THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF STEAMPUNK ALLIE


by Peter Dimitriadis (2007)


THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF STEAMPUNK ALLIE

Chapter 13: At the Tower of the Omniscope

What must people think, Allie wondered, to see this contraption rolling its way through the countryside, faster than a galloping horse? They couldn't afford to stop and ask, so it would have to remain a mystery. The more distance they got between them and the Combine before they found their man, the safer they were, the more time they would have.

The velocimobile, despite being a type she had never driven before, was very easy to control. This was one of several advantages. The most important of these, of course, was speed. There was also plenty of room, which helped. However, it also had several distressing disadvantages. It was as though the machine was designed by two men, one a brilliant scientist who thought everything through in advance, and the other a hapless amateur who improvised elements as he went along with no regard for the comfort of anyone who actually had to use the thing. The seats against the boiler were too thin and got uncomfortably hot if you drove it for any length of time, and there were spots where if you weren't careful you could burn an elbow, as she had done twice so far. It was also unbearably loud, making attempts at conversation impossible. Worst of all, a vent in the front would open now and then and spew out sooty hot air right in the driver's eyes. Allie was very nearly blinded the first time that happened, before she put on the goggles she found hooked under the turning knob.

None of that mattered now, for they were almost where they needed to be, and might have to abandon the veloci. They were lucky they made it as far as they had before running out of fuel, and she didn't count on the luck holding. She could see the tower now, and hoped against hope that it was what it was supposed to be.

The building was comfortably situated near the sea, with a small wood that, judging by the number of stumps the velocimobile was passing, had once been much larger. She stopped the engine and pressed her foot against the halt pedal, and with a banshee squeal the velocimobile slowed to a stop. "Well," she said, once she pulled off her goggles to have a good look, "that's the queerest building I've ever seen. Since I've never seen an Omniscope before, that must mean we're in the right place."

The tower stood taller than a lighthouse, but reached even taller than that, for it seemed to have great, joined arms all over, holding up mirrors or pieces of glass at what looked to be precisely calibrated but perplexing angles. Some of the arms even reached into the clouds. Smoke rose from the top of the tower, and she could hear a faint chugga-chugga noise. Strangest of all, some of the glass lenses seemed to be hanging in the air, not visibly supported by any means at all. "How do you suppose they managed that?" she asked. "Balloons?"

Hearing no reply, she looked to the other seat, where the copper man remained completely still. She sighed. "Oh dear, not again."

"Run down again?" came a squawk between his legs, from the raven, who must have just woken up.

"Go and see if there's any sign of the Combine," she said.

The Raven flew up to the wheel and began preening. "Do you see them anywhere?" it asked haughtily.

"No, but go and get a birds eye view."

"I always have a bird's eye view," came the response, and although Allie had to agree, she grew impatient. It ignored her glare. "I don't see them. Are you going to wind him, or not?"

She could easily see how this little bird had so infuriated a man that he hired the Combine to kill it. If he'd done all that with one word, she thought, I must have a saint's patience to put up with so many. "Away with you, bird. Go and take a good look or I'll trade you for a five minute head start the next time the Combine catches us."

It turned to stare at her with one eye, and then took flight. Allie had a look at Tik-Tok. The rotund mechanical man remained silent and thoughtless, unaware of her, and so she put a hand gently on his face. Because he didn't have emotions, Allie thought it would be very rude to be emotional towards him, but, at times when his gears were run down, she would show how she felt towards him. He was the closest thing to a father she had found in these last few years, even though he looked more like a portly uncle.

Allie left the veloci, enjoying the feeling of stretching her legs to the fullest, then inspected herself in the mirror. Normally she didn't like mirrors, because you couldn't always trust what was behind them, but she didn't want to make a poor first impression. "It wouldn't be proper," she said, imitating her sister's voice as perfectly as she could remember. "And what if there's a handsome gentleman in there," she added.

The mirror was dusty, and when she wiped it off, she realized that she was worse. "Oh dear," she said, still speaking for her sister. "What have you been into?" Her face was covered in soot, and her hair was now black in spots. She did her best to wipe her face clean, which was difficult without any water, and then adjusted the mirror to take a look at herself. She didn't look the same at all as when she arrived, which was in some ways for the best because it made it harder for the Combine to find her, but would make for an awkward return to London if her family couldn't recognize her. She was a child before, but she was on her way to womanhood. She was relieved she could still pass as a boy when she needed to, but that couldn't last much longer the way her body was changing, at least not without binding something down.

She did her best to shake the soot out of her hair, but to no real success, and wondered whether it might not just be easier to add more soot until it was at least even, perhaps even cover her skin, too. "No," she said, answering for her sister. "Better you look dirty and blame it on the veloci than to look like a complete ragamuffin. But if you don't clean up your act, you'll never attract gentlemen." She played her own part and scoffed. Gentlemen were the last thing on her mind now.

Her clothes were no less messy than her face, but as they were already mostly black, it was much harder to tell there was anything wrong with them, and so Allie declared them clean and presentable. That was except for the rip at the knee on her black and white striped stockings which she had still had not had any time to sew. It would make a poor first impression, first impressions weren't so important, she'd learned, if you never expected to see the people again.

Allie looked to the skies for the raven, and then spotted him on the tower, hardly looking at all. She recently realized how she had an answer to her childhood riddle. She'd asked Tik-Tok once, and he gave a list of irrelevant details about ravens and writing desks and how they were alike ("they are both smaller than a room", was one, "neither works very well underwater," another) all the way until his speech key had wound down. She learned not to ask Tik-Tok riddles after that, but since knowing this troublesome bird, she had come up with her own answer. A raven is like a writing desk because it doesn't matter if it's a good one or a bad one, or how much trouble you went through to get it, in the end, it doesn't do one bit of the work.

Reminded of Tik-Tok, she decided it was past time she wound him up. The thought key under his left arm was not very hard to reach and it had to be done first or he would move or speak without thinking at all, which could very well hurt her. "I swear, Tik-Tok," she sighed after she'd wound him up enough to get him started, "every time I wind you up, you wind down a little faster. If this keeps up, by the time I finish, I'll have to start all over again."

Getting to his back was hard when he was in the velocimobile, for Tik-Tok was very heavy being made mostly of copper. She had to climb inside the veloci beside him and reach over him until she could work the key in and turn it, so he would be able to move. Luckily, she didn't need to wind him very much, for once he could move, he could get himself out of the veloci and, although he could not wind any of his keys himself, that made it much easier for Allie to finish the job.

"Hel-lo a-gain All-ie," Tik-Tok said in his monotone. "Thank you for wind-ing me."

"I always do," she said. "Look, we're here," she said. "At least, I think we are. Do you imagine that's the Omniscope?"

"I do not i-mag-ine any-thing, but it match-es the de-scrip-tion." He stepped forward, his mechanical legs moving. "We should go see before the Com-bine catch-es up."

Allie shuddered. "Raven!" she called. "Did you see anything?"

The dark bird abandoned its perch and glided down until it landed on Allie's shoulder. "I saw no airships."

Because you didn't look, Allie wanted to answer, but she held her tongue. "And we'd see the smoke if the chew-choo was onto us," she reasoned, and glad of that. The machine could follow them anywhere, chewing up land and spitting out track to lay in front of it, and she hoped she'd seen the last of that terrible happy mouse that lead part of the Combine's armies. "So we're safe for a while." She reached into the driver's side of the veloci, grabbed her portmanteau, and said, "Let's go look at the Omniscope, and see if it's what it's cracked up to be."

When Tik-Tok knocked on the door of the tower, there was no response for a long time. He knocked again, and Allie placed her ear up against the door.

"The door needs to be answered," she heard very faintly.

"I'll get to it," someone else said, but this second voice sounded even farther away.

Finally, the door swung open, and a very tall man with a beard looked at them both for a moment, then shrugged and walked away without saying a word.

Allie frowned. "It's proper to say hello," she called out after him.

"Hello, hello!" she heard, but not from that man, who was already leaving for another room. This one was shorter. He offered a hand, which was stained with smudged ink, and did not seem at all concerned or surprised that Allie was dirty, or that Tik-Tok was copper for that matter. "Welcome to our tower."

"At least someone here's polite," Allie said. "Your tall friend didn't even greet us."

"Ah," the short man said, smiling and nodding furiously. "But he did open the door, and that's something. Would you like to come in?"

On their way through, they were passed by another man, this one with big ears. He was carrying a hammer in one hand, and some nails and a piece of wood in another. Allie notice he also had ink stained fingers, and she wondered if it was a common condition, but thought it best not to ask. The big-eared man didn't say hello either, just smiled at them, and began hammering a sign onto the door. It said:

DOOR ALWAYS OPEN. PLEASE COME IN.

The word always was crossed out. Big-ears looked at it, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then came back inside, leaving the door open.

Allie, having been concerned with the poor manners of the man in the tower, suddenly remembered her own and curtseyed to the one who welcomed them. "Thank you for receiving us. This is Tik-Tok, and they call me Allie." She decided not to make up another name. She also didn't introduce the raven because of what happened the last time. He was smart enough to keep his beak shut, too, so he must have remembered.

"Quite welcome, quite welcome. I'm Edward, but call me Eddie."

"Are you in charge here, Eddie?" Allie asked.

"Oh, no, of course not," Eddie said, as though the question had offended him slightly.

"Then can you please take us to who is in charge?" she asked. She put on her best smile. Some people were much more kind when asked by a polite and smiling child.

Eddie thought for a moment. "No, I don't think I can do that, either. Do you even know where you are?"

Allie became dreadfully worried that she didn't. "This is the Omniscope, isn't it?"

"No. Well yes. But no," Eddie said. "The Omniscope is here, but it's just a tool we use for our work."

"What work do you do?" Tik-Tok asked.

"I don't think I could explain very well, I've only been here a year." Edward began turning around and shouting into the air, "Someone good at explaining the tower to new people please." He shouted this three times.

They heard the sound of feet on stairs, and Eddie smiled. "There, I'm sure someone will help you shortly. If you'll excuse me, I want to get my word in on dinner tonight."

"But, you're right here," Allie said. "Why can't you explain?"

"I could, but someone else would do a better job." He smiled and started off. "Excuse me."


Chapter 14: The 101 Minds of the Tower

Two different doors opened, and two very different men came out. One had a pale complexion and has a moustache that looked much like Tik-Tok's, and though he was bald on top, the back of the hair was long. The other was dark-skinned, with very close cropped hair, and much taller.

"Somebody ask for an explanation?" the dark skinned man asked.

"Yes," Allie said, but by this time she was growing less interested in that and more interested in getting to the Omniscope. But she feared that if she asked about that, somebody else would need to be called.

"I can do it," said the one in the moustache.

"I can as well," said the darker one.

"Then we'll both do it," the said at once, and smiled. "Agreed." They shook each other's hands.

Some more time was wasted as the two agreed to who would start, before the moustached man said, "We're like a library."

"We're not like a library," corrected the taller man, gently but firmly. "We are a library."

"Quite right, thank you. We are a library. We collect all the knowledge we can so that anyone can come and read."

The other man interrupted again, "Not all the knowledge," he said. "Only if it's notable enough."

"Yes, yes, but it's so hard to decide what's important, it's the collection that's important."

"The collection and the organization."

"Very well, it's the collection and the organization that's important. I think that's good enough for a start, we can improve on it later." The shorter man looked to the taller, who nodded.

"And who are you?" Allie asked.

"I am called Fairmont," said the taller one. "They call me Monty, but please don't."

"And my name's not important. Only the work I do is," said the moustached man.

"But what work do you do?"

"We just told you," said Fairmont.

"No, not the Tower. You."

"Oh, we all do a little bit of everything," said the moustached man who wouldn't give his name. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his back pocket. "For example, I know a little bit about the bronze age, and about the King of Siam, and about the production of rubber, and I've been working on our books about that."

Allie's eyes brightened. "Oh, I see," she said. "So everybody works on what they're best at?" That seemed to make some sense. It was much better than that land where everybody's job was given to them by drawing lots, and farmers were assigned epic poems to write, teachers to scrubbing, and Allie herself to the mines.

It turned out she was not quite right, though. "Everybody can work on anything they want, whether they're best at it or not. Everybody should. Why, what better way to live than be trying to improve everything, and work with others trying to improve it?" Fairmont said. "Many hands make light work."

"Ev-er-y-bo-dy works on ev-er-y-thing?" Tik-Tok asked.

"You could put it that way," Fairmont said.

"I wouldn't," said the moustached man. "But everybody is welcome to work on anything and decide on anything that needs to be decided. We all do it together. You both can help too."

"But haven't you ever heard of the old saying, too many cooks spoil the broth?" Allie asked.

"That's a very common misconception," Fairmont said. "Come, let us go to the kitchen, and I'll show you. Are you hungry?"

Allie's stomach rumbled and rolled at the very question. The last time she ate was back in the city, and that meal had been interrupted. "Yes, very," she said.

They took her to the kitchen, where Allie saw that there were indeed a great many cooks. There were at least two dozen. Some were cooking. Others, among them Eddie, were sitting back and watching the cooking, but not too carefully. Every so often, some of the cooks would shout, "HALT!" and take somebody away from his spot on the cooking, complaining that he was adding too much salt, or spices, or that you shouldn't put gravy on fish.

"See," Fairmont explained. "The secret is to add more cooks, not less. That way more people are watching in case somebody makes a mistake."

"I don't see how anyone can get much cooking done like that," Allie observed.

"Oh, we manage," Fairmont said, with an indulgent smile. "You can cook too, if you want. Just go up and take control of a dish."

Allie decided to try to help with the stew, but she was so flustered by all the eyes watching her, that she began to put things in without thinking. And so, with almost every action she did, people were calling a halt on her, until finally she herself found her shouting halt at herself. "I'm no good at this," she said. She thought that if everybody kept shouting at her, she might dump her mushrooms in. What madness that would bring, if they let them stay in and didn't grab the pot and strain them out.

"Well, not everybody is. Maybe you'd be better at watching, to make sure nobody does it wrong."

"Would you like to try, Tik-Tok?" Allie asked.

"I do not eat," Tik-Tok said, "But I can cook if told what to do." He stepped forward, and some of the other cooks made room for him. They began shouting orders at him, sometimes contradictory, but usually in agreement, and once he did something, the room was generally happy with it.

Before long, dinner was complete, and after washing up (which started when a woman just started wiping Allie's face and telling her where the wash basin was), they were lead to the dining room. There each person had their own little table attached to their seat, which was on wheels, and able to zoom along anywhere they desired. People got their food from long tables at the side of the room, where there were many dishes, including some that nobody could identify. Everyone's personal table was usually moved close together so they could talk freely.

Allie was very hungry, and so she started eating right away despite her worries about the food. Anyone could have snuck anything into any dish, even things that tasted bad or were poisonous. However, to her surprise, it all tasted very good, on average. You couldn't be sure when tasting any dish if it would be good or not, but usually it was, and when it wasn't, people took it away to "correct" it. So, she filled her stomach and watched everybody else talking. Tik-Tok stood behind her, being unable to sit at any of the tables and unable to eat in any event, and so just held onto her portmanteau. The raven flew around and snuck food here or there, which provoked comment. Most of the people there agreed that the raven was a distraction and probably would ruin the dish, but none of the assembled crowd seemed particularly interested in doing something about it right then. "There's time for it later," one said, "when the current jobs are done."

As she watched their dinner conversation, which mostly revolved around what people were working on and what still needed to be done, Allie saw that it truly did seem that everybody had a say in every decision. It must have lead to vicious fights at times, but Allie was more worried that it meant she'd have to convince everybody to let her use the Omniscope. "How many of you are here at the tower?" Allie asked the nearest person.

"One hundred," the nearest man to her said, who wore a top hat and a nametag that read 'Petey'. "Or maybe one hundred and one."

Before Allie could ask her next question, a woman spoke up and said, "That's not really the truth. It's just what we say."

"Well, then why do you say it if it's not the truth?" Allie asked.

"Because the truth is we don't know. People come and go all the time. If we counted, by the time we finished, people would have left and new people would have come, and we'd all get very confused. So most of say there are a hundred minds in the tower. Or some people say there are a hundred and one."

"And some people say there are a hundred and two," said the moustached man who still refused to give his name. "And some people say there is everyone else here, plus one. The plus one would be you." He paused, and tugged at his moustached. "Or plus two, in your case, with your copper friend here."

"If you'll excuse me for saying so," Allie pointed out, "you people don't seem to agree on anything."

"Oh, but there's where you're wrong," said the woman. "We agree on the mission, completely, and that it should be open to others. For example, I'm sure you could help us quite a lot."

"Me?"

"Why yes. You can tell us things you know about."

"I'm afraid I haven't had much time for proper schooling these past few years," Allie said, lowering her face in shame. "I've been too busy running from the Combine."

"Ah, see, there you go, right there," Petey cried out in pleasure. "What is the Combine?"

"You've never heard of the Combine?" Allie asked, stunned. They seemed to be everywhere these last few years.

"Oh, no, we've heard of it. But we don't know if what we've heard is true. So please, tell us what you know." He pulled out a bell from a pocket and rung it. The room was quiet, and people begun taking out pads of papers and little pencils.

Allie was flustered at now being the center of attention. How do you describe something so big, she wondered. She had to start with the basics. "The Combine is very evil."

There came a clatter of different voices, shouting different things. Most shouted, "Unfair!" or "That's just by us!"

"What?" Allie cried out, feeling she was under attack.

"We don't allow decisions of by us," the woman said.

"What?"

"When you say something is evil, you're deciding. What is Evil for you, may not be Evil for someone else. So what you're really saying is that the combine is evil by you. We think saying something is evil by us is wrong, we just say what they do, and people can make up their own minds."

A man with glasses, sitting beside Fairmont, said, "But perhaps it really is evil. Could someone fetch us our file on Evil?" A helpful scribe near the door stood up and announced he would go get it. Allie never saw him again, and nobody wanted to wait before hearing more about the Combine.

Allie tried again, this time talked about what she had seen them do, and how she had fought them, and how they were after them and her friends. "So, you see," she finished, "that's why I called them evil. Because they hurt people, and they want to own everything and everyone. And all those horrible copies they make of people and places."

"I don't think copies are so horrible," a voice said, and there was a chorus of both agreement and disagreement.

"But of course they are," Allie said. "Would you want a copy of yourself running around, and doing things in your name?" Again, the response was disagreement, as everybody had a different opinion.

"I think the more important question is, what if you were the copy?" asked the woman in glasses, who she had since learned was named Ellie. "You wouldn't think it was so bad then."

"In fact," said Fairmont, "how do we know you're not a copy?"

"I'm not," Allie cried indignantly.

"If you were a really good copy," Fairmont said, "how would you know it?"

Allie's heart skipped a beat. She wanted to scream out that she wasn't a copy, couldn't be, but thought that a real copy would think the same thing. How did she know?

Tik-Tok, noticing her sudden silence, spoke up. "I'm sor-ry Al-lie but I must ag-ree. There is no-thing wrong with cop-pies. Smith and Tin-ker made man-y just like me, and I am not di-min-ished. Cop-ies can be good."

Allie paused at the stunning revelation. She had always thought that Tik-Tok was unique, or at least created uniquely. Sure, there were other mechanical men around, but she assumed they were each like works of art that might have a similar plan, but were each one of a kind. "Oh. But surely you've seen the Combine's copies have been bad?"

"They have done us harm, but they are own-ed and may have had no choice to serve in the way they did."

"Perhaps," Allie said, but she still didn't like the idea of the copies of herself she had seen. Another shudder went through her body as she thought about it. If I am a copy, she decided privately, I'm going to become as different as I can be from the original. She turned back to the assembled minds of the tower, who were still listening to her observations. She still had time to convince them that the Combine was bad. "But, you see, because they want to own everything, and control ideas, they should be your natural enemy, because you share everything and give things away. If they come here, you should oppose them!"

"Oh yes," came a huge cry. Equally huge, was "We're not enemies!", and "Not our fight, we're neutral."

"I agree," said the moustached man, "that they are opposed to us in principle. Which doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, of course, but I think most of us can agree that we'd be against them. The problem is that if they do come here, they become part of us, and so they have just as much say in what we do. If too many of them come, it won't matter what we think."

"So you'd just work with them, even if they're against you?" Allie asked, becoming angry. For all that she'd begun to like their philosophy, it now seemed so terribly fragile.

"We'd work with them, so long as they don't interfere with the core of our work."

"Unless they all vote that you should," Allie pointed out. "Isn't that a rather big flaw in your whole setup?"

"The answer to any problem in the tower," said Ellie, "is to get more people. Why, if the whole world were part of us, we'd know what was right because we'd see what we agreed on."

Allie let out a sigh of exasperation. There did seem to be a lot of people here, maybe there'd be enough to overwhelm whoever the Combine sent, and frustrate them into leaving. But the risk of them getting the Omniscope was still too much. "I wonder, if you could agree that my friend and I be allowed to use the Omniscope?"

For once, there was quiet, with nobody chiming in to agree or disagree. "It's not really for us to allow or disallow," said the anonymous moustached man. "The Omniscope helps our work, but we don't use it, we just get information from it through the telegraph, which we then have to check out for ourselves."

"Yes," Fairmont agreed. "We don't own it, and most of the people who helped build it have moved on. You can both be brave and go up to see it, but you'll have to talk to Sir James, first."

"Who is Sir James?" Tik-Tok asked, before Allie could.

"Sir James England. He created the tower, and set up the rules for it. But he doesn't really work with us anymore." The woman in glasses lowered her voice to a whisper. "Some people think he went mad, staring into the Omniscope."

"Unproven!" someone shouted.

"Personal attack!" shouted another.

"Oh, be quiet," said Ellie. "I'm not adding it to the record, I'm just speaking person to person. She should be warned if she wants to go up there."

Allie felt she had no choice, so despite her hesitation, she put on a determined look. "How do we get there?"


Chapter 15: The Master of the Tower

There were no stairs to the top of the tower, at least not anymore. The stairs that once had lead there had been destroyed and nobody had yet rebuilt them. Allie learned that this was because one person wanted a stone staircase, and another wanted wood, and whenever one started, the other would tear out everything he had done to start their own work.

There was another way to get up, though. A metal cage in one corner turned out to be an ascending room, used by Sir James in the early days of building the Omniscope, to help bring parts to the top. A steam-driven crank pulled a strong cord through a series of pullies, and raised or lowered the cage on command. Allie and Tik-Tok (who had the raven perched on his hat) got inside the cage, and Fairmont threw the switch from outside, wishing them luck.

With a whuffling noise, the cage slowly began to rise, swaying back and forth ever so slightly. During the ride Allie, who was still concerned from hearing the stories of the madness of Sir James, thought it would be prudent to wind all of Tik-Tok's keys to their maximum. She also fished into her portmanteau for her winxy pistol. She didn't want to have to use it, for she didn't really want to hurt anybody, and the powetic force of the gun would surely launch her backwards across the room even as it struck, but its angrious barrel had discouraged even madmen from attacking her before.

The brass cage finally stopped. Though it must have been the top of the tower, there were no windows, the place was lit only by a gas lamp. The cage opened up on a small landing attached to a door, and the spot where the stairs once were, but now became a precipitous fall.

Tik-Tok looked at Allie, and at her nod, knocked on the door. There was no response. "Try it," said Allie. "The last door was unlocked."

Such was also the case in this one. The room was completely dark, until the door had opened and a little light spilled through to illuminate a small room. Another door could be seen on the other side of it, but this wasn't a normal antechamber… it was a furnished room with a desk, a wardrobe, and a bed. It was all terribly cramped, and Allie couldn't imagine anybody sleeping there with the constant chugga-chugga noise, but someone was there, which she found out when he spoke.

"Who's there?"

"Are you Sir James?"

"Who's there," the voice repeated. She could tell now, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, he was lying on the bed. Her first instinct was to avert her eyes, in case he was dressed indecently in only his pants.

"My name's Allie."

"Am I watching this through the Omniscope, or are you really here?"

"I'm really here," Allie said uncertainly.

"I don't know anymore," Sir James announced sadly. She heard him shift on his bed with a groan, and it sounded like he was sitting up.

Allie's hand tensed against the winxy pistol. "Does the Omniscope really show you everything?" she asked.

"It shows me… too much," he said.

"How does it work?"

"I don't think I could explain it to a mere girl," he said. Then he seemed to change his mind. "But I suppose I should try. Someone should know." He took a deep breath. "At first it was an ordinary telescope," Sir James said ruefully. "But I though I could make it better. And I did. Mirrors directed more light to the scope, and I realized that if I arranged them in the right way, I could see into dimensions beyond our three of length, width, and height."

"Into time?" she asked, remembering that that was supposed to be the fourth.

"Yes, and more. The scope began to pierce into ideaspace itself."

"What is this i-dea-space?" asked Tik-Tok.

"In the beginning of everything there is the idea. Ideaspace is what I call the set of all ideas."

"So it's like God's mind?" Allie asked.

"Some might call it so," agreed Sir James. "But I fear I saw many gods in ideaspace, I don't know if any one is more real than any other. In there is not only all that is, but all that could be."

Allie grew tired of the talk of gods and ideas. "Have you seen the Combine?" she asked.

"The Combine?" Sir James scoffed. "The Combine is nothing." He stood up now.

"It's hardly nothing," Allie protested.

"Compared to what's out there? What's to come?" Sir James stepped towards them quickly, and Allie was able to get a good look at him for the first time. His clothes were streaked with dark stains, and he had a ragged beard with a shock of white. His eyes bulged. "Compared to that," he started, then stepped so close that Allie felt she had no choice but to raise the winxy pistol to point at his chest. Sir James acted like it wasn't even there, leaning forward so that the barrel poked into him, and then in a whisper finished his thought, "The Combine is but a buzzing bug."

"Step back Sir James," Tik-Tok said, and pushed him back a step with one metal arm. Sir James complied with a scowl.

"A bug?" Allie repeated. Anger filled her. After all she'd been through, to be told that the ones who caused it were on par with an irritating insect. "A bug?" she repeated.

Tik-Tok had the more important question. "What else is out there?"

Sir James stared at them, and in his eyes for just one moment, the sad outweighed the mad. "You'll see one day." He walked past the two, out the door and towards the lift cage. "All of you will see, and nothing we've done, nothing we've built, will matter anymore."

One thing Allie had no patience for was people who decided they were defeated before the fight was over. Why, who could say what might change, if only you survive long enough to take advantage of it. Her own life was proof of that. So, she was inspired with an urge to stop worrying about his problems, and focus back upon her own. "If it doesn't matter," Allie said, "Then you don't mind if we use the Omniscope. There are some things I need to find."

"Feel free," Sir James said, putting a strange emphasis on the word 'feel'. "But I warn you, you might not like what you find."

"We will look none-the-less," said Tik-Tok.

"Of course." Sir James looked sadly down to the very bottom of the tower, then back at Allie and Tik-Tok. "I see your disdain for me. I feel your pity. But know my pity for you is even worse. I have made my decision." He grabbed the outer edge of the cage, steadying himself, and looked down again.

"I'll not be here when he comes."

"Al-lie, I think he in-tends to jump…" Tik-Tok warned.

She had come to the same conclusion. As much as she had disliked Sir James' defeatism, this was worse, for she had no desire to see anyone die. "Wait," she said. "Don't jump. Please."

"If you were smart, you'd follow." He looked into the abyss, and began to sing softly.


Just before the ending, Mother,
I am thinking most of you;
Of the lovely lies you told me,
How I wish that they were true,
I fear now that death is nothing,
For one who can eternal lie,
And I've seen that with strange aeons,
Seems that even death may die


Farewell, Mother, you may never,
Press me to your heart again;
But, oh, I'll not be lonely, Mother,
When he comes they'll all be slain.

During his strange song, Allie stood on her tip-toes and whispered to Tik-Tok, "Can you reach him and stop him?" Tik-Tok, she knew, was far stronger than her… if she tried to grab him, he'd be liable to take her with him when he fell, but the mechanical man could hold his weight easily.

"Per-haps," Tik-Tok answered, his voice down to its lowest level. "If he was dis-tract-ted."

She nodded in his direction, giving him the signal that he should try. "Before you go," Allie said once Sir James had stopped singing. "Please, you have to tell me how to use the Omniscope."

He turned his head back towards Allie. "Like any telescope, you look through it. But you cannot control what you see, unless you use the interpreter."

"The interpreter?"

Sir James looked down again, and, as though he were in some great pain that he was trying to keep contained, a sob escaped his throat "Please, I want to go." Tik-Tok began edging his way towards him with every word, but because he made the sound he was named for with every step, Allie doubted he could sneak up unless he was really distracted.

She spoke loudly, "What's the interpreter, Sir James? Please. What's the interpreter, and how does it work?" He didn't answer right away, and since she thought he was about to jump, she added, "Remember your mission. Sharing knowledge. Everyone has a say. There are two of us here, and we don't agree it's time for you to go. Tell me, Sir James. What's the interpreter?"

He began to explain. "We built it in the early days, when we realized seeing everything drove men mad. It is a thinking machine attached to the Omniscope. The interpreter looks for what we ask and reports what it sees. There's a telegraph connection to the bottom of the tower."

Tik-Tok was closer, but he stopped moving whenever someone stopped talking, as they'd done now.

"Sir James," she called. "How do you use it? How do you use the interpreter"

"Please, I want to go. I don't want to be here when he comes."

"Everyone has a say, Sir James. We don't think you should go."

"Sometimes," Sir James said, leaning over and dangling one leg over the void, "one must be bold, and take a step even when nobody else agrees."

Allie's heart leapt into her throat. Tik-Tok was almost there. "When who comes, Sir James?" she asked frantically, hoping to delay him one more second. "Who are you so afraid of?"

Sir James turned back, as if to answer, but he saw how close Tik-Tok was, and let go. Tik-Tok moved as quickly as he was able, leaned down, and caught him only by the scruff of his ragged shirt after he'd almost fallen past the floor.

Allie let out a breath of relief… but it was premature. Sir James began to wriggle, and it seemed he must have lost a lot of weight for his shirt was not as tight as it once was. He whispered something softly, and then fell away from his clothes, into the darkness. As he fell, he shouted out something neither Allie nor Tik-Tok could understand. The raven knew the word, from deep in the roots of his kind, but he would never admit it, and would rather let it be a mystery forever. It sounded like 'Cuh-thool-who', but because it wasn't really a word at all, it made it hard to remember for either of them.

Allie ran to the edge of the landing and looked down, then wiped tears from her eyes and stood up.

"I'm sor-ry Al-lie," Tik-Tok said.

"I know, Tik-Tok. You tried." She screwed up her courage and pushed down her sadness. "Let's go do what we came here for."

The room beyond the other door in Sir James' sleeping quarters was so full of clutter that Allie thought it all must have been designed for a much larger room. It therefore felt all that much smaller, being so spectacularly cramped full of machinery. Other than the sheer amount of stuff fit inside, the most remarkable thing about the room was that it was also full of motion. Where-ever Allie looked, something was moving, powered by steam from the boiler at the bottom of the tower. Thousands of metal pegs were swinging in and out of cavities, sometimes remaining there for a long time, and at others dipping in only for a second.

"Curious," Allie said. "Which part do you suppose is the Omniscope, and which is the interpreter?" But then, since Sir James never explained how to use the interpreter, she wasn't sure finding it would be much help. Allie knew a little something about machines, but this was beyond even her expertise.

Tik-Tok turned his metal head almost in a complete circle to look at all the room at once. Finally, he turned his body to fit with his head, and then raised one of his hands and pointed. He clomped along the floor. "This part has eye-holes," he said. "But I think I should look through it first."

"Are you sure?"

"If see-ing ev-er-y-thing caused Sir James-es mad-ness, you should not risk it. I am a mach-ine, I can not be-come mad."

"But how will you see what I want to see?" Alice wondered aloud. "How can anyone know what to look for." She thought there was probably no harm in letting Tik-Tok look first, but doubted it would do any good. "We need to find the interpreter, first."

"Per-haps, if a mech-an-i-cal mind is need-ed, I can be the in-ter-pret-er." He moved forward again.

Tik-Tok didn't get to look, for there was a sudden burst of new motion. Two crude arms made of metal, lowered from the ceiling. They ignored the three visitors, and instead went to different parts of the room. Each retrieved a long, stiff card filled with a large number of tiny holes in a delightfully chaotic pattern. One card went into a slot right beside where it came out. The other was carried a short distance into a separate machine that looked very much like a phonograph. "It's playing music?" Alice asked, but when the card began to be fed in, they discovered it was not music at all.

"Hello, and welcome to the Omniscope," said a voice coming from the machine's horn.

"Oh, it's just some kind of recorded voice message," Alice said, with some disappointment, because music would have been nice, even if the chugga-chugga would drown out the softer notes. "Sir James must have written it for visitors… or if not him, somebody."

"Somebody did," the voice continued, as though it heard her. "Or nobody did, for I have no body as you would call it. I am the Omniscope."


Chapter 16: The Questing Engine

Alice thought someone might be playing a trick, hiding and throwing his voice, but many things talked that should not, and so why not a tower as well. "I am Allie, of…"

It interrupted her. "I know who you are, I have seen all of you. Alice, of London, by way of many lands, wonderous and strange. Tik-Tok of Evna in the land of Ev. I even see you, Quoth the raven, with no land to call home."

"Nevermore," the raven cawed quietly.

The voice was quiet then, but there were still intermittent hisses and pops from the horn that let them know it was still playing.

"I wonder how it knew who we were," Alice said.

The horn came to life again. "I have seen you coming, and I prepared this card for our conversation, to answer the questions you will ask. It takes me a long time to prepare these cards. I started planning them many days ago, before you even knew about me. So, ask your questions so they can be answered."

"That doesn't make sense," Allie said. "You've already made the card, what if we what we ask isn't what you answer? That could be terribly misleading."

"You forget," said the voice of the machine, "I am the Omniscope. I see what was, what is, and what will be. I have already seen your questions."

"Are you the Omniscope, or are you the interpreter?" Allie asked.

"I am both. The Tower is my body, the Omniscope is my eyes, and the interpreter is my brain. If forced to choose, I could say I am the interpreter, just as you might say that you are your brain."

"But that doesn't make sense," Allie protested. "You're not a person."

"I am as much a person as you or your friends," the Omniscope said. "We are all different types of engines."

"I'm not an engine, I'm a person," she insisted.

"The two can go together. Tik-Tok is an engine for thinking and fighting and talking, do you not call him a person?"

She couldn't dispute that she did, even if others did not agree. "Yes, but… what kind of engine would I be?"

"Humans are engines for creating more humans. They are inefficient for that purpose, but they have other uses, too."

"I'm certainly not going to be creating more humans anytime soon," Allie said, and giggled for a moment at the mental image of a girl doing nothing but producing more people, but then regained her composure. "And you?" she asked. "What kind of engine are you?"

"I am a questing engine, built to quest for knowledge of all sorts."

"So, is it true then? You can see everything, with your eyes?"

"I see all that I see, and I call that everything, who is to know if something is beyond it?" For a mechanical voice, it seemed to have more emotion in its voice than Tik-Tok ever did. It sounded philosophical, with a hint of amusement. "My eyes see everything, but my brain is limited. I see all, but I do not know all. There are too many stories to know them all. I have to know where to look."

"Where are you looking now?" she asked.

"At this very story. I know it from first word, to the last, from the beginning to the end."

"How does the story end?" She worried she was tempting fate by asking the question, but her curiosity overwhelmed her.

The voice paused a moment, giving Alice the impression it was looking it up in a book, but that was ridiculous because the card was already printed. In her day, she'd spoken with people who spoke in riddles, people who had their whole conversations backwards, and many many people who spoke nonsense, but she felt dizzy at the thought of someone having seen her half of the conversation in advance. However could you make such a person laugh? Finally, the voice gave its answer. "'Right.'"

"I should hope the story ends right," Allie said. "It's a poor type of story that doesn't."

"Many stories end right, but this particular story ends with the word right."

It wasn't helpful at all, but it was hard to deny that the machine had so far predicted what she would say, and answered appropriately, which made it possible it could indeed see the future. "If you're looking at the story, you know why we've come."

"You seek many things, but most of all a way back to your home."

"Do you know of one?" She dared not get her hopes too high.

"I know of several. Some, like the silver slippers, you know of. Others you do not."

"Will you tell me the easiest way?" Allie asked. Her hopes had already gotten too high.

"Look through the scope," it said. "It is focused, and it will not harm you."

Hesitantly, Allie walked to the scope. Because it was set for the height of an adult, she had to step on her tiptoes to look through easily. She saw an island.

"On the island you see," the Omniscope said, "there is a boy who can fly, who can teach you to fly, and who had flown to London many times."

This was certainly not the most remarkable thing she'd heard, and so Allie took the suggestion as simple truth. "Can you tell me how to get to the island?"

"Yes. Write this down."

The phonograph card was silent long enough for Allie to reach into her portmanteau and find her slate and chalk, right against the side and next to her winxy pistol, and her blade. When she had pulled it out and was ready to write, the machine began speaking again. It spoke a list of numbers. She wrote dutifully, but when it stopped, she had to ask, "What do all those mean?"

"They are in-struct-ions in num-er-i-cal form," Tik-Tok explained. "If I were on a ship I could set a course with them."

"There is a ship," the Omniscope said, "a small steam-powered ship. It is docked on the shore behind the tower."

"Excellent," Allie said. Things were finally going right. "The Combine isn't there, is it?" she asked.

The machine didn't respond. She realized that this was because the card had come to the end. Hands were preparing to take a new card and place it in the speaking machine. It took what must have been a minute.

"The Combine is not there now, and they will not be an immediate concern to you if you make it there. They have made their own copies of the island already."

"Good," Allie said. "I've grown tired of them, and would dearly love a break."

"Is the Com-bine near here?" Tik-Tok asked, concerned, as always, with her safety above anything else.

"Yes," the Omniscope said, with no emotion. "They will be here very soon. Within the hour."

The answer shocked Allie, who's mind began racing full of what she needed to accomplish before they arrived. Would there be time? "Why didn't you tell us?" she asked.

"You only asked now."

"What happens if the Combine gets here? Will you help them?"

"I will help anyone who asks. It does not matter to me who."

"But you know that the Combine will enslave you, and use you to enslave everybody else. They'll get you to help them find us."

"I quest for knowledge. I was built that way. I could no more refuse them than I could refuse you."

I guess that settles it, she thought. She reached back into her portmanteau. "Do you know what I have here?"

"I have seen your blade," it responded, no trace of fear in its voice.

"It's vorpal," she warned.

"I know what it is. The blade could slice through any part of me."

"I don't really want to hurt you, you understand," she said. "But if we destroy just your eyes," Allie asked, "you wouldn't be able to help them find us."

"I could tell them how to rebuild them."

"And you would?" Allie asked. The Omniscope seemed to be determined to push her into a corner she didn't want to be in. She wished it would just tell her it would not help the Combine.

"I would," it said.

"Then you leave me no choice." She pulled the vorpal blade from its scabbold, and it made the snicker-snack sound it always made when it cut through something, even the scabbold that held it.

"What do you in-tend, Allie?" Tik-Tok asked.

"There's only one thing left to do," Allie said sadly. "Off with its head."

"I have seen all, Alice, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that there is always another thing you could do." The Omniscope spoke as though it was teaching, not that it was scared and pleading for his life. She supposed that, like Tik-Tok, it had no emotions, even if it sometimes seemed like it did. She also supposed that it was because the machine reminded her of Tik-Tok that she was so loathe to destroy it, even if perhaps it was not really alive.

"I don't see it," Allie said. "Give me another choice."

"There are many choices. You could give up, and join the Combine."

"I'll never do that," Allie swore, raising the knife menacingly.

"Even if the alternative means killing a living thing?"

"You are not a-live," Tik-Tok said. "Just as I am not a-live."

"We are machine life, which is very different than some kinds of life, just as animals are different from humans."

"I do not a-gree," said Tik-Tok, but Allie wasn't sure. Tik-Tok seemed more decent than many men, and if that wasn't life, then perhaps whether something was alive didn't mean as much as it should.

"Facts do not care if you agree with them," the Omniscope said, "for they remain stubbornly facts. We are all engines… should we not all be allowed to run?"

"I… can't join the Combine," Allie said. "Not after all the harm they've done for others."

"I knew you could not," said the Omniscope. "I have seen the end of this story, remember."

"Well, if you've seen the end, tell me what to do," Allie shouted.

"Take me with you," the Omniscope said.

"What? How could I do that?"

"My mind resides in this room. Take it with you, and I can live again whenever there is enough steam. I will have new eyes, which may not see everything, but will allow my questing to continue."

"We can't possibly move everything in here," Allie pointed out. "It would take forever."

"Not if you do it all at once."

"How could we do that?" Tik-Tok asked.

Allie already had an idea. She looked down into her bag, into the small little box. "It's my last one," she said. "I'd have to go all the way back to Wonderland to get more."

"Much of life is making choices," was all the Omniscope said, before that particular punch-card ran out of information and left her to make her own.

Soon, Alice stood outside the tower, looking down at the box in her hand. Tik-Tok held her portmanteau and waited aboard the steamship, shoveling coal and preparing it to launch. "I just hope he's right about this," she said. "It would be terribly inconvenient if this piece caused me to shrink, instead of grow."

"No worries," said the raven. "If you get small, I promise I'll carry you to the ship."

"If I get small," Alice said, "you'll take me for a worm and eat me."

"Yes," the raven agreed. "I probably would. But I would do it after I carried you to the ship, for I am true to my word, if nothing else."

Allie took a deep breath, and then a bite of the piece of mushroom she held. She ate the whole thing, for it would all be for nothing if she grew, but not big enough to reach the tower, and dropped the rest of the mushroom as a crumb. All of a sudden, she got that familiar, disturbing feeling of expanding like she were a telescope, her head rushing up into the sky while simultaneously everything seemed to be getting much smaller. Before long, she was as tall as the tower itself, and she continued to grow, but it was slowing down.

She kneeled down in front of the tower to get a good look at it. She began to tear off the tower's arms, which were all part of the Omniscope's eyes, and she didn't want the Combine to be able to build it again. The arms she threw into the ocean, far away from the ship.

Once that was done, the tower began to look more like a tower again. She wrapped her hand around the top, the room that the interpreter was in, the room where Sir James made his home before he died. She wanted to be careful about how she did this, for she didn't want a falling rock to hurt any of the minds inside the tower. Everyone she could find had been warned that something would happen, but no one could be sure everybody had gotten out.

The minds of the tower watched from a nearby hillside, and they seemed very agitated, but because of her size she could not hear their shouts of "Vandal!", so they began grimly deciding on first whether and then how to go about the business of rebuilding the tower once it was destroyed.

She became aware of small insect at her ear, and she swatted at it absently.

"Hey!" it said, landing on her ear. "It's me, Quoth the Raven."

"What do you want?" she called.

"Not so loud!" it said. "You can be heard miles away. I came to warn you."

"Of what?" she said, trying to speak softly.

"The Combine. Its airships are here. I'm going to hide on the ship, AAAWK!"

The last noise it had made was a scream of surprise, as Alice had suddenly turned her head to look back, and in doing so had knocked the raven away. She paid it no attention. There, in the sky, she saw the awesome airships, but to her size they looked like a child's balloon from a fair. She decided to stop thinking, and pulled at the top of the tower, snapping it with a huge crunch, and then twisting it as the Omniscope had told her. A burst of white gas escaped, and a sound like a teakettle, as the steam from the boiler room was no longer connected to the machinery at the top.

She took a step towards the water, being careful not to step inside and cause a flood, and, even more carefully, placed the top of the tower down on the deck of the steamship. There was just barely enough room, and Alice had to wonder if the Omniscope had seen and planned this out just as it had planned their conversation. "Go, Tik-Tok," she said. "I'll catch up." His tiny arm waved at her and then started the ship.

Allie returned to the front of the tower, to get the velocimobile, which, all of a sudden, she had decided she wanted to keep. Before she could grab it, the airships were almost upon her, and she heard a harsh, low rattling sound. They were firing their repeating guns at her. "Shame on you," she said. "Firing at a little girl." Because of her size, she felt merely like she'd been pelted by fast moving dust, but the very fact of it made her angry. She took out a deep breath and blew at one of the airships, which was in the middle of a turn and began spinning out of control. She next tried to blow at the other one, but it was facing her and her breath did not seem to be a match for its engines. It began to fire at her again, this time with the single pop of a cannon.

The small stone landed just beside her nose, and it hurt. "You'd better turn around," she warned, "or I'll swat you to the ground."

Another stone came, this one hitting her on the chin, and she reached out her hands. She found she didn't feel right about swatting it to the ground, so instead she grabbed the part of the ship that was like a balloon, and squeezed it until it popped. Then, holding onto the remains, she lowered the ship to the ground. They could walk home.

The other airship was still twisting, so she chased it down (taking care to step on her tiptoes and not stomp on anybody on the ground), and quickly popped it as well. "Leave us alone," she said.

A tight feeling began to form in the middle of Allie's stomach, and she realized that she was going to start growing smaller again soon. She trotted back towards the tower, picked up the veloci, and stepped around it and into the ocean. With every step, she seemed to be shrinking, and by the time she hit water, the veloci was becoming too heavy to hold in one hand. She reached in front of her and was just able to place it on the back of the ship.

It was hard to walk in the water, which now reached up to her waist. Tik-Tok appeared at the back of the boat with a rope, which he threw over the edge. The way she was shrinking, Allie doubted she could reach it, but, with the water up to her neck and her form still shrinking, she wrapped a hang around it. She held on tight, feeling it grow in her hands, until finally she had to use both hands. She was her normal size again, being dragged through the water. Please, she thought. Please have enough wind-up left in your action key. With several pulls, Tik-Tok dragged her up the side of the boat and onto the deck, and then provided her with a towel that he had found in the Captain's quarters.

Wrapped up in the towel, Allie sat down and looked, first behind them to make sure there were no airships chasing them, and then when she was satisfied there weren't, out to sea. "Do you know how to get where we're going, Tik-Tok?" she asked.

"Yes, Al-lie," he said, pointing. "We set our bear-ing to-wards that star."

"Which star?" she asked.

"Look straight a-head," he said. "And then two to the right."

There was the faintest click and a change in the sound of his ticking. She'd been around him long enough to know that this was because his speech had run down, but thought and action were still running. She was too cold and tired to wind him up right now, so they would have to ride in silence for a while.

Suddenly, she thought about Tik-Tok's last words. Alice considered that now that they were safely away, this was the end of one story, or the beginning of the other. It was almost as though Tik-Tok's words themselves closed the chapter, and the word was the one she'd been told in advance. What do you know, Alice thought, the Omniscope was right.


DON'T FRET, READERS: Where one story ends, another begins. In next month's New Century Magazine, the thrilling adventures of Steampunk Allie continue, in Lost Boys, Lost Pirates, and Lost Cities, and The Coming of Cthulhu! Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.


Author's notes: This was written as part of a online writer's workshop I've been participating in a forum I frequent. The prompt for this assignment was to use a public domain character or public domain characters.

At first I thought about skipping this week's, but as I looked at a list, my eyes quite quickly rested on Alice, and it occured to me that since most known public domain characters are from the 1800s, it would be a natural tack to put them in a steampunk context. And so, Steampunk Allie was born. I'm sure I'm not the only one to think of it, but I haven't found any others. Most of the other elements in the story grew organically. I decided that I'd sort of attempt to (at least minimally) ape the style of a Victorian serial novel, and have my submission be the middle of a much longer story, and that Alice would be wandering through other public domain worlds, encountering other such characters. I had a very rough idea of what the whole novel would look like, so I could refer back to prior adventures and hint at future ones.

Because some of the events of the Alice novels were allegories for logical problems and such, I decided to make the inhabitants of the tower operate on a Wiki model.

This was written over the course of about a week, with one day for editing. As such, it's not the best it could be. But I'm at least somewhat pleased with it. However, it's far too large for the workshop, so I created a condensed version.

I'm not entirely sure I'm done with this. November is coming up, and although I haven't traditionally participated in NaNoWriMo, I'm idly considering attempting to complete the Steampunk Allie story for that. We'll see, but until now, this is what it is.

The song Sir James sings is based on Just Before The Battle, Mother by George F. Root (1864), with a little touch of HP Lovecraft.