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the-empress-and-her-downfall · 8 years ago

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Chapter Three

Upon reaching home later that night, having exhausted my stories earlier on with Mr Worthing, I soon acquired a sense for what life would be like in the future, living alongside a man who was a replicate of myself. For when I brought tea into my sitting room later on, I returned to the sight of my favourite armchair usurped by the fiend Percival. Conflict I was sure would very soon arise from the fact that while I had been copied, my furniture had not, but for now I sat by my typewriter on a small table near to the fire, which burned satisfyingly while the wind blew fiercely outside. Percival, meanwhile, flipped through the pages of my old book, rather wordily entitled, The Surprising Science of Reality; or, How to Be Sure That You Actually Exist. I worked at the typewriter, writing out a list of corrections that was fast becoming a short book of its own, while Percival sat back, reading through each page of the book and slowly making it redundant, paragraph by paragraph. As irritating as this was, it was surely a marvelous thing that not only had I proved myself the country’s leading authority on the science of reality, but I had also created an even greater authority. Percival, being the engine, possessed inside knowledge of the system of navigation I could never hope to acquire.

By this point in the evening with so many pieces of paper already used and my eyes growing tired, I began to doubt whether the whole endeavour was worth it. “Percival,” I said. “Are you sure this is efficient?”

“Is what efficient?” he asked.

“Going through every page of my book and making a list of corrections,” I replied. “I say, I have made so many corrections already that it might warrant a second volume.”

“Well, would you like me to let you stop typing for the night?”

“Percival, I am my own man.” I began a new line on my current page. “I will finish typing when I so wish.”

“And would that be now?”

The writing was all starting to look like a blur to me, due to tiredness not beer consumption, but then again, starting on an immensely complicated project like this after two pints does seem like a jolly bad idea in retrospect. I am sure it was Percival’s.

“As it happens,” I said, “yes.”

“Well,” said Percival, “you will only have more to do tomorrow.”

I turned around. “Well, I didn’t realise I had an attitude like that.”

“You might not do! If indeed it is true that we’re not identical after all.”

“Thank God for that.”

“And what is that supposed to mean!”

“I don’t know.” I paused. “Forget it.” I went over to sit on my second favourite armchair and drink my tea. If only I had had a better opinion of myself before my adventure across the barrier, I could have had such a pleasant evening! Instead however, pessimistic as I was about my own qualities and how the world perceived me, I was stuck with this insufferable man. “By the way, I think I should have that armchair.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been doing the typing.”

“And I have been clearing up all of your mistakes!”

We stopped speaking now and sat in an uneasy silence for at least five minutes, such was the frightfulness and intensity of the scornful glaring we exchanged between sips of tea. We hadn’t even had the argument over who had rights to my bedroom yet.

Something needed to break this stalemate, and fortunately that thing came just a minute later, with a ringing of the doorbell. As soon as it was heard we both leapt to our feet and hurried for the front door, both of us intending to answer it before the other, in order to cement ourselves as the real Mr Bingley. The trouble Percival had was that he still didn’t look a thing like me, as much as I thought differently. In the end, however, when we opened the door we stood alongside each other, while facing us was an unknown gentleman in a top hat, holding a newspaper under his arm. “Good Evening,” he said.

“Good Evening!” we simultaneously replied, in a way that slightly startled the man.

“Would one of you be Mr Bingley?” the visitor asked.

“Yes!” we spoke together again and glanced at each other in contempt.

“Both of you?” asked the man.

“Yes!” said Percival, on his own.

“We’re brothers,” I clarified.

“Oh I see,” our visitor replied. “Then, would one of you be the Mr Bingley who put the advertisement in the Evening Standard?

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I will fetch the bicycle for you now, if you like?”

“Bicycle?” the visitor seemed confused. “I don’t know about any bicycle, I’m here because of this.” He took the newspaper from under his arm and read one of the advertisements to me, “Are you sober? Are you nonetheless seeing irregularities in your environment that you cannot explain? Do not hesitate, consult Mr Bingley!”

“Oh, that!” I replied, somewhat more enthusiastically than our visitor seemed to be in the mood for. “I didn’t think anyone paid attention to that!”

“Well, can you help me or can’t you?” the man seemed impatient.

“Oh, absolutely yes,” I said, “please, come in. Would you like tea?”

Percival followed me in, as did the visitor, who closed the door behind him. “No thank you, I am not in the mood for tea,” replied the as yet anonymous man.

“Well,” said Percival. “I am.” He simply wandered back into the sitting room at this point, abruptly leaving us.

“I am most sorry,” I apologised to the miserable man who had come to visit. “Unfortunately I am charged with looking after my rather unpleasant brother for some time.”

“No,” the visitor said. “I like him. He seems irritable and unsociable; a man can relate.” Well, I thought, my household is certainly shaping up to be jolly this evening.

“Yes, he has... a unique attitude to life,” I said. “I say, what can I call you?”

“Mr Topping,” came the reply, and finally the gentleman was named.

“Oh,” I responded. “Marvelous.”

I was suddenly lost for what to say. Mr Topping did not begin to tell me about the problem for which he had come to see me, instead he waited for me to begin the conversation. Being a naturally absent minded man, as well as tired and slowed in my reactions by alcohol, I was not in the best mind for quick thinking. Instead, I stumbled out with some kind of poorly formed joke. “I say, that is a topping... topper you have, Mr Topping!” I said, as our visitor removed his hat. I immediately regretted this.

“I would appreciate if that joke were never told again,” Mr Topping was quick to reply.

“Right’oh,” I said, accepting that all joy would be banned for the course of the evening, “well, if you’d prefer, we shall discuss things in the sitting room.”

“Very well,” Mr Topping replied, and I directed him through the first door on the left.

Once in the room, I assumed my place again in the second best armchair, whilst Percival remained in the best and Mr Topping sat opposite us both on the chair by the typewriter, which he pulled into the middle of the room. “I say,” said Mr Topping, briefly getting up and reaching down towards Percival, “you seem to have dropped a book.” Indeed Percival had, on his rush to the front door, and he had neglected to pick it up again. Mr Topping retrieved the book for him and read its title out of curiosity, “The Surprising Science of Anti Reality; or, How to Be Sure That You Actually Exist? What is this?”

I wasn’t entirely sure whether the man was one of us or not, so for now I said as little as I could, “Oh, it’s nothing.”

Mr Topping sat down again and quickly glanced through a few of the book’s pages. “It isn’t light reading, is it?”

“Oh, no! Well, it is meant for a... quite specific audience.”

“Well, I want to read it!” Mr Topping was determined. “One can’t simply go on unsure of whether they exist – it would be terribly inconvenient if it should turn out that I don’t.”

I wouldn’t be so sure, I thought. “Yes, that would be quite tragic!” That was hard to say.

The man carried on looking at the book, soon finding the forward. I was fast beginning to worry whether this was all some kind of test set by the Minister of Science, to try to catch me out letting strangers know the secrets of our world. “Did you write this?” asked Mr Topping, looking at the author’s name again.

“Yes I did,” I admitted.

“I did not know you were a writer!”

“Well, I do scribble a few things down now and then.”

Mr Topping seemed unordinary happy with my book. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that most of it was now nonsense. “This book,” he went on, “would it be able to tell me... if a village existed?”

“Now, that sounds like a very specific question, if you don’t mind me saying, sir,” I commented, hoping to discover why he was asking this.

“Well, it is a very specific problem.”

I sipped my tea before asking, “And what would that be?”

“You see, I have recently moved to a village, and I fear it doesn’t exist.”

“Is it not on the map?”

“No, and it isn’t there whenever I leave by the front door. However, when I leave by the back door, it is there! Even more curiously the village seems to have no residents.”

This sounded very interesting. Mr Topping clearly was not amused by the state of affairs at all but I was positively ----. Nobody had ever come to my door before, asking me to look at something as peculiar as this. “And this village, is it there if you walk around the back of your house, to the garden?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“How peculiar.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“Well! You will have to allow me time to think.”

Percival thought to offer his opinion, “It must be another realm.”

“Another realm?” asked Mr Topping, confused. At first I almost interrupted to question the idea, but I soon realised it was indeed the most likely of all explanations.

“Yes,” replied Percival, “I do fear you may have purchased a house that is in fact a portal to another world.”

“Well, the previous owner didn’t think to mention it.”

“Perhaps because he wanted rid of it!”

Mr Topping still did not believe what he was hearing. “Sorry, a portal! Like a magical portal?”

“I am afraid not, sir,” I answered him, “it is surely something far more complicated than that. We will have to come down and see it for ourselves.” We had to. I couldn’t possibly miss this. I hadn’t ever known a village that only partially existed.

“Well, if you have to come, the house is in Sussex,” Mr Topping explained, “I don’t know if that is too far away for you.”

“Oh,” I said, “no, it isn’t, we’ll just have to rethink our plans.”

“Yes, you will,” said Percival, standing up. “Don’t mind me, will you?” He then left the room, giving no reason as to why.

I decided not to comment. “Yes, we will be able to go there tomorrow,” I carried on with Mr Topping, “most likely mid afternoon, unless you would prefer another time?”

“No, tomorrow would be excellent,” Mr Topping agreed, “the sooner you can attend to the matter, the better!”

“Good, then if you could give me the address I shall meet you there.”

“Ah, I anticipated this,” said Mr Topping, reaching into his inside pocket for a piece of paper, “I wrote the address down.” He checked a small, folded hand written note to see that it was the right one and then handed it over to me. “There you go.”

“Thank you.”

“But, I should ask, what are you going to do?”

“Oh, well, we’ll certainly look at it.”

“Look at it?”

“Well, yes, to see what we can do.”

“Do you know what you might be able to do?”

I thought, and then I answered, “No, not particularly.”

“Well, I won’t be paying you to simply look at the problem.”

“Oh, no sir, I shan’t charge you anything if I don’t solve the problem! I shall merely see it as a learning experience.”

“Is that what this is to you?”

“No – sir, I don’t know if you realise but portals like this do not appear very often!”

“I am quite aware of that. Until now in fact I was unaware that such phenomena existed outside of fiction, and I am still doubtful.”

“Then, you must appreciate it is a scientific curiosity by which I am very intrigued?”

“Well, I see it as a damned nuisance!”

I asked, “Then, what precisely would you like me to do about it? If indeed it is a portal.”

“Get rid of it!”

“Why, that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?”

“Would it?”

“Somebody has probably put a lot of time into building that portal.”

“Perhaps, but how am I supposed to explain this when I come to resell the property?”

“Well,” I can’t say I knew the answer to this, “I am sure there are hundreds of people who would love their own portal. Don’t you like it?”

“I would prefer a functioning back door.”

“Well, I will see what I can do.”

“That sentence does not inspire hope.”

I was growing tired of this man and both his lack of patience and intellectual curiosity. I said, “I am afraid to say, sir, this isn’t something I encounter regularly.”

“Well – answer me this, if it isn’t a magical portal, what is it?”

“Now, I can’t possibly say. We must examine it first.”

“Well, I don’t know how your other customers usually feel at this point in a conversation but I remain hopelessly confused.”

“Oh, I am sorry.”

Mr Topping grumbled. “You will have to go through it again with me!”

I certainly was not prepared to go through anything else again with this insufferable man. If it weren’t for his portal I would surely have asked him to leave long before now. Fortunately, however, with good timing, Percival returned to the room, assumedly coming to my relief. On a tray he carried a teapot, which excited me, “Oh, tea, Percival?”

“Yes,” he replied, sitting down again in my armchair, “for me!”

My hopes were dashed. “Ah, very well.” I had only made myself a small cup earlier and very little remained of it.

I lost concentration for a moment while I gazed upon Percival pouring his tea, dreaming of having a pot of my own, but Mr Topping interrupted this thought, “Mr Bingley, do you only think of tea?”

“Oh – no,” I said, distractedly. I noticed Percival was most annoyed by our visitor’s attitude.

“Good, now,” Mr Topping went on, “explain everything to me again.”

“Oh, are we going through it again?” asked Percival.

“Yes, apparently so,” I said.

“Oh, how wonderful,” Percival replied, “topping you might say.” He tried to contain a smirk, while Mr Topping tried to hide his aggravation as it seemed Percival was engaging in wordplay regarding his name that he found deeply unamusing. Reluctantly, he let the remark go, as he was more concerned with understanding his very peculiar problem and wished to avoid deviation.

“Yes,” began Mr Topping, speaking to me, “I want to know, how does a portal work? And where do they take you? Where are these other worlds?”

“Oh, Mr Bingley will be able to tell you everything about that,” Percival interrupted, rather strangely, “he’s an absolutely topping fellow in that regard.”

“Yes...” I said, somewhat catching onto what Percival was doing: attempting to irritate Mr Topping enough in order for him to leave. It seemed to be working. The only problem with this was that I hadn’t a great amount to say about portals at all, so I began to invent most of it as I went along. “Portals, yes, they are very interesting. You – go into them, and then, well, you end up somewhere else!”

“Yes, that is generally what is meant by a portal,” Mr Topping replied.

“Ah!” I said. “Well you’re most of the way to understanding them, then!”

“Am I? I don’t feel like I understand.”

“Oh!” Percival interrupted again, at another peculiar interval. “I forgot to ask; would you like cake?”

“No,” said Mr Topping.

“Why, yes please!” I replied.

“Well,” Percival came back, “we have several kinds. Is there a topping you would prefer?” He even went so far as to smirk at our visitor in the process of saying this.

“Yes, you know – this explanation, it can wait, I think!” Mr Topping had clearly had enough. “I shall... see you tomorrow.” He stood up to leave.

“Oh, that is a shame,” Percival responded, “and just as we were starting to have an absolutely topping time.”

“Yes,” Mr Topping agreed, with no emotion, “what a shame,”

We soon saw him out after that, me seeing him to the front door and Percival remaining in the armchair with his tea. Once I shut the door behind him, I returned to the sitting room. “I say, what a horrible sort of chap,” I remarked, walking through the doorway.

“Deeply unpleasant!” Percival replied.

“Well. You soon were rid of him!” I quickly followed with a question, “Is there any hot water left in the kettle?”

“No,” replied Percival, delightedly sipping from his cup. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” I said, “then I shall boil my own.”

“And I had the last of the Assam.”

“Excellent.”

Percival carried on despite my plans, “I say, the man’s a civilian, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I replied, “not one of us, certainly. He didn’t even think to mention psykery.”

“Then how on earth does a man like that come to end up with a house with a portal? It must be illegal for one of us to sell it to him.”

“Oh, it is,” I was certain. “Handing the portal to another realm over to an unauthorised person is unquestionably traitorous.”

“Well, if it is, then why would someone do that?”

“I don’t know. Somebody not known to us, most likely mad, evidently has the technology to build other realms and portals between them.”

“Impossible!”

“I only wish it were so. In this case, they have apparently built an entire village of their own within a realm of their creation and handed it over to an unsuspecting man. What do you reckon to it?”

“Most odd indeed.”

I headed for the door. “Well,” I said, “I am looking forward to meeting him, whoever he is.”

Chapter Four

The night before travelling to Sussex, I telephoned Mr Worthing to inform him that the plan had changed. Instead of travelling down to Dorset together on the Sunday as we had agreed earlier in the Lion, we would instead set off on Saturday and first travel to Kent. It was there that I had left my motor car, close by to Canterbury and my nearby country home. We would take the motor car from Kent to Sussex, stay the night there and then embark for Dorset the next morning. Mr Worthing and I agreed that it would be far safer to have the motor car beside us when we went to investigate the disappearing village, in case things turned nasty and we needed to leave quickly. This is the reason for the significant deviation in our journey in travelling to Kent, rather than going straight to Sussex by train.

Mr Worthing had responded enthusiastically to the call to investigate Mr Topping’s partially-existent village, immediately setting about packing his bags and then retiring for the evening. I meanwhile, did the same, all the time distracted by thoughts regarding the case. Why somebody would sell their property to an unsuspecting man, knowing full well that they had built a portal into it, remained a mystery to me. More so, since it was clear that the act was unlawful and that the property would surely be registered with the Ministry of Science, why would anyone commit such a crime if their name would be easily accessible to the Secret Service and immediately attributable to the crime?

The only possible eventualities I considered likely were either that the seller was mad, or somehow determined to spring a trap. I deliberated this all through the night and soon regretted it once the reality of an early morning struck me.

Not long before seven on the Saturday morning, Percival and I walked with our suitcases for nearby Victoria Station, where we met Mr Worthing. The man had pottered around aimlessly until our arrival, whereupon we collected him, bought him a small cake from the cafe and purchased our tickets. Fantastically, we were able to pay for both of these things from Percival’s pocket, as it emerged that the man, in replicating me and my appearance, had also replicated any money I had on me at the time. Unfortunate it was then, that I hadn’t chosen to imagine myself in a nicer suit, which could have been acquisitioned for my own use.

A short while later, we followed on down to the platform, where we boarded the train for Canterbury East. From then on, we sat rather quietly in a compartment of our own, delighting ourselves with our various reading materials, mostly in silence for the most part. Percival’s silence in particular was deliberate, as he was still assuredly opposed to the whole idea of travelling out to Kent in the first place, preferring to go directly to Sussex rather than going out of the way to pick up the motor car. Since being outvoted on the matter, he preferred to spend the journey scowling behind the Daily Telegraph rather than making conversation, as he now wished only to hear those opinions he agreed with. Meanwhile, Mr Worthing and I discussed all manner of things, between chapters of Mr Worthing’s book for the journey, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which he seemed to enjoy. The topic that arose most often was understandably the one of most concern.

Mr Worthing briefly put down his book and gazed out of the window, to think. He asked me, “Who is in the business of building portals, anyway?”

I decided I was fed up of the Times and instead decided to join Mr Worthing in looking out of the window. I replied, “Well, I thought that no one was. ------ makes mention of them but they seem frightfully dangerous things. I can’t think of anyone we know who would attempt to build one.” ------’s work, incidentally, is the original authoritative text on reality science written by one of the founders of our Society. It was a revealing book, in its thorough explanation of some of the extraordinary quirks of the universe, their possible causes and how they could be exploited. Therefore, few copies were ever produced, and members of the general public were forbidden to read it or acknowledge its existence without authorisation by the Ministry of Science. “I say, this isn’t to do with your bet, is it?”

“Not at all, I assure you!” confidently answered Mr Worthing.

“Well, it must be somebody known to us who owned the house. There are barely more than twenty people in possession of a copy of ----’s book, it must be one of them.”

“Unless they acquired a copy through less than honourable means.”

I agreed, “Yes... which might be the likeliest explanation in the case of a traitor.”

“Are we absolutely sure that he is a traitor? I mean to say, perhaps this Mr Topping fellow was one of us after all, but merely clueless.”

“Well, I am not certain but it is the assumption I am working on. Whoever he is, he isn’t a fool – which cannot be said for Mr Topping.”

It must be made clear that in the eyes of the Ministry there were only two kinds of people in this world: those who knew about psykery and those who didn’t. Those who knew about it were so called ‘Persons Authorised to Practise Psykery;’ people either born into a family of other authorised persons, or adopted into a society from the outside world, like me some years ago. Legally, there was no grey area. You were either part of our world and its strange customs and technologies, or completely unaware of its existence. If Mr Topping was indeed unauthorised to practise psykery, he was equally unauthorised to learn about it, making the previous owner of the house highly treasonous. Psykery, after all, was potentially destructive business and a threat to the state.

Mr Worthing continued to entertain the problem while he gazed out of the window but he soon returned to his reading, as did I. My choice of literature for the journey was however quite unfortunate. Before leaving London I had originally intended to bring with me a new book to start on, however in my general state of unease following an exceptionally short night’s sleep, I forgot about this entirely. Left in my case then, was a rather new book called The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells – rather good, you might say, but considering its plot; about a gentleman scientist thrust by his own machine into a strange and inescapable new world where he is forced to contend with brutish creatures; not exactly the kind of escapism I was hoping for. The Jane Austen novel I had planned on taking instead lay on a small side table at home, meaning that unfortunately I would not be inquiring into the romantic pursuits of my namesake for at least two days now.

Thankfully thereafter, the journey was not too long, and we soon arrived in Canterbury. Then, we immediately began the short walk from the station to my nearby inconspicuous shed, just outside the old city walls on a small piece of land owned by the government.

In Kent I owned a modest residence not so far from Canterbury, but I rented the shed so I might have somewhere nearer to the railway station to store my motor car and a few other pieces of mechanical interest. I was by no means a man of great wealth, as owning two homes might suggest, but merely fortunate to have applied to the Ministry of Science for a grant for the purchase of a country home while the government was at its most generous. Having somewhere to build, maintain and operate noisy machinery far away from the heavily populated streets of central London was necessary for my work, but such a grant would not be given nowadays, since the tightening of budgets and the stern close-fistedness of the current minister. Indeed, it was the new minister who was responsible for the rent on my Canterbury shed being doubled. As we approached it, it quickly became evident as to why this was unfair.

I simply want you to imagine a slightly dilapidated old farm building with a large portion of its slates missing, for that was essentially what it was. The door was nothing more than several improvised sheets of scrap metal on hinges, padlocked together, and there were no windows or floorboards to speak of. All I particularly needed there was space, for my splendid new motor vehicle and a few workbenches and containers, but the building was surely worth only half of what I paid for it.

“What a frightful place,” said Mr Worthing as I unlocked the doors with a key from my pocket. We then pulled open the doors and wandered inside, into what was quite a tight space when the motor car was there.

The vehicle was one I had acquired rather recently from a chap called Lord Wentworth, in Surrey. He had won it in a game of Whist a few months ago from another Lord, Sudbury, who was apparently his arch rival for reasons unbeknownst to me. Wentworth then gave it to me about a month ago in exchange for my services in machine repair, chief among his reasons being that the car was in frightful condition when he won it and he had no idea how to go about repairing it. As it happens, when I did eventually have it repaired, it transpired to be the most magnificent machine! Its engine was far more powerful than any other motor vehicle I had ever encountered – as if it were a prototype of sorts, although Lord Wentworth could never enlighten me as to where Lord Sudbury had bought the vehicle as the two men were not on speaking terms. Nonetheless, I fitted the beastly, four seated machine into my shed as best I could and made great use of it while in the country.

“I tell you,” said Mr Worthing, removing his hat and getting into the front of the motor car, “you should be building these things. These are the future! Not those irksome automatons or tin can machines you so love.”

“Call them irksome, Mr Worthing, but there is a lot of money in it,” I replied. “Besides, those tin can machines will no doubt save this country a lot of bother one day.” What he called a tin can was what most called a fighting machine, although they did often bear a striking resemblance to the tin can, albeit one which was sophisticated and highly vicious.

“What sort of chap even keeps automatons nowadays?” asked Mr Worthing.

Lord Wentworth sprung to mind. “Very rich chaps,” I said. “They think it will impress their friends, and indeed rivals for that matter.” The aforementioned Lord was fixated with the extravagances of electricity and modern technology, however impractical they were. He kept a staff composed almost entirely of machines and automatons, mostly in an attempt to out-do Lord Sudbury, who was quite a bit madder than him and preferred to pay his own servants heaps of money to wear metal suits all day whilst they worked and remain silent in the presence of guests.

“Well,” Mr Worthing continued as I placed our suitcases in the back, just as Percival was getting in, “those rich chaps are all fools.”

I took myself around to the other side of the car and then sat in front of the steering wheel. “I like it when people are fools,” I said, “you can make a good living out of them.” I started the engine and then pressed down the accelerating peddle, causing the car to lurch forward rather suddenly. “I say, if it weren’t for those rich fools with an automaton fixation, there would be near to no money in the development of machines at all!”

“And you know where that will get us one day,” Mr Worthing replied. “Everyone will be out of work!”

I drove the car forwards, out of the shed and onto grass. “Good!” I replied. “Then we may all have a much needed rest.”

The motor car, although brilliant, was horrendously loud, and it must be stressed that all further conversation was conducted entirely through shouting. Experimental vehicles were by no means elegant in any way! Indeed, even the seats were quite uncomfortable. If it weren’t for the installation of belts to stop passengers being thrown forward when the machine became temperamental, our journey would soon prove very hazardous for all involved. The speeds at which this vehicle travelled were more or less unseen on the roads of England until now, much to the shock of those attached to the vehicle and indeed those who happened to witness it.

After removing our hats and placing on goggles, we soon enough started on the second half of our journey. Before leaving Canterbury, I drove at modest speed, to attract as little possible attention from bystanders. However, once presented with long and relatively straight country lanes with little traffic, I took the vehicle across the Kentish countryside as fast as the vehicle could travel – I dare say as fast as thirty miles to the hour. I am quite sure it was against the law but we travelled faster than the constabulary possibly could, so the law was of little relevance. At times, the journey became awfully bumpy and uncomfortable, whilst overhanging tree branches were an aggravation on some of the less trodden paths. Villages too were an inconvenience as some less enlightened rural persons showed great concern at the ghastly noise we were bringing to their peaceful corner of rural England. One man said that we were ‘clownish,’ which Mr Worthing took to heart and he needed to be consoled, but ultimately the exercise went swimmingly, and we arrived near to our destination by about two o’clock.

Soon afterwards we reached Mr Topping’s address, finding it with ease. It was a relatively isolated country house with a Georgian facade, set against a small hill and a slightly more distant wood. It had a modest garden, and then it was surrounded by grassy fields and hedgerows.

I brought the motor car to a standstill at the side of the road, just outside the front garden. I then turned off the engine, having left it on just long enough for Mr Topping to surely hear us arriving. We then disembarked, gave our jackets a small dusting off, tidied our hair from the horrible windiness of the journey, and then swapped our goggles for the usual hats. Percival, who I realise I may not have mentioned very much lately, was still of the same agitated mood he had left London with, although I began to sense that he was letting go of our disagreements now we had arrived at the intended destination in good time. Mr Worthing meanwhile, was simply dazed.

“Well, do you think he’ll be waiting for us?” I asked.

“Let us hope not,” Percival replied.

“Well, I for one am very much looking forward to finally finding out what this apparently unbearable gentleman is really like,” Mr Worthing foolishly declared his optimism. He looked across to the house and sighted a figure in the window. “Is that him?”

“Probably!” I said. “It is either him or a servant.”

“Well, he looks, awfully grey,” Mr Worthing went on, inspiring us to look the same way as him. I couldn’t see the figure very well but he was distinctly grey, or perhaps silver.

“That’s curious,” I said, leading my two friends up the garden path towards the front door. Halfway there, it all became clearer. The man we saw was mechanical! His face was bronze and featureless, spare his camera-like eyes, and his hull was bulky, rectangular and plated with steel. “I say, it’s a metal man!”

“In which case, Mr Topping must be one of us,” Percival replied.

“God help us.”

“So much for being a traitor, the man is simply a fool!”

I turned to Mr Worthing and said, “You asked what sort of chap keeps automatons? You have your answer: Mr Topping.”

Now, if it did now seem that Mr Topping was in fact a person authorised to practise psykery (as difficult as it might be to imagine such a man as him being adopted into one of our societies), then the question would still remain as to why he seemed so ignorant of the existence of psykery. Perhaps the ignorance was an act, to persuade us that he was an unauthorised person in order to advance a malign plot – or perhaps he was indeed simply a fool. I was never one to rule out anything, no matter how absurd or unlikely, as experience in my field had taught me.

Whilst we wandered towards the door the metal man shifted himself away from the window, evidently having seen us approaching. Once there, I rang the door bell, and several seconds later the door unlocked. Then, the door swung open – apparently opened by a mechanism rather than a human. Rope would surely be attached to the other side of the door and then to a motor, which was usually how these things worked. Into the doorway then stumbled the metal man, now with his horribly cumbersome, non-jointed and nearly rectangular legs in view, along with the cable leading from the back of him over to the side of the hallway. This kind of cable, as limiting to an automaton’s mobility as it was, was unfortunately necessary in a metal man’s functioning.

One might at first expect an automaton’s electric brain to be in its head, but of course an electric brain of the sophistication able to support an automaton was simply too vast to be able to fit within the confines of a mechanical body. Instead, an entire small room had to be dedicated to the components needed to operate a fully functioning metal man, and the chap himself would be required to remain connected to this room at all times, either directly or by sockets installed throughout a house. This was but one of the numerous severe impracticalities associated with such technology and why, as Mr Worthing noted, only a wealthy fool would want to maintain it in his own home.

Mr Worthing treated the automaton with little respect, deciding to approach it and knock it twice on the head. “Hello! Is anyone in there?” he asked. The machine then abruptly raised an arm, almost striking Mr Worthing! Fortunately he leapt out of the way. “I say, mind your manners.”

“I don’t think he can hear you,” I said.

“Good Afternoon!” spoke the metal man, quite unexpectedly, in a grainy English gentleman’s voice. Usually these larger automatons had at least one greeting they could play through a miniature phonograph inside the body. “If you would be so kind as to type your name.”

Looking at the metal man’s arm that he had raised, it appeared to boast lettered and numbered keys, by which a human could input an instruction. I leant forward towards the machine and pressed the letters, ‘B-I-N-G-L-Y,’ spelling my name, and then pressed the largest button at the end of the arm bearing the word, ‘STOP.’ In response to this, a louder recorded voice then echoed through the hallway, this time originating from the room where the automaton’s cable led, “Lady Bingley to see you, sir!”

“Oh dear,” I said.

“Shall we... go in?” Mr Worthing asked waveringly.

Percival began to step forward but then he was shocked, as the voice of none other than Mr Topping himself was heard through the hallway, emerging from the metal man’s unit room as a recording, “Mr Bingley, I apologise most sincerely that I cannot be with you today. Please let my man take you to the back door.”

“Well, the man’s awfully trusting,” said Percival. “We could be stealing all his things for all he knows.”

The metal man turned his back on us and then edged his way over to a door at the far side of the hallway, dragging his cable along with him. “I’m tempted to just cut the damned thing,” said Mr Worthing. “That would show him.”

It then seemed that the whole movement of the metal man over to the door was in fact just an elaborate pointing exercise, as he didn’t open the door himself, it simply slid open, vanishing into the wall as it was moved along by a small wheel attached to a motor. All the metal man did was more or less guide us in the direction of the door, as if where we were supposed to go wasn’t clear enough already.

“You know,” I said, as we wandered on over towards the open door, “I want to know how Mr Topping knew we would be coming today, in order to set up his message.”

“I am sure we would all like to know,” Percival replied.

The open door led to his kitchen, where the back door was to be found, and, if our theories were at all correct, a portal as well. Mr Worthing was the last of us to enter the kitchen and as soon as he did, the door slid itself closed behind him. He looked back and then listened as the metal man could be heard shuffling around close to the door. It sounded as if he was moving to stand against it, perhaps to block the doorway. “Do you get the feeling that we may have wandered into a trap?” asked Mr Worthing.

“Yes,” I replied, “but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to trap us.”

“Well. Either way, I am no longer in any way fond of this Mr Topping fellow.”

Percival walked over to the back window to look out, seeing only the expected scenery; an uphill slope and a small wood. “Well, there’s no village,” he said.

“Then, perhaps if we open the door?” I replied, trying the handle. When the door wouldn’t open I then turned the key already there in the keyhole, before pulling open the door and stepping out into the garden – except, the garden wasn’t there, and nor were the trees. “Good heavens, this is a completely different place,” I said, turning myself around to gaze at this new realm into which I had now stumbled. There was no hill, but there was a village close by, and the sky was much clearer. “I think we can conclude that the back door is indeed a portal, as we suspected.”

Both Percival and Mr Worthing were amazed to look upon a completely different landscape through the door to the one which they saw through the window. “I say,” said Mr Worthing, beginning to step in and out of the house, comparing what he saw outside to what he could see through the window. “Is this what it is like to travel between realms? How wonderful.”

“Well, my experiences the first time somewhat differed,” I replied.

Mr Worthing was all of a sudden overcome by curiosity, joyfully stepping out and back in again; into one world and out again, marveling at the transition. “This is incredible!” he said.

“Very surreal,” I commented, looking through the outside window into the house and seeing no one inside when I knew Percival to be standing exactly there. Once you stepped through the portal, the house you saw was no longer the same house, although it looked identical. Like my townhouse in the other place, it was merely an identical copy.

Percival eventually followed us outside, looking around the doorway intently for visual signs of the technology that built the portal. He then cast his eye toward the village. “It’s all very elaborate,” he said. “You don’t think Mr Topping built this?”

“Surely not!” I replied. “Could you imagine that?”

“Well, perhaps that was what he wanted us to think,” Percival considered.

“So he could mischievously lure us here and show us the village?”

“Can you think of a more sensible theory? The whole matter is deeply strange to begin with.”

“Well,” said Mr Worthing, coming up between us, “we are here, regardless of why that is. Should we not explore?”

“Yes, you are right,” I replied, “we should.”

“Indeed we should,” agreed Percival, somewhat more reluctantly.

^�>� �

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the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

Chapter Two

Once I had been stranded for almost a week in a place with no heating except in the precious moments of warmth when my house caught fire, the winter air no longer seemed to bite. As night fell, I wandered out with Percival for the first time since his creation to once again cover the great street of Piccadilly, preparing myself for the astonished reactions of those who knew me if they should happen to encounter us along the way. I wore grey whilst Percival opted for brown, in order to reduce confusion, and we decided too that we would claim to be brothers until a later date when I had more time to explain the predicament. For now, Mr Worthing would be the only man to know the truth.

At night, we would wander down Piccadilly, usually in the hectic hours at the end of the working day. During my first hours back in the realm of humanity I did just the same. Among the noise and confusion of great crowds flowing along the pavements, I tried to look for people I knew, to make it known as soon as possible that I had returned and that there was no reason to worry. The air was cold, rain pattered lightly on the streets, and I could scantly make out passing faces under gaslight. A stream of horses and carts stumbled along the road in a congested manner, obscuring the other side of the road from view, so I stayed close to Percival and headed onward towards the Lion as planned, keenly observing those who passed us on the way.

To be reintroduced to civilisation like this in no light measure was at first slightly disorientating! Yet, I adjusted much quicker than I had to the mad world that I had just left. Goblins and their mischief did still dwell on my mind and undermine my faith in all sentient beings, but I was quite confident that the respectable people around me would not soon attempt to blow me up.

Nonetheless, in my current state I would still have found it immensely difficult to spot any person I knew, if I wasn’t so fortunate as to physically collide with an acquaintance of mine, Mr Ramsbury, not so far along the road. He was an often disorientated and distracted young man, preferring to keep his eyes on interesting shop windows as he strolled along, rather than the man in front of him. I was therefore not surprised to meet him in this way. Of course, he apologised immediately. “Oh! I’m most awfully sorry,” he said, turning around to me, noticing that he had almost tripped me over to the right and toppled my hat.

“It’s quite alright,” I said, standing up straight again, “I am sure I will be fine.”

Once the man recognised me he then stood there aghast. “I say! Mr Bingley! This is a surprise!”

“Thought you’d seen the back of me?”

“Well, yes! You had been gone for so long.”

“Only because I enjoyed it so much, dear boy! All the loneliness, tinned food and occasionally being blown up – absolute bliss.”

“I say! That sounds jolly bad.”

“It jolly well was.”

“What in the world went wrong?”

“You know, I can’t say, but I am sure my brother will be able to offer a better explanation,” I introduced the two men. “This chap here; you might call him Percival.”

“How do you do!” Percival greeted Mr Ramsbury.

“Quite well, and you sir?” came the reply.

“I am... rather well.” He wasn’t. Who on earth could be after what we had been through?

“Yes, and, how is your work, anyway?” I asked my acquaintance, as the project was nearing completion when last I heard. “Still coming along well?”

The man suddenly seemed distracted by something all the way to his left. He replied nervously, as if completely unaware of what I was talking about, “What do you mean?”

“Your drug; the madness inducing one, you were working on it.”

“I know of no such thing!”

“Well, surely you do! You were telling me just last Tuesday. I recall it being a most enthralling conversation. ”

“Mr Bingley, I most certainly wasn’t!” he interrupted. Something very peculiar was definitely afoot. There was no way the man could have forgotten about that in the space of a week. “I am a law abiding subject of Her Majesty, I will have you know!”

“I do not doubt it!”

“Yes... well, we will speak another time,” he quickly ended the conversation. “Jolly well hope you’re alright, though. Do make sure you speak to Mr Worthing.” He then seemed to just carry on his way, abandoning the conversation like that as it had barely begun.

“Yes... I shall do,” was the last thing I said to Mr Ramsbury in parting. Then, I continued along the road with Percival. “I say, that was strange, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, most peculiar. Very odd for him.”

Now, I knew Mr Ramsbury quite well, and he most certainly wasn’t a forgetful man when it came to the work he was most passionate about, namely creating medicine; particularly that concerned with the mind. For a man with a kind nature like himself, the idea of creating a drug which could cause a subject to become insane was indeed... ethically questionable, but the man assured me that he would not allow the substance out of his sight. He stressed that it should only be used for good, and that he would ensure the effects of the final product were only temporary upon the men subjected to them – assumedly horrid people. The theory was that perhaps it could be used for enforcement of the law. If a criminal could be made to lack self control, restraint or a sense of reality for the duration of an interrogation then perhaps he might give away vital information, but this power over the mind unnerved certain members of the cabinet and therefore Government support was lacking.

“You know,” I carried on, “I don’t think he expressed any shock when he saw you.”

Percival replied, “Perhaps the similarity isn’t as obvious in this lighting.”

“Oh, it is! Surely!”

The brief encounter with Mr Ramsbury was very odd, but one must of course move on.

The walk down Piccadilly would shortly bring you to Babbage Lane; a charming little road down which surprisingly few people ever seemed to think of going. At the top of the lane was the Red Lion itself; an establishment which even fewer people ever thought of entering. I will never be sure what it was that dissuaded people from approaching the Lion quite so much, but I personally put the blame with the eccentricity of the place and the general dubiousness of its patrons.

By all outward appearances, yes, the building looked terribly ordinary, even down to its common name, but once inside one quickly acquired the sense that something about the place was deeply odd. There was nothing unordinary about the layout when it came to the bar, the chairs or the tables; in fact, it first appeared a rather cleanly and genteel environment. Then, however, you would notice the miniature track leading from a hole in the wall at the other side of the room, across the bar and over to a narrow table by the doorway. One would come in through the door and in the process pull on a piece of wire attached to a hidden switch. Then, a small vehicle would emerge from the hole, carrying a rather basic automaton fashioned out of spare machine parts with screws for eyes. It would then automatically run along the track and over to the door, turn towards the unsuspecting visitor and then tip its metal hat! This was one of only two functions it had, and the other was then to turn its back upon the visitor in order to reveal a note written there, which read, “Welcome Sir or Madam! You will be served very shortly.” A few seconds later the object would dash off again, leaving the potential customer with enough time to read the note and then decide whether they really wished to enter this very strange place.

I couldn’t describe to you the typical patron of the Red Lion. I hadn’t ever known a more disparate group of individuals in any other place I had been. Most were scientists, as was to be expected, but others were intellectuals: artists, writers, historians and similar, along with various other social outcasts, such as disgraced aristocrats, muddled old army officers, destitute politicians and so called ‘difficult women.’ Many regulars of course didn’t fit into these categories at all, but you should at least be of the impression that the place was usually crowded at about this time.

Not so, however, on the evening of my return to London. I went in with Percival for the first time after the strange encounter with Mr Ramsbury, only to find that the place was all of a sudden very sparsely populated. Not only was Mr Worthing not there, but just about nobody else either. Perhaps, I thought, disaster had struck whilst I was away and the whole society had gone into hiding. Perhaps indeed they had all become so worried for my safety that they had all embarked on a search for me! However, this was likely fanciful thinking.

“It is Friday, isn’t it Percival?” I asked the man.

“Of course it is,” he said. “Look, Mr ---- and Miss Swivel are here.” They sat in their usual seats at the other side of the room, playing cards. “They only ever come in on a Friday.”

Aside from them, the only other fellow I recognised was Mr Bloom,

z��q

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the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

ACT I: SCENE I

A room in Windsor Castle.

[Norfolk, Clifford and Weatherby enter. There is a mood of frustration.]

Norfolk. Could this day get any worse?

Clifford. [despairing] I don’t know.

Weatherby. I can’t believe it. When the country is divided and most in need of leadership, we end up with a mad king!

Norfolk. Just our luck.

Clifford. So, we’re agreed then. The king is unfit to rule.

Norfolk. Completely! The man has no capacity left for the demands of running a state; we can’t carry on like this.

Weatherby. Well, you say that but at least this way we can do whatever we like.

Norfolk. Yes, Weatherby, but that creates a power vacuum and completely paralyses us on the world stage. We can’t let that happen.

Clifford. Well, then we must act quickly – appoint you Lord Protector before the Tories have time to respond.

Weatherby. Isn’t that legally questionable?

Clifford. Of course it is! But I am advised that the Privy Council has the power to act in this way by majority.

Weatherby. And not unanimously?

Norfolk. Yes, Clifford, Weatherby has a point. We can’t be too rash about this kind of thing. If we make one questionable move then the Tories could challenge us in the courts. We don’t want this to be dragged out longer than it needs to be.

Clifford. Then what do you propose we do?

Norfolk. Just wait now until my lawyer arrives. He’s been in Westminster looking through all the charters and acts of parliament. He should be able to tell us exactly what the procedure is.

Clifford. If there is an established procedure.

Norfolk. If there isn’t then God help us.

Weatherby. [pulling out a chair and wearily sitting down] Some Christmas day this is. I know they say it is tradition to have an argument after dinner but not a constitutional crisis!

Clifford. And we haven’t even had dinner yet.

Weatherby. That’s all Christmas Day ends up being about these days: politics. Something is always the matter isn’t it? Exclusion bills, civil unrest, war in Europe, assassination attempts. Can’t we have just one peaceful year?

Norfolk. Well, it will never be as bad as last year again. Remember that?

Weatherby. I know! The Tory conspirator putting gunpowder in the plum pudding!

Clifford. Ah, yes, the Puddington Plot.

Weatherby. And I expect there’ll be more like it!

Norfolk. Yes, then I suppose that is more of a reason to make sure that my appointment is legitimate.

Clifford. We better hope that it is viewed that way or the Tories will no doubt try to put Robert on the throne.

Weatherby. The Prince of Wales! Heavens no!

Clifford. I’m afraid so.

Weatherby. But we sent him on a jolly to France!

Clifford. Yes, but the Tories will surely seek to bring him back to England.

Norfolk. Good God. That would be the end of days. I’d sooner have a mad king than that lout on the throne.

Clifford. Then your lawyer better be good.

Norfolk. Clifford, the man is a genius! He knows everything you can possibly know about the governance of this country. He’s the closest thing we have to a codified constitution.

Clifford. When shall he arriving?

Norfolk. Very soon! He is to address us after dinner.

Clifford. About the crisis?

Norfolk. He is going to settle the issue of who should rule in the King’s place once and for all.

0 notes

the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

ACT I: SCENE I

A room in Windsor Castle.

[Ashcroft carries a large book into the room and sets it down on the table. He opens it and begins to read through in an inquisitive manner. Clifford enters, not suspecting to find Ashcroft there.]

Clifford. Hello, is that you?

Ashcroft. [Looking up] I say! William, my good man! I did not expect to see you here! [He walks over to Clifford and enthusiastically shakes his hand.]

Clifford. Nor did I expect to see you! What brings you here?

Ashcroft. Well, you know, legal matters. Norfolk’s hired me to rummage through the all the Acts of Parliament to see if I can find anything to do with this constitutional bother.

Clifford. My friend, I do not envy you! The law has never been my strong point.

Ashcroft. Neither is it Norfolk’s. He seems determined for me to find some kind of loophole so that he can ignore parliament and have himself appointed Lord Protector.

Clifford. Have you had any luck?

Ashcroft. Of course not. What he asks is impossible.

Clifford. Well, then you must stop reading that book and sit down so I can tell you all about Spain! It’s Christmas Day, dear boy, we can’t have you working today!

Ashcroft. Well, apparently Norfolk can! He wants me to address everyone later and tell them who should become the new ruler of the country.

Clifford. He wishes you to resolve a constitutional crisis over supper?

Ashcroft. It does sound unreasonable, doesn’t it?

Clifford. Indeed it does!

Ashcroft. I’m starting to think that he is as mad as the King.

Clifford. Well, at least he’s a Whig – if that’s what you call them now.

Ashcroft. Oh, yes we do.

Clifford. And the others are Tories?

Ashcroft. Yes, that’s right! Been keeping up with politics while you’ve been in Spain have you?

Clifford. Only a little, Weatherby sends me letters. I hear that the King has gone mad?

Ashcroft. Absolutely loopy!

Clifford. And what consequences has that?

Ashcroft. Every possible consequence you can think of! England is already divided over a bill to exclude the King’s brother from the succession.

Clifford. For reason of being a Catholic?

Ashcroft. No, for reason of him being an utter prat.

Clifford. I say! Is he really that bad?

Ashcroft. Yes! The man is incompetent, loutish and egotistical! He never expected to be King so he never prepared for it, but now as it looks as if the King will never have an heir it only makes the prospect of a King Robert more likely. In fact, I am worried that he might end up becoming Lord Protector.

Clifford. But, he can’t possibly! We were alert to the threat years ago – I thought we sent him on a jolly to France?

Ashcroft. Yes, but there is always the worry that he might return to England. If his supporters can find out where he is.

0 notes

the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

CHAPTER TWO

Chapter Two

Of course, we went to meet my dear friend straight away at the Red Lion public house, which is where he would always be found at this hour on a Friday. That isn’t to say that the man was an avid drinker, absolutely not; in fact he often abstained completely. Meeting there was highly typical for those in our society, regardless of whom they were. Its main advantage lay in the fact it was quite off track, down a small lane called ---- Street. Most people regarded the types of character who wandered down there as being deeply strange and unapproachable. Consequently, not many people that I spoke to had ever been in the Red Lion, nor even heard of it, and outward appearances if one had seen it only from the outside suggested a terribly ordinary and unassuming place.

One could only scantly make out quickly passing faces under gaslight, which would have made finding anyone very difficult if I wasn’t so fortunate as to physically collide with an acquaintance of mine, Mr Ramsbury, not so far along the road. He was an often disorientated and distracted young man, preferring to keep his eyes on interesting shop windows as he strolled along, rather than the man in front of him. I was therefore not surprised to meet him in this way. Of course, he apologised immediately. “Oh! I’m most awfully sorry,” he said, turning around to me, noticing that he had almost tripped me over to the right hand side and toppled my hat.

“It’s quite alright,” I said, standing up straight again, “I am sure I will be fine.”

Once the man recognised me he then stood there aghast. “I say! Mr Bingley! This is a surprise!”

“Thought you’d seen the back of me?”

“Well, yes! You had been gone for so long.”

“Only because I enjoyed it so much, dear boy! All the loneliness, tinned food and occasionally being blown up – absolute bliss.”

“I say! That sounds jolly bad.”

“It jolly well was.”

“What in the world went wrong?”

“You know, I can’t say, but I am sure my brother will be able to offer a better explanation,” I introduced the two men. “This chap here; you might call him Percival.”

“How do you do!” Percival greeted Mr Ramsbury.

“Quite well sir, and you?” came the reply.

“I am... rather well.” He wasn’t. Who on earth could be after what we had been through?

“Yes, and, how is your work, anyway?” I asked my acquaintance, as the project was nearing completion when last I heard. “Still coming along well?”

The man suddenly seemed distracted by something all the way to his left. He replied nervously, as if completely unaware of what I was talking about, “What do you mean?”

“Your drug; the madness inducing one, you were working on it.”

“I know of no such thing!”

“Well, surely you do! You were telling me just last Tuesday. I recall it being a most enthralling conversation. ”

“I do not doubt it!”

“Yes... I shall do,” was the last thing I said to Mr Ramsbury in parting. Then, I continued along the road with Percival. “I say, that was strange, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, most peculiar. Very odd for him.”

Now, I knew Mr Ramsbury quite well, and he most certainly wasn’t a forgetful man when it came to the work he was most passionate about, namely creating medicine; particularly that concerned with the mind. For a man with a kind nature like himself, the idea of creating a drug which could cause a subject to become insane was indeed... ethically questionable, but the man assured me that he would not allow the substance out of his sight. He stressed that it should only be used for good, and that he would ensure the effects of the final product were only temporary upon the men subjected to them – assumedly horrid people. The theory was that perhaps it could be used for enforcement of the law. If a criminal could be made to lack self control, restraint or a sense of reality for the duration of an interrogation then perhaps he might give away vital details, but this power over the mind unnerved certain members of the cabinet, and Government support, therefore, was lacking.

“You know,” I carried on, “I don’t think he expressed any shock when he saw you.”

Percival replied, “Perhaps the similarity isn’t obvious in this lighting.”

“Oh, it is! Surely!”

The brief encounter with Mr Ramsbury was indeed peculiar, but one must of course move on.

0 notes

the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

The Rewritten Mr Bingley

Chapter One

Never had I predicted that I might one day become one of those men driven mad by their own invention, yet there I was, sat alone in the middle of a horrid new world where nothing made sense, leaning forward in my armchair and anxiously guarding my sitting room with a flintlock pistol. At a time like this there fast becomes a sense that not all is going well. Indeed, it most certainly wasn’t. However, as I have never been one to dwell on the negative, I shall begin with what had gone slightly better than anticipated.

Yes, following quite an unfortunate turn of events there had been a terrific blaze in my sitting room which engulfed my favourite armchair, (thankfully, I was parted from it at the time) but this was only short lived. At first the flames burst from a single point, spreading to the windows and savaging my front curtains. All hope seemed lost, the room filled with smoke and I began to fear for the safety of my side table – but then, quite unexpectedly, the fire began to recede! Such was the inclination of this very peculiar world towards complete nonsensicality. Soon after, I was able to extinguish what remained of the fire by swift intervention with a bucket of water, in the process saving the majority of my front curtains.

To add to this, two nights ago I had finally restored electric light to the room after losing it earlier on. As my bookcase went undisturbed by the described turmoil, this allowed me to continue reading in the night hours. Along with a suitable supply of tea, this provided me with some minor comfort between catastrophes, but as the positives seem to end there you may be quite certain that the overall experience was really rather bleak. This, of course, brings me to the utter calamity of the situation that faced me.

I had, six days ago, in a feat of some daring, crossed the impossible barrier and become the first known man ever to enter into another reality – only then to find myself jolly well stuck there in a dramatic reverse of fortunes. It would appear that crossing into a reality that one had constructed oneself was a wholly different matter from returning from one. Navigating the complexities of a universe where so many alternate realms rested on top of each other was evidently too much for my first navigation engine to handle, but I had no explanation at all as to why this might be. One way, things seemed so simple, but going the other seemed nightmarishly complicated. I would give a lot of thought to the issue later, but for now a new navigation engine would have to be built, however long that would take. Otherwise, I would be stuck in a world of perpetual disorder and petty upheaval for good.

To think, it had all seemed so promising upon my arrival some days ago. I stepped outside my front door for the first time since activating my experimental ‘anti-reality’ engine, to find that it all had worked. I breathed the air of a brave new world; green, leafy and completely untouched, with only myself and the townhouse placed in the middle of it all. The naysayers and doom merchants were, to my delight, entirely wrong. No chaos was evident, and neither had there been any trouble caused to me during the transition from one realm to another. Things seemed, by and large, actually quite tranquil, and it is some liberation to be given a world of one’s own to enjoy without the interference of another living soul.

Needless to say however, this didn’t last. The true nature of the new realm soon revealed itself to me, beginning with trivial oddities in the gravity. I knocked a fountain pen onto the floor, for instance, and it fell with more force than if I had dropped a book. Then came other objects such as floor boards, ornaments and machine parts suddenly demonstrating temporary transparency to gravity – a great shock! On several other occasions one would also see light refracted by apparently clear air; a very peculiar spectacle, or water heated by electric kettle coming to boil ridiculously fast. Some errors had quite evidently been made prior to the journey across, the most notable concerning biology.

Usually, one expects that when one discovers that they are the first known man ever to create new life, celebrations are in order. In this world, however, there was no such cause for jubilation. Contrary to what kind of life I had first believed would populate the new realm; generally unintelligent animals and insects cloned from the original Earth, in fact what had been created was something very new and quite developed indeed. Developed, I should say, in the way of being an unholy nuisance, finding their way into my home and utilising whatever they found to create the best amount of destruction. Indeed, the fire in my sitting room was caused by just one particular creature with hold of an experimental cutting tool (such was the kind of thing I had around at the time). The tool in question used a powerful beam of heat to cut through material, usually metal, and thus it made short work of the disintegration of my favourite armchair when fallen into the hands of a small green miscreant.

It was the return of the arsonist or a similar creature for which I now waited keenly with my pistol, but I had no such luck in spotting them again. I simply wished to shoot the blasted thing so I could be left to read in peace, but one soon finds that when one actually wants the blighter to appear, he never does! Reading consequently became a terrible strain as memories of what had happened to my armchair haunted my mind and caused me to shudder. My escape therefore came only through drink, but I was hesitant in turning to it until I could be sure I had seen off my grotty little adversary for good. As far as I had observed however, creatures of his kind typically wouldn’t bother to come out again after about five o’clock, so as far as I saw it the coast was pretty well clear for me to set the pistol down, wander over to the cabinet and bring out the whiskey.

Imagine my dismay, then, that upon opening the cabinet I was faced with not my drink, no, but several small barrels of black and grainy powder and next to that a small goblin holding a lit match. Before I could ask the wretched creature just what he was playing at, he put me off with an unsettling look from his deranged eyes. Then, he shouted, in his squirmy, harsh little voice, “Gunpowder!”

“Good God!” I replied, fleeing the room. I then threw open the front door, jettisoned myself from the building, ran as far as I could in the space of about a minute and then turned around to face the house again; taking cover in the long grass. Predictably, a large explosion then burst from the sitting room and shattered the windows, presumably having much the same effect on the goblin. So began yet another costly fire in my once relatively peaceful home.

For a very short time I sat back whilst I watched the thing burn away, only then to remember that I would have to charge back into the house straight away to contain the blaze. This I did, some seconds later, with my nose held as I scrambled through the front door and into the hallway, which was slowly filling with smoke. Beyond that, thankfully, in a kitchen cupboard, lay a rather handy fire extinguisher that I kept in preparation for just this sort of occasion. I ran in, threw open the cupboard door, rushed the device to the sitting room and gave the fire a blast of the old white smoke: smithium carbonate, if you're familiar with it. If not, you ought to know that our societies could not survive without it! The number of fires to which we would have succumbed over the course of several grievous accidents if it were not for this marvelous compound -- we would surely have burnt down all of Piccadilly in a week.

By the time I had emptied the canister, I could safely say that the fire was subdued. Nonetheless, I stood my ground to keep guard against any attempt by the fire to make a return; anything being possible in this ghastly new set of circumstances. In the meantime, I took time to reflect, seeing the terrible damage which this new fire had inflicted upon my bookcase, side table and sole surviving armchair. You know, I can't say that anything survived of my bookcase, or the side table, or indeed much of the armchair. The whole lot had become rather a mangled mess in the corner of an already pretty dismal, burnt out room.

"Oh dear," I said. "I do think I will require more than a cup of tea in this instance." By means of comical understatement of course, I concealed a lingering feeling of impending doom. I don't know who from. By now it was simply habit.

The gentleman next to me tipped his hat in greeting, as a plume of smoke drifted past us. "Are these fires a frequent occurrence, Mr Bingley?" he enquired, in a familiar sort of voice.

I coughed before I replied, "As a matter of fact, yes! More so than I would like."

"It is indeed a curious world which we inhabit."

"You know it is, isn't it!" I said. "I will simply be minding my own business, don't you know, putting out the fire in my most valued living space, and then a man will... suddenly appear next to me." I stopped. "I say! Who are you?" Come to think of it, he did look awfully familiar, and he certainly knew my name. I was sure embarrassment would follow. "Do I know you from somewhere? I'm sure I do. It's a Mr... Bamford, isn't it? Bristol... Bakewell... no, Bernard!"

"Percival."

"Percival! Yes, absolutely, that's it, Percival! Good to see you again, old boy. Oh it has been a long time, hasn't it? One could hardly recognise you now, you have changed."

"We have never met."

"Of course we haven't!"

"But I am here to extricate you."

"Oh, capital! When do we leave?"

"Very soon," he said. "I should hope you have prepared tea by the time I return. I shan't be long." On that note he vanished, quite abruptly! All of this left me in quite the state of confusion as I went to make the tea. Barely a moment ago, I had been sitting peacefully, (by the incredible standards which I had now grown accustomed to) and now, barely a few minutes later, the other half of my sitting room had been destroyed by fire and I was already in the process of making tea for a very strange and fleeting gentleman. More to the point, he could easily have been an illusion! Just consider: a stranger with a familiar voice suddenly appearing beside me unannounced to tell me that he had come to take me home -- it was just the kind of thing that my mind was likely to construct at a time like this! Further still, my very short glances of the man indicated that he looked rather similar to myself. I might say almost identical. This made me rather suspicious of the man's credentials in the way of existing.

Still, I continued to make tea for the imaginary Mr Percival. It was of some convenience that I had invested in an electric kettle prior to making the journey across the impossible barrier; a dashed silly thing but one which fulfilled its purpose splendidly while I found myself with no supply of gas. Therefore, while I did have tea, sugar, bottled water, long-lasting milk (of a very dubious variety that a friend of mine had been giving out to test), and most crucially, an electric generator, I was able to produce a satisfactory cup of tea. Somehow, I soon acquired a preference for taking it without milk.

The drawn out process of using the electric kettle gave me time to think: if this man did in fact exist, how on earth did he get here? Moreover, why did he look so similar to me? There was certainly a lot that didn't make sense, but then again, neither did much else. This world had a very different way of operating. At this point, having been stranded on my own for some time already and facing the prospect of being stranded for an indefinitely longer period that would surely be unbearable, I was tempted to become excited and hopeful, but I remained cautious. For all I knew it could well be the goblins up to another sinister exercise! If I was to disregard any possibility I would do so at my peril, but for the moment things looked encouraging, as Percival did indeed return, just as I had finished making the tea. Of course, I served him straight away.

My guest received his cup of tea gladly, handling it as a real person would, not at all like a hallucination. In the event of his non-existence I would surely have expected the china to fall to the table and shatter. "Ah, tea!" he said. "But no milk?"

"Oh no, there is milk, sir. In front of you," I replied, referring to the small bottle on the table.

"It's a bit green," he observed correctly.

"Yes, but that is because it is special milk," I said, "long lasting, don't you know?"

"Presumably because nobody will drink it."

"Well sir, I am sorry to say it is the only milk I have left."

"And no cake?"

"No, we are presently separated from all of humanity by an insurmountable barrier built into the fabric of space."

"Well that is a shame."

"Actually, I was rather hoping you would have something to say on the subject!"

"Yes, I should think so." He sipped his tea now. "I was meaning to speak to you -- about going home, as a matter of fact."

"Going home? I say! That sounds awfully good."

"You have been drawing up plans, am I right?"

"For a new navigation engine, yes. Have you seen them?"

"Why yes, I have rather." He didn't seem impressed, in his tone.

On the matter of engines, I should say, some explanation must be made. In this instance there are two principle types of engine concerned: the first being the anti-reality engine; a device capable of the creation of realms and travelling between them, and the second being the navigation engine, which would assist the anti-reality engine in plotting a course across the many layers of this very complicated universe. To travel to any realm, my anti-reality engine would ask for a set of coordinates. In turn, my navigation engine would calculate those coordinates, providing that it was powerful enough, which mine evidently was not. I therefore went about designing a new one to build with components salvaged from neglected draws and other more unnecessary machines.

I enquired of Percival, "Well, do you think I am making progress?"

He replied, "Of course, it depends on what you mean by progress, necessarily."

"I generally take it to mean satisfactory progression towards a particular aim, don't you?"

"I do, yes."

"Am I making progress then?"

"No."

"No!"

"Not by my definition of satisfactory."

"And how do you define satisfactory?"

"Mr Bingley, when you took the journey here, how many settings had your navigation engine to sort through?" There are thousands of different destinations which an anti-reality engine can take you to, each with their own coordinates. A navigation engine therefore must search through each of these until it finds the setting for your desired stop, making a calculation for every other possible setting along the way in what becomes a very time consuming process.

"Oh, about eleven hundred," I replied.

"Then, I take it that you realise now that the number of settings to sort through when returning to the home reality is somewhat greater than when travelling here in the first place?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then you have identified the correct problem, but neither the cause nor the solution."

"Oh, is it obvious?"

I was growing very impatient with the man who now paused to drink from his teacup before continuing to lecture me on my life's greatest persuit. "Mr Bingley," he said, "I am afraid that your new engine would have made a futile effort."

I took a similar pause to sip my tea before replying, "And why is that?"

"There are simply too many settings to sort through, even for a new engine."

"How many more?"

"Oh, quite a few more."

"Would you be prepared to make an estimate?"

"Yes, rather," he reached the bottom of his cup of tea and stopped to think. "Somewhere in the region of thirty-five quadrillion, I should say."

"Thirty-five quadrillion!" I said. "I cannot possibly pass that off as a minor miscalculation!" As you may imagine, I was quite shocked. "How on earth do you come to thirty-five quadrillion?" If this gentleman was right, my theories of reality were almost completely in tatters.

"Quite simply really," it almost certainly wouldn't be simple, "when making the return journey one must instead begin the coordinate search at the other end of the scale -- backwards!"

"Oh, well that explains a lot." It didn't.

"Indeed it does. Beginning at the other end, the process takes no longer than it does the other way around." Why hadn't I thought of that? Oh, I knew why.

"Wait a minute," I said. "How would I know which was the last coordinate on the spectrum? The whole idea is useless unless one can find the starting point."

"Well, you know now, it's thirty-five quadrillion, or thereabouts."

"Only thanks to you."

"Sir, you are too kind." I didn't think I'd been kind.

"No, what I am saying is I can't exactly expect you to turn up to extricate me every time. I have no idea who you are for a start!" The man didn't reply. He just stared at me for a bit in this awfully unnerving sort of way. Unnerving, I say, because I couldn't look past the fact he looked remarkably similar to me. Until now he even struggled with eye contact in the same way I would and copied many of my favourite mannerisms. "What is it?"

"You really don't know, do you?" Percival replied.

Now I did feel embarrassed. For a moment I tried to think of something, but then I just had to shrug. "Sorry, I just don't know." I guessed, "Some kind of long forgotten brother?"

"Almost."

"Almost? I say, what on earth do you mean?"

"Well, we are identical, sir! You are me, and I am you!"

"You must be joking."

"I am not."

"You're saying that you're a copy of me?"

"Indeed I am."

I failed to muster a proper response. "Well I'll be dashed," I said. The man, my double, saw me getting up and walking towards the door. "I must say, this is very hard to take in," I said. I would like a few minutes in the sitting room to think things over before I would have anything more to say on the subject. "I need time."

Percival interjected, "May I remind you that your sitting room, to which you probably wish to retreat, has been destroyed?"

"Oh yes," I replied, turning around again. "How silly of me." I went to sit down.

"Well, I suppose now you're wondering where I came from," said Percival.

"Yes, I was rather wondering that," I said with certainty. "How did you cross the barrier?"

"I did not cross, sir, I was created here, along with this realm."

"How in blazes!"

"You replicated your consciousness."

"I did no such thing!"

"Indeed you did, by way of linking yourself to the engine. Every anti-reality engine must have a consciousness, don't you know? That is the nature of the inter-realm structure of things."

"Why yes, I know that, but I hardly expected that it would replicate mine!"

"Who else's would it replicate!" He had a point. "Why, even the goblins have a bit of you in them."

I was aghast. "Now, I'm not having that!"

"I am afraid it is the truth! There is a lot you will need to correct about your present theory."

"Evidently! At this rate, it may warrant a whole second volume!"

"Then at least the experiment will prove worthwhile after all, will it not?"

"If you call losing your sanity and sacrificing your favourite items of furniture to the flames worthwhile, then perhaps so!" I had, by now, grown tired of science and began considering a new path in life as a seller of jellied eels.

"The furniture will return once we return to the home reality."

"But the sanity will not!"

"Not even when I tell you that we can go home this instant?"

If this was a hallucination, I thought, the trick better end here. "Are you serious?"

"Yes, of course."

"How is that possible?"

"I have worked out the coordinates."

"You can do that?"

"As a manifestation of the engine itself, it would appear that I can."

"But you take human form?"

"I take the form of the man I imagine myself to be. As our consciousnesses are identical, it is your appearance that I assume. I cannot see myself any other way."

Things were, in some respects, beginning to make sense, but I would be extremely glad to see the back of this ghastly plain. I had one more question, "I see, but when we make the transition, will you remain here or come back with me to the home reality?"

"Sir, as the manifestation of your engine, I may follow you to any reality. Indeed, I may wander the plains as I wish without any hassle at all."

Would the end result of this experiment be the creation of a second Mr Bingley and his settling with me in London, bringing with it all the resulting confusion? It would appear so.

"Well!" I said, standing to leave. "You must tell me the coordinates then! Best be on our way." I went to the window to look out upon the fields behind my house for the last time, before they would again be replaced by houses. I was sure there had been hills there when I first arrived, but the geography of this world was, like most other things, inconsistent. One imagines that the goblins moved the hills during the night, preparing to repurpose the earth the next day in the construction of some kind of fort.

"Oh no, stay here, by all means," Percival assured me. "I am the engine! I may initiate the transition with a thought." He pushed back his chair and went to stand by the wall. "Whatever you do, though, don't sit down! The chairs will probably be in different positions in the other reality; you could fall!"

"Oh dear, I certainly don't want that." I stood clear of the furniture.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes, I believe I am." Though, it was still difficult to believe that this turn of events was really taking place.

"Good." There was a pause at this moment, as if he was waiting for me to say something, but I remained silent in anticipation. "Well, here we go then!" he said as he triggered the beginning of the process with a thought. The last time I had stood by the engine itself during this process, but this time it operated remotely, underneath my house as always. I therefore braced myself for the transition.

It wasn't a dangerous or upsetting thing, only very odd. One simply stands there and a whole world fades into another, while for about ten seconds or just under, one exists in neither place entirely. Matter rearranges itself around you. Objects that have previously been moved disappear and reappear simultaneously where they once had been, all to the effect that the house appears to reset itself, as much as this isn't really the case. After all, the original house hadn't been anywhere. It was only me who crossed the barrier. The house on the other side and everything within it was only a copy of my townhouse and its present contents. Thankfully, this meant that things that had been destroyed in one world would still be perfectly intact in the other!

A great sense of relief soon fell upon me as the room settled down. Once everything had moved back into place and I found myself firmly within one reality, I wandered aimlessly into the middle of the kitchen. Things seemed to appear completely unchanged, except for an improvement in tidiness. I looked at the table and the tea was gone, that was disappointing, but then I walked over to the window. There, I saw the backs of familiar houses -- my usual view! All seemed to have gone splendidly, almost too splendidly, so much that I anxiously approached Percival again, asking him the question, "This isn't a hallucination, is it?" I then reasoned with myself. "No, the view is too detailed. Everything is in the right place!" It took me a short while to adjust my thinking, but soon afterwards once I regained my footing and realised how all was suddenly well and that normality had been restored, I laughed, quite hysterically, and then I cheered, startling my new friend. "You know, I dare say... we're home! We're home, old boy! We're jolly well back!"

"We are indeed, sir!" Percival replied, not quite equal in enthusiasm, but still pleased.

"You did it, man!" I said, vigorously shaking Percival's hand in congratulations. "I have no idea how but you certainly did!"

"Sir, I am as amazed as you are!" uttered my splendid copy.

I cannot think of a more rotten feeling than the complete isolation I felt for six days, stranded in an unfamiliar world, plagued by goblins and facing perhaps another six months of the same toil with my furniture ever dwindling. Yet, in contrast, I cannot think of a single moment where I was happier than the time I finally returned from across the barrier! Nearly a week spent in the other place when I promised to return within the day would prove slightly embarassing, as would the fact that my new realm was decidedly more chaotic than I assured my critics it would be, but the glory outweighed this! Several great achievements had been made. Besides, with only myself and Percival as witnesses, we could make up anything.

As I wandered on into the hallway for the first time since returning to sanity, I looked around to see if any of the gentlemen who had seen me off on my adventure had remained for my somewhat delayed return. Inevitably, they had not! They would surely be surprised to see me again at the Red Lion later on. "Well, our friends certainly don't wait around, do they Percival?" I said, going over to the sitting room door.

"They will surely be worrying for your safety," said Percival.

"Well," I replied as I opened the door, "won't they be pleased that instead of losing me they have gained another one."

Through the doorway lay the grandest sight of all: my favourite armchair, restored to life again! Not that the real thing had been anywhere, of course, just as my bookcase, drinks cabinet and second armchair remained completely unmoved as well. I quickly reacquainted myself with the esteemed chair before I thought to reopen the curtains, where no longer were fields filled with ghastly creatures but the former small road, just off Piccadilly. Not many people did pass by on a quiet street like this in the middle of the afternoon, but it satisfied me as proof enough that I was back in civilised country. "Marvelous, isn't it, the city?" I said.

Percival, with much the same satisfaction, uttered, "Civilisation at last, old boy."

"And indeed a return to such splendid institutions as the Royal Society, and the public house."

A rather smart man in a bowler hat strolled by, and I walked away from the window towards my book case. Percival turned to me. "Are you looking for our book?"

"Yes, I am," I replied, searching along the shelf for the only book there written by me. It was a scientific work, rather groundbreaking I might say and tremendously popular in certain circles. At one time, if one wanted to learn the very nature of the inter-realm structure of things, my book was essential reading. Not so anymore, once the findings of my journey proved most of it to be false. Surely no one would trust me again. "I fancy it needs a bit of updating," I said, removing it from the end of the shelf and glancing at a few pages.

"Yes, it was rather a terrible book anyway," replied Percival in a manner unexpected, rather overstepping the mark of welcome criticism and approaching on the unwelcome, "absolutely painful to read in parts, don't you think?"

"Now, look here!" I said, in a combative manner.

"What?" asked Percival. "Don't you think the same?"

"Yes, but only I am allowed to say that!" I qualified this, "Even if you are me."

"Others are most likely thinking the same." Was I really so dreary?

"Yes, well," I said, throwing the book onto my second arm chair, "they seem to buy the thing regardless. Mr Worthing and Mr Stamford are very enthusiastic and that satisfies me enough!"

Mr Worthing, as he must be introduced for future reference, was my dearest friend: a young fellow with a perpetually cluttered mind. Think fiendishly clever, fantastically imaginative and hopelessly absent minded.

I went on, "Come to think of it, Mr Worthing will be shocked!"

"Yes, I think I will let you explain why there are two of us," said Percival.

"No, you shall! You're the engine. You know about these things. In fact, you haven't fully explained it to me yet."

"There will be more than enough time later, once we have returned from the Red Lion."

"Indeed there will be, but at this moment, Percival, I am in no mood for any discussion relating to the subject."

"Nor am I! I have spent almost the entire last week agonizing about the coordinates for your machine!"

"Good! Then I shall have time to wash and change these clothes." One highly irritating aspect of this whole affair was that Percival seemed to escape bedlam more or less entirely unscathed, whereas I emerged with a jacket that smelled of smoke and clothes that were dirty and frayed at the edges. By this point, my skin was likely some shade of grey. Such was the result of a week spent living in a nightmare with no access to running water or any other suit at all, once my wardrobe was destroyed in the first fire of the great excursion. "If it is..." I looked up to the clock on the wall, "almost four o'clock, on a Friday -- it is Friday, isn't it Percival?"

"I do hope so, sir."

"Yes, very good. Then we shall meet Mr Worthing as usual at six."

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the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

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Chapter One

I never for one moment thought that I would ever be driven mad by one of my own creations, but here I was, sat on my own in a world of scientific anarchy, leaning forward in my armchair and anxiously guarding my sitting room with a flintlock pistol. At a time like this there fast becomes a sense that not all is going well, and it most certainly wasn’t, but I have never been one to dwell on the negative, so I shall begin with what had gone slightly better than anticipated first. Yes, unfortunately there had been a terrific blaze in my sitting room and it had engulfed my favourite armchair, (thankfully, I was parted from it at the time) but it transpired later on that first impressions were not all they seemed and that the severity of the fire was greatly overstated. Thus, I was able to quell it quickly by swift intervention with a bucket of water, in the process saving the majority of my front curtains. Aside from this, I had also restored electric light to the room so I could return to reading in the night hours. Fortunately still, my bookcase went entirely undisturbed by all of this turmoil. Unfortunately, the positives do seem to end there, and as you can imagine this creates a certain bleakness of feeling that rather distracts from one’s reading. Therefore, I come to the utter calamity of the situation that faced me. I had, six days ago, in a feat of some daring, crossed the impossible barrier and become the first known man ever to enter into another reality – only then to find myself jolly well stuck there in a dramatic reverse of fortunes. It would appear that crossing into a reality that one had constructed oneself was a wholly different matter from returning. Navigating the complexities of a universe where so many alternate realms rested on top of each other was evidently too much for my first navigation engine to handle, though I had no explanation in theory as to why this might be so relatively simple one way and so difficult the other. I decided therefore that a new navigation engine had to be built, however long that would take, lest I be stranded in a world of perpetual chaos and petty upheaval for good. It had all seemed so promising some days ago, when I first arrived. I stepped outside my front door for the first time since activating my experimental ‘anti-reality’ engine, to find that it all had worked. I breathed the air of a brave new world; green, leafy and completely untouched, with only myself and the townhouse in the middle of it all. The naysayers and doom merchants were, to my delight, entirely wrong. No chaos was evident, and neither had there been any trouble caused to me during the transition from one realm to another. Things seemed, by and large, actually quite tranquil, and it is some liberation to be given a world of one’s own to enjoy without the interference of another living soul. Needless to say however, this didn’t last. The true nature of this realm soon revealed itself to me, beginning with trivial oddities in the gravity. I knocked a fountain pen onto the floor, for instance, and it fell with more force than if I had dropped a book. Then came other objects such as floor boards, ornaments and machine parts suddenly demonstrating temporary transparency to gravity – a great shock! On several other occasions one would also see light refracted by apparently clear air; a very peculiar spectacle, or water heated by electric kettle come to boil ridiculously fast. Some errors had quite evidently been made prior to the journey across, but the most notable of these concerned biology. Usually, one expects that when one discovers that they are the first known man ever to create new life, one might first congratulate oneself on the marvellous achievement at hand. In this world, however, there was no such celebration. Contrary to what kind of life I first believed would populate the new realm; generally unintelligent animals and insects cloned from the original Earth, in fact what had been created was something very new and quite developed indeed. Developed, I should say, in the way of being a dashed nuisance, finding their way into my home and utilising whatever they found to create optimal destruction. Indeed, the fire in my sitting room was caused by just one particular blighter with hold of an experimental cutting tool (such was the kind of thing I had around). The tool in question used a powerful beam of heat to cut through material, usually metal, and thus it made short work of the disintegration of my favourite armchair when fallen into the hands of a small green miscreant. It was the return of the arsonist or a similar creature for which I now waited keenly with my pistol, but I had no such luck in spotting them again. I simply wished to shoot the blasted thing so I could then tend to my reading in peace, but when one actually wants the vermin to appear of course, they never do! Reading therefore was ------, (lead onto turning to drink instead further down on this doc.)

It was tranquil and peaceful. I had accomplished a long held dream This new world I had created was. Bright and breezy, green leafy and untouched with just myself and the townhouse in the middle of it all.

Rather makes one appreciate the sort of bother God must have had to come by. I am a peaceful man by nature, you know? Full-time occupation as Lord Creator of a whole new Universe was not something I believed I was fully cut out for.

(First say how you’re stuck, because of problems navigating, then move on to the strange aspects of the world. Mention waiting for the return of the arsonist or a similar creature, then decide to turn to drink)

Remember the cynicism, go through the whole thing with an attitude of “you must be joking,” and toying with the reality by testing dropping things You know, I dropped a fountain pen and it fell with more force than if I had dropped a book.

My escape from the madness of this situation therefore came only through drink, but I hesitated in turning to it before I could be sure I would not see the return of the arsonist, or a similar creature. Such malicious beasts evidently covered the entirety of this green and unpleasant land, but as sunset neared I eventually set down the pistol and forgot all about the foul creatures. Usually they wouldn’t bother to come out again after about five o’clock, so as far as I saw it the coast was pretty well clear for me to wander over to the cabinet and bring out the whiskey. Imagine my dismay, then, that upon opening the cabinet I was faced with not my alcohol, no, but several small barrels of black and grainy powder in its place and next to that a small goblin holding a lit match. Before I could ask the wretched creature just what he was playing at, he put me off with an unsettling look from his deranged eyes. Then, he shouted, in his squirmy, harsh little voice, “Gunpowder!”

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the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

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"I can't – take any more of this," I spoke, propping myself forward in my armchair. I looked across to the drinks cabinet and then to my left and right. The front curtains remained drawn and only lightly singed, the electric light flickered only one to two times a minute, and my bookcase just stood there, undisturbed. Everything seemed ordinary, as far as I saw it anyway, so I stood and began to edge myself across the room. The sitting room cabinet contained my only release from a reality that seemed utterly incomprehensible, and with me, I will have you know, that word is used only in the most exceptional of exceptional circumstances. Although my life as a somewhat unconventional scientist had already brought me considerable experience with the very unordinary, I was simply not prepared for anything like this. This world was beyond the realm of order and restrained not by any accepted laws of physics, even to the point when it would seem that a pen fell with more force than a lengthy reference book, or that a piece of floor-board could experience spontaneous transparency to gravity; a continuing inconvenience for my ceiling, furniture and unexpectedly assaulted face; or even on several remarkable occasions that light could be refracted by perfectly clear air. If I could emerge from the ghastly foreign realm unscathed I was certain that the results I collected would perplex even the greatest minds of our time; perhaps Digby, Baker or even Willoughby. Haven't you heard of them? No, you wouldn't have. They're not as boastful as the rabble down the road at the Royal Society. Well, I do say down the road, but it should be given mention that a considerable inconvenience existed at the time in that of all of human civilisation outside the walls of my house now existed across a gap between great plains of reality traversable only through the use of the greatest power source known to man. It just so happens that I was in possession of this at the time. After all, I had to have made it across in the first place, hadn’t I? Prior to departure, however, I had gravely misunderstood how easily I might be able to return the home reality. I lacked the raw strength to my psykery to persuade my engine to again make a trans-reality jump, and this confused me terribly. There was no reason given in my theories for this. The journey home wasn’t meant to be any more difficult than cutting through in the first place, but it would seem I was wrong. The answer would be clearer at the bottom of a glass of... suspiciously black powder, I thought. It then occurred to me that this was rather a strange thing to think and that in fact my usual drink bottles had been thieved and replaced by two miniature barrels of black and grainy powder that seemed to overflow. I thought perhaps I might ask the goblin sat by the barrels precisely what was happening, however I wished not to disturb him, and planned to leave him to his business; whatever it was he was doing with the match he had just lit. It was then the little green mischievous creature gave me an unsettling look with his deranged eyes, shouting in his squirmy, harsh little voice, "Gunpowder!" "Good God!" I replied, as I trembled in fright and began the walk away from the cabinet. In response to these events, with complete disregard for order, I left the room, ran for the front door, hastily unlocked it and jettisoned my person from the building with immediacy! I then ran a safe distance away from the sitting room windows, stopping at least twenty yards away to turn around and face the building. A blast engulfed my drinks cabinet and destroyed my favourite armchair! The sitting room was consequently set on fire and the windows were shattered. A terrible nuisance, goblins with a faulty sense of self preservation proved to be. I was hugely irritated. The world outside my property was entirely uninhabitable to humans – not due to any defect in the atmosphere, but rather an aggressively evident infestation of horrible creatures tending to be green and malignant. I was not willing to see my only bastion of regularity within the mess I had created defiled by beasts. I only stood back for a moment, whereupon I ran back to the house to deal with the fire. It seemed to burn very irregularly – not out of control – but occasionally startling, with small explosions and the uncharacteristically rapid incendiary of certain objects. Books and other valuables seemed too often lost to this realm's blatant disregard for the laws of physics and chemistry. The fire hence, was completely unpredictable, and this certainly frightened me. I ran through to the kitchen, where I kept a rather handy fire extinguisher. I took it to hand and went back through to the sitting room. Pulling back a small lever, I attempted to quell the fire with concentrated bursts of water. For the most part, I observed no abnormalities in the behaviour of the water, except in one unsettling moment, when the water I sent at the fire unexpectedly began to catch fire itself, almost bringing new life to the frightful flames! However, this pitiful scientific inaccuracy did not persist and I was able to contain the worst of it. With the fire receding faster than I had expected, I stood on guard in fear of this being but some kind of cruel trickery. The gentleman next to me tipped his bowler hat. "Afternoon!" the man said, greeting me pleasantly as a great volume of smoke drifted past us. I went to tip my hat in return, but as I wasn't wearing it at the time the gesture became a kind of peculiar hand motion resembling a salute. I coughed before I spoke. "Ah, good afternoon!" I replied, trying not to breathe in. "Do curious things similar to this happen often, Mr Bingley?" enquired the man. "Yes, they do rather," I said. "I'll be here, minding my own business, just putting out the fire in my sitting room, and then a man... will suddenly appear next to me." I came to the conclusion that this was quite odd – particularly odd in fact, as the fellow looked strangely familiar, and he could actually communicate, unlike the goblins in this realm. "I say, err, wh-ho are you?" I stuttered. The man said, "No one in particular," giving me a strangely devious look, "I'll be back in a moment, do put the kettle on." He abruptly faded away. I say, some people simply have no manners. Well, I did as the man asked of me. I set down the fire extinguisher and filled my kettle with what was left in a bottle of water. I (plugs into the light)----. Of course, I boiled water like this with great reluctance. Disconnecting my house from the world had inevitably deprived me of a gas supply, but I did have an electric generator. Upon realising that I might be stranded in the alternate realm for some time I had immediately gone about building a crude copper base for the kettle, enclosing a heating element. The finished product was slow, as electric kettles were, but it did the job. Waiting just over ten minutes, I was able to brew a perfectly satisfactory pot of tea. I put my teapot, two empty cups with saucers, a bowl of sugar, and a jug of milk on the little round kitchen table. I then checked all cupboards, lest we have any unwanted guests. All was clear so I pulled out a chair and sat myself down. The gentleman in the bowler hat promptly reappeared. He seemed pleased to see the tea, but somehow else dissatisfied. "Oh, no cake," he said, pulling out a chair for himself and sitting down opposite me. "Oh well, I ate earlier." He quickly helped himself to tea, not waiting for a word from me. "I say, err, would you like some tea?" I asked as a formality, as he poured on regardless. "Oh, yes, I see – yes please!" he replied, adding milk to his tea, as well as a meticulously measured half teaspoon of sugar. "I will help myself as well, then, in that case," I said, pouring my own tea and adding the same amount of milk and sugar as the man. My guest stirred his tea, and took one sip. "Mr Bingley, I'll be frank," he said. "I would usually finish the tea first but I'd like to get straight to business." I was stirring my own tea at the time. I replied, "Oh, I see. If you wish then, sir." "Yes, there are a few matters regarding your engine," said the man. "I was looking through some of the calculations you were making." "Do you think I'm making progress?" I asked. The man was referencing my workings towards the building of a new machine for navigation. A machine of this purpose was needed solely for sorting through hundreds of potential inter-reality location sequences of noughts and ones, checking to see whether each would be the right one to input into the main engine. The navigation I had built into the engine in the first place was quite evidently struggling, so I sought to build something more powerful, to ensure the upmost efficiency. "It depends on how you might define progress," the man replied. "I admire your ingenuity, designing a more powerful machine to check the settings, but I can't help feeling you might have misplaced a few decimal points in your preliminary workings." "Whatever do you mean?" "I mean to say that you might have slightly overestimated the effect your machine might have," explained the man. "Is that so?" "You will have realised by now that the power of your psykery is not enough to bring you home,” continued the man. "In a way, you have gone about solving this problem the right way. Your machine used for calculating the setting needed to travel here needed only sort through eleven hundred settings, but after arriving here, a level you created, it is now struggling to sort through them again, yes?" "Yes?" The man carried on speaking and I was hugely intrigued. "Now, your theories of trans-reality travel have one crucial flaw." "They do? What is it?” The man leant in closer, sipping his tea, before continuing, "You failed to highlight the differences between level creation and inter-level navigation! The number of settings possible when travelling between pre-existing realities, like your home, is substantially greater!" "Dear God, it all makes sense now." "Yes," said the man, sitting back, "and you were correct in your approach to this, despite thinking you had a different problem. You began to design a more powerful machine able to sort through thousands of settings significantly faster!" "Yes, I did!" The man then replied, "But I'm afraid it wouldn't have much of an impact. The number of settings is simply too large for it to handle." "I say – just how many settings are there to sort through on return?" The man thought to himself for a moment, before answering, "Somewhere in the region of thirty-four quadrillion, or thereabouts." "Thirty-four quadrillion!" I questioned in disbelief. "Yes, it is a vast number," said the man, "so vast that it took even myself a week to work out which setting would be required to bring you home.” "You've worked it out?" I asked. "I have indeed, sir!" replied the man. "Who are you, and how in the world did you do it!" I enquired, astonished as well as incredibly relieved. "Call me Percival, if you would," said the man. "It's a nice name, Percival." "I say, it is indeed, sir! It is indeed! I have never been more pleased to meet a chap called Percival than right now, at this moment!" "Quite rightly, sir, I might have saved your life just now," said Percival, seemingly boastful until he continued, "and all of this thanks to nobody but yourself!" "Well, I couldn't take all of the credit..." I said, modestly, still unsure of what exactly I had done. "No, sir, only you deserve the credit," replied Percival, "you, and your incredible mistakes!" "My incredible mistakes?" I enquired, somewhat disheartened. "Why, you only made the mistake of replicating your consciousness through the power you invested in the jump!" explained Percival. "That is who I am! I am merely a replicate of your own consciousness housed within the engine, and I am represented by none other than your imaginary self. I am quite surprised you didn't recognise me, actually." "I thought you seemed familiar!" I said. "You're me!" "I assure you I am not," said Percival. "I am merely a manifestation of your machine's consciousness, which does happen to be a copy of yours. I look, act, and think, in this physical representation of myself, only how you might imagine yourself to look, act and think." It was going to take me a while to get my head around this. "Then, how did you work out the setting?" "I looked within myself and remembered my home," said Percival. "After working through a few simulations I judged that the setting which I have now applied is the one which shall bring you home.” "Then, if you are really my engine, can you bring me home now?" I asked, hopefully. "Immediately,” replied Percival. "I am no less your engine than the noisy metal thing under the house. Whatever you might expect of that form of the engine you might expect of me. Mr Bingley, I assure you, this is the closest thing you will ever have to meeting the hulking machine downstairs and engaging it in polite and intriguing conversation.”

“You can bring me home – instantly?” I had to make sure this wasn’t all too good to be true.

“Of course!” "Then do so immediately! If you would!" I had grown ill of this dreadfully inconsistent realm and its scientific unruliness. I wasn’t prepared to take another second dealing with it. The mountains I could see in the distance from the kitchen window appeared much too... upside down, and floating, for my particular liking, symbolising entirely the kind of nonsense I wished to see nothing more of. As Percival said, “Right you are,” everything seemed to suddenly reorder itself – objects fading away and reappearing in surprisingly sensible positions. The tea disappeared, much to my dismay, but all else seemed to right itself, as if returning to the state of everything before I left my home reality. It must have been one of the strangest experiences I had ever sat through – nothing like anything I had witnessed before. Mountains and fields outside the window gave way to the backs of other houses, and all again, after about half a minute, stood still. Percival still sat opposite me and I looked around to see if any other changes remained to the room. It seemed they did not. "Are we back in London, Percival?" I asked, still in disbelief that I was ever able to return to sensible physics. "Back in London, sir? You never left," said Percival. "Oh, yes. I suppose I didn't, rather," I realised. "All I did was create another level of reality atop this, I assume?"

“You are right, yes.”

“So I am right so far as that.” I stood up and walked to the window, looking out. "And to think that all of that was green fields just a moment ago – with those irritating hills and mountains in the background." I turned back to Percival. "That's all I wanted, you know! A nice green world with a few animals! God only knows how the damned goblins turned up."

"Well," thought Percival, "some errors were made in the physics, and the chemistry... and indeed the biology, but I shall right them before next time!"

I laughed to myself, "Next time!" I said, "I'm not even thinking about next time!" I walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway. An oblivious Percival followed me through. "I'm going out." I went to reach for my coat, but it then occurred to me that I was in no way presentable for going out. My clothes were dirty and slightly singed, with a distinct smell of smoke. "Though, I think I might change, first."

"Where will we be going?" asked Percival, inviting himself. I noticed he was spotless despite the fire; not in need of change at all. I must have imagined myself a splendidly dressed man. Then I thought, if only I could have imagined myself wearing a new Savile Row suit. I could have acquisitioned it for later and rewarded myself for enduring a week of tedious machine tending and perpetual mathematics. Unfortunately, I hadn’t entertained the thought at the time.

"I was thinking, Percival, the Royal Society!" I replied.

Percival reacted with unease to my plans, "I was thinking more in terms of... perhaps, the Red Lion?"

"Precisely my thoughts!" I said. "I cannot believe you didn't see through me, sir. Call yourself me?"

"I don't call myself you, sir – I’m Percival!" replied Percival.

"Indeed you are," I said, "and if anyone asks, I don't know, concoct some nonsense about family feuds and long lost brothers or something like that. Make it sensational."

Percival thought to himself for a moment, grinning somewhat mischievously at the prospects. "Yes, I suppose I will!" he replied.

0 notes

the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

Chapter One

War had gripped the continent for four years, but now it was drawing to an uneasy close. Hatred, where there once had been peaceful coexistence, now grew to be irreconcilable. There would to be no quiet end to conflict. It would be long, and it would be terrible.

Salwick-Taleria was a young power, but prior to the war it had been a great one, its growing strength much the trigger of the conflict. Now, however, it fought against annihilation; her remaining armies forced to embark upon a costly and unnecessary Grand Spring Offensive. As their surge deep into the Northernmost region of the Eastern Union brought shock to their high command, a large part of their until now continuously victorious army entered retreat, all of this in face of weary Talerian soldiers now filing over their borders unstoppably, fighting for the survival of their homeland.

At the first battle of the offensive, Union armies were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer concentration of bodies spearheaded by the Talerians into the large and mostly untouched Northern county of Redshire. Their counter attacks too, were repulsed, and the decision was soon made to cede the region to the enemy in favour of a withdrawal to the next most northerly county, Davanshire and the neighbouring fortified city of Kingsgate.

The Redshire-Davanshire border was wild, rugged and dark; expansive moorland encompassed by tall hills capped with gritstone. Collectively, the area was known as the Northern Peaks, a place quite inhospitable to development and crossed only by one major road and a single railway. At one end of the link, on the more Northerly Redshire side, lay the solitary old market town of Whitehart, centre to a network of villages traditionally sustained by mining. This contrasted hugely with the grand, cathedral-like station that lay at the other end of the Peak Railway, in the heart of a city that couldn’t be any further from the quiet, gritty and detached world of the Peaks. Bright and metropolitan was the city of Bingford. County Town of Davanshire, it was key to the Northland, and indeed to the more prosperous, intellectual side of the Eastern Union as a whole, steeped in classical architecture, grand libraries, theatres and museums. Culturally it was a bastion, and militarily it was too, home to Royal Artillery, the cavalry, and the army’s officer training academy.

Owing to its link with the great city, Whitehart and the surrounding valley now formed the main part of the Union’s new frontier against the Talerians. Soldiers retreating towards the nearby villages soon began to dig in and layer the ground behind them with defensive obstacles. As they prepared for a lengthy stay and a serious defence against the onslaught, the Peak Railway ensured that they would always be supplied, if nothing faltered.

But the Talerians brought more guns to the front; what amounted to their army’s entire grand battery, concentrated on a cruelly small area encompassing not much more than the Peaks itself and Kingsgate. Fronting their assault too, was not the bulk of the infantry but a fast moving cavalry division, both horse and light armour. This devastated the Union’s battalions, as each was shelled out of its trenches and thrown into disorder, making them extremely vulnerable to the ensuing cavalry charge and sweeping fire of the armoured cars’ machine guns.

If anything gave the Union respite however, it was the heavy rain which followed for the next week, dampening the ground and bogging down the Talerians’ heavy, horse-drawn guns. Meanwhile, soldiers defending the Peaks had days to dig their earthworks while the advance of enemy cavalry was stalled, all in spite of the muddy conditions they would be working in. During this period, one morning when the rain had stopped, an order was passed down to a company of engineers that they must continue their retreat. Instead of digging in they would be needed desperately for work on the Peak Railway, which had sustained terrible damage from shelling. If it couldn’t be repaired then supply to what was becoming a vital salient would soon become limited, which would be disastrous for the defenders and local inhabitants.

A column of fifty blue coated soldiers, rifles slung over backs, continued their retreat to a gritstone edge, where they stepped carefully down a gradual slope to the side and joined the lane beneath it. Having marched since 0300 that morning and the time now approaching 1100, many among them now found the downhill march to be of huge relief, though the young sergeant leading the column assured them, “Enjoy going down! It doesn’t last for long.” Thankfully she knew the area and its roads well enough to avoid marching through sodden fields. The soldiers’ boots were worn and muddy enough already.

“Aye, well, at least you know where the good pubs are,” a coarsely spoken corporal replied.

If one thing was encouraging for the retreating soldiers it was the smell of long grass in the rain, and the freshness of the countryside air, a welcome change from smoke and metalwork. Even if the faint whirring of artillery continued in the background, the birds continued to sing. But reality soon struck back, and a shot rang out across the surroundings. The soldiers took cover at the roadside and gripped their rifles. They hid, and waited.

The corporal asked the captain, “Is it enemy?” The captain, knelt against a stone wall, looked around him at every hill and wood in sight, regardless of distance, scanning the area and bringing out his binoculars to aid him. Behind, where the shot sounded as though it came from, was only long grass. “Sharpshooter?”

“Perhaps,” said the captain, calmly and softly spoken, looking over the wall into an upward slope and long grass, “but if it was, I’d have picked a better position to fire from, wouldn’t you?”

“Well there’s a farmhouse at the end of the field,” the sergeant replied, citing her local knowledge, “it could just be the farmer.”

The corporal swore, “Bloody idiot!”

Another shot was then heard and the captain quickly dropped his head. The sound definitely came from the field ahead of them.

“Should we fire a warning shot?” asked the corporal.

As a pause followed for about five seconds and no further shot was heard, the captain deliberated. “Er, yes, fire one into the air, that should frighten him off.”

“Aye sir.” The corporal proceeded to pull back the bolt, push it forward again and then let off a single shot from his rifle into the air. Several nearby birds immediately took flight. “Bah!” said the corporal, watching them fly away. “If I’d have had another shot we could’ve had pigeon pie tonight.”

“Well if that didn’t give away our position, I don’t know what will,” said the captain, beginning to question his judgement ever so slightly.

The hidden gunman then replied with a warning shot of his own, so it seemed, followed by one which was better aimed. The second bullet skimmed blades of long grass ahead of the company and went over one soldier’s head. “Bloody hell!” she said.

“It’s enemy, isn’t it?” the corporal made up his mind.

“I don’t know,” the captain replied, “perhaps he’s mistaken us for enemy. You know what our coats look like from a distance, we could easily be Talerian.”

“Well, maybe you could!” said the corporal. “But I’ll have you know I keep my uniform immaculate. Have you ever seen a Talerian with buttons this shiny?”

“Corporal, let me handle this,” began the captain, readying his voice to shout. “I say!” he bellowed uncharacteristically, across the field. “Who goes there!” There was no reply yet, and no gunshot either, leaving a confused picture as to whether the gunman had actually heard him. “I have no choice then, cut the wire,” he ordered the engineer next to him. The engineer followed his order, bringing out his wire cutters to tend to the barbed wire on the stone wall.

“What are you doing?” asked the sergeant. “Are you mad?”

“Yes, I suppose I am.” Once the engineer had cut the wire, the captain bravely leapt over the wall and wandered forward, holstering his pistol and raising his arms in the air. “Who goes there!” he shouted again, presenting himself as a negotiator.

The gunman responded by taking a shot at him. He missed. The captain immediately hit the ground. “Swine!” he said.

“No proper Easterner shoots a sod with his hands up!” reasoned the corporal. “Come on, let’s have ‘im then!”

“Cut the wire!” ordered the sergeant. The company began cutting barbed wire all along the wall, meaning to allow a sizeable gap for them all to advance. When it came to it, all remaining forty-nine managed to cross the wall with no harassment by gunfire, but they crawled from now on, hugging the muddy ground and keeping their heads down. Looking up, one could just see the farmhouse; grey stone, large and mostly dilapidated. The gunman’s position was unclear. Nonetheless, he made another shot, and in response the captain ordered, “Fire at the house!”

Every rifle in the company was shot, and several crawled forward to make better aim against the house. Together, their fire rang as if delivered by machine guns. Like hail, the well drilled rifle fire struck the house unrelentingly, shattering windows, breaking fixtures, scarring bricks and silencing the gunman. Who knew if he had been hit? All anyone knew was that the weight of fire prevented him from returning shots, so the captain ordered two sections to advance, led by the sergeant towards the farmhouse, while the other rifles continued fire.

Twenty soldiers, following the sergeant, kept low whilst they crept forward through the long grass, friendly bullets still flying over their heads. The sergeant allowed her troops occasionally to fire their rifles as they advanced, paranoid that the gunman may spring up again at any moment and fire upon them. Once they got closer, the captain’s rifles directed their fire only at the house’s upper levels, while the sergeant led a storming of the house. She went about this incredibly cautiously. “We can’t go in through the doors!” she said, shouting over gunfire. “If they’re doing this deliberately there’s a good chance they’ve booby trapped the obvious entrances.”

“Swine!” replied the corporal, who had followed.

“So, let’s surround the kitchen – Black’s section by the north-facing windows and Stamford’s round the other side with me!” the sergeant ordered. “Come on!”

The engineers surrounded the room, broke the windows either side with their rifles and aimed at the hallway door from the outside. Seeing no one, the sergeant clambered in through the window in front of her, ordering the familiar corporal, Black, to follow her, alongside one man from the ranks. She slung her rifle over her back and heaved herself over, trying not to cut herself on broken glass. First thing, she checked the back door. It was indeed trapped. Explosives sat by the door, waiting for enemies to enter, whereupon they would surely pull the wire attached to the handle and detonate the device. The sergeant therefore ordered her two sections to stay outside, whilst she and her two comrades searched for the gunman. The first step would be to clear the hallway.

Fearing the presence of the enemy there, aiming his gun ready for the soldiers to enter through the kitchen door, the sergeant quietly ordered Black to place a small bomb against the door, whilst she and her accompanying engineer overturned the kitchen table and hid behind it. Once Black had triggered the bomb, he too ran to hide behind the table, while the sergeant prepared a hand grenade. “Once that goes off, we storm the hall,” she said.

“Aye sir,” replied the corporal, readying a hand grenade of his own. One should have known better than to fire on a company of engineers, always no doubt brimming with explosives.

When the bomb went off, the doorway was destroyed by the explosion, creating a cloud of dust and an onset of panic in the engineer. Storming buildings was not a task he was trained for, but there was no time to think about the danger now. “Come on!” said the sergeant, running to stand by the open doorway, by which now lay ruined furniture and scraps of burning wood. “Grenades now!” she continued, throwing hers through the doorway, followed by the corporal’s. Once two successive blasts had been heard, the sergeant and corporal rushed into the hallway, rifles ready, quickly observing a staircase, several tables and three further doors. Very fortunately, the sergeant also noticed a figure behind the banisters, hiding in the staircase to avoid shrapnel. Thinking quickly, she made no hesitation in firing her rifle – hitting her mark straight away.

Discovering the body of a young woman, however, the sergeant was shocked. She was carrying water and bandages up the stairs, but now she lay there dead, bleeding out onto the stairway with the sergeant’s bullet in her neck. “Oh God!” she said, walking up past her and being unable to divert her eyes from the ghastly mistake she had made.

Once, the corporal bore a delighted grin, but now it transformed quickly into a very sombre and indeed horrified expression, upon discovering who the sergeant had really killed. “Bloody hell,” he said, thinking of nothing else to say, still not quite coming to sense of what had happened.

Ridiculously, faced with this, the soldiers immediately carried on, not able to spare a single moment to reflect on what had happened until the gunman was found. Whatever danger there was to them, it had to be dealt with first, but this didn’t take long. They soon discovered the gunman, already dead from a gunshot wound to the chest, in the first room they entered upstairs. When they arrived there, shots were still being fired from the fields and impacting against the wall at the back of the room. The sergeant had to send the engineer as a runner to call off the fire. Meanwhile, the corporal stayed by her, examining the body of the gunman while the sergeant sat down against a wall, removed her hat, and waited for the gunfire to stop.

By 1300, the company entered the next village, through a road enveloped by trees and then by stone walls. At the end of the road was not a deserted, war torn settlement like many anticipated, but a beautiful part of the world still in the routine of ordinary life. Flowers were blossoming, trucks and carts still went about their business, people walked to and from home and children even played in the streets. It was an idyllic picture of the countryside, in dramatic contrast to the sight of the engineers, most dirtied, some bloodied, and all visibly exhausted. The weather however decided to side with the bleak, and the rain returned once again, though very lightly to begin with while the soldiers took rest and spent their whole wages on fresh produce of the kind they had been starved of at the front. The captain asked of one woman, carrying on her commerce just as she might normally in a stall at the roadside, “You know the enemy are just the other side of that hill, don’t you?”

“Of course!” she replied. “But you’ve got to make your money somehow, haven’t you? Place might not be like what it were when we come back – we’ll need the money to rebuild our lives! Can’t set up shop now, not with all you soldiers coming through.”

“Well,” said the captain, taking the fruit he had purchased, “I thank you kindly for your custom but I recommend strongly that you make leave for Whitehart as soon as you can!”

Other soldiers bought food, drink, seeds, wool and paper from various merchants around the village, while others mingled with villagers who were resting at the time, especially the younger ones, getting on very well with their counterparts for obvious reasons. While the corporal kept things orderly, the sergeant strayed away from most of the company, preferring not to buy anything nor strike conversation. She wouldn’t avoid it though, as another young woman emerged from her cottage and approached her, kindly offering her a cup of tea as she looked very weary. In an abrupt and confusing response to the gesture, the sergeant simply replied, “It could have been you,” as she walked on.

She only joined her comrades again as the column began to reform, welcoming the surprise arrival of a general on horseback, galloping into the village alone. To the captain, he called, “What ho, sir!” lifting his hat to draw attention.

“Good Afternoon, sir!” the captain replied, turning. As much as he had never met the man, General Walsingham, the whole country recognised his image perfectly; that of a dashing, traditional horseback general, symbol of an old era of warfare long since dead and romanticised.

“Do you command this company?”

“Yes sir!”

“Good, I’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh, what is it sir?”

The general began, “I bring you new orders – to stop the retreat and dig in before the village.” In contrast to his usual optimism, the general struck a solemn tone, looking upward to the rainclouds. “I do pray of the world that the rain may soon return to its former severity, as to put to rest the fires which now consume Kingsgate.”

“Why, what’s happened?”

“Kingsgate is fallen, captain! The Talerians hold it to ransom, they burn its buildings to the ground street by street, and beg that we re-enter the city to fight them there. They wish to draw our whole army into a murderous trap.”

“What!” The captain was troubled by what he heard. “That’s awful. What remains of our hold on the borderland?”

“This is it! Only you and your army of the Peaks remain!”

“Bloody hell.”

“Quite! The enemy advances again, and we have no choice but to hold them back here. I will not leave Whitehart to the scoundrels.”

The peace of the countryside soon fell to the guns of war. Shells landed on rooftops and slates, and windows were shattered. The streets now became ridden with shrapnel, and blast following blast tore into the roads and cottage gardens. Some shells bit terribly close to soldiers and villagers, sending the company running for cover in all directions. The general dismounted and ordered that the villagers open their homes and basements to his troops, but nothing could be quick enough in the midst of the random bombardment. So indiscriminate it was, that all souls, officers to engineers and even village children found themselves dangerously close to the random death. The corporal, ducking as he heard the sound of a shell arriving close to him, shouted, “What the hell are they playing at!” The deal he was trying to strike with the local owner of a truck, for transport to Whitehart, would now be squandered as the vehicle was hit and immediately destroyed by a shell to the engine compartment.

The captain ran towards a gap between two cottages where the sergeant now hid, followed by an engineer. A shell fell in front of him, grazing his face and body with shrapnel, and the sergeant ran out to help the shaken officer into cover. Meanwhile, the other engineers escaped mostly unharmed, but two were injured as the house in which they hid partially collapsed as the shelling intensified, before the bombardment ceased a minute later. The villagers too, were mostly unharmed, but many were left distraught by the event.

“Right chaps!” began the captain earlier in the afternoon as he began to announce the new orders. “Good news is there’ll be no more marching today! Bad news is there’ll be a whole lot more digging, and it’s going to be frightfully muddy.” By the late afternoon, despite this, the company had dug basic shallow trenches in a field to the front of the village. They were flanked to their left by the road leading into the village, and forest beyond that, while ahead of them and to their right lay miles of expansive moorland, at the end of which lay several major hills. It was the top of these hills that the company would observe very keenly for soldiers crossing, as the last troops known to be of Union allegiance had now already crossed, retreating to the edge of the woods. The fear of battle was now dwelling on every person’s mind, as the villagers fled and the number of soldiers moving up to the front seemed concernedly small.

The army which had swept away the Union’s entire defensive force in Redshire was now poised to attack them head on. The engineers, part of a very lightly defended frontline now manned with barely more than two thousand rifles and a few machine guns, would now bear the brunt of their renewed assault. The rain began to pour again, so if they hoped to advance anywhere, the Talerians would need to attack quickly, lest the ground so become so damp that the assault would have to be delayed for days, giving the Union enough time to construct a proper defence.

“Ah, lovely day for a battle,” said the corporal, crawling alongside the other engineers, pointing his rifle over the side of the shallow trench. What lay ahead was certain to be as muddy as it was bloody.

The idea of being the first line of defence against the Talerians petrified even the captain. He, more so than any other in the company, realised that however valiantly his troops fought back, the first line was certainly designed to fall. His only hope was that the general’s plan, involving the digging of a reserve line of trenches which went unoccupied, would work. This was wishful thinking however. In reality most expected that they would soon come face to face with the Talerians, at bayonet point.

But the wait was long before the first bodies crossed the hill – the advance beginning towards dusk, long after the rain had stopped. Before then the soldiers had eaten, they had rested and they had prepared plans, but this didn’t quell the disappointment of those who hoped that the enemy wouldn’t come today at all. Neither did it prepare them for the onslaught of artillery which now began, as thousands of enemy troops and cavalry showed themselves on the hills and prepared to attack.

The first shells were inaccurate. They hit nowhere near their mark, but a few seconds in the enemy corrected their fire, and several soldiers were covered with dirt as shells burst either side of their trenches. They braced themselves for a terrible impact and the captain ordered, “Stand your ground! No retreat!”

A rifle battalion of at least seven hundred troops, all clothed in a dark scarlet, had dug in around the engineer company. They received the worst shelling to begin with and no soldier went uncovered by dirt. Fortunately the earthworks which they had dug protected them for some time, but with each shell more came the inevitability that one would hit its target soon enough.

A minute into the bombardment, a rifleman saw his friend grievously wounded by shrapnel whilst he had kept his head down. He called out for a medic to help her but he was scarcely heard, and what little basic training and bandages he had would have to do. Meanwhile a lance corporal from the same company of rifles was struck by a shell and did not survive. One of the engineers too, was wounded, possibly fatally, but time would have to tell.

The bombardment intensified, the forest too was hit, and the cavalry slowly advanced. Shell after shell dropped and each minute at least one or two would hit a soldier. One of those hit was another engineer; her legs bloodied by shrapnel, but despite temptations to surrender the frontline, the captain still held his ground, amid the flying dirt, the deafening roar of guns and the cries of the wounded. He ordered his troops simply to cling as hard as they could to what little cover they had. Running would serve no good.

Amid this, the sergeant’s presence was vital to the morale of at least one boy, no older than eighteen. As his nerves shattered under the pressure of the fire and the fear of battle, the sergeant held him reassuringly around the shoulder. He cried, saying, “I don’t want to be here!”

The sergeant, although still scarred by earlier events in the day, managed to calm the broken soldier. “I know, I don’t either. We won’t be soon.”

“I just want to be home!”

“And you shall be!”

“I’ll die, I’ll die, I know it.”

“No, I shan’t let you, I’ll protect you, don’t worry.”

“I want to go home!”

“No, you must stay. If a shell comes down here I will make sure it hits me!”

“I just want to see my mother again, and the chickens, and my old home!”

“Good, good, just picture those things! You’ll see them all again soon enough, the war’s almost over!”

The boy carried on crying, though at least now in the protection of the sergeant, as she kept watch over the skies for the approach of shells, though this would probably be in vain. “I didn’t join the engineers for this,” the boy continued. “I just joined to build bridges, and fix things! That’s what I’m good at!”

“Treasure those abilities lad, you can be proud of them! There’s no satisfaction in this business.”

The soldiers bravely stood another few minutes under fire, accepting some more casualties before the general’s plan was finally enacted. In the first part of this, the company of engineers retreated, appearing to be disordered, as did the rifle battalion and the rest of the soldiers at the front. Hundreds stood, heaved themselves out of their trenches and set off back towards the village, spare a few who remained at the front and hid. The Talerians took this to be the sign that the cavalry must now charge, as were their tactics; shelling the enemy out of their trenches with a sharp concentration of fire and then running them down in their disorder with a charge of thousands of horse mounted, sabre wielding daredevils.

In contrast to the glamour of the cavalry, heroically charging into combat with their swords glistening as the sun broke through the clouds, the retreat of the Union soldiers was chaotic, disorderly and outright cowardly. “Leg it!” the corporal yelled. The captain followed him as did the sergeant, amid a scattered group of their frightened comrades. It would appear that the officers simply could not keep their ranks in order anymore, as the soldiers under them adopted an every man for himself mentality and shed their duty to their Emperor and their Union in its entirety. Before them, at least as the Talerians saw it, was a routed regiment. Unbeknownst to them however, the dramatic climax of the battle, which until now had simply been a slugging match, was not all it would seem. As the cavalry closed in with the Union soldiers, many in their ranks began to panic, quite understandably, but the charge was losing momentum in the muddy ground and many fronting the charge soon grasped that this certainly would not be an exercise in killing rabbits.

To their astonishment, the broken Union ranks began to reform, and far from being completely shelled out of their trenches, they instead resettled in new ones, where their machine guns had already been set up. “Present!” yelled the captain, over the loudening yell of the charging enemy. The rifles deployed in the reserve trenches and now they established a perfect formation to fire, but the cavalry had left it too late to stop. Far from running down a broken unit of demoralised men and women with sabres to their backs, they instead met a frightening array of guns, lined up against them.

Finally came the fatal order from the general, standing with his troops in the reserve trenches: “Fire!”

And in that second a crescendo of fire echoed loudly across the landscape, and the cavalry heroes were engulfed in a hail of bullets. The first line of horses fell, some of their riders were shot, and others were trampled. The charge continued over the dead but the horsemen’s eyes now glared in horror at the enemy, as their machine guns spread fire cruelly across the next rank, seeing many more men and women fall with their horses; their glamour despoiled by the horrid stench of blood and death. One man took four bullets to his chest; a woman near him two, while her horse was killed under her. Many immediately sought to turn their horses around to escape their fate, but they were simply caught up in the tide of valour, and shot in the back instead. Others managed to dismount and escape with only a trampling, but the vast majority carried on, into a further volley of rifle fire, which tore into yet another rank of the ill fated regiment.

The artillery fire which pounded the Union soldiers prior to the charge of the cavalry had since ceased, as not to fire on their own soldiers, but all this did now was give the defenders free reign to cut the Talerians to shreds from the safety of their trenches. With most of the cavalry officers now wounded or dead the charge went leaderless; some now carrying on and miraculously managing to reach the enemy trenches, only to be captured there, while others retreated and others were shot attempting either course. What was now clear was that only the enemy infantry remained as a fighting force, but they would be heavily outnumbered. They had advanced in close order behind the cavalry before they charged in order to hold the ground they captured, but this plan of course ended in catastrophe, and the spectacle of well regimented blue coated soldiers, marching with their bayonets glistening in the slowly setting sun, now disappeared as they all went to ground.

For a moment then, all went quiet. This lasted until the officer commanding the Talerian infantry ordered a retreat. On this order, her troops now stood, not to full height but crouching to avoid much exposure. Unfortunately however this did not help to protect them. General Walsingham ordered, “Prepare to fire again!” prompting questions from one of his fellow officers alongside him in the trench.

“Are you sure this is the best course of action, sir?” asked the lieutenant colonel in command of the rifle battalion. “They are running – do we really wish to reopen the battle?”

“Old boy,” the general replied, “if we don’t shoot them now we’ll only have to do it later! Best we do it now while they’re outnumbered and outgunned, eh?”

“Yes sir.”

The general indeed gave the order to fire again, and the onslaught was as heavy as it had been before. Again, without artillery harassment, the Union soldiers covered the enemy in bullets; some fired by sharpshooters who excelled at firing at far away targets. In the midst of this storm of lead, many were of course killed, and others wounded, prompting the unit to lose all order as each man and woman ran in different directions in a desperate attempt to save themselves. Some simply went to ground again, although several of those who attempted this were killed. Part of the terror this all caused was that the bullets came from behind; the enemy who took your life not even being seen. But the truth, as the general saw it, was that too many of those soldiers would survive and be reformed to fight another day, and he wouldn’t have that. As the enemy ran away further, out of range for many, and the sound of artillery began to reappear, the general made a quick decision. “Cease fire!” he ordered. “All except for machine guns!”

The order was followed, and the Talerians, although still broken and leaving many dead and wounded behind, seemed relieved, even as two more of their soldiers were gunned down by machine gun.

Then came the next order. “Fix bayonets!” Every soldier with a rifle removed their sword from its scabbard and fixed it to their rifle’s end. Now they braced themselves for the next order. “Machine guns cease fire!” At that point, the battalion was poised to go over the top. The sergeant once again had to calm the nerves of the boy next to her, barely able to fire his rifle even as the cavalry came for him. Understandably he dreaded going over the top.

“Don’t worry, just linger on behind,” said the sergeant. “There are many very brave soldiers here who’ll front the charge, all they need is you behind them to back them up.”

“But what if the enemy turn and fire!” the boy fretted.

“Then go to ground immediately! If anyone asks why, you tell them it was an order from me.”

Other soldiers prepared themselves for the nightmare of close combat. Shooting was distant, and easy. You aim your rifle, you pull the trigger. But the bayonet required passion, hatred, strength of will and some might say near inhumanity, to pierce a fellow human’s chest and look them in their eye as you did it, so intimately, and then pull away and leave them to die. This was harder to stomach for some even than the danger of running into the open in face of the enemy’s rifles. Still the general decided it had to be done.

He gave the order, “Charge!” and before him two thousand soldiers began their advance. Many fired their rifles as they clambered out of the trenches, some hitting the Talerians and causing yet more of their number to drop, but for others in the rifle battalion their heightened morale was quickly dashed. The shellfire began again, and by fluke one of their men was hit, but still, through persistent shelling, the charge continued, and the Union soldiers quickly made ground on the Talerians. Rather than standing to offer any real resistance the Talerians simply hoped to outrun the enemy, but this, unfortunately, did not happen. The Union troops were rested while the Talerians were exhausted following a long march to battle. Thus, the Union quickly closed in, in a far fitter state and ready to draw blood. Some fired their rifles before engaging in close combat. Some Talerians too, hearing the roar of the chargers become louder, turned to fire their rifles in a last ditch attempt not to be slaughtered. They accomplished nothing other than killing a young man and causing some more to go to ground. The charge still continued.

At this point, the first Talerians met cold steel, and their scattered ranks were devastated as the Union soldiers hit them in such concentration and with such force. Those who turned watched in horror as the enemy ran at them with almost a hedgerow of bayonets. Two union soldiers would fight each Talerian, and for most the combat ended in seconds, with the Talerian almost always stabbed in the gut, ribcage or heart. Some fought back however, and the Union soldiers also experienced horrific sights as a few charging soldiers found themselves impaled by the bayonets of those who stood to defend themselves, though these defenders were promptly killed by another soldier almost immediately afterward.

The corporal, once he reached the Talerians, tried to bayonet a man who was running away, but this man turned around and thrust his blade in the direction of the corporal in return. The two men stood off against each other for a second, but as the Talerian moved to pull the trigger on his rifle, the corporal quickly took the initiative and threw himself forward, plunging his bayonet into the enemy’s heart. The captain, meanwhile, readied his revolver to shoot any straggling Talerian in the back of the head, but the sergeant remained relatively clear of the combat.

The shock of the charge was clearly enough to cause most of the enemy to surrender after a few minutes of fighting; the majority raising their muddy hands in the air, and many kneeling to the ground and begging at bayonet point to be spared. Such was the nature of the Union soldiers that they took prisoners gladly, but many Talerians, veterans of other more brutal fronts, didn’t expect this mercy, and readily accepted their deaths. This, fortunately for them, was not what the Union gave them, and the charge resulted in the entire enemy battalion being captured. Some twelve hundred of them, along with the surviving cavalry, were gathered together and marched away to the village with their hands on their heads, escorted by engineers. The enemy artillery fire meanwhile had ceased, once the Union soldiers reached their infantry, and they did not fire again that day.

As the sun began to set, the wounded were taken away to be treated and the bodies were counted. The victorious soldiers left mainly for the pub; their natural habitat, to celebrate victory. Though a small number stayed at the front, such as the general, his staff, the troubled sergeant, and some riflemen on watch, as well as those who grieved for their fallen friends.

Those counting the bodies returned to the general with reports that the enemy had lost upwards of five hundred of their cavalry, and a hundred and twenty of their infantry, dead. The ambulance corps reported similar numbers wounded. The Union meanwhile had lost only nineteen dead, and thirty wounded; a blessing, surely, in comparison to how the Talerians had lost that day, and considering the odds as they appeared before the battle. The general had certainly pulled off something extraordinary, a victory he would no doubt be praised for, but this made scores of corpses now littering the green fields no prettier.

As he rode past the sergeant, stood gazing over the battlefield alone, the general stopped to ask of her, “It is of great relief, is it not, that their advance is stalled for another precious day?” He spoke with no joy, only content.

The sergeant had been in deep contemplation and thus took time to reply. She said, “I’ve seen enough.”

“Yes,” replied the general, “I will never understand those for whom this sight grows any easier over time. Even on a day when we triumph, one can’t avoid a stinging feeling of loss!”

“Why must we find our talents in something so terrible?” the sergeant replied.

The general enquired, “Well, have you fought for much of your life?”

“Ever since I was born.”

“And did you seek that fight?”

“No.”

“Then you are a born fighter,” said the general, beginning to leave, “what can I say? All you want is peace, but you shall never have it.” The sergeant said nothing and the general soon departed, leaving the sergeant alone again. As he rode off for the village he left with nothing in the way of inspirational words, only, “Make your peace with war!” which the sergeant scarcely caught ear of as he dashed away. Needless to say, she was no better for it.

Later, the engineers bivouacked by the village for the night, forming a small camp not so far from the battlefield. Most now slept, anticipating an early start to the morning’s march, but the corporal remained awake with the captain as well as the sergeant, sitting with them around an open fire near to a wood. The corporal of course brewed tea, while the captain tried to read a book and the sergeant glanced her dirtied face in a mirror by firelight.

“War is hell,” said the corporal, not entirely sure whether serious or not.

The captain set down the book he had once he reached the end of a chapter, this on flower beds, planning later to continue onto the next one he had on hanging baskets. “Yes,” he replied, “one much prefers gardening. It’s not as muddy and requires less digging.”

“Brew?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“How about you sergeant?” Of course she gave no reply. Instead she continued to look herself in the eyes. “Come on,” the corporal went on, “you must have had nothing to drink since, well, this morning! You must be dying of thirst.”

The sergeant lowered the mirror. “I’ve been distracted,” she said.

The corporal made her cup of tea first, even though she didn’t ask for it. “Aye,” he said. “I should think I would have been too. Fancy getting your daughter killed just for that eh? Makes you sick.” He passed the tea to the sergeant still nearly as hot as boiled, but she drank it quickly as if it were cold water. “Blimey, no need to do that, I’d have got you something cold!” The sergeant was clearly discomforted now and preferred not to reply. “Are you alright?”

She only spoke a few minutes later, saying again, “I’ve seen enough.”

“I should think you have,” replied the captain. “I’d seen enough at least two years ago.”

“No, I mean I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to see anymore.”

“Well, good thing the war’s nearly over. You can go home after that.”

“No,” the sergeant rejected. She sank her face into her hands. “I can’t go home. This is the only thing I’m good at, I have to stay.” She intentionally kept her teary eyes covered. “It’s the only thing I’m good at and I hate it and I can’t do it anymore!”

“You have managed until now, what’s happened?”

“A person died today because of my decisions!”

“Sergeant, you can’t blame yourself for what happened earlier. These things happen.”

The sergeant took some time to speak again, thinking over events. “What point have we come to when the death of a young person like that is just dismissed as ‘these things happen’?”

“Well sergeant, this is what happens when you help your father shoot at soldiers!” The sergeant looked the captain intently in the eyes. He went on, “This is what happens, when you carry on fighting a war unnecessarily even though you know you’ve lost! One thing’s certain, she would not have mourned your death.”

“And I do not mourn hers.”

“Then what affects you?”

“My failure – as a soldier. I made a wrong decision and now a person is dead. I can’t recover from that.”

The captain replied, “Sergeant, that’s life as a solider – especially one of rank. That’s what war’s like. If I make a bad decision people die. That’s how it goes, but someone has to do the job and it looks like I’m the best to do it. I’ve already lost three, maybe four soldiers under my command in this war, and that’s not counting the wounded. For generals it’s a matter of thousands.” The captain was clearly troubled at this point, perhaps by the sheer lack of emotion he found himself showing, as if he’d lost something of his humanity. Nonetheless, he finished, “You just need to accept the tragedy of it, at the start, and move on.”

The sergeant was slowly giving up. “And that’s why I’m not cut out for this,” she said, “I just can’t handle the reality of it.”

The captain didn’t reply this time and instead let the corporal pass him his cup of tea, made with fresh milk bought in the village. This was a welcome change from the usual rations but stock would be running out after tonight. The corporal finished making his own tea and then sipped it, before moving the conversation on, “Ah, better than the powdered stuff eh?”

“Yes, well,” the captain began, “at least there aren’t onions floating in this one.” He evoked the memory of an unpleasant episode of recent campaign life. Things like this did occur occasionally, with poor access to water for washing on some fronts.

“Bloody hell,” the corporal remembered, “that was a cock up, wasn’t it!”

“It was!” the captain laughed. “But good thinking getting the milk.”

“Thank you, sir! I’ll shall remember it for the next war.”

“Yes – I’ll pass that onto the other officers. Suggestion from the chaps: more fresh milk and fewer onions!”

The sergeant, although still troubled, broke silence, “And double rum for the NCOs!”

“Aye, that too!” the corporal agreed.

0 notes

the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

Chapter Two

While the Talerian army was for one night stalled, this did not mean the end of the retreat. By dusk the rain had stopped, meaning that there would probably come another assault in the morning. Overnight, the villagers packed, leaving for Whitehart before dawn, while the soldiers camping nearby began their march just before midday; abandoning the village they had defended so valiantly a day earlier. As loyalists left for the safety of the stronghold town, only a few straggling citizens remained for when the enemy arrived – they unveiled banners to greet their approaching columns.

The first soldiers to enter the village were not uniformed, however, but men and women in civilian coats armed with rifles. Indeed, neither were they Talerian. They were traitorous citizens of the Northlands who fought with the enemy, and at their head rode a dark, horse mounted figure; an outlaw; black coated with a brown leather strap across her chest. In her hand she held a short rifle, with two revolvers holstered by her side and a sabre in its scabbard. Her small band of rebels followed her on foot, marching in a wide column. They marched along the same road the engineers had followed, leading them past the ghastly remains of the cavalry regiment which had tried to take the village last evening. They still wore expressions of disgust on their faces as they now entered that village, unopposed but wary. The outlaw ordered that her troops spread out in case of ambush, but the rebels in the village left their houses to meet them in the road, causing her great reassurance. “Close order!” she yelled, as her soldiers organised themselves into perfect ranks again and halted.

The village resistance held a prisoner, whom they restrained with rope and threw down in front of the outlaw. “This is him!” a man said. The prisoner gazed up and feared the worst.

The rider looked down and she returned a cold glare. “Do you know who I am?” she asked abruptly in her penetrating tone, making no introductions.

“Are you –” the prisoner tried to speak but delayed his answer ever so slightly, causing the outlaw to interrupt.

“Spit it out man!”

“Are you Blackhart?”

“Oh good. You know who I am. Then I won’t need to explain to you my tendency to brutality and the details of the cruellest acts I have committed.”

“No, you shan’t.”

“Do you believe those stories?”

At the woman in question’s mercy, the man replied, “I don’t know who to believe.”

“Well believe me!” The outlaw took her rifle and fired at the ground in front of the prisoner without warning. He repulsed. “It is all true!”

The terrified man replied, “I believe you!”

Blackhart laughed. “Oh my poor boy, do you hate me?”

“No, no I don’t. I’m incapable. It’s not in my nature to.”

Blackhart didn’t speak. She just stared with the intensity of her usual manner and waited for a different answer. She didn’t receive one. “Come on!”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say that you hate me!”

“I do!”

“Well say it!”

“I hate you!” Blackhart smiled and the prisoner continued, “I hate you!” The outlaw grinned, as if to say continue. “I hate you with all my heart!”

“Good!” Blackhart laughed, tilting her head upwards. “Good...” She stopped laughing and breathed a sigh. “I live off that. I love hearing that. It makes me feel like I’m doing my job.”

The prisoner only became further embittered by his powerlessness and inability to strike back or leave her presence. He yelled, “You’re a bloody disgrace!”

Blackhart handled herself with far more composure. “Oh, that is convenient to know! Then I shall feel less guilty about wishing that I had you strung up and mutilated.”

“You’re a brute!” said the now enraged prisoner. In return for this he was kicked in the back of the head by a resistance soldier and then clubbed in the back with his rifle.

“Traitor!” Blackhart shot again; skimming the enemy’s arm. She had meant to kill him but he collapsed forward as she fired. “Oh just hold him in a house and torture him for what he knows,” she ordered, riding on after that to meet a fellow commander. “I’m sure you can handle things.”

“Yes, we can,” said her second in command as he stood forward to greet the prisoner with his gun barrel. The prisoner spat at him in defiance. Fortunate that Blackhart wasn’t there to see it. “So, you like telling the Union what our plans are then, do you lad?”

“I was saving lives,” the prisoner replied.

“Not ours!”

“You’re the ones who carry on this war when you’ve no chance of winning!”

“Erm,” the commander stopped him from speaking on, “I’ll have less of that from you.” He turned to an armed woman stood next to him. “Untie the bastard.”

The prisoner was untied so that he could be paraded at rifle point down the road to a house where he would be interrogated. In the meantime, two rebel bands would meet and merge their ranks. Some prepared explosives which they stockpiled in their houses, others readied extensive rations to be taken with them for a long campaign, and the rest distributed ammunition to their responsible troops. What the prisoner would have witnessed, before and during his captivity, was a fresh new regiment’s preparations for war. Far from being an army of the shadows, the separatists were now preparing to engage the Union Army in full battle. Behind the first soldiers entering the village, the resistance’s own field guns were pulled up by horse, and a truck carrying two machine guns followed soon after. Now, Blackhart sought the cooperation of several Talerian commanders, whom she met by the village’s church, to make sure she could deliver a shock victory which would serve as inspiration to followers of her wider movement to take up arms.

But among the fresh troops still straggled the very few survivors of yesterday’s assault. These men and women who hadn’t been captured lingered on in the village to haunt the next wave, their faces grey like ghosts and their once bright uniforms dulled by the dust, mud and blood of battle. Those who still remained fit roamed in gangs, looting the fields and the houses beside them, while the wounded and distraught slumped at the side of the main road leading to the village. Although Blackhart was unmoved by any of these scenes, her troops certainly were, as were her officers and indeed her Talerian allies, who had lost dearly.

The commander escorting the prisoner was met by three disheartened cavalrymen at the side of the road, by a house from which they had looted beer. Seeing him the midst of his duties, pressing his gun barrel against the prisoner’s back and forcing him onward, one of the men told him, “Just give up,” with a voice that sounded sorrowful.

“Give up?” the commander stopped to ask.

“Yeah, give up!” the cavalryman went on. “What’s the point anymore? They’re going to win anyway, what can you do?” He slightly slurred his words. His eyes were teary.

“Sir, we will fight on until this land is free from Bastion’s rule!” the commander delivered the official line, resenting the Union’s capital. Following this, he took his prisoner indoors into an unoccupied house where the door had been left open by other looters. The prisoner, supposedly now to undergo interrogation, expressed great relief.

“Bloody hell, man!” he said. “I’m glad it’s you!”

“Yes, fortunate isn’t it?” the commander replied. “Otherwise it could have been very nasty!”

How fortunate it was indeed, that one of the Union’s spies had reached such a rank, with the trust of Blackhart, to be able to come to the aid of another spy in peril, and how even more fortunate it was that the two men happened to encounter each other at the right time.

“I’m glad you recognised me!”

“Of course I did! John Wells, how could I forget you?” The commander remembered his prisoner from time spent together in the army some years back.

“George old boy, I simply don’t know!”

“My God, it feels a relief to be referred to by one’s own name again.”

“Oh yes,” said Wells, the prisoner. “What can I say? Free at last!”

“Oh yes, indeed.” The men shook hands. “Good to meet you again, John!”

“Good to meet you too, George!”

Blackhart’s second in command, real name George Blakely, had risen to the highest rank in the rebel army despite being a spy, in what was a masterful deception. But this would now have to end in total betrayal. John Wells meanwhile had been hidden as a newer recruit to Blackhart’s ranks but found himself quickly uncovered during an attempt to pass on information by carrier pigeon. At this point he was taken prisoner, for which he apologised, “I do hope you don’t have to break your cover because of me!”

“Don’t worry, old boy!” assured George. “I couldn’t stay with that ghastly woman too much longer anyway. Too dangerous to be around her now.”

“Why?”

“Because she knows she has been betrayed, and it is I who betrayed her. She’ll work it out soon enough, she’s in denial.” George checked his rifle and took ammunition from his pouch. “Besides, we need to get out of here now and tell our chaps what the plan is.”

“What plan?”

“Their plan.”

“Their plan?”

“Yes, their plan to bugger things up for us!”

“What, the assault?”

“Not just the assault, but the sabotage. They want to blow the Eve River bridge.”

“Bloody hell, they can’t do that!”

“I know!” George promptly handed Wells his rifle along with the ammunition. In turn he drew his side revolver for himself. “I hope you can shoot. I won’t be able to when I’m steering that bitch’s horse.”

“What bitch’s horse?”

“Yes, I should say, Blackhart’s meeting the Tallies by the church.”

“She is?”

“Yes, and coincidentally I know a horse parked just outside there that will be perfect for a quick dash back to home turf.”

“Well,” said Wells, loading a clip of ammunition into his new rifle, “if the Union expects that I should steal a horse from the most vile woman in the North to save my comrades, then that is what I shall do.”

“Good,” replied George, opening the door to the kitchen and looking inside, “then smash that thing through the back window and break us out, will you?”

The back door was still locked, forcing the men to flee through the window as George had anticipated. Both tried as best they could to avoid fragments of broken glass and take themselves over the kitchen worktop and through the small back window. At the other side was a garden; covered in shell holes with the back wall now damaged. Through this they ran. Over the back wall, they found themselves going downhill for the church, by a shortcut through a wood. At this point Wells required a rest, which George enjoyed as well, both sitting against a large old tree and listening out for any treading. But all that could be heard was the faint, ever present noise of artillery, and distant marching.

Wells was exhausted, having stood through much trauma over the past few days, now he asked, “When’s this bloody war going to be over?”

George was pessimistic. “Oh God,” he said. “Never! The Talerians will give up soon, yes, but the separatists? This won’t end soon at all. Especially not if they get a taste for victory.”

“Well,” said Wells, looking past the tree with his rifle pointed, “we won’t let them have that, will we?” He stood and made his way through the fallen blossoms. “Follow on.”

0 notes

the-empress-and-her-downfall · 9 years ago

Text

Chapter One

“Aye, well, at least you know where the good pubs are,” a coarsely spoken corporal replied.

“Well there’s a farmhouse at the end of the field,” the sergeant replied, citing her local knowledge, “it could just be the farmer.”

The corporal swore, “Bloody idiot!”

Another shot was then heard and the captain quickly dropped his head. The sound definitely came from the field ahead of them.

“Should we fire a warning shot?” asked the corporal.

As a pause followed for about five seconds and no further shot was heard, the captain deliberated. “Er, yes, fire one into the air, that should frighten him off.”

“Well if that didn’t give away our position, I don’t know what will,” said the captain, beginning to question his judgement ever so slightly.

“It’s enemy, isn’t it?” the corporal made up his mind.

“I don’t know,” the captain replied, “perhaps he’s mistaken us for enemy. You know what our coats look like from a distance, we could easily be Talerian.”

“Well, maybe you could!” said the corporal. “I’ll have you know I keep my uniform immaculate! Have you ever seen a Talerian with buttons this shiny?”

“What are you doing?” asked the sergeant. “Are you mad?”

The gunman responded by taking a shot at him. He missed. The captain immediately hit the ground. “Swine!” he said.

“No proper Easterner shoots a sod with his hands up!” reasoned the corporal. “Come on, let’s have ‘im then!”

“Swine!” replied the corporal, who had followed.

“So, let’s surround the kitchen – Black’s section by the north-facing windows and Stamford’s round the other side with me!” the sergeant ordered. “Come on!”

“Aye sir,” replied the corporal, readying a hand grenade of his own. One should have known better than to fire on a company of engineers, always no doubt brimming with explosives.

“Well,” said the captain, taking the fruit he had purchased, “I thank you kindly for your custom but I recommend strongly that you make leave for Whitehart as soon as you can!”

“Do you command this company?”

“Yes sir!”

“Good, I’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh, what is it sir?”

“Why, what’s happened?”

“What!” The captain was troubled by what he heard. “That’s awful. What remains of our hold on the borderland?”

“This is it! Only you and your army of the Peaks remain!”

“Bloody hell.”

“Quite! The enemy advances again, and we have no choice but to hold them back here. I will not leave Whitehart to the scoundrels.”

The sergeant, although still scarred by earlier events in the day, managed to calm the broken soldier. “I know, I don’t either. We won’t be soon.”

“I just want to be home!”

“And you shall be!”

“I’ll die, I’ll die, I know it.”

“No, I shan’t let you, I’ll protect you, don’t worry.”

“I want to go home!”

“No, you must stay. If a shell comes down here I will make sure it hits me!”

“I just want to see my mother again, and the chickens, and my old home!”

“Good, good, just picture those things! You’ll see them all again soon enough, the war’s almost over!”

“Treasure those abilities lad, you can be proud of them! There’s no satisfaction in this business.”

Finally came the fatal order from the general, standing with his troops in the reserve trenches: “Fire!”

“Are you sure this is the best course of action, sir?” asked the lieutenant colonel in command of the rifle battalion. “They are running – do we really wish to reopen the battle?”

“Old boy,” the general replied, “if we don’t shoot them now we’ll only have to do it later! Best we do it now while they’re outnumbered and outgunned, eh?”

“Yes sir.”

The general indeed gave the order to fire again, and the fire was as heavy as it had been before. Again, without artillery harassment, the Union soldiers covered the enemy in bullets; some fired by sharpshooters who excelled at firing at far away targets. In the midst of this storm of lead, many were of course killed, and others wounded, prompting the unit to lose all order as each man and woman ran in different directions in a desperate attempt to save themselves. Some simply went to ground again, although several of those who attempted this were killed. Part of the terror this all caused was that the bullets came from behind; the enemy who took your life not even being seen. But the truth, as the general saw it, was that too many of those soldiers would survive and be reformed to fight another day, and he wouldn’t have that. As the enemy ran away further, out of range for many, and the sound of artillery began to reappear, the general made a quick decision. “Cease fire!” he ordered. “All except for machine guns!”

The order was followed, and the Talerians, although still broken and leaving many dead and wounded behind, seemed relieved, even as two more of their soldiers were gunned down by machine gun.

“Don’t worry, just linger on behind,” said the sergeant. “There are many very brave soldiers here who’ll front the charge, all they need is you behind them to back them up.”

“But what if the enemy turn and fire!” the boy fretted.

“Then go to ground immediately! If anyone asks why, you tell them it was an order from me.”

Other soldiers mentally prepared themselves for the nightmare of close combat. Shooting was distant, and easy. You aim your rifle, you pull the trigger. But the bayonet required passion, hatred, strength of will and some might say near inhumanity, to pierce a fellow human’s chest and look them in their eye as you did it, so intimately, and then pull away and leave them to die. This was harder to stomach for some even than the danger of running into the open in face of the enemy’s rifles. Still the general decided it had to be done.

The sergeant had been in deep contemplation and thus took time to reply. She said, “I’ve seen enough.”

“Yes,” replied the general, “I will never understand those for whom this sight grows any easier over time. Even on a day when we triumph, one can’t avoid a stinging feeling of loss!”

“Why must we find our talents in something so terrible?” the sergeant replied.

The general enquired, “Well, have you fought for much of your life?”

“Ever since I was born.”

“And did you seek that fight?”

“No.”

Chapter Two

The engineers bivouacked by the village for the night, forming a small camp not so far from the battlefield. Most now slept, anticipating an early start to the morning’s march, but the corporal remained awake with the captain as well as the sergeant, sitting with them around an open fire near to a wood. The corporal of course brewed tea, while the captain tried to read a book and the sergeant glanced her dirtied face in a mirror by firelight.

“War is hell,” said the corporal, not entirely sure whether serious or not.

“Brew?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“How about you sergeant?” Of course she gave no reply. Instead she continued to look herself in the eyes. “Oh come on,” the corporal went on, “you must have had nothing to drink since, well, this morning! You must be dying of thirst!”

The sergeant lowered the mirror. “I’ve been distracted,” she said.

The sergeant was clearly discomforted now and preferred not to reply. She only spoke a few minutes later, when she said again, “I’ve seen enough.”

“I should think you have,” replied the captain. “I’d seen enough at least two years ago.”

“No, I mean I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to see anymore.”

“Well, good thing the war’s nearly over. You can go home after that.”

“No,” the sergeant rejected. She sank her face into her hands. “I can’t go home. This is the only thing I’m good at.” She intentionally kept her watery eyes covered. “It’s the only thing I’m good at and I hate it and I can’t do it anymore! A person who didn’t need to die is dead because of my decisions!”

“Sergeant, you can’t blame yourself for what happened earlier, if that’s what you mean. These things happen.”

The sergeant took some time to speak again, thinking over events. “What point have we come to when the death of a young person like that is just dismissed as ‘these things happen’?”

“Well this is what happens when you help your father shoot at soldiers!” The sergeant looked the captain intently in the eyes. He went on, “This is what happens, when you carry on fighting a war unnecessarily even though you know you’ve lost! One thing’s certain, she would not have mourned your death.”

“And I do not mourn hers.”

“Then what affects you?”

“My failure – as a soldier. I made a wrong decision and now a person is dead. I can’t recover from that.

The captain replied, “Sergeant, that’s life as a solider – especially one of rank. That’s what war’s like. If I make a bad decision people die. That’s how it goes. Someone has to do the job. I’ve already lost three, maybe four soldiers under my command in this war, and that’s not counting the wounded. For generals it’s a matter of thousands.” The captain was clearly troubled at this point, perhaps by the sheer lack of emotion he found himself showing, as if he’d lost something of his humanity. Nonetheless, he finished, “You need to accept the tragedy of it, at the start.”

The sergeant was slowly giving up. “And that’s why I’m not cut out for this,” she said, “I just can’t handle the reality of it.”

The captain didn’t reply this time and instead let the corporal pass him his cup of tea, made with fresh milk bought in the village. This was a welcome change from the usual rations. As he finished making his own tea and sipped it, the corporal said, “Ah, better than the powdered stuff eh?” He broke from previous conversation.

“Well, at least there aren’t onions floating in this one,” the captain evoked the memory of an unpleasant episode of recent campaign life.

“Bloody hell, yeah,” the corporal remembered, “that was a cock up, wasn’t it!”

“It was!” the captain replied. “But good thinking getting the milk.”

“Thank you, sir! I’ll make sure to remember for the next war.”

“Yes – I’ll pass that onto the other officers. Suggestion from the chaps: more fresh milk and fewer onions!”

“And double rum for the NCOs!” said the sergeant.

“Aye, that too,” agreed the corporal.

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