A series of staccato dots and dashes, shrill and sonorous in their patterned repetition, falls flatly against the worn, muddied canvas of an overstretched tent. These reverberant clacks of Morse Code emanate from the metal sounder of a telegraph machine, which lies atop the splintered, cluttered surface of a solitary wooden desk. The dim, crimson flame of a gas lantern illuminates a consortium of small tools and ink-stained papers blotted betwixt the scrawled translation of the aural code. Hunched and straining her abyssal eyes through the somnolent, wavering shadows extruding from the draped recesses of the tent, a sole engineer sits. She listens and scribbles methodically, the sinuous, raven strands of her frayed hair curling about a narrow finger on her listless right hand. As blackness pours from the stiffly uniformed back of the distracted engineer, two parallel, indented treads caked in copper silt roll beyond the flap threshold of the tent.
An automaton enters.
Painted in the pitch of obfuscating darkness, the machine, with slow, deliberate precision, trudges behind the occupied engineer and settles beside a sunken-in, cloth cot. A blue flash, effulgent in the gloom, emits with sudden intensity from a small bulb inset within its domed, metal skull.
The engineer flinches violently, her tremulous left hand instinctually grabbing for the navy cap slipping precariously from amidst the tangle of her wiry black hair. Her hat secured expeditiously with military exactness, she then grasps the lantern and turns to scout for the source of the lurid light.
The meek, red gleam of the lantern diffuses against the dulled surface of the automaton.
Pronounced in the comingling of colored suffusions, its leaden, cylindrical torso is rutted with striated scratches, and the rusted rivets lining its seams are contorted and loosened across its heavy frame.
The timorous composure of the engineer relaxes at the sight of the wearied machine as she kneels, pen and notebook now on hand, to face the automaton at the height of its stature. Her deep complexion appears ethereally wan in the sapphire gaze of the sole bulb, and the impenetrable blackness of her eyes mirrors the hollow, cavernous socket where a second bulb was once set. She leans toward a small, conical mouthpiece screwed to the automaton’s chest and begins an orated reply.
“Copy. Start transmission.”
Syncopated clicks, metallic and clangorous, vibrate from within the cavity of the automaton.
She translates:
-To Lead Telegraph Engineer (L.T.E) Berenice Turner 11/03/1902
“We are requesting your services to escort this automaton to coordinates 25˚ 33’ 0” S / 28˚ 11’ 0”E for repairs. Will signal with further instruction. Respond with haste.”
-Telegraphist Cecil Tregennis for Macluto Telautomatics, Main Station
“Affirmed.”
The engineer rises, resting the meager weight of her frail frame against the clouded, opaque steel of the automaton’s hemispherical head. Beginning to undo the tenuous knots and splitting threads of the mis-matched buttons aligning the creases of her sun-bleached navy uniform, she momentarily stares back at the automaton. It remains unmoving. Quizzical apprehension assuaged, she proceeds to remove the formal affects of her assigned raiment until naught of it remains save prosaic cloth underclothes and her silver-trimmed, navy cap. She rests her garments on the desk and slouches into the deepening concavity of the stretched, cot fabric. The knob of the lantern is turned, and the quivering flame is stifled; in deference, the lone bulb flickers for a moment, fades gently into the expanding gloom, and finally dies.
***
Pale hues of the inchoate morning scatter amongst the laden haze settling into a damp, capacious valley. A penetrating knell pierces the stillness, awakening an encampment of soldiers from the encumbrance of sheltered slumber. The assemblage emerges from their tents and disperses about the bivouac like dissipating mist amidst the rising cacophony of indistinct orders and meretricious chatter.
Standing in the periphery of the camp, the engineer squints against the incident glow of the rising sun that reflects off the dew clinging to the few, obdurate blades of heavily trodden, dying grass. The automaton trudges with imperturbable constancy behind her, its treads leaving a patterned impaction in its wake.
She turns around.
“Follow closely.”
The laminar stream of a quite breeze propagates a few ripples across the garish, silver volutes and swirls sewn into the dark blue fabric of a dignified flag. Passing armed guards and the barrel of a wagon-mounted cannon, coated in a film of pewter powder, the engineer and the automaton encroach the end of the encampment and cross into the silence of the sleeping veld beyond. As the two progress through the hacked brush and trampled path formed along the natural curve of the sunlit valley, they can barely discern the gaudy flag, still flapping proudly in the distance.
***
In the topaz glare of the high-angled sun, the low-lying brush lining the advancing plains shimmer with flecks of golden radiance. Alight in the glow of the incandescent afternoon, crumbling mountaintops dotted in a pointillistic palette of smattered treetops appear to fade inexorably into the distance. Clumps of iron-dense silt stick to the patched leather sides of her high-laced boots as the engineer marches with a strident pace atop the amenable ground. Bellows of russet grit blown by temperate gusts brush against the twisted rivets and rusted joints of the automaton’s two, bent, arm-like appendages.
It follows at her heels.
Reflected through the prismatic cloud of vaporous air, a sudden gleam from the sole bulb tinges the surrounding area in a radial profusion of cerulean light.
The engineer kneels before the automaton, her wiry fingers searching the depths of a muddied knapsack she had been carrying for her notebook and pen.
“Copy. Start transmission.”
She translates:
“Refrain from opening the internal cavity and disturbing its delicate mechanisms. Adjustments to be made only if communication functions have ceased.”
A questioning intensity flares momentarily in her charcoal eyes, and the contortion of uncertainty lining her appearance is exaggerated in its reflection in the fragile, rounded glass of the automaton’s lone bulb. She blinks away her perambulating thoughts and raises, turning her back to the automaton and resuming her unwavering persistence in their commanded journey.
It follows in her wake.
***
Purple hues of the crepuscular sky are fretted with ruby fires as the sun sinks with quiet lassitude beneath the horizon. In the stillness of the encroaching night, flickering flames chew euphoniously upon the withered and splintered sticks that lie crackling in a pile before the taut, knotted laces of the engineer’s high boots. She scoops sloughing contents of a tin can between her parted, dry lips, while the automaton rests at her side, the outline of its metallic frame silhouetted by the resplendence of the burning embers.
A stark sound interrupts their silent repose.
Without pause or hesitancy, the familiar echoing clangor of Morse Code rattles from the automaton, and the engineer, in short reply, clamors for her concealed notebook and pen.
“Wait, hold on! …Mr. Tregennis, please re-transmit your previous message.”
The clash of the internal iron armature ceases, and the engineer waits in prepared anticipation of its resumption. The noise refuses to repeat.
“Damn it.” She mulls restlessly, eyes closed, the toe of her left boot striking the compacted earth beneath it out of mindless agitation. “D... Diverting…” Sequences of dots and dashes begin to reconstruct from her memory, and she parses each resonant, hollow sound, translating the series of legato and staccato notes until a single message precipitates.
“‘Diverting our course five kilometers west will yield an intersection with a mining city. We can find temporary respite there.’”
Incredulous, the engineer pauses, the shallow creases of her sharp lineaments contorting in a contradictory expression of skepticism and certainty.
“No, that’s… far too informal. Though accurate, I’m fairly sure…”
Looking up from under the lowered bridge of her cap, her furrowed visage greets its warped, blurred equal staring back from the curved anterior plates of the automaton. She relinquishes her gaze, shakes off her consternation, and reaches for her abandoned tin can.
Wavering ribbons of smoke curl and intermingle as they trace upwards from the amber fires, rising in languid columns until the ashen plumes are lost amongst the enveloping turbidity of low-lying clouds.
***
A shrill exhalated sigh from a passing train sends screeching birds scattering into the thin layer of stratus clouds hanging deep into the leaden firmament. From a jagged precipice of tumbled, jutting stones, the engineer and the automaton visually follow the jettisoned puffs of coal-fired steam as they escape from the clinging film of fog that suffuse the sifting fields in the distance. Emergent from the darkening, somber pall of haze beneath, a shrouded city of blackened, broken plaster is partially entombed in the piles of maroon soil displaced by heavy, craterous indentations slammed against the streets and lined buildings. From afar, the engineer notices heavy armaments encircling the remains of the city’s walls that rise like headstones from the settled dust.
A clash of ringing Code pierces her errant, desultory thoughts. Steadying her cap against the force of her timorous recoiling, she twists her frame uncomfortably to face the automaton.
She translates aloud:
“Accessibility of nearby quarries has not been compromised in spite of recent tribulations in their propinquity.”
In a brazen masking of sudden trepidation, she responds with sardonic flippancy, “Mind explaining how you knew what I was looking at, Mr. Tregennis?”
Silence is the only response she receives.
“Never mind.”
The engineer crosses her arms into the stiffened folds of her uniform, maintaining a stance of resolution in a facsimile display of her former composure. In a barely perceptible, rhetorical utterance, she retorts, “I hadn’t realized it was such a priority for us to protect these mines specifically.”
“Ionium’s military utility has been recognized since-”
“So they found it here, too. I see…” An inscrutable expression is cast across the growing pallidity of her sunken cheeks, as the black depths of her eyes glide with crawling viscosity along the rail line like thick, poured oil.
The train’s breaks sputter and hiss as the weighted iron wheels scrape against the flecks of rust flaking off the tracks, and it stops, slowly, resentfully, with a final, deafening whine.
***
Quivering limply as its hangs in the stagnant, damp air, a single flag, pearlescent with threads of silver and navy, rises in proud ostentation above the plaintive solemnity of the city lying beneath. A dull electrical fizzle accompanies the dimming of wired filaments encased in the cracked glass domes that surmount the few functional streetlamps. Refuse piles of fractured bricks and soot-smothered panes of shattered window glass clog the arterial pathways like the corpuscular globules of an inflicted malady. Bombardments of punctured holes emboss the tumbled fragments of the surviving brick facades, and the metallic remains of exploded shell casings rest, seeping, into the welcoming mud of their earthen graves.
Gruff, acetic soldiers grunt a solitary word of greeting to the engineer from atop the saddled backs of horses that plod, listless, at the sodden ground. She tugs at the brim of her cap in reply, and the guards glare, with surprise and scrutiny, at the mechanical being treading in servitude behind.
The clinging of the sounder, intrusive and sonorous, breaks the contemplative silence.
“I advise that we depart at your earliest convenience tomorrow morning. Delays will needlessly protract our journey.”
“Of course. We-…We.”
She stops. A single, emergent thought is struck in a flicker of incendiary ferocity, and it consumes her mind, growing, becoming more puissant and dominant and searing as the seconds pass until a fretful realization is illuminated through the obfuscation of doubt.
“I-I need to find a Telegraph Office. Wait here.”
The automaton obeys.
***
Spatulate droplets of turbulent rain pour from the dense accumulation of cumulus clouds gathering overhead. The passing inhabitants, wearied, with thin, translucent skin stretched across bulging bones, watch, as they scramble to shelter, the automaton stationed motionless in the unremitting storm.
Through the torrential mire of sloshing grime and flooding waves of rotting effluent, the engineer returns. Her face is sheen from an indistinguishable stippling of sweat and rain, and her blushed lineaments appear painted in a stroke of preternatural darkness that follows every angular edge, every hollow curve, every prematurely sunken line.
“Come with me. Now.”
It follows her out of the rain, where they convene, face to front, under an ornate steel balcony that stands incongruous, with its intact structure and spiraling ornamentation, against the crumbling city in the background. She opens her slack, drenched coat and removes a concealed device, which almost slips through her slick, damp fingers as she fidgets with tremulous anticipation.
She holds out her scavenged components before the automaton.
An iron bar rests in her cupped, narrow palms, wrapped in coils of fabric-coated copper wire and secured to a diminutive, voltaic cell in a crude circuit.
Her voice is shaken and strained, almost inaudible above the arrhythmic patterns of percussive rain and cymbal-thrashing thunder. “This is ludicrous, truly, but I-I need to know. It’s best to test these things empirically, so…If I’m not allowed to adjust this automaton’s inductance internally, perhaps temporary interference is permissible instead?”
Without waiting for its aural crash of coded assent, she kneels and presses the electromagnet gently with the sallow pads of her fingertips against the center of the automaton’s cylindrical chest. “In conjunction with the electromagnetic interference provided by the storm, this should compound the severance to the main station and Mr. Tregennis,” She reasons aloud, wiping a residual droplet of corroding rain as it drips down the front of the automaton.
“So, if I command an answer and no one, as expected, complies, then I was speaking directly to Mr. Tregennis this entire time. Alternatively, if I get a response, that means…” A meek rasp of stunted breath shudders her body as it escapes her shaking lips. “No. Automata can’t. The others couldn’t…”
The engineer falters.
Then, with brave impetuosity, she yells, “Where are we, right now? I command you to answer!”
Silence pervades. Her eyes burn with the black ferocity of struck flint. The automaton is still.
The metal armature falls.
A ringing thud, one after another, sounds.
“We are in the telegraph office of Kimasmith City, coordinates approximately 28° 33' 34" S / 29° 46' 50E”
She recoils, seizing in a galvanic shock of paralytic fear coursing through her wiry stature. A chill of cold realization wracks a shiver down her frozen frame, and she attempts to speak, the words crystalizing and transfixing her lower jaw in a position unnaturally agape.
“I-I was wrong, Mr. Tregennis s-somehow received it…T-This can’t prove…”
“A sample size of one is insufficient datum to formulate a defensible theory. However, in this instance, your hypothesis is correct.”