The great network of rail lines which characterize the world of The Clockwork Caterpillar, are as dangerous as they are liberating. The competitiveness of the rail magnates knew no bounds and in their haste to create the most comprehensive rail system, they ended up creating a tangled web near indecipherable to common folk. Thus steps in the navigators, a ragtag collection of individuals who must chart byzantine timetables and rail maps to try and steer their vessels smoothly from station to station without colliding with their fellows. It’s a surprisingly stressful job made all the more difficult by individuals who run the lines off the wire. Crews like Felicity often arrive unannounced and must weave their transport through scheduled runs of more legitimate captains. There are plenty of examples out in the wastes of those ships that judged their passage poorly.

Thankfully, many magnates built lines literally beside their competitors and hopeful communities connected the competing rails to entice more visitors to their far flung settlements. The Thyrian throne even encouraged such illegal activity since no greater claim of territory is made than that of the bodies of loyal citizens. Course, when you’re so far from the imperial influence of your homeland, it’s really hard to maintain the loyalty of these people. There is a reason that piracy has thrived on the fringes. These frontier towns don’t look too closely at a ship’s history so long as they’re civil within their walls.  They will dutifully keep the lines working against sabotage, however, whether that be at native or competitive hand.

Thus navigators in The Clockwork Caterpillar are entrusted with the safety of the ship and the crew. A single misstep can spell disaster. S.J. takes on his responsibilities with that grave knowledge in mind. He’s a stalwart individual who knows just how precarious their runs are. While the others are able to sit in their cabins without a care, Simon-Jacob sees to his maps and schedules. He telegraphs forward posts to ensure a smooth ride. His best work goes unnoticed by the people he ferries. But the people drawn to this world of numbers and lines aren’t those that desire fame or glory. It takes all kinds to fill out the wastes of The Clockwork Caterpillar and these people who cannot find a place in proper society always find something in the outskirts.

But whether what they find is what they originally sought is an entirely different question.

S.J.

Ill met by candlelight.

The crackle of static and electricity kept the dark air alight. He raised his hairy forearm to his head, swiping at the sweat and shifting his slim frame on the rickety stool. This next part required precision and care. He had to focus. He had to concentrate.

The screwdriver flicked gently over the iron case. He could feel a surge of electricity jump from the metal plate to the raised screw. He took a slow breath, pushing the air in a constant stream through his lips. He lowered the tip into the crossed indent. With fingers wrapped in the thickest rubber, he began to turn.

The gloves squeaked as he unscrewed. Ever so slowly he worked, until his prize drew loose and he snatched it as carefully as he could with rubber tipped tweezers.

One down: four more to go.

He looked at the wrinkled paper beside him, carefully dropping the screw head first into a small sketched circle. The entire schematic of the device stretched beneath the jumping shadows of the furious candle. All across its surface was spread a dizzying array of disassembled metal pieces. If there was one sin Simon-Jacob Reardon held to a fault, it was his tireless attention to detail. It all had to be right. The consequences, otherwise, would be dire.

The static’s snarl was most unwholesome. But in that chaos rumbled something deeper. In slight pauses and moments of silence, Simon-Jacob could almost hear something grander. He knew, deep in the depths of his breast, something profound existed.

And so he toiled.

He worked and he pried. Metal and pieces began to pile beside him in an intoxicating complex structure. The thrum of the buried battery was the thrum of majesty. Somewhere within this metal container rested that acidic heart. It was a remarkable container where true magick occurred through the simple process of introducing two seemingly unimportant substances to each other. Within the glass jar sloshed the sulphuric liquid, caressing two lead plates with only a simple rubber strip separating them. But by connecting the two plates with a lead dioxide wire, man was capable of producing that which had once been the sole purview of the heavens.

And that electrifying product was used as both fuel and defence for this device.

But the battery wasn’t his prime target. He was after the network of wires, transistors and resistors. It was the first attempt to understand a fundamental truth about our world. It could literally reveal the inner workings of the heavens if its theories were accurate. It would provide the definitive proof of the existence of forces beyond the perception of our limited faculties.

And it was Simon-Jacob’s duty to try and understand it.

He just had to get past the designer’s clever trap.

With the last screw removed, Simon-Jacob rested his instrument and leaned back in his chair. He breathed slowly, keeping his heart and his pulse timed and rhythmic. He removed his glasses, rubbing at weary eyes. The device hissed and crackled again.

A soft knock came at the door.

“Burning the midnight oil?”

“There’s no rest for the wicked,” Simon-Jacob replied.

“How’s our little ticket coming?”

A man in a pressed suit and crisp cuffs stepped to the table. He reached for the object before Simon-Jacob gave a shout.

“Still damnably charged?”

“I’ve followed the schematic as close as possible,” Simon-Jacob said, waving his hand over the half-covered paper. “I still do not understand what I’m dealing with.”

“Well you better get on it, my boy. Ain’t no way that those stodgy mechanists are going to miss its absence much longer. We need to get this apart and marked before their conference starts.”

“I don’t know. I don’t like this, Timothy.”

“You ain’t being paid to like it,” the man responded, fetching a cigar from his pocket before patting about for a match. Failing that, he held the tip over the candle until it glowed red and curled back in soft flames.

He lifted the smoking cigar to his mouth and inhaled deeply.

“Only good thing them savages ever gave us.”

Timothy Payne was a taker. He saw only profits and the best way to line his pockets. It was why he had invested so much in the railways. He knew exactly what rapid transit could mean for this developing land and he cared not for the cost that it required. So long as that cost wasn’t his coin.

“Put faith in my word and not in earthly pleasures. Only then will you discover the bounty of my kingdom.”

Timothy eyed the wiry man.

“I was told you were one of ’em dogmatic types. Thought you were supposed to be against all this unholy iron madness.”

“I seek only to do the Lord’s will, as any true believer,” Simon-Jacob said. “And how better to serve his will than to understand it.”

Timothy exhaled a stifling cloud of smoke.

“I pay the Lord his due just like any other proper man.”

“It’s not a matter of paying tithes. The Lord has little value for our gold and blood. It’s about serving his word.”

“If that’s the case, then I don’t need to pay your wages!” Timothy laughed.

“He who is covetous of gain troubles his house; but he that as gifts shall live.”

“Precisely, boy. You bring trouble. Don’t think I don’t know your kind. Just ‘cause you covet elsewise of me don’t make you any better.”

Simon-Jacob shook his head.

“I need not riches save those of the Lord.”

“Is that so? Then walk out that door. I’ll find some other gearhead to take care of that.”

Timothy waited patiently, the cigar crackling between his fingers. Simon-Jacob turned back to the schematic, half-finished from his studies with margins choked by his thoughts on the device’s function. How many hours had he sat hunched over this table? How long had he carefully analyzed and detailed each screw and plate that he unfastened? He kept cramped in this small closet on Payne’s ship as the train sped to some destination irrelevant to Simon-Jacob’s purpose.

And he had toiled all this time with nothing but a jug of water and intermittent meals left for him at the doorstep. He knew he was close. He could tell from the device’s output that it ran on the new lead-acid battery. What else could explain the intermittent surges which were so powerful but so inefficient in powering a device? But its infrequency made its deterrent so much more effective since any dissembler would not know when the next strike of lightning would come.

“Precisely,” Timothy accused. “Some men desire wealth. And others desire knowledge. We ain’t so different in our devotions. I just don’t put on airs because I think I have some moral high ground. Judge not least you be judged.” Timothy laughed. “Yes, boy, I’ve read my Scriptures too. Some of us didn’t need no persecution complex to come to this dreary land. I profit from this land because the Lord wills it. Just like you learn his machinations to understand him. We are driven by the same righteousness even if our goals are different. Don’t think those fancy cathedrals will build themselves without people like me filling their coffers. You can’t raise roofs or feed the hungry on fancy scribblings.”

The man made his way to the door, pausing long enough to expel a curling cloud of smoke. “Make sure you get that little device figured by the time we make Guildwood. It won’t do for them academics to know we’ve been rummaging through their things.”

Timothy slammed the door behind him.

Simon-Jacob’s hands clenched. The arrogance of man knew no limit. These eastern merchants came just like the prosecuted and the undesirables, seeking refuge in the New World from the tyranny of the old. They hoped to escape the ever tightening grip of a monarchy keen to consolidate power and strip upstart nobles of their land and titles. Though they travelled just like all the others, they brought with them the entitlement and scorn that had forced them to flee.

And generations later, they were the first to run back to the beckoning arms of the monarchy looking to strengthen loyalty in colonies grumbling for liberty. How quickly abandoned were those dreams of prominence and self-governance. When men lay down their lives for freedom, it was the old prosecuted that turned to prosecuting.

Simon-Jacob slipped his gloves back on.

Talk of revolution and liberty weren’t his things. That was the domain of other men obsessed with the immediacy of their transient lives. His focus was on the machine and with the Lord. He pushed such worldly thoughts from his mind. He had a grander perspective, one that took in things far wider than borders and uniform colours. Like so many others, now was a fascinating and overwhelming time of discovery. The social upheaval was nothing compared to the greater understanding that man was developing of the Kingdom and the Wilds.

And that understanding could lead to even greater things.

Currently, the only way to send messages was either through courier or telegraph. But both required a messenger in one form or another. Either a rider or a line to carry the signal. However, there were some men who thought that this could change. There could be a way to send a message through the air itself. And it would be borne on the waves of a new force.

If, indeed, this force existed in the first place.

And here Simon-Jacob sat, carefully taking apart the first mechanism that was rumoured to have detected this electromagnetism. If the theory was accurate, this force could bear messages instantaneously across great expanses.

For Timothy Payne, the applications for this discovery were immediately evident. Communication amongst the railways would be improved tenfold. Navigators could become obsolete overnight. No longer would the rail companies be required to hire and train men and women to study the convoluted timetables and schedules of trains. Authorities could be contacted almost immediately of any banditry on the lines and the scoundrels that cruised the webway of forgotten routes could be hunted and brought to justice.

So much money could be saved both in pay and in lost merchandise.

But Simon-Jacob didn’t care about that. True, he was familiar to Payne because that was precisely his role on the man’s fleet of engines. For Simon-Jacob, his job meant nothing compared to the revelations that could be discovered through this technology.

For him, the will of the Creator was his to discover. Each new tool, each new invention brought man ever closer to the divine providence that invented them. The Lord was the grand architect of their world and their lives. And what better way to understand that Lord than to study his creations? Through rigorous observation and analysis of the workings of this world would the method and process of its master be revealed.

Just like Simon-Jacob knew he could discern the functioning of this machine by taking it apart and understanding its components, he knew he could understand the Lord once he was given all the working parts of his masterpiece. And if that meant vandalism of another mechanist’s noble property, then so be it. Theirs was a field so consumed with their own paranoia and secrecy that they would arm their own devices to keep it out of the hands of rival inventors. They would damn them all from the secrets of the Lord in their short-sighted greed and fear.

Simon-Jacob was devoted to a nobler pursuit. His was the way of enlightenment, bringing knowledge and grace to others through discovery. And he was certain, once the divine was fully understood, nothing would stop the devoted from heralding in the Lord’s kingdom on earth. They would throw open the gates and welcome all to his blessed grace. For here, there were no monstrous untamed to fear. Only ignorance and naivete barred the peoples of this world from salvation, peace and happiness.

So Simon-Jacob picked up his screwdriver and returned to work. As the room grew hotter, he brushed the sweat once more from his brow.