Serpents and Stairways

Chapter VIII - Part 2

The small automaton bowed and scraped with his leg, and touched the microphone, establishing an unseen tether between them. The device crackled more, then suddenly a synthetic voice poured straight from it as if pre-recorded—and Iolaus stood by without moving, neither in its way nor with it. An odd sensation—when people talk, something is always in motion: throat, chest, eyes. Even the blind... Although, he'd never seen anyone who was truly blind.

"I'm going to read you a poem by a friend of mine," said the voice that must've, it seemed, belonged to Iolaus, "He is shy. Thinks the poem is bad. Says—it has a slant rhyme. Says—it ruins everything. I think the poem—is wonderful. Listen."

Michel rested his chin on the folded hands and hmmed.

"Amusing. Did someone actually think that the audience would buy that?"

"Why not? I know an automaton that wrote music. Why can't another love poetry?"

"But it's a factory model."

Georg, with a surprise, discovered annoyance rustling inside him.

But Iolaus was still quiet—waiting for the shivering stir of whispers to hush. And only once silence hatched through the shell of shock, he started—strangely lonely with that enormous empty sail of grey screen behind him.

"The gryphon, gold, in chains gold,

His future known, his fate sold:.."

"Automatons of his type lack higher-order cognition. They just don't need it." Michel said, lowering his voice.

"Perhaps Tamara did something to him? That girl who was at my door, do you remember her? Really smart."

"I do," Michel squinted, "Did you notice that it's not just us? Everybody is talking? The regulars are just as surprised."

"You and I are regulars ourselves now, aren't we?" Georg thought, but said nothing—unexpectedly, the poem captivated him, made him listen, and an hour later, on their way from the theatre he felt that in spite of distortions it was stuck in his brain like toffee in gears.

The doors closed softly behind them. The electric signboard had been long out, the posters on the street bore nighttime abandonment, the windows of the theatre look dark: its witchlight bulbs enchanted to only shine within specified bounds. Inside—was bright; outside you saw nothing even if the windows were wide open. As most wares produced by the aetherborn for themselves, these lights were made by a single manufacturer, perhaps somewhere in Rzeczpospolita. Although, could Silen have its own enchantment factory? At some point a lot of smaller manufacturers had moved here—Michel had mentioned as much on their first visit. Right. He knows these things better.

Georg took a deep breath and didn't smile, sensing the sweet elastic tension in the swollen air. Pollinated change ripened. He had recovered enough. Something was about to happen in this new world of withered lilacs and blooming grasses.

"A walk?" He asked.

"I'm glad you offered. Are you upset?"

"Why would I be?"

Under Michel's heavy gaze, he put his hands in pockets and strolled down the street, towards the centre where spotlight beams split skyscraper trunks into unequal cake slices.

"To find the restoring force in this air, if the stiffness of its spring is 4 N/m, and its displacement is my entire life," he thought, aligning his course with a row of highrisers, "refer to Hooke's law. Suppose F = k * ∆l, where k is the stiffness coefficient, then F = 4 * years *..."

Georg looked up. There was something chilling in the way gigantomania and emptiness cohabitated Silen.

"The answer: the force in question is four times greater than I am. What was that line again, in Iolaus's poem?—"