It helped crystallise a thought I've been having recently with both the world of Poisonroot and the Eve and Tic stories, and my wonderful wife helpfully added another facet to it: what if the continent of Ehrian is something like a Pangaea continent, ten thousand years in the future? I appreciate that it wouldn't be time for the continents to actually move, but certainly time for a mass extinction event to have forever changed the face of the planet and for technology to have changed, evolved, moved on from its current wasteful ways. And then Sue suggested that I could use this as a way of including real scientific fact, or inventions, from now as seen through the eyes of Eve and Tic.
So I got straight to it and wrote this. I'd love to submit it to the guys at Stuff You Should Know; they seem like awesome people and it'd be just amazing to get a mention.
Eve and the 10,000 Year Clock
The ticking echoed through the shaft, bouncing off the
smooth rock. It was a massive noise, metal and stone clicking together with
each shuddering second, and the entire effect was unsettling.
“I don’t like it,” Tic murmured. He was floating as close to
Eve’s ear as he could, the tiny purring of his flight barely audible over the
clock’s slow heartbeat.
Eve put her hand out flat at about shoulder height and Tic
quickly settled on it. Still looking carefully at the mural in front of her,
she transferred him to the top of her backpack, leant against the wall.
“This is some sort of blueprint,” Eve said. “Look, here;
some of the things we would recognise from clockwork are right here.” She
started to point at parts of the diagram. “There are chimes, a winding mechanism,
weights for powering it… but if I’m reading this right, it’s massive.”
“It sounds massive,” Tic said. “But why is it here?”
The town had been a complete waste of time; they had sent a
hawk demanding someone form the college come and fix their amberic lighting,
claiming that someone had sabotaged it. Eve had been duly dispatched, only to
discover that one of the townsfolk had been using part of the wire to dry
clothes.
They had already been on the way back home when Tic had
spotted the shining object at the top of the mountain.
“It’s definitely something artificial, and big,” he said.
“Well, it could be anything,” Eve replied. “Perhaps one of
the townsfolk climbed up there and camped. Left a pan or something.”
“No… there’s something weird about it. It’s…” Tic’s
childlike voice died away.
Eve turned to look at the tiny Cog floating in the air.
“What?”
“Can you hear that?”
Frowning, Eve shook her head. “There’s nothing unusual, Tic.
What can you hear?”
“Ticking.”
They had camped at the base of the mountain, the
almost-sheer cliff rising in front of them. Eve’s small tent, already pitched,
was sheltered by an overhanging lip of rock; between Tic, stationary on a rock,
and Eve sat cross-legged, the fire crackled merrily. Soup bubbled away in her
small pan.
“Why can’t you just fly up there? Check it out. It could be
nothing.”
Tic didn’t respond immediately, and Eve dug in her bag for
her large tin mug. She poured the soup into it and began to eat, dipping into
it pieces of a small hard loaf that the townsfolk had given to her. When Tic
did reply, his voice, usually so chirpy, sounded almost hollow.
“Eve, when we go to a temple or a tomb, there are things
from your past there. How does it feel?”
She paused. “It feels… like I should be respectful. Like the
place is, I don’t know, holy?” She shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve ever had much
to do with religion other than as an observer.” The fire danced and spat
mesmerizingly as she stared into it. “Like there’s something from my past. My
ancestors.”
“Whatever’s up there, Eve, the ticking… that’s how it feels.
For me.” Tic rocked slightly from side to side, almost a shrug of his own.
“There’s no other way to describe it.”
So, the following day, they had climbed.
They made record time, Tic flying ahead to pick out hand-
and footholds before Eve needed them. It was something they had done before,
plenty of times, and the system was well practiced.
Eve paused to look around, stood on a small ledge. Her
muscles had long since stopped screaming at her and she was now enjoying the
dull ache that reminded her she was alive. The sky was darkening as the sun
began to set, but the view was stunning. A broad stone plateau stretched out
below her and, many miles away, the nearest town looked like a child’s playset.
A few stubby trees were struggling to grow out of crevasses in the rock,
spindly branches reaching for the sun. Most were dead, firewood just waiting to
be harvested.
“Eve, you’d better get up here,” Tic called down. Something
in his voice made her stomach twist, and she scaled the last few metres,
clambering onto a wider platform. She estimated they were about halfway up.
Tic was hovering, his ruby sensors turned towards where the
rock face continued upwards; the platform was only about four metres deep.
“There. The door,” Tic said.
“Where? There’s no-“ Eve began, and then she saw it.
Cleverly concealed behind a layer of rock dust and carved to look like part of
the stone, there was a door. Once her mind had realised it was there, it was
easy to see. As she moved closer, she could see there was even a wheel for
opening it, set into it, again cleverly hidden.
“What have we here,” she murmured. “Tic, can you clear some
of this dust?”
A small hatch on the front of Tic’s curved nose opened up as
he flew over to the door. With a sort of hooting, blowing noise, air began to
come out of him, sweeping the dust away. As he moved back and forth, more of
the door was revealed; the carving was clever indeed, but only when disguised.
Revealed, the door was made entirely of jade, misty green and rimmed in metal.
“This much jade… this door must have cost a fortune,” Eve
said. She whistled. “This is something different, definitely.”
Tic turned the flow of air off and closed the hatch. “I can
sense another door the other side,” Tic said. “We should check it out.”
The wheel was a
little stiff as Eve turned it, but the door swung open smoothly. Behind it was
the small chamber, large enough for three or four people comfortably, and then
another door made of the same metal the first was ringed with. It had a wheel,
identical to the first door.
“There’s no power,” Eve said. “No amberic lights. This isn’t
a recent thing.” She removed her backpack and unclipped the lantern hanging
from the side. As she turned the base of it, the globule of amber inside
flickered into a yellowish light, weak in the sunlight.
“Let’s go,” she said, stepping into the chamber. Putting the
lantern down, she grasped the wheel of the second door firmly and turned. It
moved a tiny fraction, then stopped. She yanked at it, then stepped back and
wiped her hands on her shirt.
“I’m just slipped around it; it’s hard to get a grip,” she
said. “Perhaps it’s stuck.”
“Maybe not,” Tic said. “Try closing the first door before
you open the second one.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Eve said. “If I wanted to
protect something against, oh, dust, wild animals, that sort of thing, one door
wouldn’t be enough. You’d want to avoid a situation where both doors could be
open at the same time.” She reached for the handle on the inside of the jade door
and swung it closed. It clicked back into place perfectly. The amber lantern’s
light seemed to grow as her eyes adjusted to it. She grasped the wheel again,
and this time it turned without any trouble. The door swung open to reveal a
tunnel, stretching off into blackness. Unmuffled by the door, Eve heard
ticking. It was as if the largest clock she had ever seen, the tower clock back
at the college, was in the very next room.
“It’s about four hundred metres long,” Tic said, the rubies
on his dome glowing slightly in the darkness. “Then there’s a vertical shaft.”
“You’re not normally able to sense that far away,” Eve said,
starting down the corridor.
“I know,” the Cog said. “It’s something about this place.
Like it’s made for me.”
The ticking grew louder, booming around them, shaking Eve to
her bones. She could feel the bass note of each resonant measure echo in her
chest.
Sure enough, after a few hundred paces they reached a pale
circle of light on the floor. Eve looked up; a set of spiral stairs stretched
up towards a dot of light, hundreds of metres up; objects interfered with the
light in the centre of the shaft, strange things moving together in rhythmic
patterns. Eve raised the lantern high; there, on the wall in front of her, was
a mural.
They began the climb together, taking in each new wonder as
they did so. Huge weights, each one the size of a loaded cart and disk-shaped,
were dangling at the bottom of cables. A few turns up, perhaps a hundred steps,
and they came to a platform made of a metal grid. A tall shaft grew from the
middle of the platform and, around it, three handles protruded.
“This is a capstan,” Tic said, going over to hover above it.
“Like you get on a ship; it’s a large winding device.”
“Three people could wind it,” Eve said. “But it can’t be
wound now. I mean, the weights are right at the bottom. How is it still
working?”
“Maybe there’s a hidden power source?”
Eve put her backpack down again and moved to the capstan. The
handles were about at shoulder height, moulded to be broad at the middle and
ends, and thinner where her hands fit. “Do you think I could wind it myself?”
Tic bobbed a shrug, and Eve braced herself against one of
the winding handles. The metal under her hands was smooth, and she wondered how
many other hands had been placed on this handle. She took a breath and threw
her weight behind it. To her surprise, the capstan began to move, turning, and
she almost fell. It was immensely heavy to do on her own, but with every
clicking rotation she felt a sense of satisfaction. Four turns, five, and she
relaxed, stepping back. Sweat was dripping from her forehead. Tic flew down the
central shaft, and Eve picked her backpack up again. It seemed lighter to her
after the immense effort of the capstan.
Tic was back in half a minute. “The weights have been
raised, maybe a quarter of the way. You’ve wound it.”
Eve nodded. “Let’s go on; this is just amazing. But we don’t
know what it’s for, and I don’t want to do too much.” She paused, looking at
the capstan. “This has been here for… centuries, at least. Maybe longer. But
look around. There’s not much dust. It’s still working. There aren’t even
cobwebs, and there always seems to be cobwebs.” She shook her head. “It’s just
amazing. Someone built this at the peak of their mechanical knowledge.”
“Like a temple. Or a shrine,” Tic said.
They moved on up the spiral staircase. It wrapped around the
central core, allowing the pair to see large cogs and gears, some as wide as
the chamber itself, slowly grinding together. Some horizontal, some vertical,
the gears moved at various speeds and, near the top, they found one that seemed
to barely be moving at all.
“This gear might take a hundred years to do one revolution,”
Tic said excitedly. “If this is a clock, it’s not for measuring seconds.” He
whistled, a tinny metallic sound. “And these gears, they’re made of ceramic.
Not metal.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” Eve said. “We still find
ceramic things that are thousands of years old. It’s long-lasting.”
Further up, they came to a tall column of gears. Some were
moving in time with the ticking that echoed up and down the shaft; Eve watched
as one gear turned so that a tiny pin could click into place, setting off a
reaction further up that allowed another gear to whirr into place.
“This is fantastically complicated,” Eve said.
“I recognise it.” Tic replied. “If you opened me up, there
would be a much smaller version of this, on a much more complicated level.”
“This is… Cog technology?” Eve looked around nervously, as
if expecting a legion of the vicious Cog soldiers of legend to burst out of the
walls. “Are we in danger?”
“No. This is to my kind what a baby is to an adult. It’s not
formed, not refined.”
It was Eve’s turn to let out a low whistle of amazement.
“Sure is one big baby.”
They continued the climb, the lantern light reflecting off
metallic movements in the core. Ten long metal tubes, hanging in a ring around
the core, shone dully in the light.
“Chimes,” Tic said, and Eve nodded.
Finally, the stairs passed into a larger spherical chamber.
In the centre, a large circular arrangement stood, a black orb surrounded by
two rings. A small brass arm made a window through which two of the numbers
lined up. The whole thing was huge; ten people could stand in a circle around
it.
Eve peered at the numbers engraved onto the ring,
highlighted by the brass. “04011. What does it mean?”
From the other side, Tic said “There’s a handle over here. A
winding mechanism. That might tell us more.”
Eve moved around the base of the device, looking closely at
the black orb in its centre. Curved metal claws seemed to hold it in place. “I
think there’s supposed to be something showing here. It’s black; stars, maybe?”
“If this is a clock designed for measuring centuries,
possibly. The stars would move a great deal in that time,” Tic said.
“Then the numbers show the years it’s been in place,” she
reasoned. “Look here. The lowest possible number it could be is… 01999. It’s
over two thousand years old.”
“I think it’s older than that, Eve,” Tic said. He floated up
and around the dial. “There’s a whole mess of cogs back here, but if I’m seeing
this right, it’s designed to show the date of the last time anyone checked it.
Or maybe wound it.” He came back around and hovered near her shoulder. “04011
is the last time anyone was here.”
Eve bit her lip. “Do I wind it?”
There was a long pause, long enough that she was about to
ask again when Tic suddenly said “Do it.”
She grasped the small wheel fixed to the side of it and
began to turn. As she did so, every part of the device began to move.
With a whirring sound, the rings turned, the inner ring at a
slower pace than the outer one; the black orb turned soundlessly on its axis,
and the metal claws smoothly moved up and down, almost like waves on the ocean.
A pair of rings even closer to the centre began to move as well; one had a
small silver sphere on it, standing proud, and the other had an engraved circle
with lines coming from it.
“The moon and sun,” Eve said. “It’s like… anyone who found
this would be able to tell the time one way or another.” As the rings continued
spinning, she stepped back. “Let’s assume that whoever made this wanted it to
survive for a long time. They might not know what technology we would have now.
Do we still tell the time like they do? Is the moon still there? Does the sun
rise and set at the same times? One of these will probably be right.” She shook
her head. “It’s just a staggering engineering achievement. I’m not sure
anything I ever make, or anything the college makes, will last as long as this
clock is designed to.”
“This is as close to a god as I will ever come,” Tic said
quietly, and Eve heard a note of awe enter his mechanical voice that she had
not thought was possible.
The clock face slowed, then stopped. The sun dial had
stopped near the top; the moon was about three quarters of the way round, and
the year dials had turned until a new combination of numbers were in the small
brass window. Aware that her hands were trembling slightly, excitement
fluttering in her breast, Eve stepped close to see what they said.
“11998,” Eve breathed. “Ten thousand years.”
The dials clicked forward once more, coming to rest on
19999. Below them, many storeys down, the ten chimes began to ring, like a
ghostly echo of a time long gone. Eve and Tic listened as the mournful notes
filled the chamber like swansong.
Then it was over, and silence rushed into fill the space.
The ticking had stopped.
The stairs continued on up behind the clock face, and the
woman and the Cog passed up out of the main chamber together. They climbed towards
the light above to find that it was the sun being reflected down by a large
circular pane of what appeared to be a massive sapphire prism. A small service
door, double-sealed like the main door had been, let them out onto the top of
the mountain and, for what seemed like a long time, they sat and soaked in the sunset.
“What do we do?” Eve said finally.
“Whoever made the clock, they’re long gone. No-one has been
here for millennia,” Tic said. His voice sounded different, Eve thought.
Mature. Settled. Calm.
“What if we’re the people who made it? But ten thousand
years on… so much could change,” she said. The last rays of orange light caught
the plateau, made the sapphire twinkle. “How much has been forgotten? What were
people doing that long ago? And how would they feel if they knew this was the
only artefact left?” She got up and began to pace. “I would have so many
questions for them. What happened? How far were they technologically? What was
everyday life like?”
Tic, turning to watch as Eve wandered back and forth,
produced a tinny sigh. “I suppose we’ll find out eventually. Once a team from
the College descends on this place, they’ll find what they need.”
At the note in his voice, Eve stopped and faced Tic. “Is
that what you want? This place is as much a temple or a tomb for you as
anywhere we’ve ever been.” Eve went back over to him and sat cross-legged. “If…
if you don’t want us to, we’ll not report this.”
For a long minute, the only sounds were tiny whirs from
inside Tic, and the dusty stirring of a gentle breeze.
“…we should tell them,” he said eventually. “There might be
things in there that save lives, or make life easier. There were rooms we
didn’t explore.” He floated up to Eve’s eye-level, and his voice dropped to a
whisper. “But thank you. It means a lot that you asked.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” she said, and together they
watched as the sun dipped below the horizon, causing long shadows to spring
from trees and houses alike, just as it had for millennia before that.
No comments:
Post a Comment