le 17e septembre, 1889.
I write this down and lock it away. Let the world know the truth—la vérité—after I am gone.
There was a time, not so long ago, before they erected that iron monstrosity, the Eiffel Tower—before I lost my family’s entire fortune at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean—when I would have awakened to the rapturous perfume of warm crêpes, fresh strawberries and rich cream commingled with dark, African roast coffee and a petite portion of potatoes and scallions pan-fried in garlic butter and dill. In through the double doors out over the Champs Élysées I would have been serenaded by the pleasant jingle of harness, clop of hoof and clatter of carriage as all of Paris seemed to pass beneath my balcony. Not very exciting, I agree, but certainly a more delicious start to the day than a trio of pistol shots, a garbled shout in Russian, heavy metal clanging rhythmically on the cobbles beneath my window, and frantic, clumsy, human footsteps racing up two flights of stairs, ending in a life-or-death iron pounding on the cheap fabricated door of my rented room.
With this rude awakening, gone were the crêpes, the dark roast, the dill, and the balcony overlooking the Champs Élysées. I stumbled from the lopsided cot, lit the lamp and tore open the door, fully prepared to give a sound beating to the offender, only to be met by Grigori. A tall, lanky, boy of twenty, he was soaking wet in a torn waistcoat and stinking foully of la rivière Seine. He sported a bleeding wound to his left temple and was holding a smoking pistol up to pound its butt on my portal once again.
Gone, too, was Grigori, meek bo’s’n’s mate who never looked comfortable amongst his social betters, a group I once proudly counted myself a member of. Scruffy and bearded, he tripped past me and into my squalid room. His wide-eyed, terrified gaze searched the nine-yard-square space for any threat greater than the empty bottle of cheap Bordeaux and the chamber pot much in need of emptying. There was no threat here. I, Georges DeBlois, surgeon, entrepreneur and multiple patent-holder, was not at my best.
“Bolt the door! Quick! Do you have a pistol, docteur?!” Grigori had been a rough-edged Russian peasant at the best of times so I was only slightly put off by his brusque entrance and complete lack of civil greeting. “A pistol? Do you have one? I have only one bullet remaining!”
“A pistol?” The loud crash of the destruction of the front door of the building froze us both where we stood, but Grigori recovered soonest.
“Too late!” He shoved a small, surprisingly heavy, burlap sac into my hands and grabbed my old walking stick leaning against the bed. With the pistol in one hand and the stick in the other, he backed toward the open window. “Flee with me or die my brother mariner! We are betrayed!”
“But I cannot simply—” A high-pitched hiss of steam whistled from the stairwell followed by the grinding of small mechanical gears and pistons, whining and struggling. I knew those sounds only too well. “An automaton, boy? You flee an automaton?! Impossible!” I knew only too well that this was not just any man-mocking, mechanical, sideshow puppet, but one of Lord Mordecai Hawkwood’s custom designed, steam-driven men of metal. Terror twisted my intestines and inspiration struck—I glanced in the sac. I wanted so badly to be wrong but fear I was not. The sac contained the head of another such mechanical man. “Mon dieu! You stupid boy!! What have you done?!”
Slower on foot than a man of flesh and bone, the contraption ascending toward us possessed the strength of five men and through wireless signals could communicate with others of its ilk. If a living, breathing man were at the other end of the transmission doing the thinking and decision-making then it would be an unstoppable force.
I clutched the burlapped mechanical skull and followed the terrified Grigori over the sill and onto the fire escape. Having fallen so far from grace I no longer had a carriage at my disposal nor the funds with which to hire one so this would be a footrace. As I backed myself out into the cool, damp air, the papier-thin barricade masquerading as a door erupted inward. Shards of cheap board and veneer flew every which way as one of Hawkwood’s humanistic contraptions crashed through. I saw my money belt on the night stand at the same moment the metal menace sighted me. That belt contained all I had left in the world and so I hesitated. That moment of indecision was all that the automaton needed. Despite the poor light I saw the dart leave the end of the index finger of its right hand a moment before I felt its sting. I slumped forward over the sill, wondering with my last conscious thought how it had come to pass that the dart was used against myself rather than a denizen of the deep.
When consciousness tracked me down I was back in my own bed, which is to say that I lay between fine Egyptian cotton sheets under a goose-down duvet a hundred yards beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Africa. I was once again in Hawkwood’s Haven, which meant that I was dreaming with great lucidity or that the explosion of the volcanic hydrothermal vent and the resultant collapse of the supporting rock face didn’t do nearly the degrees of damage to the Haven as I had assumed when I was retreating back to the surface in the self-contained escape pod six months before.
As curiously divine as the flea-free bedding was, it was the scent of strawberries, cream and dark roast which brought me to full, though confused, wakefulness. I sat bolt upright and paid the price with a rush of nausea my own patients regularly complained of on the other side of a heavy dose of sodium bromide. I leaned over the edge of the bed and vomited what little my stomach contained. It was only then, in that less-than-flattering position, that I took notice of the lack of a rug of any sort and, despite the domed ceiling and rounded walls, was now quite certain that I was not in my former suite at all but a former storage closet.
With my stomach emptied of its pitiful contents I laid my throbbing head back on the stately pillow and immediately succumbed to sleep, the breakfast forgotten.
When at last I awoke with a steady head, the food, the vomi and the throbbing were gone. In their places were a jug of water, a crystal water goblet, a clear head, and a handwritten note in a choppy, unsure version of Hawkwood’s own hand. My own hand was now much steadier as I retrieved the note and read it aloud, to no one in particular.
“Georges—my friend—please excuse the rough handling which brought you back here to the Haven. I have answers to all of your questions but one I will answer here and now. You are here because I am alive. Please come to the infirmary as soon as you are able. Your fellow submariner and friend, Hawkwood.” And so I drank a goodly amount of water, splashed a dab more on my face to bring a bit of wakefulness and left the closet behind. Once in the corridor I was met by one of the cursed automatons. Yes, cursed. Though I once believed them mechanical marvels, since being darted, drugged and abducted, I was less enthused of Hawkwood’s brilliance.
But I had returned to the Haven and there were questions I needed answered so I set forth for the infirmary as requested, with the metal menace two steps behind me. There was no sign of Grigori about so I suspect that his boyish reflexes had aided his escape where mine had failed.
It took a moment to get myself reoriented, especially since the floor canted somewhat to the left. An arrow accompanied by a red cross painted on the wall told me exactly where I was in the complex and with one hand on the downhill wall for support I stumbled on. I may have soured on the presence of the automatons, but as I made my way through the complex I was still quite proud of our little project. Between Hawkwood’s structural engineering genius and my respirator design modified to scrub and revitalize our air, we had done the impossible and established a ten-edifice complex on the ocean floor! We had powered it off the hydrothermal vents and, judging by the flickering electric light illuminating our way and the clean crispness of the cool air, the generators worked still. More and more I marvelled at how much had survived the sub-marine landslide.
We came to a junction and I turned left, following the arrow and the red cross, but the way was blocked by a wall of collapsed rock. Closer inspection showed fresh repairs and a petite puddle of seawater at the base of the rubble-cum-wall so I turned and followed the corridor the long way around. My silent companion—Delta by the insignia on his scratched and dented chest plate—clanked and whirred along behind me.
Two turns later I was reminded why I fell in love with Hawkwood’s proposal in that salon in Marseille three years before. The corridor lighting was greatly reduced, but that was by design, so that the view through the massive bubbled window was as clear as could be. I stopped, as I had every other time I passed this look-out, this sub-oceanic observatory.
The hydrothermic vents powering our little habitat provided heat and chemistry unavailable elsewhere and despite the rift in the vent which had caused the structural collapse behind us, life continued in abundance there, on the other side of the glass. A lethargic, white zoarcid fish snapped at an orange tube worm but missed, and the yard-long worm retracted at lightning speed back into its hard, protective chitin tube. I saw a modest tentacle reach out from behind a mass of tubes and our petite, resident octopus plucked a white Galatheid crab from his own meal on the mussel bed. Life went on here and not one of them cared that I watched in wonder.
Delta waited patiently whilst I let myself be lulled by the gentle waving to-and-fro of the two-foot-long sea worms in the current. I regarded my escort, wondering.
“Do you see what I see, metal man?” I placed my palm affectionately on the glass, still surprised at the warmth this far below the surface. “Do you understand the marvel that we created here or do you simply follow your wireless commands and complete your tasks? Does the tableau magnifique before us stir you in any way? Does it make your clockworks speed up at all, or even slow, as it matches the marine rhythm?” It turned its head toward me but remained silent.
“You and your three fellows were the brawn to our brain and did the heavy, tedious work we were incapable of at this depth, but did you understand then or even now what was being constructed? What a marvel this was—is?” It blinked twice at me, but whether it was programming or a sign of understanding I know not. I returned to watching our maritime neighbours, observing features and behaviours no man had seen before, certainly no man of science.
After a moment Delta did acknowledge my presence by gently taking my elbow in its steel grip and turning me firmly back on track. We were expected in the Infirmary and I suspect he just received a command to see that we arrived post haste. With a last look out at the magnificent sea bed within arm’s reach, I shook free of the hand and marched on.
Three more piles of rubble in collapsed and blocked passages told me that the sea cliff’s collapse had indeed destroyed much of our mariners’ residence, including the dormitories carved out of the cliff itself. We continued on, once or twice taking a longer route to avoid what I guessed were impassable areas. I could see that Hawkwood’s three remaining automatons had been busy, with pathways cleared through rubble and in some cases the rubble cleaned up entirely and probably taken elsewhere to shore up a failing dam to the sea water yearning to burst through.
A quiescent bilge pump sat next to one such dam and I realized then how truly precarious the situation was. When the domed buildings were intact and firmly seated on the sea floor, the habitat was safe and secure, but now, with the breaches so evident and the automatons struggling to keep the sea at bay, we were in danger and the novelty of it all left me cold and un peu claustrophobic. Even the biologist in me wanted no more of it. Exploration by bathysphere would be more than sufficient.
I hurried my step and with little further guidance from Delta, soon found myself sitting at the bedside of the man I had, until recently, presumed dead.
“Do I terrify you, Georges?”
“I am a man of medicine—there is nothing of the human condition which terrifies me.” I had seen leprosy, pox, syphilis, but nothing like this. Rien. Nothing.
“Yes, you’ve seen much, ol’ chap, but I would wager that this is new.”
I looked at a mechanical eye, a skull more metal plate and bolt than bone. The left arm above the sheet was mechanical contrivance from the elbow down to a steel-cable and lubricated-piston hand whilst beneath the sheet the right was machine from the shoulder down. The angry violet redness of an infection radiated from the shoulder socket across his once strong pectoral toward his heart. I suspected he had little time remaining.
“Nouveau? Bien sûr. Certainly.”
“Also both inner ears, one lung and both legs below the knee.”
“How . . . ?”
“They found me after the cave-in, trapped in an air pocket inside the Refectory.” He took a long, rasping breath and coughed sputum into that mechanized hand. Very human bloody spittle flecked his full Victorian whiskers and I saw sadness in his still human eye.
“The Refectory. We were three men and four automatons—what did we need with a full-sized refectory. A simple dining room would have sufficed.”
“Maybe in the beginning, but our plans were to expand.” I reassured him. “To bring selected men and women here to live and work. Your mining operation and my marine-farm.”
“Were we out of our minds? Did we throw good money after bad and dream beyond reality?”
I rested my hand on his good shoulder and squeezed gently. “Greatness is only achieved when honest men take risks, mon ami.” But silently, to myself, I now agree that we had over-reached here.
“Were we honest, Georges? To ourselves? To each other?” He coughed and I went to a small cabinet behind what had once been my desk. There I found a small satchel of personal “elixirs of medicinal nature,” as my grandmama was wont to call such things.
“Honest? I would suppose that we were as honest as business partners can be, although our motives may have differed somewhat when we built our misguided sub-maritime paradise.” I administered to him a good-sized dose of my narcotic blend and Mordecai, Lord Hawkwood, smiled lopsidedly.
“We did do it, though, did we not? We carved a settlement beneath the sea and powered it all from the adjacent steam vents . . .”
“Oui, mon ami, we did indeed. In one year we constructed what no man had ever dared and for six months we lived in it, aided by your ‘marvellous’ creations. We had big dreams, Mordecai.”
“Yet, have I wasted the talents of a brilliant surgeon? Kept him from the greatness he deserves?” More coughing, though not as heavily as before.
“Save both your strength and your kind words of praise. I am a simple country chirurgien who has allowed this failed venture to keep me down in a morass of self-pity. I have been living as one lost in les catacombes beneath Paris where we first tested your theories; but seeing you here, not willing to fold your hand and lay your cards down has renewed my vigour for life.”
“Excellent, excellent.”
“May I ask how you found me? Out of shame, I have not been living under my own name for some months now.”
From deep within, Hawkwood seemed to find joy at his inventiveness and allowed it to bubble up into a smile worthy of the dreamer who had sold me on his great scheme in the first place. “Grigori. Between his mystical visions he found time and means to launch a small salvage operation.”
“Grigori?” I was doubtful.
“Our young Russian returned to our Moroccan warehouse in Agadir and cobbled together enough equipment to make his way back down. That impetuous boy learned more from both of us than we could have imagined.” He coughed, shuddered and his eye drifted in the orbit for a moment, appearing untethered. He regained control and once more focussed on my face, though with some difficulty.
“He found me here, just after the surgery. I was in much better condition than what you are witnessing now and so, once we were both satisfied that neither was here to kill the other, we chatted at some length. He had believed he was the only survivor of the Haven, since he was topside checking the buoys when the vent ruptured.
We talked some more and eventually I sent him with poor Gamma’s skull to find you, knowing that you would better believe his story of my survival with the head as proof. I sent him merely to extend an invitation to return, unfortunately my condition worsened after he departed and with no way to get a message to him to change the degree of urgency, I was left with no choice but to send Alpha out into the world to fetch you.”
“But how?”
“He followed the homing signal still active in Gamma’s cerebrum. I should have known that Grigori would react the way he did when Alpha caught up to him—he never really trusted the mechanicals. Of course, when Grigori shot at him, Alpha reacted as he was trained and it all tumbled downhill from there, starting with gunfire in the streets of Paris and ending in your subsequent drugged abduction.”
“I would have come willingly. I never had a chance to get your message from Grigori, nor to ponder the contents of the sac for long.”
“I know, I know. My sincerest apologies, ol’ chap. The single-mindedness of task completion in the automatons is one of the issues I wish to address on the cognitive level.”
I looked again at the infected shoulder and his grey pallor, listened to his belaboured breathing, and doubted he had time enough to address anything, though I kept that thought very much to myself as well.
“Before he departed to find you, Grigori squared up and told me that, thinking us all dead, he had returned for the gold. Once I knew that I gave him a handful of doblones as partial advance payment for the delivery of the message. Since he did not return with you and Alpha I must assume he is still running and will eventually make his way back home to Russia where he will marry Praskovia and try to forget the sea and the gold owed to him.”
“Gold?” I knew of no gold here.
“The doblones we recovered that very morning. I was on my way to show you the amazing samples when all bloody hell broke loose. Although the cliff collapsed on this wing, the domed structure which allows Haven to resist the pressure of the sea saved her from the rock above.”
I was shocked. “Mordecai, when the silt settled and my sealed-off laboratory was all that remained, I despaired. Like Grigori, I thought myself the only survivor. I waited three days but when my air-revitalizer failed I had no choice but to gather my journal and a bottle of port and trigger the emergency surfacer. My heart broke, sir, when I rose up from and above the ruin of our dreams and—less importantly—our fortunes. Gold, you say?”
“Doblones. Eighteenth Century Spanish coins. We managed to save one chest before the cave-in buried the lion’s share. Your half is in that small box behind you, against the wall.”
I turned and spotted the boîte immediately. Making a poor attempt to appear less eager than I felt, I opened it and my heart nearly stopped. It was no Blackbeard’s treasure, but it was gold and it was easily twice what I had invested in Hawkwood’s Haven. I looked back over my shoulder to my dying partner. “You are certain of this?”
“It is the least I owe you for your faith in this madman’s dream. I have but one last favour to ask of you, as a doctor. The doblones are yours whether you accept or refuse so feel no obligation from that quarter.”
“A medicant to aid your final release? Something to ease your pain as you move on?” He would not live long in his bastardized mélange of a shell, which was probably best. I saw less of mon ami in that face than I did a mechanical contrivance.
He laughed. “Not at all, my friend. My automatons are most capable in that field, should it become necessary. In fact, they are so capable that they have one final surgery to perform.”
“Surgery? You have an infection. Poisoned blood. No surgeries will repair that.”
“None but one, my sceptical Frenchman. Or it may not. But should it succeed . . . should it be done with any degree of success, I would have you by my side through it all to oversee the work and to revel in the greatness of my new reality.”
And so, not two hours later, Mordecai, Lord Hawkwood, had his mad, dying brain transplanted from his failing hybrid of flesh and machine into a fully mechanical host designed in part by myself a year previous, although at the drawing board I had believed it was to be a somewhat more conventional life-support system. The procedure took a bit more than eight hours and throughout it all I could only stare dumbstruck as Mordecai’s remaining three mechanicals worked with a surgical speed and precision far beyond that of any human surgeons I had ever worked with or even heard mention of.
I will admit that more than once during the long night I nearly ripped the human brain from the metal pan and dashed it to the floor to keep this horror from continuing, but I was rooted in place, simultaneously fascinated and repulsed. I was both a God-fearing man and a scientist, an innovator. Their achievement was sheer brilliance, but also an abomination. Oui, they transplanted his brain, his own thinking, reasoning machine, but what of his soul? What of his essence?
My hands quivered and shook even after I stuffed them down into my pockets but when I saw that Epsilon—the mechanical taking the lead—was referring to my own notes on Medical Field Improvisation, Amputation, and Surgical Procedure, I wept silently at the inhumanity of it all. I had not even known they could read!
What had we created down here in Poseidon’s domain?! At least young Mary Shelley’s fictional monster was cobbled together from human parts. This machine—this clockwork caricature—being given life before my eyes was both so much more and so much less than a man.
But, alas, at heart I was a cowardly doctor. Other than increasing the dosage of the bromide cocktail being used as a sedative and anti-convulsant, I kept out of their way and let them work.
Twenty hours after Mordecai’s yellowed, bloodshot human eye closed for the last time, two new, brass-and-glass optical receptors spun open and the “reinvented” man performed a miracle—he spoke. He spoke in a voice resonating of light machine oil and a miniature metal orchestra, yet he spoke, and I nearly fell off the cot where I had been grasping at fitful sleep. His words at first were soft and quite raspy, yet as he learned the ways of his new apparatus there grew strength and purpose.
“This . . . is . . . a . . . most interesting experience. I can detect my mechanical brethren in way quite similar to how I am hearing my own voice. We are . . . as a small, four-unit hive, yet I retain my individuality. . . . Ah, I see now that they are distinct individuals, though not yet as well-defined as I am.” A hive? Mon dieu!
He paused, most probably listening to a voice broadcast between himself and his new kin. His piston and cable fingers twitched and he cocked his clockwork head like a dog attempting to hear better.
“The surfacer is ready and the hydro-boat awaits topside.” It was Mordecai’s voice, but at the same time it wasn’t and it jarred my nerves quite harshly. I realized at that moment that as dearly as I wanted to stay and participate in this incredible breakthrough in medical and engineering science, I found I no longer had either taste or tolerance for life on the ocean floor. The offer to return me topside was perfection.
“How will you fare, mon ami?”
“I will fare well and not want for activity, ol’ chap. We have a great deal of work to complete here before it is a sustainable environ once again.” He gestured sloppily with his new arms and I believe that a hinge lifted on his speaking aperture, affecting a smile. “At least now I will have the opportunity. Some day, when your mind is still sharp but your body begins to fail, I hope then you will consider joining me on this adventure, my friend. As marvellous as this new body of mine is, over time it will appear crude and primitive as we modify and improve the designs.”
I shivered at the thought of trading a flesh body for mechanical self and prayed that I managed to return to the world of humanity before these creations learned to read minds and could see the dark intent forming in my heart. I am no zealot, but I do so believe that beyond this world there is a paradise waiting and I will face my earthly end here with Gallic pride and stubborn faith. At least that is my hope. I see now in Hawkwood’s actions and words that it is très possible that he will not stop until all mankind joins his new hive, his dark collective.
And so, I returned to the surface world, the world of sunlight and rain and humanity, taking with me both the Spanish gold I was given and a fresh insight into what dreams may come to. Here, outside Paris, I am well satisfied to invest in dry land and in the new industrial automation growing in London and America. I rebuild what I gambled away on Hawkwood’s Haven and mayhap someday will confess to our local Monsignor why I spent a month in that warehouse in Agadir erasing all signs of my involvement in a bizarre project somewhere off the coast.
Perhaps, too, the Monsignor will understand why I converted a goodly portion of those Spanish coins to simple francs and then quietly used the francs for a shipment of explosives in waterproof crates sent down from Stockholm.
I like to believe that some day the world will be ready for a genius the likes of Lord Mordecai Hawkwood, inventor, noble, and steam-driven mechanical dreamer. Mais il ne sera pas aujourd’hui. But it will not be today.