Cogs in Time Anthology (The Steamworks Series) (4 page)

Ashe stood strong as the winds started to accelerate, and Daniel couldn’t help but smirk as Ashe’s hair whipped in the wind, his luxurious long tailcoat flapping wildly. Something about it was ironic, watching the child that had been so afraid after falling, now a man standing so close to the edge.

Daniel slowly walked towards him, carefully placing his feet as he took every step. The airship rose quickly, and the force bore down on him. He wasn’t accustomed to such a small vessel. For a moment, he felt a terrified start as his body pitched forward, and he couldn’t see how close he was to the edge. An arm wrapped around his chest, holding him firm as the airship continued to rise. He was frozen against the arm, unsure of which direction to move as clouds encompassed them.

“Almost there.” A voice said, and Daniel instinctively felt his hand reach for the arm, holding it against him as he smiled.

It was Ashe. His skin was warm even as the air felt like it was freezing Daniel’s skin. Something about the warmth was familiar, like the moment, he had passed Ashe the lotus flower and their hands had brushed against one another’s as they each smiled widely. He was that boy, yet not. When they had first met Ashe was the one falling, and now, Daniel could feel himself falling in more ways than he could describe.

“There we go.” Ashe said, and Daniel realized they were past the clouds—there was no reason to keep holding on.

“I am sorry, your majesty.” He said softly, the air even as the ship glided forward. Looking at his positioning on the ship, he had been right not to move, somehow he had made his way to the edge.

“Don’t be. It is nice to know someone else enjoys being out here in the chaos.” Ashe said and smiled.

Daniel smiled back, his chest felt so full of emotions he was afraid they might start tumbling out as words he wasn’t sure he wanted to say. Their eyes met, and Daniel froze. His eyes, those beautiful eyes, were all he could see, even as Ashe continued to speak. Daniel couldn’t understand a word, his mind muddled.

“I…I’m sorry, your majesty, I must get back below,” Daniel said quickly.

Panicking he walked briskly back to the hatch and hurried to the engine room. He had known what his feelings for Ashe were, but he hadn’t thought they could intensify. Having seen him, how much he had changed and grown, how brave he had become over the time they had been separated, he feared that the man he had gotten to know through the letters might not be all that Ashe was. He kept replaying everything about Ashe, and couldn’t stand the pressure building in his chest. He needed to build something, something that explained the emotions he didn’t know how to explain to himself.

He found the pieces he would need, as he always had, as though some part of him knew without need for thought what pieces would come together to encompass his emotions. After rechecking the engines, he got to work, grabbing gears and pins and bending copper sheets for the outer frame. It wasn’t enough, his chest still felt full. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and continued working, setting a chime he had created for himself to ring every hour for engine checks. His work took everything from him, his emotions, his sweat, and his energy as it sapped him dry. After hours of work, he sat in his office, exhausted, with the small machine in the palm of his hands.

He smiled when he realized what he had made. It beat with the rhythm of a heart, but it was another flower like the lotus. Only as its petals unfolded, they showed two small figures standing opposite each other, watching one another at its center. Setting it down on his desk, he smiled and made his way to his room, taking the chime with him. As he reached the engineering hatch and opened it towards him, he saw Ashe, a small bronze object clasped tightly in his hands.

“I need your help.” He said, stepping past Daniel and into the main engineering level without ceremony or guards.

“Your majesty?” He questioned, feeling his heart already pounding again. His exhaustion gone, replaced by jittery excitement that made it hard to stand still, even though he was known for being stoic, and at times, unemotional.

“It is broken.” His voice was both strong and tender as he opened his hands to reveal the lotus. “It no longer moves as it once did, and I can’t reach the creator now. Do you think you might be able to fix it?”

Seeing that he still felt the lotus was precious enough to keep with him on his journey, Daniel couldn’t help but look into Ashe’s eyes and respond, “Of course.”

Glad the pieces of his true workmanship were in his office where Ashe couldn’t discover him, he walked to his workstation and found the tools necessary. He still wasn’t sure he was ready for Ashe to know until he could better understand the way he felt around him.

Ashe followed him to the table and set the lotus down tenderly. “It is very precious to me. It was a gift. Please be very careful with it.” He spoke softly, as though speaking too loudly might accidentally harm it.

Opening up the trinket piece by piece to find the cause of the malfunction, Daniel could see the wear from use and felt touched. The mechanical trinket really was important to Ashe; it looked as though it had been used daily for years.

“I wondered if you might work with these after seeing the manifest list for your supplies. Normally engineers and mechanics don’t choose such small pieces when working on such a large engine.” Ashe said, anxious seeing his trinket in pieces.

Daniel, startled that Ashe had checked the manifest since his decision to come aboard, answered honestly, “I have always loved working with small trinkets like these, your majesty.” .

“I would love to see your other work if you manage to fix this.” Ashe said and smirked as Daniel watched him out of the corner of his eye.

“I will fix it, your majesty.”

Daniel knew his words had double meaning, not that he had realized he intended them to. He wanted to fix the mistake he had made when he left the air fortress all that time ago, not coming back, not asking to meet out of fear of rejection.

He removed his gloves to get a better feel for the center mechanism and found the problem, something as simple as a spring that had been damaged overtime. A flaw his younger self hadn’t noticed in the design, but had easily fixed in the trinket’s newer counterpart. It was a quick piece to switch, but the only one he had left was inside of the lotus he had created only hours before. 

“One moment, your majesty.” Daniel said, bowing to leave the room and remembering as he walked to his office that he had forgotten to bow on the air deck. Thinking he had better apologize to Ashe, he walked to his desk and got ready to disassemble the lotus for the spring.

“Stop.” He heard as he removed the first petal. “It is you... don’t take it apart.”

Daniel’s hand still held the petal as his and Ashe’s eyes locked. “How long have you known?”

“I had wondered since seeing you on the balcony at the ruling but wasn’t sure, until now. Your name on the passenger manifest only made me more curious. How long have you known who I am?” Ashe’s voice wasn’t harsh, it was comfortable and almost affectionate, giving Daniel hope.

“Since we were fourteen. My servant read one of my letters and confessed.” Daniel bit his lip, putting the petal back and screwing it to its bracket. He closed his eyes, getting up the nerve to do what everything inside of him was telling him to. He held the new lotus out to Ashe, who took it gingerly and used the trigger petal to start the dance. One by one the petals moved until the center was revealed and Daniel watched to see Ashe’s reaction. 

Lightly setting down the trinket on Daniel’s desk Ashe moved towards him and Daniel stood. Their eyes locked for a moment until they were so close that Daniel felt his body go rigid. Ashe raised his fingers to brush Daniel’s cheek, and laced them around the back of his neck. Ashe pulled him forward, and their lips met.

Tenderly, Daniel felt Ashe’s soft lips moving in motion with his own and embraced him. Emotions rolled over him in waves, but he had only one thought.
Ashe
. As their kiss deepened, Ashe wrapped his other arm around Daniel’s back, and they desperately pushed against one another until they were inseparable, trying to become one, until Ashe paused.

“This mission, you followed me here, didn’t you?” Ashe’s voice was tender as his heavy breathing intensified.

“Yes.”

“You could die.”

“So could you. Glide or fall, we are in this together.”

“Together.”

There was no hesitation as their lips met again, only a hunger for each other that had been building for years. Whatever fate brought them next, at least it had given them each other, and they would stand together.

By Faith Marlow

Pen stood in awed silence before the enormous temple entrance as the humid dampness of the jungle soaked into every surface. Above him, moisture dripped from the thick canopy. Above that, a soaking rainstorm had just passed over the area. In the thick jungle, the rain continually percolated through the foliage, regardless if it continued to rain or had already ceased.

Pen pushed his hair out of his face, slicking it back, and rummaged through his satchel. He took out the locator device and pulled up the antenna. Turning the small crank on the side, he wound it tight before sitting it on the ground to do its work, calling Hitch. No matter where he was within a twenty-mile radius, Hitch would get the alert and the coordinates to Pen’s location. Pen had no doubt the wet and mud were playing havoc on Hitch’s gears, and he would have to assist him with some thorough cleaning when they arrived back at camp, whether he liked it or not. 

While he waited for Hitch to return from his entomology survey, Pen rolled up his sleeve to reveal the notation terminal on his forearm and flipped the switch. The terminal possessed a miniature keyboard and a narrow display, which revealed two small drums of water resistant paper, similar to that of an accountant’s calculator. It hummed with mechanical life, gears and springs working beneath the coppery tinted exterior, fully wound and ready to function by the movement of his body, just like self-winding watch.

He quickly typed the coordinates of his location and a quick observation. The paper fed onto the roll behind the first as he typed. When Hitch arrived, he would photograph the location and work up a detailed map as they investigated the interior. He quickly finished his notes and turned off the terminal, not wishing to test the resistance of the paper any more than necessary.

Pen walked to the sealed entrance of the temple, which was mostly obscured by thick vines and tree roots, and rubbed his hands across its surface. He could feel carvings, but eons of overgrowth and exposure had taken their toll, eroding and obscuring what remained. He returned to his satchel and withdrew a small crate, which opened like a briefcase. Nestled inside the protective foam were four small egg-shaped pods, with a winding key on the top of each. Pen called them crawlers.

He extracted the first, feeling the gears and mechanisms within the pod come to life like a butterfly within a cocoon as he wound the key. He sat it on the ground and continued to the next as the crawler’s six legs unfolded from its sides, and two arms with brushes at the ends, peeked out as the top opened like the back of a scarab. Soon, all four crawlers stood in a line with gears turning, lightly trembling and awaiting directions.

Pen gathered the devices up, took them to the doorway, set each of them to the “clean” function, and watched as they scurried forward. Soon the crawlers would be busy cleaning and removing foliage with their tiny, surgically precise tools, and Pen would have a better idea of what he was dealing with. As he watched them work, he heard the familiar whistle and cadence of his old friend as he plodded through the undergrowth.

Eight years prior, five years before he and Pen had met, Peter “Hitch” Barnesly had been on a species reconnaissance expedition in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of North America. As the caravan of researchers traveled the remnants of a narrow muddy road, the earth beneath them sloughed off and Hitch’s rover had careened down the slope with it. The rover and its three occupants rolled down the mountainside, crashing into trees and covered by the following avalanche of mud and rocks. The driver and front passenger were killed. Hitch had been riding in the back seat with the equipment, and although his choice of seating saved his life, the heavy crates crushed his left leg and arm.

He had lain comatose in the hospital for two days, straddling the line between life and death. He woke to discover his colleagues had not survived the crash and that his leg had been amputated below the knee and his arm just below the shoulder joint. After months of healing and physical therapy, he was fitted with top of the line prosthetics, funded by the University. Unlike traditional prosthetics, the appliances were fueled by steam, hydraulic powered enhancements. They still functioned as well as the day he was “reassembled,” as he liked to call it, aside from the “hitch” in his gait from the added weight of his leg.

“Hello, Pen.” Hitch said in his flat, dry voice. He puffed and wiped the sweat and rain from his eyes. The bandana he wore to shield his head from the sun and insects was soaked through, trickling down his sideburns and running into his thick, bushy beard.

“Hey buddy, how did the hunt go?” Pen responded curiously. “Did you bring anything back?”

“I found several species, cataloged and photographed them, and let them go.” He responded, annoyed by the musing of his younger companion.

Pen shrugged and huffed before leaning to look at the various gages and meters on the sides of his colleague’s prosthetics. “You still got plenty in the tank?”

“My tank is at optimum level and pressure.” Hitch answered, a hiss of steam jetting through the recapture unit as if on cue. “I have had my rain catch open most of the day. It seems this jungle climate is not without its advantages.”

“How are your gears doing? You full of mud?” Pen asked, bending over to check his companion at his ankles, knees, and then standing to check his shoulders.

“My joints are fine, thank you. I could have told you and saved you the trouble of violating my personal space.”

“No rust…right?”

“No I do not have rust. I was tested last month for any indications of rust and my sensors are at zero, for your information—not that it is.” Hitch retorted, obviously offended.

“Alright buddy, just asking…” Pen teased.

“Do you have any chafing, Pen? Perhaps between your buttocks or legs, maybe you have some unwanted itching in your scrotal
region. That is very common in a wet, humid environment.”

“Alright, simmer down. I get it.” Penn conceded, swiping his hair out of his face again. “Come check this out. The crawlers are almost done.”

Pen and Hitch walked toward the entrance of the temple, which was mostly clear of the vines, roots, and moss. The crawlers were scouring the surface of the sealed door with tiny brushes, revealing the engravings and reliefs that adorned its surface.

“What do you think of it?” Pen asked, standing back to admire his discovery in the same way a sculptor might gaze upon a finished statue.

“It’s old, very old. This was constructed centuries before the flare.” Hitch said, walking forward for a closer look. He traced his fingers over the engraving. “There is text here, but also an image.”

“Can you increase the visibility in the photo?”

“Probably, but it will take time to expose.” Hitch said, pulling the camera and its folding tripod from his backpack. “You know, back before the flare, you could manipulate any image you wanted on a computer. Add stuff, take stuff out, you could even make yourself skinny.”

“Hey you could really use that!” Pen teased, patting his belly with great exaggeration.

“Your face could use it, ugly little bastard.” Hitch grumbled as he stood and pulled up the back of his pants, tucking in his shirt to prevent any unintended exposure.

Pen laughed and left him alone to work.

The solar flare of 2115 had wiped the earth of all electronic and digital technology. For a while, people wondered if humans would survive at all. Riots, war, and hunger were rampant for years. Eventually, the world began to crawl back from the stone ages with what remained of analog technology, what the generation before the flare had called outdated junk and antiques.

Only in the last ten years had scientist begun to reverse engineer the electronic technology from the past, but so far, their efforts had not bore fruit, but a total reorganization of the world had not been without its advantages. In the century after the flare, people talked face to face again, communities became closer, and families ate dinner around the table again, instead of in front of a screen. People read books, grew their own vegetables, and took less medications. A love of nature meant conservation efforts increased. Solar and wind power were commonplace, and a resurgence and modernization of steam power had made the burning of fossil fuels obsolete. It seemed people enjoyed breathing after all.

“Pen, it’s finished. Come take a look at this.” He held the freshly developed photograph carefully by the edges, passing it to Pen. Hitch sheltered it from drips with his hands. “Do you see the man in the image? Remind you of anything?”

Pen immediately made the same connection. Framed by an ornate border, the carving depicted a man in such a way that he appeared to be seated on some sort of throne, but instead of resting in royal splendor, the man was reclined and looking skyward. His hands were not holding
a scepter or sword, but seemed to manipulate aspects of the carving, as if he was sitting in the cockpit of some sort of vehicle or craft.  

“
The Palenque Astronaut, King Pakal.”

“Sure looks like him.”

“So the question is this; why is a Mayan king carved on a temple entrance in a jungle that is about nine thousand miles away from Guatemala?” Pen questioned, returning to the temple entrance. He traced the edge of the perfectly rectangular door stone with his fingertips. The joint was nearly seamless, the edges so perfectly joined that not even a fingernail could be pushed between them. “And if it is not Pakal, then who is it?”

“We are not going to know that until we can get in there.” Hitch said, returning to the crawler case. He opened it, and then looked around on all sides, scanning the immediate area. “Did you only bring one case?”

Pen dropped his head before nodding in agreement. “Yeah…”

“Damn amateur.”

* * *

Three days later, Pen and Hitch stood in front of the temple again, its door carefully liberated from the entrance. It had taken the crawlers forty-six hours to chisel enough rock from the doorway that ropes could be wrapped around the door and another full day for the anxious explorers to drag it just far enough that they would be able to squeeze into the passageway behind it. Hitch checked the fuel in the lantern before lifting the glass chimney to light the wick and then handed it to Pen.  

“Watch yourself in here, Hitch.” He said, pushing the lantern into the darkness before sliding past the door himself. Hitch took a deep breath and followed him into the unknown, again.

Hitch had followed Pen into the middle of the darkest jungle in what was once called Cambodia, thousands of miles from home, because Pen had a hunch that the secrets they sought would be discovered there. But that was not the only reason or the first time he had followed him halfway across the earth merely on a hunch. Four years before, he had accompanied Pen in the deserts of the East, searching for more evidence to support his theory that the ancients possessed electrical technology that far surpassed Bagdad battery.

He had rediscovered some ancient hieroglyphs and inscriptions in Egypt, discoveries made by generations long before the flare, but for the most part, they had returned empty handed. Years of archeology and grave robbery had destroyed much of the integrity of those locations.

Pen needed a location that was undefiled, someplace so remote that it had managed to go unnoticed, even before the flare. Long ago, a tribe was said to have lived and worshiped at a temple that supposedly held such amazing technology it would have only been given to them from a more advanced race, an alien race. That myth was what had drawn Pen to the temple in one of the most remote places of the earth.

To believers, the school of thought was known
as the ancient astronaut theory. To skeptics it was bunk. Hitch hoped that whatever proof  Pen needed to establish advance technology existed in ancient times long before the flare was in the temple, because the last time they had gotten skunked. He doubted even Pen would get the University to fund another expedition if they came back unsuccessful again.

Pen and Hitch had to duck their heads as they slowly walked down the gradually sloping passage. It was narrow, just wide enough that Hitch’s fingertips could touch both sides of the smooth walls. He wondered where the ancients had quarried the stone to produce the blocks, which were uniform and square, three-feet long by two-feet high. He could only imagine how thick, or how much they must weigh. Those details would come later, but for the moment both explorers were consumed by the thrill of the hunt, their ambitioned tempered only by the fear of booby traps or becoming hopelessly lost.