THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF STEAMPUNK ALLIE

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THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF STEAMPUNK ALLIE

Chapter 13: Steampunk Allie and 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."

The room at the very top of the tower 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?" But then, since since they didn't know 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."

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."

TO BE CONTINUED in next month's New Century Magazine, with more thrilling adventures of Steampunk Allie
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.

The story reached over 10,000 words, written over the course of about a week, with one day for editing. As such, it's probably way too large for the workshop. So, this is a shortened version, taking bits of a few chapters. The longer version is here.

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.