#zyborne clock

Sylus processed the words logically through his cranium. He cradled Zybourne's head in his lap, "Uncle Dr. Zybourne, what is it? What is going on with the egg? Why did you call me into this?" Sylus blushed and lowered his voice so only Zybourne could hear him, "What can I possibly do to help? I've never done anything."

Zybourne laughed and then coughed, as a causal result of his laughter, his injuries being exacerbated by the physical mechanism of laughter, which, as any intelligent Rasennian was aware, was nothing more than a sequence of chemical and physical actions taking place inside the body and not, as some older mystic scholars had surmised, a psychic activity relevant to emotion. "I'll answer...your first question first...*cough*... What 'it' is, is the very future of Rasenni, lad. There are things at work, things that have gone into motion, like the gearwork of a pocketwatch, that can no longer be halted. Malaprop knows some, but not the entirety, of what is at hand and will forego no effort to achieve his goals and cause what I believe will be a great catastrophe, greater than anything experienced during the War of Ascension."

Sylus' mind staggered. He had heard stories of the horrors inflicted upon innocent people during the Ascension Wars, and even more than that, had lived through them, though very young and only remembering vague impressions, had lived with the consequences - the death of his parents - ever since. What could Dr. Malaprop have in mind that could rival the heartless carnage of that great battle? Zybourne continued, "Yes, it is the Egg, Sylus, the Golden Egg. Not only the egg, but also the Clock. The egg. The Clock. The Key. The Passage. These are the ingredients, the pieces of this panoramic puzzle which you my dear boy, you and your friends must put together before Malaprop discovers its meaning."

Sylus didn't understand. "Uncle, I don't understand," Sylus said, expressing his incomprehension, "What do all those things mean? What is this all about?"

Zybourne coughed, and winced, a slight trickle of blood issued from his cracked lips. "Time. It's about time. Listen closely, Sylus, this is important. Maybe the most important thing anyone has ever told anyone, ever. You know how when playing pool the first move is a break? It's like that. Time is analogous to a pool game. It began with a big break, and then each ball, or era, is pocketed accordingly. Some balls backspin, others bank and crash into each other before being sunk. Some are unimportant, others of dire consequence, and some periods are the very 8-ball of history. But the cue, Sylus, he that holds the cue has control of how and more importantly WHEN each ball (era) is put into place.

"Allow me to elucidate further: You know how elephants walk tail-in-snout? Time works the same way. Each moment is connected, unless, using the device, one of the elephants, or eras, is eliminated and the preceding and following moments are then fused together in a chronosplice. Some elephants are large, some just children (though also large, in comparison with say, a human, but that is irrelevant and time is short), some elephants are leaders of the pack. Hence packyderms. Do you know what happens to a herd of Elephanti when the tail-snout line is disrupted? I assume you do, well, imagine that disruption on the scale of the time-time contiuum."

"You know when you put your loose coinage into a Chronosteam Gyrocurrency Sorter and it sorts it by pengies, dranickels, dimes, doublebits and silver dollars? Time works the same way. Each pengy is a second, each dranickel a minute, each dime an hour, each doublebit a day, and each silver dollar a year. What the golden egg does is an x-factor, a Bookian Spinel as it were, that the Sorter machine (time) rejects. Time is then resorted. But if one were so inclined to find a way to insert this Bookian Spinel into the currency of time... the results could be disasterous."

"A brief explanation: you know those puzzle games for children with the little holograph blocks that you push around and one block is empty but you have to arrange them to make a little picture? The picture is history as you know it, the blocks are eras, and the egg reconfigures the puzzle. Time works that way..." Zybourne coughed and sputtered more, his frail body wracked with what Sylus imagined were death agonies.

"Uncle hold on, don't die! Please, what do you mean!"

Zybourne caught his breath and looked Sylus sternly in the eye. "Sylus have you heard nothing of what I've said? I will try to make it clearer but my time is short, I'm afraid, and soon I will have to... take my leave. This is the utmost truth behind the clock, Sylus: When the object enters the timestream, time begins to correct itself. Let me use this example: Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff. Time works the same way."

Sylus began to turn pale, and dizzy. He quickly found a chair and used the magazine (that he had picked up earlier and was subsequently still clutching) to fan himself. "Well, there must be a way around this. There must be." He said, even though he knew he was lying to himself. All of them looked as if they had just became very ill. "Doctor, you understand if we do this, We will fade from existance as the timeline corrects itself." One of my colleagues said in the grimest manner I had ever heard him speak before.

Sylus supported himself against the bullet-marred wall of Zybourne’s laboratory, his hands spread, fingers strained, nails digging into the ferrosteel. His forehead, hot with disbelief, pressed against the coolness of the metal, a coolness he willed into his own burning intellect at this moment of unforeseen tragedy. He fought back the tears he knew wouldn’t come, refusing to look at the body on the floor behind him, the lifeless receptacle of the individual he had once called so fondly Uncle Doctor. Elsewhere in the room Nina wept openly in Scholtz’s arms, the older man looking around helplessly, bewildered, now and then attempting to smooth out Nina’s usually immaculate bob that was now disarrayed by her outburst of womanly grief. They were each isolated in their own spheres of mourning and rudely murdered hope, Sylus knew this, and wanted to rail against it, but was instantly crushed by the futility of it. Why even try, now that Dr. Zybourne, that eloquent philosopher of answers, science, and knowledge, was lying in a pool of his own blood and disjecta, just moments ago dead? Malaprop, Haagenbugen and CAPITAL--these were the answers now, the only possible outcomes were their domination and swift destruction of the Rasenni everyone else loved so much but that they only wanted to possess and, by possessing, destroy.

Through the door suddenly came Johnny, followed by Alex, and then by a behatted man with a metal leg that Sylus logically deduced was none other than Agent Dirk McLauren, the man with whom this whole disaster had begun.

“Sorry we’re late everybody,” Johnny said breathing heavily, dried blood caked around a contusion on his forehead. “How’s the old man doing?” No one said anything. He looked around the room, then in the middle of the room, at the floor. “Oh,” he said. “So . . . not good?”

Scholtz gently but firmly pushed Nina away from himself. “Johnny, oh bless, that these evil days should be mine. Zybourne’s dead, and here we are still living, and what’s old Scholtzy to do, without his grande dame to lead him along and send him aloft? I fear, I do, that I really scrummed the ruddy puddle on this one. There’s no getting around that, by me crackle, I deftly did scum the ruddy blooming puddle this time, ay me.”

“Aw Reg, don’t talk like that. We’ll get through this. We always have.” Johnny turned to Alex, but she only looked quietly at the remains of the man who so long ago had introduced her to Dirk and the rush of pleasure and excitement that was the Resistance. Seeing that she wasn’t going to answer, Johnny looked at Dirk. “C’mon Dirk, c’mon buddy, chin up, right? We got you out of that prison, we can do anything. You, me, and Reg, just like old times. Man, we’ll tear ‘em up again, just you see! Fathers lock up your daughters, sons lock up your mothers, Johnny and the boys are back in town and they’ll show that fat hog emperor and his metal-faced psycho what’s what! Dirk?” Dirk didn’t answer either.

Desperate now, Johnny looked around the room, his swaggerette resolutely clenched between his teeth. “Damn it, don’t all of you go plastisoft on me now! Not now damn it! Anybody? We all just gonna stand around yankin’ our drive shafts waiting in case old Doc’s corpse somehow jumps up and dances the quantum slide? Well I ain’t! That’s for mugs and stim-addled dimstreggs, not for Johnny fargin’ Fiveaces!”

“You’re right, Johnny. For once . . . you’re right.”

Johnny looked, surprised. The speaker was Sylus who, during Johnny’s speech, had slowly turned and been making his way to Dr. Zybourne’s body. “Well . . . thanks kid. That means a lot to me, right now at least.”

“Everybody,” Sylus began, “Uncle Dr. Zybourne was like a father to me, the father I never had, if you don’t count the father that was killed by CAPITAL, and the other father that Angruff tried, and failed, to be. He was also a grandfather and, yes, even an uncle. But most of all he was a doctor. And what is a doctor?” He surveyed the faces of his friends, all contortioned with grief. “A doctor is a man of science, intellectual exploration, and carefully considered principles. A man who sees beyond the mundane everyday humanity to the strange, spectacular geometry of the universe, the forces that order and direct the brief spans we deluded creatures count as our lives. A man who is calm, and detached, and who does not allow emotions to deter him from those actions that need to be done so that all may continue as it should continue, in such a way that rationality demands. Uncle Dr. Zybourne was such a man and now so am I. Before he died he gave me a ring and he told me to go to Bookworld, that it was my destiny, my path to greatness. And so that’s what I’m going to do. Because that’s what he would have wanted, and because that’s what makes sense.”

Nina raised her tear-stained face. “Sylus is right. Golly, is he ever! Sniff.”

Sylus sighed. “Right Nina, thank you. Anyway, I’m going to go to Bookworld. The rest of you should go to the following places: City5, the Ruins of Pharodi, and somewhere in this very city. That’s where we’ll find the components necessary to activate the Zybourne Clock and defeat the black wave of CAPITAL that threatens to subsume this world in chaos. Are you with me?”

Johnny blew a blue whorl of smoke into the air, his scarf streaming behind him, an ace idly twirling in one hand as with the other he scratched the stubble of days of ruggedly unshaving. “Yeah, kid, I’m with you. It’s time I taught Haagenbugen and Malaprop that givin’ ups one card I don’t keep in this deck o’ mine, or my name ain’t Johnny Fiveaces.” He smirked. “And it is.”

“Oh tosh!” Scholtz said. “Do you even have to ask, I say, do you honestly think it’s necessitary? This old bulldog’s sworn to the cause of the Resistance and so he’ll be, bliminy, until they lower his satiated corpus into Rasenni’s pleasant pastures green. R.F.M. Scholtz is on your side for now and for ever, love a cryptoduck!”

Nina blushed. “Sylus, it’s so strange to hear you talk like that like a . . . oh shucks, like a man! But I like it and I’ll go with you, you know that silly. It’ll be just like being kids again, except instead of just that dinky old stream, we’ll have the whole world at our feet! How exciting!” She twirled in place, throwing her hands in the air.

“As a deputized officer of the Prey Bark branch of the Rasenni Outland Rangers, it’s my sworn duty to protect this land and all who dwell within it, and this oath encompasses many actions, up to and including explicit support of rogue elements if it is the decided opinion of the Ranger in question that the current governing body is not acting within the best interests of its constituency. What I’m saying,” Alex said, “is that I guess I’ve got no choice but to come along since I hate Haagenbugen and CAPITAL just as much as any of you civilians. Besides I’ve got to keep an eye on this fugitive here,” she jerked a thumb at Johnny, “and maybe I’ll finally get my promotion from Sgt. Sogglup. I hope.”

“Well mister,” Dirk tugged the brim of his hat. “Dang if you don’t know your way around a word or two, and that ain’t just steam I’m blowing, no sir. I guess I’ll up and join this little quest directly, seein’ as I’m the one that dang got us in this jam in the first place. Why it’ll be a mite of pleasure to recover that Golden Egg again and I’m naturally much obliged to all of you for finally getting me out of prison because freedom is what keeps a man--”

Dirk’s sentence was interrupted by the outer wall of the dome blowing the fuck up. Vice-Admiral Werner Von Vaundermaus of the Iron Magistracy’s Air Force of CAPITAL descended through the post-explosion haze on a floating metal platform with a railing that he gripped in his leather-gloved hands. “Aha I hope I am not interrupting anything, like perhaps a funeral for zome dead zo-unt-zo doctor! Vee finally meet, Sylus Camgroove, Nina of Palestar, unt others, including Johnny Fiveaces and Scholtz whom I am already unfortunately acvainted vith! And vunce again, Dirk McLauren, vee see zere is nutzing vich you can possess zat I cannot then take away. Looking for this, schweinhunds?” He held aloft in his hand a gleaming obloid object, none other than the coveted Golden Egg itself, previously supposed to have been elsewhere in the city.

“Vaundermaus, you hawk-nosed sausage smoker!” Johnny yelled. “You got less than five seconds to give us that Egg or you’re getting’ a suicide king right in the schnitzel hole!”

Vaundermaus clucked his tongue. “Tut tut; manners, Herr Fiveaces. Not zo fast, eh? Vun, you are hardly vun to be making zee jokes about zee nose, unt two, I believe you have met my large schwartze friend before, no?” He nodded and Rama Kazorba stepped forward.

Alex leveled her gun at the bounty hunter. “Impossible. I saw him pinned to the wall with my own two eyes. Nothing could’ve survived that. Nothing.”

“Oh, but zumthing did. You see, I do many things viss my tinkerings. It only took vun or two small favors to convince Rama here to work for CAPITAL. Show zem, Rama, vut else I have done for you.” Vaundermaus smiled in anticipation.

Rama reached up with intense deliberation and pulled aside his scarf, revealing the encrossed mesh of a speaker melded onto his throat. “Oh baby you put me in a world of pain.” The deep bass voice throbbed out of the speaker in a frightening vibrato. “But you jus’ give me some time, chk, and we see if I can’t do the same for you, awww baby yeaaah. Say Raaaamaaa.” He smiled and hologramaphic words flashed across his platinum grill, blinking KAZORBA in bright blue neon as hot fire beats pumped out of the speaker, Rama nodding his head along with the rhythm.

(some big heroic speech where everyones says Let's Do This! and they gear up for a fight and then it would've immediately cut to the beginning of the next chapter with everyone beat up and imprisoned on Vaundermaus's ship the Ramspeed II)

“Aw shit…” Johnny said, rubbing the large bruise on the right ride of his face with the hand on the same side, which was in handcuffs. Sylus, Nina, Scholtz, Johnny, Dirk and Alex were all cuffed and laying on the dirty floor of a Malapropian holding cell. Johnny looked around squintingly, Vaundermaus’ guards having absconded with his slickshades. “Well,” Johnny thought inside his head, “looks like everyone’s all right, if not the worse for wear.” Johnny examined the holding cell. An invention of Malaprop’s, the cell had actually no bars or locks, but utilized EMP technology by channeling the natural electrostatic field everpresent in the diaphane and focusing it into paper thin EMPlasma barriers that could not be penetrated from either side, save for a Binano Laser, as everyone knew. Few were incarcerated in these devious cells and lived to tell about it. Johnny was one of the few.

He kicked at Scholtz’s foot, “Scholtz, wake up you bastard,” he said under his breath, with a lowered voice, quietly. Scholtz lolled his head and opened his non-mechano eye.

“Never take us alive!” Scholtz said loudly. His eye focused on Johnny, who raised his cuffed wrists, rolled around examining the room and rested back on Johnny. “I say,” Scholtz said, “apparently I was wrong!”

“Yeah, no kidding. Anyway we’re in a real picklig here. They got us all in this damn cell, which if you remember, ain’t exactly ripe for the breaking out of. On top of that they threw us in steamcuffs. A Rasennian LeaOgre couldn’t bust em empty handed. The rest of our little troupe still seem to be out of it. I guess we took quite a beatin’ from those CAPITAL goons. I don’t really remember.”

“A beating with a CAPITAL “B”!” Scholtz said wryly, making a pun.

“Now’s no time for jokes, brother, we gotta do somethin’ or we’re parggle slop.” Johnny retorted seriously.

“Is this the same cell they had us in during that whole Vaundermaus debacle, Jonathan? I don’t remember the milieu being quite so… vulgar,” Scholtz asked, attempting to dust off his bowler with his cuffed hands.

“Yeah well, it’s been a few years, ain’t it? Probably a handful of suckers been stored and disposed of since we… had that accident. Anyway looks like now the suckers are us,” Johnny said. He patted the pockets he could reach with his bound hands. “Damn, they even took my swags.”

From a corner of the room came a low moan. Alex sat up, her blonde hair fallen over her face. “Where are we?” she said through a tangle of hair.

“Glad you are with us, darling,” Scholtz began, “we are in his majesty Haagenbuugen’s keystone Ground-to-air Steamship, Ramspeed II. So named, as the Ramspeed I met an untimely fate due to... uncontrollable circumstances. As of now, we are probably sailing back to CAPITAL headquarters to await “trial” and a most brutal execution and dismemberment at the hands of CAPITAL Thundertroopers. Met a couple of them back in the old days, fun bunch if you’re on their nice list, but some rather naughty fellows if given orders to deal with you. One young man, his name was Bruce, he had a wonderful thing he used to do with a gyrobaton…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Johnny cut in, “Anyways. We’re in this cell, we’re all tied up, and if we don’t get outta here we’re gonna be dust. So wake up the brats and that damned MacLauren and let’s figure a way out of this mess.”

Scholtz promptly stood and began dusting himself off and arranging his various accessories and linens, straightening his hat and checking his multitudinous pockets.

Alex reached over and shook Sylus who woke up groggily from his unconsciousness with a purling gurgle.

“Bleagh…Ugh,” Sylus said.

Alex looked at him with a consternated look, disapproving of his lack of discipline.

“Up and at ‘em, kid,” she said, “And wake that other one too,” she continued, pointing at Nina, “I’m not a babysitter.” She then got to her feet by standing and walked over to where Dirk MacLauren lay against the far wall, the real one behind them, not one of the Malapropian EMPlasma walls, which would have destroyed him if he had been laying against it, which, fortunately for him, he was not.

Sylus blinked his eyes and tried to focus. “What… I mean where are we? Nina?” He shook Nina’s limp body. She stirred slightly and her eyelids twittered like a loose magnacanister. “Nina, Nina are you okay? It’s me, your friend Sylus, we grew up in Palestar together?!”

Johnny looked at Sylus. “She hain’t lost her damn memory, prat, she’s just unconscious. Now get her up on her pins and let’s get the hell outta this fix.”

Sylus blushed and helped Nina to her feet. “Where are we, Johnny?”

“Well kid, this is probably a big ol’ thrill for a country-bred huckster like you, but we’s on a Steamship. Unfortunately, this ain’t no City5 pleasure cruise, or even a steamcanoe jaunt down the Rex. This is a CAPITAL warship, the flagship warship, and they’re taking us back to the fortress for ‘questioning’ if you take my meaning. Scholtzy and I run into this Vaundermaus before and he ain’t no fan of ours. So start whatever gears you got in that skull grinding on how we’re gonna get outta here,” Johnny said, reaching for his swaggerettes, which he realized upon physical inspection were still not on his person but rather, more likely, in the confiscated contraband storage facility on the bottom floor of the steamship, along with all their weapons.

“A steamship…” Sylus mouthed wordlessly, “I’ve seen them flying far overhead, but right now, we’re actually on one?”

“Enjoy it now, kid. It ain’t gonna last long,” Johnny said laughingly, but with the kind of empty laugh that implies something not humorous.

Nina looked at Sylus with her eyes, “Sylus… it’s… we’ll be okay. I just know it.”

***

Somewhere, well above the polluted haze of the city, it was another beautiful day. The sun refracted down through the smoky clouds in a saffron hue, yellowed and redded. This saffron light glinted off the second hand as it swang up past the half hour mark and back towards its own origin, completing a circuit of time it began not long ago and soon would begin again. When it finally righted itself upright at the hour mark, the clock struck midday. This set off a raucous of noise that rose like a din down to the bustling city. The steam erupted violently from the open ends of the pipes which protruded outward from the clock. A loud whistle, announcing the arrival of noon, had sounded. The steam wispily snaked upward, through the light which was coming down through the haze. The large hands of the clock flickered and wavered as the steam passed through them, for they were holograms, projected from the enormous hologramographer mounted to the sleek metallic side of the spire.

There used to be real hands on the clock, but that was a long time ago, in an age long forgotten. Then, iron and wood were abundant. Now all that remained was this: the three dimensional light refracting holoparticles emitted regularly by the machine, giving the allusion of the original Chronospire, destroyed in the Ascension Wars before CAPITAL solidified its empire.

Far below, a man squinted upward, watching the midday steam ritual with a somewhat confused expression on his face.

"Midday already..." he said in a quaint, educated tone. "My...my...I really must be on my way."

Dirk MacLauren returned his gaze back down to those things that were in front of him: both down the lane, lined with venders and kiosks and to the task at hand which he disparately needed to accomplish. He patted softly the leather bag at his hip and looked around unsuspiciously.

"Pray, logic and chance, give me but a little more time undetected."

Dirk MacLauren (Ferrinus)

His prayer rose weakly in the air, mingling with the deep leaden circles of the tolling Chronospire. That done, Dirk set off down the street called, according to the old-style pitted street sign, Strass Magnus, his boots making soft leather noises on the uneven cobblestones, accompanied by a strange click and hiss whenever his anterior foot struck the stone. This burrough was a good area to be for someone moving culvertly under the enemy's nose: quiet, not meant for use of people driving steamcycles, autocarts, or other high-end mechinations, populated only by vendors in their ramshackle shacks and shoddy kiosks lining the side of the street hawking their wares, and the customers milling about busily lining the middle of the street Strass Magnus. Dirk could purposefully be lost himself here, as was what he wanted to be. He was one of the best, most discrete transporters, that's why Dr. Zybourne chose him for such an prominent mission.

As he advanced haltingly down the lane, he observed the sellers and buyers. An old woman offered fresh Warenni lake cabbage to a mother holding her child. Warenni lake cabbage, Dirk thought, my dear plasmic soul the things still available in the city of Capital! This must be why they call this city the City Where All Roads Meet Together As One. A strong-looking man shirtless except for an apron, wearing pants and iron boots, hacked at a chine of beefslab with a cleaver, its primitive steam motor chugging pleasantly, his muscle culture sweated and gleaming. One old man, grinning to show a number of four steel teeth in his gummy mouth, rocked back and forth working a threadlewheel with his feet. McLauren past them all, making like just another innocent citizen in the crowd, excusing himself with unremarkable "Sorry darling"s and "Pardon me"s. If only they knew.

But maybe they did? he considered. Any one of them could be an agent of CAPITAL. That old woman could be an assassin in an activated deluder screen. The mother could be likewise a spy, her baby actually a camera in swadding clothes. There was no reason reason the old man's threadlewheel wasn't a disguised EMP weapon. And that butcher, that thicknecked butcher? Easily two dwarf thralls in a humanistic mechsuit. Even the dog (Dirk had also saw a dog while he was observing) the dog possibly might be no dog at all, but a dog with a communicator emplanted in its canine brain, each wag of its tail against the cobbles transmitting datum to its fell masters. There was no telling what fever dreams Dr. Malaprop wrought in CAPITAL's whispered-about science labs, playing a seamstress God for his tyrant and miscreant superiors in their towering arcology mansions. But, No, Dirk reassured himself, he had made clean his escape, Dr. Zybourne had seen to that. He was still safely undetectable. He patted the leather pouch again and reached the end of the street.

The Dog Communicator (EvilKosh)

Now he had to choose; to his left the wider lainway broadened into the downtown area, meaning more people to cloak him but also more faces to see his identity. In front of McLauren was the entrance arch to one of the city of Capital's last remaining train stations. Opposite the direction of the downtown was uptown, deeper into the cityscape where he did not want to go. He needed to rest. His war wound was acting up to bother him, the place in his leg where during the War of Ascension (when CAPITAL had risen to power) an EMP bullet had lodged and discharged its crackling blue energy, incapacitating him for many weeks while medical doctors fitted him with then state-of-the-art steam parts and prostheses, now outdated of course. He needed to sit. He need to refuel his bummishing leg. So he went into the train station's massive entrance.

Inside, the train station's impressive architecture and curved glass ceiling crossed with black metal beams could be described as cathedralesque, if the Changing hadn't made such buildings and terms quaint obloquies. That old Zybourne, Dirk ideated, what has he gotten himself into this time? Posh, his health hasn't been well for a long while and yet he still sets out, or rather, he chuckled to his self, sets ME out on these crazy hush hush missions without barely telling me what is going on! Dirk's smirk settled into a bemused half-smile. He did care for the old man. He had been running errants for him for a long time. But he was worried. Not only about Dr. Zybourne's falling health, but about the state of things in general, as concerned the political maneuvers of CAPITAL and the insecurity of the surrounding territories. Ah, well, he thought again, it's for brighter minds then my own.

The steam engines blasted along, arriving, departing, each keeping to its schedule, obeying the law of time that governed the transports and all those aboard. It was like a giant body, each tunnel an artery, trains starting, stopping, pumping forward, the people flooding in and out of the brass doorways, and up, out into the streets. The locogyrator on each train amped up and whirred rapidly into a blur of motion in time. Dirk stared at all of this, feeling a weariness in his good leg. He espied a bronze bench, unoccupied and thought that though his mission were dire, he would rest for just a moment, enough to catch his breath and relive his joints and refuel his steam leg.

Dirk MacLauren's Steamleg (Ferrinus)

"By science!" Dirk swore, "Aging may be inevitable but why does it happen so quickly! Not ten years ago I could do this sort of thing in my sleep, and often did!"

He sat himself down on the bench and grasped the leather satchel close to this chest. Looking around wearily, he made sure no one suspicious was watching him. Very carefully, he thought, very carefully... His hand slowly dug through the flap of the bag, probing its innards. Very carefully...Gah, where is it? He groped blindly, keeping a lookout in all directions. Finally he stopped and a smile found his face. Aha! He recoiled his arm slowly, keeping the pouch pressed closely to his body. As his fingertips withdrew into sight, a small hard candy in a red wrapper was held tightly between them. He unwrapped the candy with relish, looking at it greedily. Dirk had a sweet tooth and was glad he managed to smuggle some of the Butterstream Spirals into his bag before he left. He focused on the candy, anticipating its dropping into his mouth. "It truly is the little things in li-huh?"

Dirk At The Train Station (theinhko)

His eyes racked focus to a young girl standing in front of him. She had certainly snuck up on him! He looked around anxiously but did not see any other people, save those hurrying in and out of the trains, the obsequious masses.

"Hi Mister." She said in a small voice, fitting her frame. Her wide doe eyes stared up at him. The candy hovered in midair, his mouth agape, waiting for it to fall. It tumbled out of his fingers right as he began to speak-

"Hello darling, wh-cough-bleaaough!!" The candy slipped into his throat and he choked on it. The girl took a step back, frightened. After a mighty effort he managed to dislodge the lozenge from his airway and back into his mouth. He braced himself on the bench and caught his breath.

"Are you okay?" the girl asked.

"Yes, yes...I'm fine, thank you." He was sweating a little.

"Ummm... do you think I could have one of those? We don't get candies like that here," she inquired forlornly in a sad voice. He raised his eyebrows, as one does when surprised. He thought they had everything here in Capital. He knew that the Buttersteam company was located outside of Capital, but he figured they imported everything. He recalled that they were once called Buttersteam Spirals, named after the device used to make them, the SteamButterer, and the company which made it, The Buttersteam Company. Then, as always happens with technology, the Steambutterer was replaced by the Streambutterer, which still ran on steam, but differently, and was still made by Buttersteam Co. His brow furrowed.

An ad for Butterstream Spirals (hernando)

"You don't have these here?" He asked. She shook her head mournfully. He looked around again to make sure nobody was watching. He looked again at the girl. She was perhaps eleven or twelve, her unblemished skin gleamed pale alabaster when all else radiated the reflection of the harsh station lighting. Her features, soft and fragile seemed to rise above the harsh surroundings. He sensed an innocence, a frailty that appealed to some part of his own hidden nature. She just looked at him quietly, with trusting wide eyes, her thin frame seemingly unanchored to the floor as if the nearer trains passing might blow her away. He loosed a breath. "Very well. Hold on a moment."

He brought the leather satchel to his knees and opened it carefully. As the flap of the pouch flipped open, the girls eyes widened.

"I have another in here... give me a moment. Where did that thing go?" Dirk said, half to himself, half to the girl.

He didn't notice the iridescent glow strangely emitting from the bag. The girl however was fixated on it. "What is that?" she whispered in quiet awe.

"Hmm? What is wha-" he looked down and saw the luminous glow coming out of the satchel. Quickly he closed the flap again and looked around to make sure no one saw it.

"That, that was nothing. Here," Dirk procured another Buttersteam Spiral from his pocket. "Have this. They're delectable."

The girl hesitated, glanced quickly left and right, perhaps seeking the approval of a misplaced parent and then, with upmost trepidation, took the candy. The cool touch of her fingers curling around the lozenge amazed Dirk and he noted how fragile and bird-like her hands were, as if her bones were the hollow flutes of a fletchling wren. She raised the candy to her mouth with a motion going one way and at the same moment Dirk drew his hand the other way, tearing the wrapper away before her tiny lips touched it and letting it flutter wanly to the floor. The rush of the murmurous crowd and the pistoning of the trains throbbed in his ears. And in his mechanic knee throbbed the hot conflagration of steam and the burn of swelling heat.

The girl sucked the treat slowly, one foot turned in against the other shyly, eyeing her benefactor from under tremulous lashes. "What's your name?" Dirk inquired. "Miranda" the girl answered. "Would you like to hear a story, poppet?" Dirk asked and then continued without waiting for her answer. "There was a man once, a very tried and sweet man who wanted nothing more in the world than for there to be peace and quietude, especially so in his own little plot of garden, a paradisal solitude filled with blooming daffodilia and blossoming jonquil. And an area where the children will play... But powerful people had other plans and some of them wanted to burn the garden and some of them wanted not to burn it and those of them that wanted not to burn gave to the man a wonderful treasure, a treasure made of such stuff as dreams are made of. And this man, this poor worn down man had to take this treasure in secret, yes, and flee far far across the land. It was, I fear, his sad lot in life."

"Oh mister, that's terrible. What happened to that man?" Miranda asked, the lozenge gone, melted on the pink tongue that peeked softly between her mouth.

"He's still running, I am sorry to say. Or, if not running, moving as best he can." Dirk chuckled then sighed, preparing to rise. "Ah well sweetling, I could sit here and dandle you with tales all day, but I have things to do. Yes, this old bluff barrel of a fool needs to see the horizon by sundown."

The girl watched him struggle to rise, opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again, to speak. "Please mister, I saw something in your bag. Something glowing. What was it mister? Was it a jewelry for me? Please say it was something for me. Mister, what is it?

Dirk paused for a moment, considering plots which might've employed this child as a spy, paid in food, to inquire. Exhausted and drawn to the child's innocence, the walls of his secrecy melted for a moment.

"This, my darling, is a device. A device many men and many women have died to see, to understand, and to own. In many ways it is like one of your toys, but a toy for adults. This, darling, is The Zybourne Clock."

Suddenly, barely visible in the dim light, the child's eyes changed. The hazelnut brown tones unglued into silver, melting into swirls of pearl and mechanical shades. Her body lost its shy posture and rapidly conformed to a rigid, upright stance. Her mouth opened slightly and with programmed precision, she moved her wrist slowly towards her tiny lips.

The Young Miranda (Ferrinus)

"Orange Fox to Deitrus. Orange Fox to Deitrus. The Golden Egg has been located. I repeat, we've got it. Over".

Frozen with guilt, McLauren slowly began to run through the crowd. The girl screamed, "Rape! Rape! He tried to touch me! Help!".

For Dirk McLauren, Wedesnday January 19 2381 has begun very poorly.