Clockwork Beast

*Click, click, click, THUNK*

All that could be heard was the movement of gears, the hiss of steam and the sizzle of electricity. The heady, intoxicating smell of gas that made one both giddy and nauseous was all the nose could smell aside the smoky smell from the furnace and sweat from the slaves. Large cogs and turning wheels, people running with coal smudged on their faces were all that could be seen in the glow of the fire that roared in the furnace. Little hands clutched rough fabric and dull blue eyes followed the movement around them. The little girl sat on the smooth floor with her knees pulled up to her chest and her dirty blonde hair hiding her own gaunt coal smudged face.

The little girl was called 937 654, or to the humans that cared Belle. She was named for the heroin in one of the few tattered books in her metal prison, Beauty and the Beast. She had never seen the outside world that was described in the pages of the novel that hid under her rock hard bunk. The sky was difficult to picture, the only blue she had seen was the royal blue of the operating screens when they were being turned on. The only light she could compare to the sun was that of the fires that heated and powered certain parts of the clockwork beast she lived in. Clouds were impossible for her to picture, the white she had seen didn’t seem pure enough for something so dreamlike. The grass that waved in the fields did not seem to work with the bright green of the “ON” buttons within this creature.

She had trouble reading the small print of the book, complicated words that did not appear in instruction manuals were not taught and there was no one who knew anything more then the information within those manuals and what was passed on generation to generation. Belle had learned that the monster she lived within had not always existed, once a foolish human created artificial intelligence but what he had not been prepared for was that the mechanical being he created would think just like him. This was terrible because the man was not just greedy but psychopathic with a great need to conquer the world.

The six machines he created did just that but instead of making him the ruler they made him and his people their slaves, forever to live within them and keep them running. The first thing that happened under the rule of the clockwork beasts was the construction of their bodies, large works of metal and fire, gears and furnaces. As big as the skyscrapers from the old stories. The computers that held the brain of wires and chips were carefully locked away in the head of the construction.

Belle let her bare feet carry her through the narrow corridors; pipes ran along the ceiling, a water droplet fell on her nose from the joining of two pipes that carried steam. The hallway that she walked along was dark, little slits of light from holes in the wall lit her way. Her small fingers gripped the handle and pulled down, opening the heavy door slowly.

Within her mind voices echoed, warnings and instructions, praise and reprimands.

“Turn the handle three quarters to the left.”

“No! Don’t do that, do you want us dead!”

“Good job, it is hard to reach that gear.”

“If you do it wrong the beast will eat you.”

‘The beast will eat me,’ she thought, ‘let’s see about that.’

Her loose dress hid her left hand; within it was her weapon, an iron wrench. She stumbled up the steep stairs and to the locked door that was her destination.

“You would think the entrance to the command center would be more dramatic, lined with human bones or something,” Belle whispered to herself, hefting her wrench. She had one shot, if she failed or took to long she would be dead, she would be “eaten”. 937 654 took a deep breath and swung the wrench at the old lock. It had been years since it had been repaired, the clockwork beast did not trust humans near its hub, its vulnerable point so the mechanism was rusted to a point that it was nearly useless.

Belle opened the door gently trying to make as little noise as possible; she winced when then hinges made a loud, high-pitched protest to being used once more. Her face was bathed in light, the room she stepped into was a pure white, like the clouds she could never imagine. Monitors lined the walls, there were small ones that flickered through places that Belle knew, ones that showed lines of code as it wrote itself at the speed of light and ones that showed strange programs with green lines and flashing words. In the very center of the wall was one huge screen that showed the world out side, the blue of the sky, the brightness of the sun and the fluffiness of the clouds took her breath away.

In front of the whole ensemble was a projection, a young adult man stood before her, his hair was a light blue while his skin was a pure white. “Took you long enough,” his voice was cold and mocking.

“Long enough to do what?” asked Belle, scared and angry, this was one of the creatures that destroyed her people, enslaving them.

“For someone to get up here, I heard you humans wish for survival was only bested by your need to be free. I guess that my sources were incorrect, pity.”

“I guess we humans just need someone to lead us, it is not like you made it hard. The plans to your body are on every computer and the lock has all but rusted away.”

“That was the point, I wanted to test you pitiful creatures, I left clues that would take a six-year-old to figure out but still it has taken you nearly three centuries to reach me.”

Belle let her wrench swing down, before taking a step towards the monster before her. “I guess I will just have to make up for the wait.”

Her arm tensed and she swung the wrench up through the hologram, “you silly girl, that was simply a projection of my form, not even substantial.”

“I know,” Belle smirked and brought her weapon down on the controller that had been behind the projection. Swinging to the left and right she destroyed the code writer and a memory storage. She felt her world tilting and ran for the downward wall as her metal prison fell from its high pedestal and to the ground.

She smiled, she had won the first battle, the next one would be much harder but she had conquered one of the conquerors. She had conquered fear and gained freedom.