane all of the hundreds of knights that had stormed the room. They eventually found Ford’s body, and Ames and Graham knew this was the moment they had to escape, before chaos broke loose in Lanford. Without a leader to guide them through the martial law, the knights would undoubtedly lose control and sight of their objective.

Society as they knew it – at least how Ames knew it – would crumble beneath their feet. They had to escape to somewhere else and find a way to stabilize Lanford and stop Ford’s plans, which would continue in the hands of the rest of the Oceanic Confederacy.

Graham knew where the portal in the door with the corpus lock on it went. He knew how he had come to Talos, and believed it, as Graham believed, to be a work of fate. It must have been fate, for only such a reason would cause Curie’s lock and the corpus locks to become so strikingly similar, similar enough that when properly aligned and solved with one another they would accidentally open a portal to another world, and world Graham had never dreamt existed, a world so far removed from Earth that he doubted it was even in the same galaxy.

Now it was Cydia on the other side of the door. Voices, too, came from the door, but they were inaudible, mushy sounding, as though they were underwater. The darkness coming from the door was expanding, and Graham’s only wish was that he was wrong about Cydia’s existence on the other side of the portal. He wished Earth was on the other side of the portal, though deep inside he knew there was no possibility that this was true. In fact, he was not even sure if Earth still stood – when he’d left it, it was without electricity.

Suddenly, a new sense of urgency caught his attention: If Talos and Earth were linked by any means, that meant the extensive research and disruption of space-time caused by inter-dimensional travel might disrupt electromagnetism on Earth. And that would cause massive rolling blackouts. It was Talos that was to blame for Earth’s misfortune! And if it truly was Cydia on the other side of the portal, then Graham knew what he and Ames had to do – cease the flow of technology from Cydia to Talos. Without their precious Cydian tech the Oceanic Confederacy would be starved and unable to continue their operations. Earth, too, would reap the benefits – electricity would most likely return to the humble blue dot.

“I know you’ll think this is strange, but we have to go through that door. It’ll seem scary, but I’ve done it once before. It’s bad, yeah, but if we survive we’ll probably be taken to another world – this looks like the fruits of Ford’s inter-dimensional research. And it looks exactly like the portal that pulled me into Talos.”

“But we don’t know where this goes,” Ames said, hoping to avoid the portal, “if it goes anywhere. We wouldn’t even know where if it did; it’s probably just a closet. Look, if we stay here—”

“If we stay here, all we’ll see is Lanford slowly fall into ruin! I won’t stick around to watch that – I have a home to get to, my own planet. I’m not from here, Jessica. I want to go home.”

“You think a closet is going to take you to Earth?”

“It’s not a closet – it’s a portal. It links to other parts of the universe, and I don’t think this one goes to Earth. Ford said Earth hasn’t been mentioned in hundreds or thousands of years. It’s more likely it goes to that other planet – he mentioned that all modern technology in Talos is derived from technology that came that planet. Cydia, it was. That means they - whoever they are – are feeding technology to Talos world leaders, and probably for a reason.”

“If we stop them from sending technology…”

“…then we stop the Oceanic Confederacy from jettisoning Talos into another dimension. Yeah. And hey, I might just get to go home. If the primitive technology here in Talos can make these portals happen, I’m sure there’s something similar on Cydia. It would be nice to stop back on Earth eventually. Not that it’s important,” Graham said sarcastically, “it’s only my home world.” He smirked, and Ames returned the favor.

“Alright. But it better not be a closet,” Ames said, reassured by Graham’s proven experience at traveling between worlds.

But neither would have much more time to make the decision of whether to not to leap into the portal, for the footsteps and armor clanking of knights soon reverberated throughout the passageway outside the door of the observation room. Both parties realized that they now had no choice but to jump into the portal, but faced with the action Graham suddenly lost his nerve.

The darkness was overwhelming. He and Ames had stepped in front of the open door, and looked into the deep darkness beyond for any sign of light, but could see nothing. Only the distance aquatically muted vocals resonated from the portal’s depths. But the knights were at the door, and Graham was forced to choose life temporarily in Cydia, or no life at all – he nodded reluctantly to Ames, confirming his decision, and stepped up to the darkness.

The darkness grabbed him, but not physically. He could feel its pull, but unlike before it was not strong enough to take him on its own. This required his will to agree. Graham closed his eyes and let himself fall into the darkness, become consumed by the darkness, leave one world and enter another. It was the strangest feeling of freefalling as one flew between worlds, and for the first time Ames, too, experienced this feeling, for she followed Graham’s example a few moments later.

Into the darkness they fell, until both entities lost consciousness. Where they would find themselves when they awoke, be it Cydia, Earth, or some other strange planet, remained unknown.

* *  *   *    *     *      *       *        *          *          *         *        *       *      *     *    *   *  * *

When Graham awoke, Ames was no longer at his side, but neither was anything else. Graham was floating freely in space, at some unknown location. Below him a planet glowed purple. He slipped out of and back into consciousness every few minutes, and each time found himself at a different location.

Eventually his body found its way onto a surface of cold metal. He was on the ground, on his belly; there was nobody else in the room, if a room it could be called. Behind Graham was another open door with a corpus lock installed on it, and not a moment later did Ames appear in a cloud of black dust that quickly evaporated, her lifeless body right on top of Graham. She did not stir; gently Graham moved her body off of his, and instantly he worried if she had survived the trip. He checked for a pulse by pressing two fingers to her neck – he found one instantly, and he let out a deep sigh of relief.

The wall on which the portal was located broke into several free-floating pieces as it cascaded up into the heavens. There was no roof to this building, only a dark starry sky. The building, however, was clearly some form of research facility. The walls glowed green in between their cracks; the glow was periodic and faded in and out, calmly and gently, at frequent intervals. Eventually, Graham wondered if he was in a room at all; from high up enough it seemed like outdoors, as the walls simply faded away and there was no roof, but from where he stood it was without a doubt the interior of a building.

He looked around further by exploring the area – over a fence he could see that the building actually stretched much further down, almost infinitely far down. Miles and miles of bridges and platforms cascaded downward below him. He imagined a resilient character jumping over these fences, down for miles without the use of an elevator. He searched and searched for some sort of lift, but could not find one.

Eventually Ames awoke, and to a certain degree of shock when she saw how unlike Talos this new world was. She turned her head around and looked at the portal from whence she’d come, noticing a terror-inducing red light coming from the area above it. Most strikingly, this light had no apparent source; rather it was as a free-floating sphere in front of the wall above the portal door. Ames could not bring herself to get up, only crawl away from the strange source of red light. She bumped into Graham, still absentmindedly exploring the area.

Graham touched the tile flooring and realized that its surface was uniform, like glad. But it appeared to be tile; it even had the illusion of three dimensions. But it was flat as glass! Everything in this building completely astounded Graham, who for a while could only wonder how these objects were constructed and designed. But soon it would be his fear, instead of his curiosity, that would take control of his body.

Across a bridge-like platform a door appeared out of thin air, and a most strange being strode through – it was a man, but at the same time it was not a man. This man lacked a proper face; he was shrouded in darkness. He wore a boulder hat, which transitioned clearly into a face made entirely of black material, as though his entire head had been painted over; in fact all of his skin was this way, and he appeared as only the silhouette of a man, a mere shadow of existence. Clothing the silhouette man’s skin was a debonair suit that made him appear as though he were at a black tie event. Ames was now even more in shock than previously and began seizing up, for she had spent all of her life in a world governed by steam – such appearances were not only uncommon, but also simply impossible.

The silhouette man tipped his hat and spoke in a stately voice akin to those from Lanford and Alteria. “Good evening – looks like we’ve got some fresh visitors here tonight. I hope you’re both in good health, especially the lady there. Allow me to introduce myself: I am Variable.”

Word Count: 60,105

Graham picked himself up, albeit slowly, and made his way, gun in hand, over to Jessica. “Stop crying, there was nothing you could have done. Saving me was something completely different than saving Joseph. I was accessible.” Graham looked up at the Wheat robot, which was now almost completely prepared. Soon enough the robotic arms backed away, leaving a shimmering brass structure, large enough to fill the entire orifice, where Joseph Wheat once stood. Graham turned away, not wanting to see such a horrid sight – but it would soon be forced upon him. More robot arms picked up the metallic remnants of Wheat and began lowering them to the ground, and during this slow process neither of the two humans left in the room could move.

Finally, the Wheat robot clunked down, making slight indents onto the metal floor. It stood still, and all at once activated – a Carnot Engine where Wheat’s heart used to be was now pumping steam throughout the robot’s system.

It hardly looked human; there was no flesh, only pipes and gears, but there was one major difference between the Wheat robot and the clockwork robot 0×18015DANIL that had saved Graham: The Wheat robot still had several vital organs. Somehow, president Ford and his malicious engineers had found a way to create a half-android; Wheat’s brain was still intact, but it was integrated into the robot being.

It moved.

It flexed its arms. Tested its legs to ensure everything was functioning properly. The generic, preprogrammed tests confirmed correct functionality.

It spoke through steam pipes and a slit mouth. With every word, more steam bellowed forth from the ungodly orifice. “Hello. I am your friend.”

Graham thought he might faint as did Ames, but both restrained themselves from running away from the Wheatbot. Instead, Graham worked up the courage to speak to the robot. Graham moved closer and touched the warm brass that made up Wheat’s new body.

“I’d like to be your friend, too,” he said.

Suddenly an abundance of gears turned, pulling leftover muscles and tendons that had been taken from Wheat’s body, and the metallic face of the Wheatbot contorted to show happiness. “I’m not gone,” said the Wheatbot. “But it hurts. Find Ford. Make him pay.” The entire structure shook as the steam jettisoned from the Wheatbot’s mouth, and it was clear to Graham and Ames that Wheat was still inside the robot, alive and well, his memories intact. And yet the robot controlled him; Wheat’s mind had little to do with the actions the robot actually took. Those actions were predetermined by advanced programming within the robotic architecture – clearly primitive versions of this architecture were present in 0×18015DANIL, but the Wheatbot contained bits of the advanced technology from the taser-like devices and the robotic arms in the room.

As a result, the Wheatbot looked strikingly less complex and more modern than 0×18015DANIL. And it was just such a robot that was now walking over to take a look at his newest companion. Unlike DANIL, Wheat’s structure was fundamentally more limber and quick, although both robots were about the same size. It was only when both robots were together that Graham noticed the label on Wheat’s structure – 15×829172JOSEPH. Graham turned to the DANIL robot, looking up into its artificial face solemnly.

“They did this to you, too, didn’t they?”

DANIL nodded, his metal joints creaking; the gears inside his body were becoming weaker, unstable with the passage of time. A corpus clock on the wall was currently the only audible noise in the room besides Graham’s voice, and Ames’s bewildered weeping. Ames was focused on Graham, too afraid to speak to the Wheatbot or to the DANIL robot. Even though she had spent an afternoon with the DANIL robot, she never considered that it had been made from a live human being – she was in such disbelief that she very nearly ran away in attempt to deny the entire event, but knew this would solve nothing.
“Can you speak? Can you tell me what your name was? Can you tell me anything about your former self?”

The DANIL robot shook its head no, and then began to bend down. It took one of its hands to the metal floor and began engraving letters, for it seemed writing was the most it could do beyond move its body and fire bullets. In the floor it wrote: “DANIL OTHRET”.

Graham had heard that name before. He knew it from somewhere – it seemed familiar, for he knew that he only knew one Othret in the world, but it was not from the world of Talos. This fueled Graham’s next question: “Are you from Talos?”

Danil Othret shook his head in denial, and Graham remembered where he’d heard the name Othret before – his old boss, Lars Othret; As he recalled, Lars Othret’s only son, in his early twenties, had gone missing several years ago, causing Lars an incredible amount of distress. It was Graham who had consoled the man at regular intervals, which is why Graham was so surprised that Lars would fire him – but this was no time to rekindle old agonies. Graham had found Lars Othret’s lost son!

“Danil… Danil Othret… I knew your father. I worked for him. When you went missing several summers ago, this was where you went? I don’t even want to know the how, or the why, but I know that others from Earth might be here as well. I’m trying to get home, back to Earth. Did anyone come here with you and still has their body intact?”

Danil began engraving another series of letters into the metal floor: “STEVE – CHILD – CAMPER – BOILED”. Danil could recall the events vaguely in his torn-up mind – the child being brought to the refueling, his confusion, his maddening and futile attempt to stop the knights who had melted the child down and hailed him as “the devil incarnate”. But without tear ducts, without half of his emotions, Danil could feel nothing for the child. Everything was a string of words to him without meaning. Graham knew Danil’s father? This meant nothing to a robot; it meant nothing to Danil’s model.

Wheat tried to capture their attention again by speaking. “Go find Ford,” he said. Danil looked at Ames and Graham and nodded in agreement with Wheat. “Now!” Wheat said, Graham took Ames by the arm and dragged her away from Wheat, whom she’d just began to touch and confirm the existence of, still in disbelief. The gigantic robots, which from all the way across the room lacked any semblance of humanity, shrunk into the distance as Graham and Ames made their way for the exit. And just like that they were gone, lost behind the doors of the robot creation chamber.

“We can’t just leave them in there!” Ames shouted to Graham, angry with him for dragging her out of the room so suddenly. The two were now standing in a red hallway lit similarly to the boiler room; this was clearly a back hallway inaccessible through normal means. The floor was a metal grill, and beneath the metal mesh was dirty concrete. The walls, too, were concrete.

“We don’t have a choice. Ford is up there somewhere, probably hiding away until we leave, and if we don’t do something about him he could do this to more people. I want to get out of Talos and go back to my own world as much as the next guy, but this man has already destroyed two people too many, and one of them from my own world! Not only does this prove I’m not insane, but it proves that there is something seriously wrong with Lanford and its government. And if Ford thinks we’re just going to leave and let him get away with what he’s done scot-free, he should have another thing coming to him, don’t you think?”

“I agree with you, but it’s not fair to either of them. They’re still human… Joseph is still inside that thing. I can’t just leave him alone, James! It’s partially my fault that he’s like that now.”

“It’s none of your fault. Frankly, I can’t believe you came to rescue either of us.”

“Someone sent up a signal flare from inside the White District and I got word of it. It’s big news right now, and nearly the entire Railroad gathered together to infiltrate the district. Yes, just to rescue Station A! Every station is as important as every other station, and so we all worked to break in. At one point I met with that robot, who, when he realized what I was doing, followed me and began helping me dispatch the knights. But listen, if we’re going to leave the two of them in that room, we have to get everyone else first and then go for Ford, not the other way around.”

Graham looked at the floor and swayed. “Ames…”

“What?” she said, noticing the despair in his face.

“The rest of Station A… is…”

“That can’t be. That’s impossible! They sent the flare! Somebody had to send the flare!”

“It was probably Alex, when the rest of us were still in shock that we were in the Whiter District. We were attempting to break out, but got caught. That’s probably when the signal flare was sent. Wheat and I were detained, but everyone else, they weren’t as fortunate,” Graham told her in a heavy voice. He then continued, not wanting to aggravate Ames’s emotions further, “You could argue that Joseph and I have it worse. Everyone else got to move on, got to stop experiencing this torture, but Joseph and I lived! They forced us to watch as they tossed all of our friends into a gigantic cauldron to be cooked to death!”

Graham realized he was making Ames hysterical. “Stop it!” she said at once, and began running down the hall.

“Where are you going?”

“To find President Ford! Hurry, now!”

The two began sprinting down the hall, knowing that there would eventually be an elevator to take them back up to one of the main floors, or eventually the spiral of prison cells. They did not intend to avoid knights, but rather rush through them, killing all in their path in an attempt to make their way to the boiler room. Ames had never seen this room, and Graham did not want it to come as a shock to her the truth about the power plant, and so he never told her why the Station A residents had been melted down, nor did he mention the ritual of the refueling to her at any point.

Through the convoluted network of elevators they made their way to the spiral of prison cells. Several knights did get in their way, but with the combination of bullets, ingenuity and the stolen taser device, they were no matches for the duo – at least, not one at a time; they never ganged up in groups to the relief of Graham and Ames. After much turmoil they reached the boiler room. The elevators along the way were all completely empty, as if every elevator boy had simply evaporated. This scared Graham, who had begun to tolerate and even appreciate the elevator boy who he had seen and not seen throughout his journey in Talos.

However, the boiler room was empty – not a human being in sight. Not bothering to introduce Ames to the bubbling cauldron of lava at the other end of the room, he began searching every corner and crevice for President Ford, who he was sure would be somewhere around here. Then he remembered: the elevator wall went to the hidden observation chamber, not to the boiler room, and he began looking for signs of the observation chamber in the room. It was, however, impossible to see from within the boiler chamber, which was much too dark and much too red to spot anything near the ceiling, which was where the observation chamber was located.

Their only option was to find the path up to the chamber, which Graham supposed was hidden somewhere in the room. Together he and Ames shut all the doors to the boiler room and began searching for hidden passages that would lead up to the observation chamber, and after several critical minutes of searching a pathway behind the cauldron was revealed by switching a lever on one of the large steam processors. These steam processors, located adjacent to the boiling lava cauldron, trapped and cleaned the steam; they were massive box structures reminiscent of the oldest computers on Earth that filled entire rooms. The refrigerator-sized steam processors had dials, meters and levels all over them, and Graham and Ames switched every one of them until at last a door revealed itself in the brick wall, just like the passageway Alex had once revealed to Graham.

Through the passageway they crawled, which eventually became wider and wider and better lit. Several Lamp Spheres adorned the walls of this new passageway leading up to the door that Graham easily recognized due to its pristine cleanliness and white color as the entrance to the observation chamber. President Ford clearly did not think that anybody would find his hidden passage to the observation chamber, and pompously had left the door unlocked.

Ford was within, working at a complex control panel that had popped out of the wall on the far end of the small room. Above the control panel was a corpus clock, slowly clicking, slowly consuming time., emphasizing with each passing second how little time Graham and Ames had to stop this deadly man from continuing his tradition of death. Hearing their entrance, Ford turned around.

“Come to get me, eh?” he said, turning away from his control panel for just a moment, sounding incredibly nervous. “Well, I suppose I can’t fight you.”

“No, you can’t,” Graham said. “People from Talos are weak, like you said. So either cease all operations, or my friend and I can dispose of you right here.”

“I can’t do either of those, I’m afraid! This is something much grander than you or me, Mr. Graham. It involves the entire world – nay, both our worlds! Allow me to explain.” Ames was already pointing her gun at the man, but Graham became vulnerable at the mention of Earth, and told Ames to back off for a moment while he asked Ford how his operations involved his world. With an expression of grief, President Ford said, “Lanford has always been this way; the country, not the city. Steam and coal have always been our only methods of generating power, and you must know these are terribly limited resources, and their technology can only go so far before you must find a new technology.

“I do not want that new technology,” he continued, as Ames clutched her steam gun at her side, preparing to shoot and kill President Ford at any given moment. “All of the world leaders, in every country on every continent, have collectively agreed that it is best if we continue our progress with steam. We know there are alternatives, as did our predecessors, yet the world of Talos remains adamant about its heritage. Our society was founded on steam; the day that those great men came to Lanford and began a new society of their very own, from the ground up, was a defining moment in our history. What they do not tell you in the history books, however, is how steam technology came about and developed.

“To everyone, steam has always been. There have been recent advancements, yes, but our overall goal in commanding this world has been to ensure that technology remains relatively the same century after century. No generation shall be more fortunate than the last. This was the system we prided ourselves on; we kept it safe from the residents of the countries around the world. The agenda was ours and nobody else needed to know what we were doing by hiding the evils of alternative fuels.”

By now Graham and Ames were intently listening to the man’s speech, Ames especially so, for she was a resident of Talos and was utterly astounded by how much had been kept from her. Even in the Underground Railroad there were so many things she never knew about her own planet, about the government they were supposedly fighting, about why things were as they were. She wanted to know more, but kept a steady hold on her steam gun the entire time.

“Yet, somewhere along the line,” Ford continued, “our logic was flawed, and the seeds of civil unrest had already been deep inlaid into our people. They had begun to catch on to our plot; we denied inventors the right to patent their work, and we confiscated all new materials developed by eager scientists. This level of control now makes citizens uneasy, but we continue our agenda and keep the people using steam and steam alone – that is this world. But only for now.

“The founding minds of these lands had a plan for its development, and that was that it should remain as it was founded. If we, therefore, cannot change the way it works now, we must refound the land. And it is your world, Mr. Graham, which is enabling us to do so. Through means beyond our comprehension, your world has always loomed in the midst of Talos, and since our founding fathers came to Lanford we have borrowed from technology received from your world to advance our own steam-driven versions. It was from technologies like these that we invented the Lamp Sphere, in top-secret, and released it to the world under the name of a fictional scientist. This was, of course before I was even before – my grandfather, bless his soul, was the man who pioneered this effort. Ah, but please here the rest of my tale, for I am not nearly done!

“With more of your technology, Mr. Graham, we began researching inter-dimensional travel, and within the last decade have made several breakthroughs significant enough to convince us humble world leaders that Talos could indeed be saved from its civil unrest and instability. By opening a rift into this strange, outer dimension, we could seek to control the space and build a new Talos there, as we saw it fit; a Talos that would not be strewn with the seeds of instability and unrest, but the triumphant song of a utopian paradise.

“With technology from your world, Mr. Graham, this is becoming possible, and not a moment too soon. We cannot maintain the current lifestyle in Lanford forever, or anywhere in the world for that matter. It is all falling apart at the seams.”

Graham interrupted. “You—are you telling me this is what these prisons are for?”

“We’re out of coal and raw materials for steam, I’m afraid. And once we build the new world, it won’t matter anyway – we will make new people, people accustomed to technology of our choosing, and together we will live in peace in New Talos.” Ford stood, incredibly proud of his vision, not noticing any of the multiple flaws in his plan, and by proxy the plans of all the world leaders of Talos who had collectively come to the agreement to use borrowed technology to destroy their own world and rebuild it from the ground up.

Ames was disgusted. “You’re sick,” she said. “I won’t let you get away with this. You can’t destroy Talos! It’s the home of billions of people – you would simply throw those lives away to create your own twisted vision of a perfect society?” She raised her gun just slightly higher, waiting for Ford’s response, waiting for the end of his story so that she could shoot him and be done with it. She listened to the man only for Graham’s sake, only because Graham had begged her to wait until Ford was finished. She had too much respect, she thought, for a man she knew too little about.

Then again, perhaps that was how Graham felt about Ford during those tense moments.

Word Count: 56,745

Through the gaping window they witnessed the room full of prisoners splitting apart, and several knights grasping tightly the arms of prisoners walked through the crowd as Moses through the Red Sea. Squirming, hoping to escape, both men thrashed about against the wall with their abdomen, unable to move their clamped arms and legs. The old man simply watched through the window and smiled, saying nothing, enjoying the event as it unfurled – five prisoners were brought up to the front of the room and exemplified in front of the entire Black District. Wheat and Graham saw each one of them, their faces broken and listless, their expressions bleak, their minds empty of all but one thought: We stand here, right now, as a dead men and women.

Amelia Lavan looked at James Fleming, who looked at Ives Judson, who looked at Henry Tesla, who looked at Alex – and they all solemnly bowed their heads and accepted their deaths, one by one, at the hands of the executioner. “No!” Graham and Wheat shouted over and over again, but their voices did not pass through the glass – none of the five Station A members in the boiler room could hear, especially not over the roar of the crowd.

Eventually, and to Wheat and Graham’s delight, it appeared all of the prisoners were displeased that the escapees had been captured and wished to start a riot, but they were quickly suppressed with the knights’ uncommonly high technology. It seems for this purpose they had even more technologically advanced devices, and nobody could explain where they were coming from. The old man expressed how much he enjoyed watching them use the devices, but said nothing more about them.

Fleming was the first brought up to the melting pot, and just as Alex had once described, his jaw appeared to want to fall off the rest of his face; never in his wildest dreams did he ever believe he would face his death. His mortality had never occurred to him; his life was one station after the next, constantly avoiding capture, but now that capture had come he could not bring himself to bear the thought, and he struggled the entire time that the executioner held him down. He was stripped off his clothes and held naked above the pot, then slowly lowered in. Graham could not bear to watch; he covered his eyes, then opened them when he thought the process must have been finished, thankful that sound from the boiler room did not pour over into that small chamber in which he was trapped.

He had opened his eyes too early – early enough that Fleming’s head was still visible, sinking into the lava. He was long dead now, and nothing would bring him back; his face was frozen in a perpetual open-jawed scream, and his eyes had rolled far back into his skull. The entire head glower bright yellow as it melted down, and soon enough the face was so disfigured that it could no longer be distinguished as Fleming’s. No, it was now a simple mass of flesh slowly sinking into the melting pot.

One by one, each of the prisoners from Station A were stripped of their clothes and lowered into the pot. Graham and Wheat kept their eyes closed for as long as possible – thankfully, they both thought, none of their colleagues could see them trapped in this tiny room. They both would rather have died in the refueling than watch that sad event, and when it was through their weeping only intensified a hundred fold. This act was swiftly interrupted as the old man stepped in front of the glass panel, facing both men as their tears drenched their clothes. Almost everyone Graham had met in Lanford was now dead – executed at the hands of a disgusting, greedy government! The two men could only take solace in each other’s presence, and neither knew how long that would last given their current predicament.

The old man spoke once more, “I’m sorry, gentlemen, I have failed to introduce myself—”

“No, don’t bother!” Graham shouted. “I don’t need to know who you are if you laugh at my friends’ deaths – but all that aside, I think I already know. You’re President Ford, aren’t you?”

The old man took a step back, surprised. “There’s no way you could have known that – nobody has ever seen me in public; half of Lanford doesn’t even know I exist! How do you know about me?”

Wheat looked at Graham, also stunned. “Do tell, James – I’ve never heard of this man in my life. I didn’t know we had a president; the government of Lanford conceals most everything, and all the Railroad tries to do is keep everyone alive.”

Graham spoke, “When I was captured by a crimson knight weeks ago, after visiting your house to investigate your arrest, I was knocked out and taken here. During the time I was unconscious I had the strangest dream, and one of them men in that dream was you,” he said, turning to the old man, “President Ford of Lanford continent. You lent me your cane so that I could walk despite my injured leg, but I see what you told me in the dream was not true after all. You need it more than I do, though right now I don’t need it at all.”

“I’m impressed, but I do not believe your story. Someone told you of my existence – everyone else has been led to believe that there is a parliament, a monarch, or a combination thereof. But that you know who I am is of no consequence. Yes, I am President Thomas Ford, at your service, and I’m here to inform you both that as a result of your attempt to escape and your subsequent capture the White District of Lanford shall be expediting the consequences of your special circumstances.”

“What special circumstances would those be, Mr. President?” asked Wheat, irritated.

“I should not even have to answer this. Is it not obvious? You are a conductor of an Underground Railroad station, and the man next to you, I’m quite sure, is not even from this world. Ergo, you are both quite special people, and we have uses for those like you. You shall see soon enough; we used to melt people like you down as fuel, but nowadays we are much more conservative about whom we use for fuel, and who we – ah, well, I shan’t ruin the surprise for either of you. Off you go to treatment!” Making a gesture in the air with his hand, President Ford called out a switch from inside the wall of the room. Pulling the switch activated a mechanism that made the entire wall shift backwards – deeper into the center of the Black District silo – taking Graham and Wheat with it. President Ford waved goodbye to the men, then hobbled out of the room with his cane.

The wall was along a metal track, and fell downward for several minutes inside a dark shaft. Along the way down, neither of the two spoke, though Graham wondered with much intensity how the President could have known that he was not from Talos – it couldn’t have been a wild guess. He thought back to his mannerisms, which must have seemed strange to Talos residents, and knew that one of the knights must have reported him to the President – or at least to higher authorities, and the report simply spiraled up and up the governmental ladder until it reached Mr. Ford, who knew at once that he had to act or risk his entire continent’s stability and security.

Strangely enough, this made Graham wonder if his case was unique. If there was one man from Earth on Talos, who was to say there were not more? There could be an entire legion of Earthlings on Talos, living amongst the people after years of awkward assimilation; and not all of them had to have ended up in Lanford, or Alteria. They could be scattered about the globe. As unlikely as it sounded, Graham was now hopeful – or he would have been had he not the strong inkling that he was about to be killed at the unmerciful hands of the knights.

After several minutes of falling and not a word from either of the two men, they both knew that this strange elevator wall was not taking them to the boiler room, but to some far off section of the tower that nobody had ever seen before. When Graham had feared of death by meltdown his heart had sank more deeply into his chest than ever before, but at the notion of dying by some as-of-yet unknown, and possibly more tortuous method, his heart broke clear out of the back of his body and through the pristine wall against which he was pinned.

At last they saw light, far down below – the wall panel began to slow its movement as it prepared to push forward into the light, where a hole had been cut into the wall with the exact dimensions of the panel. Once the panel was in front of the hole, both men could see where the wall elevator had taken them. It was a gigantic dome-topped cylindrical shaped room whose height spanned several hundred meters. In the center of the room was a thick column lined with human-shaped orifices, though the shapes were much too large to fit a normal human being. Along the curved walls were more of these orifices, and countless electronic arms that waved to and fro, waiting for a human to be placed inside the orifice, surrounded each one.

For an awkward moment, Graham wondered if Ford wanted to use this gigantic pristine chamber to supply the entire Black District with fresh automated haircuts, but the straps present on each limb of each orifice spoke otherwise. As the wall forced itself into place, completing the broken edge of the room, President Ford walked in through an entrance on their far left, clothed in a white lab coat instead of his previous formal suit, and stood in front of a massive array of control panels, each button and switch more foreign to Graham than the next. The entire room was stark white, save for the black column in the center, including the robotic arms that swayed back and forth so rhythmically – this was technology that was beyond comprehension, and did not fit into the world of Talos. It made no sense – where was all this advanced technology coming from? Not even Earth had devices and control panels like these!

“Joseph,” Graham said, “This technology… have you ever seen it before?”

“Never. I didn’t even know we had stuff like this. If I didn’t think I was about to die, I would be in awe of it all! It’s magnificent, and I don’t understand any of it. Does it run on steam?”

“I don’t think so,” Graham said, looking around at all of the clearly electronic equipment, wondering where it could have come from. Perhaps, he thought, the Lanford government was hiding these advanced devices from the public, as they had cleverly hidden their own leader behind the shawl of the knights. But that left no reason not to share it with the public; if better technology had been developed, why wouldn’t the government take advantage of this technology to enhance the standards of living across the world? Why would the Lanford, Alteria, and every continent on Talos collaborate to collectively hinder their own populous?

Ford finished flipped a few switches, and at once Graham and Wheat were released. The two men fell promptly to the ground and held their wrists in pain; to ensure that neither of the two men escaped, two black knights held them at those same wrists while delivering them to Ford.

“This room is quite remarkable, really,” President Ford said. “I can’t remember how many years ago this place was built. Perhaps it was ten years ago, or ten thousand years ago, but it has undergone several very modest upgrades since its inception.”

“I can see that,” Graham said.

“I knew you would, Mr. Graham. Since the day I heard about you I knew you were the most special of all – that you were one not from this world. And I have dreaded meeting you ever since. But who would have known you were so easily brought into submission! Not I; that is certain. We people of Talos, we are weak folk, but we enjoy what we have.”

“You have a lot, from the looks of it. I’ve never seen anything like this before. How did you build it?”

“How did I build it? I did not build it, my friend. I am not that great. But we – the world leaders, you see – have such technologies scattered around the world on reserve electricity. There isn’t enough for everyone, but I have decided that I do not want there to be enough for everyone. Enough to power this room is satisfactory. So off you go – into the chambers with you! You shall become my newest robots. I’ve been developing a new line, and I need some prototype models. Both of your bodies should work nicely, especially the body of a Cydian. Once I get you out of that fetch of yours, I’ll have the most powerful robot on Talos! Knights, store them in separate orifices. They don’t need to talk to one another during their treatment. I want to watch that one, though,” he pointed to Graham, “so put him in Danil’s spot.”

The two knights took Graham and Wheat to separate locations. Graham was placed in the center column, right in front of Ford and the control panel, on the lowest level of human-shaped orifices, and Wheat was taken somewhere entirely foreign – Graham could not determine where. At once President Ford began working the control panels. The mechanical arms around Graham began to rev and activate, preparing to place Graham through the torture of become a mechanical being – the torture of destroying his physical body and using the leftover musculature and tendons and ligaments as parts for a clockwork abomination.

Just then, there was a loud rumbling throughout the chamber – and then an explosion. Ford ceased operations and went to examine the explosion, but too late – another one set off just outside the entrance to the chamber. And just like that, Graham knew he and Wheat were saved, for it was Jessica Ames setting of the explosions. Somehow she had managed to infiltrate the Black District – with the help of the rest of the Underground Railroad, no double – and traced Graham and Wheat to this very room. More explosions set off my miniature bomblets rattled the entire room as Ames made her way to the chamber. Ford began to panic, pushing control buttons as fast as humanly possible to jump-start the transformation process. Once he was comfortable with the settings, he allowed the machines to do the rest of the work on their own.

However, Ames was not alone – and Graham saw this as she entered into the chamber accompanied by none other than the large robot he’d become acquainted with earlier in his imprisonment. They burst through the entrance doors like madmen, shooting everything in sight in attempt to free Graham and Wheat, but missing most of their targets. Cleverly enough, President Ford had come prepared; he took out one of the taser-like machines and used it to generate a shield of blue light, which none of Ames’s or the clockwork robot’s technology could pierce.

“Jessica! Thank god!” Graham shouted. “Wheat! We’re saved – they’ve come to save us all!”

The clockwork robot, 0×18015DANIL, advanced towards Ford at a snail’s pace – not fast enough to catch the man as he fled the scene. He waved his arms in the same gesture against the wall where Wheat and Graham had once been strapped, then rode the elevator wall back up to the room overlooking the refueling chamber. Exhausted, Ames commanded the robot at once to destroy the machines around Graham. Not fast enough to relieve the shock of being nearly killed and then daringly rescued, the clockwork robot 0×18015DANIL made its way over with clunky motion, but ripped apart the robotic arms with the force of three tanks, crumpling them up into balls of puny tin foil, and then proceeded to release the metal straps barring Graham to the wall.

“Are you alright?” asked Ames to Graham, who had fallen face first to the ground and was just recovering.

“No, not at all – where’s Joseph? We’ve got to save him, too!”

The two knights were just not rushing over to the scene, one armed with several steam guns and the other armed with one of the taser-like devices. Ames pulled out a gun and dropped it on the floor next to Graham, telling him to make good use of it, and then fired relentlessly at the two black knights. As if by divine providence her first bullet struck the armed knight directly in the forehead between the eyes, and Graham’s own eyes grew wide with envy and fear at the sight of this. The other black knight, now with nobody but himself to defend with his fancy electronic toy, began quaking in fear. He attempted to use it on the robot so that he could not be pounded to death with its crushing force, but Ames took out her own device – the one Graham had left to her that day he’d been arrested at Station A – and used it to counteract the effects of the first device. Suddenly, the remaining black knight was helpless and pinned to the floor by the robot, and it was only moments later that the clockwork robot chunkily knelt down, pinned the man to the floor by his neck, and bashed his skull in with one mighty blow.

But it was too late for Wheat, who was writhing in pain at this very moment. Screaming for help, of any sort, but in vain, the machines performed their painful rituals all around his human, fleshy body. Ames, now ignoring Graham, who was safe for the moment, ran around the room searching for Wheat’s location. The sound of the machines at work filled the room; the stamping of metal, the twisting of gears, the ripping apart of ligaments. High pitched wails from Wheat’s mouth echoed forth and made Graham too scream out in agony.

Wheat was located high up where no normal man could rescue him, and not a soul in the room knew how to operate the technology that would take them up, though it was doubtful the hefty clockwork robot, with its weighty copper and brass pipes and gears, and the even heftier weight of the Carnot Engine at its heart, would be able to stand on an elevator platform without destroying it, and hence destroying Ames’s chances to save Wheat. But Graham knew that it was already too late, they Ames and her robotic companion had spent far too much time rescuing him, and had neglected the one other person who truly mattered, and it was with a heavy heart that Graham said a farewell – albeit a premature one – to the soon-to-be deceased Joseph Wheat.

Realizing the impossibility of her actions and the unforeseen height of Wheat’s transformation process, Ames banged her fist on the wall and began to cry. “Goddammit!” she screamed. “I came too far to deal with this shit! Joseph, you can’t be dying, please don’t yet! I can make it up there, somehow…” She sobbed, as she had sobbed the night that Graham left her for the house of Station A, and for the silliest reasons she began to attribute the loss of Wheat to her own inability to rescue him. As the process finalized and Wheat’s body was cast into metal and pipe, all of Wheat’s pain and agony melted away with the heated molten metal. With Wheat done for, silence penetrated the room, filling it with a gaseous despair greater in volume than any amount of steam any Carnot Engine in Talos could ever generate.

Word Count: 53,380

This is why for the next several days Graham remained secluded in his cell, yelling out for anybody who might respond and solve the mystery for him. He grew hungrier, and weaker, and his leg ached more so than any time before. He continued to scrawl drawings to pass the time. If he would look out the window when particularly bored, though he could not see much of Lanford City beyond the walls f the Black District. Clearly the black district was somewhere in the city – the view was partially blocked by the high district walls. He clutched his stomach one day, looking out of the window, wondering how many ore days it would be till he could get food again. He should have listened to the strange blonde man – if he had, he might not have been so hungry then. In fact, he might have been quite content.

As soon as the opportunity to leave sprung, just before the next lunchtime, he looked above his cell for a marking, but saw only a number; his cell number. Clearly having minimal significance, he searched further for anything that could mean something further – perhaps, he thought, there was simply meaning in the number. Indeed, when he looked around at other cell numbers, he noticed that his had an extra digit not present on anybody else’s. He walked the opposite direction from the elevator as far as could and saw no indication that any other person had this special number as he had.

He kept walking up the spiral of the Black District, hoping for another number similar to his – but clearly he was getting special treatment. Eventually he went to far, and was stopped by a knight, who told him to turn around and get to the cafeteria or he would begin beating on Graham. Terrified of this man in armor, Graham promptly turned around and rushed to the cafeteria, where he found the blonde man and began stuffing his face full of the tar-like gruel.

“I should have listened to you,” Graham said to the man, his face full of slop like a pig.

“Shut up and eat,” the man said. “James, I appreciate you wanting to talk, but this is the only time we’ve got to eat. We can talk on the way up.” The man smiled and shoved more food in his mouth, finishing the bowl, then left and walked up for more.

Graham was amazed – how had the blonde man known his name? His suspicions were advanced further when the blonde man made friendly gestures towards him throughout the course of the meal, as if they were familiar with one another, but the man had already denied the possibility that he was Joseph Wheat. Unless he’d lied.

Between the two of them over twelve bowls of gruel were consumed, and each felt as though their stomachs might burst, knowing that they would not feel this way for long. In fact, both men had lost considerable weight ever since arriving at the prison, the blonde man more so due to his rising fear that he would have to participate in the Refueling, which Graham was still unfamiliar with. This fear seemed to harbor in every prisoner except Graham, who was lost in the darkness due to his exception to the attendance rule. Why Graham was exempt he could not surmise.

The bell rang and people began clamoring out of the cafeteria. The blonde man hastily spoke with Graham, “I know who you are looking for, and I can help you get to him and his comrades. But you must do as I saw – ah, shush now, we are passing a few knights. There. All right, I can bring you to them now. Will you come?”

“You mean Joseph Wheat and all of Station A? They’re here?”

“Oh, indeed. This is not the first time, either. Station A has been demolished and relocated several times; Joseph Wheat is the sixth coordinator of Station A. I was the fifth. We have ways of keeping contact with the outside world. We are the Railroad, after all – we’re not without resources. Now, come with me.” After they had gone up the elevator (the elevator boy was again not present, to Graham’s relief), the blonde man pushed in a brick of the wall, after which Graham heard clicking noises – and suddenly a hidden passage appeared. The doorway of the passage was very small, but could easily fit an adult man, and the inside was dank and full of cobwebs. It looked like it had recently been used for travel, most likely by the blonde man when he’d heard about Wheat’s arrest. Together they carefully slipped away from the stampede in the hallway; there were no knights around to fit in the hallway and watch them, and security cameras were an advent that thankfully had not yet occurred in Talos.

“Make sure you seal up the entrance,” the blonde man said. “We don’t want others knowing about this passageway – it is a well-kept secret. You should be able to push the brick back out from behind the entrance.” Graham found the brick that the blonde man had pushed in and returned it to its former state, and watched as a sheet of metal – coated with bricks on the outside to act as a disguise – rolled its way back into place. Nobody had noticed their entrance into the tunnel; it had happened all too quickly for anyone of significance to care, and nobody was in a rush to return to their cells.

The passageway followed through the entire core of the Black District; Graham had initially thought something must be inside the center of the prison, which the cells revolved around, but this was clearly a misconception – the brick was thick around the passageway; there was probably nothing beyond it. The Black District was just one large tower as he saw it – around a core of stone and brick rotated countless dome-shaped cells, and somewhere along the line a cafeteria was shoved into the mix, but he didn’t really know where it was. All he knew was that the elevator took him up from the cafeteria and down from his cell, and back again with ease; learning the layout of the prison was not in his best interests. He did not intend to stay long – if he could just figure out a way to get back to Earth, he wouldn’t have to stay at all.

At some point the tunnel divided into multiple tunnels. The blonde man felt around, searching for some marker that would indicate, in a brail-like way, which direction led to Wheat’s cell. After finding the correct cell, he took hold of Graham and led him on. After several minutes they reached the end, and as carefully and slowly as possible the blonde man opened the way out of the hidden passageway. They exited into the hallway; there were no knights in sight.

Sitting in his cell twiddling with his thumbs was a scrawny version of the already scrawny Joseph Wheat, who looked up at the blonde man, and then darted his eyes over to Graham. Graham had never seen a man so ecstatic, yet so distressed – Wheat was glad that he could see Graham again, but of all places!

He moved up to the bars, limping; he had been injured as Graham had, but in different places – his head, his arms, his stomach and feet. Wheat was thoroughly destroyed in too many ways to count, yet surprisingly functional and resilient.

“James Graham… well I’ll be. How did you find yourself in here? I see you’ve met Alex,” said Wheat enthusiastically, through a raspy, hungry voice.

“Alex, eh? I was arrested not long after you I suppose; when Jessica and I received that broadgraph message from Station A, I rushed over, but you were already gone. A knight captured me and knocked me out, and here I am. Alex has been nice enough to show me the ropes and lead me to you.”

“That’s good, because we’re getting out of here,” Wheat said. “I’ve got several moles in this prison – or rather, the Underground Railroad does. The administration doesn’t know how ubiquitous we are, which works in our favor whenever people get arrested. Unfortunately, Alex has been here for over a year; it’s only recently that we’ve built up a legion of knights working in our favor. The knights around this area work for the Railroad, so don’t be worried – they know that you’re here and they know about the passageways.”

“Aren’t you worried they’ll betray you? I can see them getting a hefty reward for exposing an Underground Railroad,” Graham said.

Alex laughed, and quite loudly, causing other prisoners to begin talking and asking who was there. Wheat shouted that he was talking to himself, making impressions to create an imaginary conversation, knowing that nobody could see to the side of their cells with the view provided by the cage. Alex continued after, “We are not worried in the slightest. This is the umpteenth operation like this we have managed, and I am sure that we will be able to manage another with ease. Though nobody has ever broken out of the Black District, at the very least we can make our conditions livable by working together. We know the whereabouts of the other Station A members as well, but they are scattered all about the prison, which winds up and down forever.

“However, we will not be able to convene at the next refueling; I have seen that neither you, Joseph, nor our friend here are invited to that gruesome event.”

“How did you know that?” Graham asked.

“Why, your cell number begins with an even number and has an extra digit. Cell numbers are not randomly assigned, but they do change them every time a prisoner enters based on the classification of the prisoner, as I’ve been told. I do not know why you are special, but Wheat is marked because he led Station A.”

“What about the other two people who led Station A – Amelia Lavan and James Fleming? Wheat co-ran it, I thought.”

“They, too, are marked – though they did not run the station, they were only advisers and helpers that remained there.”

“I see – any more information?”

“Sadly, even with moles in the system information is difficult to obtain, and I know nothing else about the special markings and what they entail. This is what I know from asking fellow prisoners, and even the ability to converse is strictly monitored. That I was able to talk to you returning from lunchtime was miraculous and lucky, and we probably will not be able to do so again. But if all goes well, we will be able to convince our elevator boy to take us to the ground floor through a network of several elevators and the aid of specifically placed undercover knights, giving us a clear path to the exit. From then on, the outside will be our biggest challenge – but I digress, this is for Joseph to explain to you.”

Wheat spoke up, “I’ve devised a plan for all of us to escape using the tunnels and the elevator systems around the prison. If you two and the other five of us here will use the network of tunnels to exit at specific points bounded by two undercover knights each. In between these knights will be an elevator, and we will ride the elevator downward and follow through another network of tunnels, and another elevator hence, until we have reached the bottom. So long as our undercover knights are on shift, we should have no problems, but we have to be prepared for the worst – and all we can manage right now is hand-to-hand combat. I do not know their hours, but I believe they work in full-day shifts, so we should be fine on certain days of the week, specifically lunch days when we will perform the escape.

“The problem occurs, right now, when we exit. Nobody knows where the Black District is located in Lanford City – it’s not visible from any district due to the walls, and reports from all Railroad stations tell us that the Black District is not located anywhere in the five outer rings of the city. It could be outside the city, or it could be in the Orange District – which is highly unlikely given its small size. The White District is taken up by the city’s power plant, so that’s out of the question as well; I’m convinced we’re outside of the city limits, and will be forced to find a method of returning to Lanford, or simply fleeing as far as we can from the authorities.”

Graham rubbed his head – this was all incredibly convoluted. His entire life had been made for him, and so he was not used to things like prison, or jail breaking, or senseless and impossible machinations led by underground organization leaders. Already he was unsure who to trust in Lanford; if the knights would so readily beat and arrest him, why would there be any knight whom he could trust? And what was to say he could even trust Alex and Wheat, and Lavan and Fleming and the others? His head scratching went on forever – he was utterly lost in this conversation, and couldn’t for a moment imagine this plan working.

“I still want to know what my odd cell number means,” Graham said.

“I told you already that I have no idea. Joseph also doesn’t know… but we’ve tried to find out. There is no information other than that you miss the refueling, and I told you, in the cafeteria I believe, that the refueling is an event that you’re better off missing and even better off not knowing anything about.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just find a way to go myself. I mean, I’m already about to break out of this place – who’s to say I won’t coerce one of the undercover knights to let me go to the refueling? Tell me what it is.”

“All right, if you insist. But it isn’t pleasant. I will tell you of my first visit to the boiler chamber and what I saw within. Joseph, you’ll want to listen as well, as I have avoided telling you this also.” Alex sighed, then took in a deep breath and began.

* *  *   *    *     *      *       *        *          *          *         *        *       *      *     *    *   *  * *

“I was just arrested by a team of knights, a little over a year ago last week, and was as unfamiliar as everything as you two men are now; why you would wish to know the gruesome horror is beyond me, but I digress. This was a time when arrests were just beginning to step up, and the Black District was becoming more and more filled every day. Over the last few years, a tradition known as the refueling had developed, of which several reluctant prisoners informed me on our way to then more frequent lunches. We have it very bad these days – I hear in years past inmates received up to two meals per day, each day of the week, although it was the same disgusting slop we have now.

“Nevertheless, we had three meals per day twice per week when I arrived, and these were always moments of intense dread for nobody knew who the next few prisoners to participate in the ritual would be. It always happened in between the feeding days – an alarm bell would sound, our cell gates would open by some province of God, and prisoners would hesitate to leave their cages before finally submitting to the knights, who in many cases had to force prisoners to leave. I, who knew nothing of it at the time of my arrest, simply followed instructions and hoped to remain alive. I’ve been lucky thus far, but I don’t know how much longer I will last, and you will see why.

“We were led to the elevators, which shot us upward to near the top of this wretched tower – for it indeed only goes so high, although to you it must seem endless – and packed into a large auditorium without seats. We all stood, tightly packed into the room, which was smaller than the cafeteria, and introduced to a very large cauldron filled with a thick, hot stew that bubbled out of the bowl and struck several prisoners close enough to it, burning them immensely and leaving them in excruciating pain. The guards did nothing for these men, only watched them squirm – several guards laughed at those who were burned, finding it funny that scum such as us were so vulnerable to a substance hot as lava.

“It was after a good half hour that a large, muscular knight shouted across the room for the chatter amongst the prisoners to cease at once, and I heard the room become more quiet than the darkest, emptiest caves. The whole room was focused solely on the cauldron, which rested on a platform high above us – there was a set of stairs to its right, and an exit thereafter through which workers brought in several filled brown sacks. The muscular man picked up one of the sacks and said garble that I could not understand through the reverberation of the room, and to this day still can barely decipher, but I do clearly remember him picking up the sack and holding it up for all of us to see.

“I, who was in the back of the room at the time, squinted to get a glimpse of the large brown sack, hoping to see what the fuss was all about when the muscular knight suddenly and forcefully threw the bag into the air. It flew high above the cauldron, and its contents slipped out in stop-motion time to my eyes.

“I saw first the head of a man exit the sack – a dead man, but still a man. Then the rest of his body left the sack and he plummeted into the lava substance with great force. At once the entire corpse caught aflame, and lava splattered all over the prisoners in the front, and as you have now heard being at the front of this assembly is the greatest misfortune of all, for it means you shall suffer indescribable burns from scalding lava. I, luckily, have never had such a misfortune, but witnessing the event alone is enough.

“The muscular knight proceeded to read a paper statement of the man’s will and testament, which included, as I interpreted with the help of several other prisoners, the man’s cremation for ‘the good of his country’. In effect, we were told that this dead man desired his body to be cremated in order to power the kitchens and elevators and gadgetry all around the prison, and that we should pray for his safe passage to heaven as one of the most noble men alive.

“This proceeded for two other dead persons, a male and a female, both supposedly incredibly wealthy folk who happened to pass away the day before. I have come to learn that incredibly patriotic folk often put in their wills that they want their bodies donated to the government for use as fuel, and I never thought much of that practice – I actually prefer it to coal, and I believe graves are useless if a perfectly fine body can provide us with much needed steam, but the prison was clearly not content simply cremating bodies on request as an alternative fuel.

“Once the bags were extinguished and there was no longer any will or testament left to read to us, and once we had been thoroughly reminded that those who had just been cremated were our moral and social superiors on every possible level, the muscular knight called for the entire room to split down the middle. Hastily everybody did so, for to not do so would invoke a painful beating from the crimson knights guarding the edges of the room. I was pushed even closer to several grotesque and dirty prisoners, though I now am grotesque and dirty, not to mention thin and weak.

“Through this newly formed center aisle several knights in black armor led two of the scrawniest and weakest prisoners I had ever seen up to the front. The muscular knight looked at them with intense disapproval – even from the back of the room this was apparent – and called for the first of them to join him up on the stage to put on a good show.

“The musical knight laughed maniacally and stared at the prisoner, then shook his head. ‘With great regret,’ he began, ‘I inform you all that this prisoner has been selected to take place in the rite of the refueling.’ The prisoner, who was now attempting to escape, was withheld by the muscular knight’s right arm – he detained a man with only one arm! – then promptly beaten with the other arm as a form of sedation. His face was pouring tears; it was clear he knew that his time on Talos was up, and I myself felt the sting of this realization as well. His cries were so melancholy that it seemed his jaw would fall right off if he frowned any further, and all of us collectively turned away – except me, who wanted to bear witness to the man’s fate. I must admit it was the only time I have ever looked.

“Still grasping the prisoner’s chains, the muscular knight now shouted, with great gusto, ‘Thank this man a thousand times over before you sleep tonight, for he is the only reason you will have food in two days’ time! Thank him when you awaken, for his is the only reason your elevators will operate! While he burns in the depths of hell, you scum shall live fueled only by the sins of your peers. It is for your sins that this man will now die. Farewell!’

“With that, the muscular knight, who I will now refer to as the executioner, held the living prisoner over the open cauldron for a good ten seconds, and then began, to my disbelief, to lower him in! I closed my eyes, but could not resist opening, and I witnessed the executioner release the prisoner’s chains and let him drop entirely into the cauldron. His screams were louder than ever before, and a high shrill filled the room, and all around me prisoners shivered in fear. At last the man’s screams reverberated through the room one final time, and the he was fully submerged in the lava. We were told that his body melted and he suffered the worst possible agony, because he was the weakest among us and deserved to die swiftly. Several crimson knights spoke amongst themselves, and I overheard them saying how just a death this was for the man, who supposedly would have died slowly and painfully over the next few weeks of starvation!

“From this point forward I shut my eyes and ears as the executioner repeated his previous statements and promptly disposed of the next prisoner. Once this was done, we all solemnly reported back to our cells, and on the way back I conversed with one veteran prisoner to discover that the entire prison was fueled by bodies alone – no coal, no steam, but some strange method to fuel a prison by human flesh! In shock I returned to my cell and very nearly sucked my thumb like a baby, and make a vow to consume as much food as possible so that I would never look the weakest and be the next subjected to death. At that is why I implore both of you to keep your strengths up – the healthier you are, the less likely it is you will be destroyed. They keep you alive here for one purpose only: You are cattle, bred to be used as fuel that will ultimately power the prison so that the knights can breed more of you to be used as fuel. And I fear that if we remain in this prison any longer, they may subject you to this death regardless of your condition. In recent weeks I have seen several of my companions gone missing, never to return, and it is with a heavy heart that I say I believe they were murdered outside of the horrific refueling. I may go so far as to say I now believe the refueling is a formality, and they confiscate prisoners every day in growing numbers to make room for the uncountable numbers of new inmates arriving.

“And that is the refueling. I pray that both of you never have to experience it, but I am kidding myself – as special cases you two may be, I have my doubts that you will remain exempt from attending a refueling forever. And when you are forced to go, one day, possibly before we attempt to escape, avoid the front and don’t face forward.”

* *  *   *    *     *      *       *        *          *          *         *        *       *      *     *    *   *  * *

Graham and Wheat were both silent after Alex’s speech, and they concluded that now was as best a time as ever to end the discussion, and it was stated they would meet up again next lunchtime. Alex planned to use the tunnel networks for the rest of that night to go and inform the rest of Station A that the plan would be executed on that next lunchtime, and that they would all meet in the cafeteria at a certain table and go up the elevator and through the passageways together.

Alex first led Graham back to his cell, where he promised to tell Graham if he found out anything about his and Wheat’s special imprisonment circumstances, but at the moment had to leave with much haste and inform the others of the plan, which would happen whether they met at the table or not. Alex was dead-set on escaping, and anybody who didn’t meet at the table come next lunchtime would be left behind to escape on their own. Graham’s cell was still open; he was surprised some other prisoner hadn’t taken it up. As soon as he entered into the cell the cage slammed shut. It was dark outside, and Graham realized he’d completely lost track of time while conversing with Alex and Wheat.

When Graham went to reach for his tiny slips of paper, he noticed that they were not where he’d left them. After extensive searching, he couldn’t find any of them at all, and thought that a knight must have taken them. Alex’s story now scared him half to death, and he worried that the discovery of those drawings would draw enough attention to Graham to make him a candidate for the next refueling. A robot suddenly clunked by and made excessive noise; it was the robot he’d seen a while back grouped with one of the knights. It spewed steam at regular intervals and its massive gears and pipes twisted and warped with every step – it must have weighed several tons.

Strangest of all was the inclusion of several organic components into the machine – what looked like tendons and human fibers, possibly donated by more patriotic wealthy citizens like those described in Alex’s tale, were attached to the robot in specific places, giving it extra mobility and flexibility. The robot, which Graham realized shortly had its own sentience, turned and faced Graham’s cell. Through Lamp Sphere eyes it stared at Graham, and he could have sworn it tilted its head at one moment in curiosity. On its chest was a tag with an alphanumeric sequence that read “0×18015DANIL”, which Graham could read clearly as the robot took a step closer.

He reached out of his cell to touch the robot; it was cool on the tag, but the piped were scalding hot, filled with steam being pumped and recycled through a Carnot Engine at its heart. At this action, the robot clumsily turned and faced forward, then continued its way up the spiral hallway.

Graham slept less peacefully than before. His fears about the Black District had been magnified a thousand fold by Alex’s tale, and he could not wait for the day that he and the other Station A residents would break out. He believed in Alex’s plan and knew that with effort they might be able to pull it off, as malicious as the knights were, and it was only this belief that enabled him to sleep with ay semblance of peace.
He was happy that he did not need to attend the next refueling, but still didn’t have a clue why he was exempt, which shook him even more – he began to theorize that he was a special prisoner set on reserve for when they could not select a proper candidate to be exterminated, but this turned out to be untrue; the knights seemed to take proper care of him, made sure that he had always gotten a hot meal. He soon learned that he could request one bowl of food per day from a knight to be brought directly to his cell, a luxury that other prisoners whined for, but that Graham embraced wholeheartedly. He ate with pleasure, not knowing what was soon to come, as the knights looked on at him with similar emotions.

Finally, the day of the breakout came, and Graham was beyond apprehensive as he worked his way down to the cafeteria. Luckily, his leg had now almost fully healed and he no longer required his cane to move quickly. He found the specific table that Alex had told him to meet at and sat down. All of his friends were there, everyone he had ever known in Lanford City, with the happy exception of Jessica Ames, who Graham had pined for in her absence and wished that she was still safe in the laboratory as she had been those weeks ago when he was first arrested.

Together they all exchanged sad looks and hopeful faces as they prepared to take the ultimate risk, aware that if they failed it could easily cost them their lives. No words were spoken amongst the friends; everything had been agreed upon. Alex looked at everyone near the end of the meal – nobody in the group had taken a bite of gruel the entire time – and nodded to affirm that he was prepared to go along with the plan in several minutes. Everyone nodded back; Graham was reluctant and unsure, but eventually nodded as well.

When the end of lunch bell rang, they all stood up quickly in unison and worked their way towards the elevator, careful not to get lost in the crowd. At last they reached the elevator and were able to get on together, which Alex called a stroke of dumb luck. But when Graham looked to see whom the elevator operator was, it was that same elevator boy who he’d seen now twice, working the elevator in their favor. It was clear to Graham now that this man worked for the Underground Railroad, appearing and disappearing at regular intervals to ensure that station members were safe. He, like all staff in the prison, was armed with at least one type of weapon – in his case, a simple steam gun, but at least it was something.

From there they moved to the passageway and slipped through undetected; even if prisoners had noticed, they would never have reported an escape attempt, for all of them wanted at least one to succeed so that they might try their hands at it.

They followed the passage and made a different turn than Graham and Alex had to get to Wheat – instead, all seven of them moved along a path that sloped downward; they were going down several floors without the use of an elevator.

“After we exit, we should have access to the elevator on this floor – by now the prisoners are back in their cells, so there shouldn’t be any riots either.”

They exited the tunnel and hastily made their way to the elevator, where Graham saw a crimson knight and panicked, but calmed down when he noticed they were all promptly ignored by this undercover operative. The elevator opened; inside was another cheery elevator boy – he looked just the same as the other one, but his hair was a different color. This cheery elevator boy lowered them several more floors, and they entered from that floor another passageway, which led them down to another elevator. This process repeated several times and they were fortunate enough each time to be surrounded, as Alex had told them, by knights affiliated with the Railroad.

Graham was astounded – they were almost at the bottom floor and had not been caught! Or so said Alex, who was beginning to spread the largest grin of the group.

It was at the bottom floor where troubles occurred. Graham had noticed that at each elevator the operator had given up his gun to one member of the group, but there were not enough to go around. Without arms Graham felt helpless, and when the alarms sounded he felt as if he’d already been shot dead.

Apparently, one of the so-called undercover knights had ratted them out – and received a hefty promotion in the process.

Faced with the entrance of the prison at last, the seven prisoners were confounded. Should they run to the exit and risk their lives, or go quietly with their pursuers, who would surely kill them anyway? Realizing these odds at once, the group dashed out the entrance – two gigantic metal gates that were open at the moment to deliver more prisoners.

None of them had ever seen the entrance from the outside – a gigantic stoop stretching for hundreds of meters approached the entrance to the Black District, which was a massive cylindrical structure that towered above everything else in sight – with the exception of the building that it was attached to.

Everybody except Graham was frozen at this sight, for now they knew where they were – the top of the cylindrical structure known as the Black District Prison was crowned with one of the massive pipes Graham had witnessed from afar before his arrest. This pipe, in turn, connected to a much grander structure: The power plant at the center of the city. And what they all soon realized was that this Black District was only one of several silos that surrounded the power planet.

“Good Lord,” Lavan said. “We’re inside the White District!” Without moving, without even talking, the group collectively knew that the refueling efforts did indeed power the prison, but the prison in turn was powering something greater: The power plant at the center of Lanford City.

That, in turn, provided steam to the metropolis at large.

All at once the group realized the source of power that the city chose to use – eventually Graham also realized this truth. That the ash and soot carried overseas was not burnt coal. That the ash forest was not really soot. That this was how the Lanford government regulated its power and technology: through the systematic killing of its residents. And, at this revelation, Graham doubled over and vomited, and wished he had figured out a way to home sooner, not knowing that his actions in attempting to escape had actually brought him closer to the solution.

However his vomiting, while unavoidable, proved fatal. Knights had already begun to surround the stupefied group of seven prisoners, who had not moved an inch from about halfway down the massive stoop. And once they were surrounded, they were arrested with great force. Each knight around them withdrew one of the strange taser-like devices from a belt sheath, and activated it. At once each individual Station A resident was surrounded by blinding blue light that shocked them painfully and sedated them into unconsciousness. They were then scooped up like dead mice, each person carried to a separate location inside this gravity-defying blue bubble.

* *  *   *    *     *      *       *        *          *          *         *        *       *      *     *    *   *  * *

When Graham awoke he was fastened to a wall at each limb in a pristine white room that seemed unreal. In front of him was a wide pane of recently washed glass that overlooked from high above a long room with a cauldron at one end – the boiler room. Hanging adjacent to him on the wall in the same fashion was Wheat, still unconscious. A strange device in the corner of the room followed their every movement – Graham noticed it and thought it was a security camera, but was smart enough to know that such cameras did not exist in Talos.

The boiler room glowed an intense bright red; it was almost difficult to make out what was inside with the exception of the even brighter cauldron of lava at the very end of the room. The room’s ceiling was filled with vents that would absorb the steam let off by a human being’s extermination, as well as the sweat from prisoners’ heated bodies in the room. The boiler room, in effect, was well equipped to absorb power for Lanford as possible – every step had been taken to ensure that any steam, any energy at all, that entered the room did not leave.

Wheat stirred, and Graham at once called out to him, “Joseph! Are you okay?”

Wheat’s misty eyes looked at Graham. “Where… where are we? Ow, my fucking head!” Wheat tried to move his hand to his head but could not; it was fastened to the wall tightly and would not budge. “This doesn’t look like any room I’ve ever seen.”

The device in the corner of the room shifted and moved along its two-dimensional axle.

“I don’t know, but look through that window.”

Wheat looked through and saw the boiler room just as Alex had described it, and together they witnessed a new event: prisoners flooding en masse into the room for an emergency refueling. An aluminum doorknob across the room turned; at the same time, Graham’s heart sank in anticipation of what was about to occur. He knew he and Wheat were the next to be sacrificed – that this pristine white room was meant to give them their one and only taste of heaven before being sent down into the boiler room, and thence to hell.

He was very wrong.

At once the door swung open, and an older man, grey haired and about the same height as Graham, hobbled in, clutching a cane that resembled the one Graham had been given by the knights. He calmly strutted over to the two men strapped to the wall, and smiled at them, then turned to face the boiler room, now teeming with apprehensive prisoners. “Pleasant little bunch, aren’t they?” he asked the two men, smiling.

“What are you going to do to us?” Wheat and Graham asked, together.

“Oh, nothing just yet, my children—”

“Don’t call us children,” Graham said angrily.

“Oh, but you are children,” the mystery elder said, “in comparison to me! You see, I’m quite old. But that doesn’t stop me from doing all of the wonderful things I’ve done with my life. It’s been many years since my inception, and still I never get tired of watching them squirm down there – all so insignificant, unaware that when they die they do so for a much greater purpose.” He made some clicking noises with his mouth, as if to say, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, what a shame!” and shook his head to and fro.

“What are you going to do to us?” Graham asked again.

“My, how rude! You have no manners, child. I install this wonderful screen for you, and not a word of gratitude. I would have prepared popcorn if I knew I would have guests today, though I suppose I did know I would have guests today – so I should have prepared popcorn! I’m becoming quite forgetful, you see, so forgive me. Ah, it is starting – look below!”

The two men followed the old man’s gaze to the boiler room below, forced to sit through the most terrifying show of their short lives.

Word Count: 46,698

After an hour of lying there, sobbing and shunning himself, Graham mustered the energy to attempt to stand up. There was immense pain, and he wished he had some sort of propping device, but the only object in the room was the bed – there wasn’t even a toilet. The pain in Graham’s leg, however, was too much; he felt around the area to confirm if it was broken, and luckily could feel no broken bones. It would heal in a few days, he gathered, as would the pain in his chest. In the meantime, he would have enjoyed the company of a cane, remembering President Ford’s image from his dream.

It was several more hours before another knight passed by his cell. There was nobody to talk to in the Black District, not even people in cells across the hall – for there was no hall to cross. Outside of Graham’s cell was a narrow passageway that spiraled into nowhere, trapping him within solitary confinement. He could hear people in the adjacent cells speaking, but he did not know whom to, since there was nobody around, and cells were spaced too far apart to clearly speak with other prisoners. Several times Graham ignored the pain in his chest and tried to shout, from on top of his bed, out into the hallway in hopes someone would hear – but the other prisoners saw it as routine tortured screaming, and did not respond.

In the end, Graham wasn’t even sure if the prisoners heard his words. They must have only heard the garbled screaming of a madman who had lost everything; Graham was sure he would never see Ames, Wheat, Curie, his family – whether he loved them or not – ever again. Saddened, he wet his mattress with tears until lunchtime.

At lunchtime a black knight passed him by, followed by a bulky bipedal clockwork robot made with several organic components. The robot looked like a protective military robot, with no neck and heavy armor. Graham reckoned that if it had enough room to move around, it would be holding the equivalent of a Talos machine gun – or perhaps the machine guns were already built into the monstrous machine. The Black Knight tossed an object into the room. Graham, still weak and in pain, did not want to leave his bed to find out what it was.

He looked out into the middle of his cell and saw his salvation – a cane. It was a plain wooden cane with a bulb-shaped brass tip and wooden stick, with no rubber bottom to grasp hold of the floor, but it was his cane, and he crawled over to the cane, carefully lowering his body onto the cold floor once more. Once he had a hold of the cane, he used the bed to help him stand up, and the cane to help him remain standing, putting almost no pressure on his leg. He must have pitied me, Graham thought. That or he wants me to get well for another reason.

Graham did not know that the knights were working to keep him alive as long as possible; he was special to them, just as every prisoner in the Black District was special. In fact, every human being in Lanford, the city and the continent, was exceedingly special to the knights, for they served a greater purpose that Graham only began to learn as time went by.

During the middle of the day, when the sun was at its zenith and the hot air flowed free