Book I: Part 15: C4

     Later, C4 would review what had happened over and over again, trying to put events together, to make the whole thing fit into some kind of coherent whole. But no matter what he did, he could just not figure out why what had happened had happened, why it had all gone down as it did.  He would be quite certain that what he thought had happened, what he had tried to assume, based on dispassionate logic, was completely outside the realm of the possible, the fevered result of these new-found emotions working within him.  But in the end, his suspicions would remain, haunting him, both evanescent and eternal, ghosts, demons or angels, lying just above and behind his shoulders.

     They had bridged into the open sky.  Once again, C4 was falling, but it was a controlled fall this time, the levels of towers passed by in the blink of a human's eye.  He was in a middle of a great chasm, one of the greatest he had ever yet traveled to, nearly a quarter of a mile wide.  Bridges, actual real bridges, not a Clockman's portal, were crisscrossing farther down in the depths, but up here, the buildings were separate and isolated, great monochrome monoliths.  Birds wafted past him on the wind, and he could see the nests tucked away in crevices and nooks.   

      And there, flying past him, just below and then above him, was Dadalus, spiraling and looping and shooting through the air, gliding and turning upon his great wings.  

     He knew where the Pteranarchist was now.  He had him directly in his sights.  His PLS was locked into by C4's computers.  He calculated based on current position, velocity, acceleration, angle, just where Dadalus would be, and when.  

     He bridged again.

     He came through the bridge-portal, timed just right to fall on onto Dadalus' back...and collided with C5, coming to the same place from the opposite angle. 

     They spun off to the side, tailspinning, and Dadalus flew on.

     "Oof! Sorry, mate," said C5.  He pushed off from C4 without another word, across the freefalling distance, into a waiting bridge-box of rainbow colored light. 

     For Maker's sake, C5, watch where you're focking going! messaged C4. 

     I said I was sorry, mate! returned C5.  It was an honest mistake!  Nothing to get out of sorts about, what?

     No, no, of course not, sorry.  C4 replied.  Within, he reprimanded himself.  He couldn't allow outbursts like that.

     He straightened out and disappeared straight down a bridge, appearing directly in front of Dadalus.  He figured, why not a frontal assault?

     It didn't work.  His timing, he thought, had been perfect.  (He was, after all, a Clockman.)  He should have arrived just in to collide head-on with the Pteranarchist.  Instead, Dadalus had, in the midst of the bridging, decided on an upwards trajectory.  C4 was able to just miss reaching out and touching the  villain's boot before falling below and behind him.  Up sailed Dadalus, down went C4.

Another Clockman, it looked like C2, tried the same move, but Dadalus' ascent was a curved one, which are always hard to calculate on the fly, at least in real life¹.  C2 came up short as Dadalus shot up into straight into the sky.

     Nice day, messaged C4 to C2, falling parallel and and slightly above him. 

     I knew I shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning, deadpanned C2².  Good to have you back.

     Good to be back, replied C4. 

     Where'd C5 get off to? messaged C2.

     Haven't seen him in 12.85 seconds, replied C4.  He bridged again, coming out a little further down the chasm, then again, this time coming out at a point far beyond Dadalus.  He couldn't get a jump on him from here, he would be far too far down by the time Dadalus came about, but he wanted to at least keep the Winged Anarchist in his view.

     C5, were the fock are you? messaged C4.

     Just enjoying the view, mate, bopping along buildings and keeping a weather eye on our fair-feathered friend.  Our John.     
     That's not exactly fair, is it?  Leaving all the bridging to the rest of us?

     There's only been the two of you so far, mate!  And neither of you have managed to exactly go about not cocking up this endeavor.

     Sigh.  Fine.

     He straightened his body out and disappeared sideways through another bridge, tumbling out upon the patio of a penthouse, far up in the sky.  He somersaulted expertly, a figure preset with the laws of physics as instincts, and landed upon his feet.

In the distance, across the chasm, he could see Dadalus wafting over open air.  A Clockman appeared in midair beside him, missed him in freefall, then disappeared again.  Then another, then another, then another.  He saw C3, C6, C7.  Then C9, C10, and C11.  Everyone was here, except for C1 and C12.

     What is going on here? cried C1's voice in his head.  It was the only place he ever heard it. Align! Align!

     C2, reporting, messaged C2, and C4 knew C2's precise PLS.

     C3, reporting, continued C3.

     C4, reporting, chimed in C4.

     C5 was next, then C6, and on down the line they went, linking into and aligning, setting themselves up in a communal alignment, each knowing just where each of the other ones was, until finally C12 announced his number. The locations appeared in C4's brane like some mystery constellation. They were all together now. Ideas and plans and feints of attack bounced between them at the speed of thought. Robot thought. Clockmen blinked out of and into existence across bridges, the constellation reconfiguring in endless variations. None jumped. The Clockmen were circling, like buzzards, or ghosted, staying to the outside of Dadalus' wafting flight across the canyon. Bickering and arguing, no plan could be agreed upon among the 12.

     In their flurry, it was a standoff.

     “Fock this,” thought C4, though only to himself.

     He bridged to the top of the Lookingglass Tower. He stood upon a 20-foot circle of concrete next to a tall antenna, 8 feet in diameter at the base, 50 yards and one foot 11 inches in height, black as obsidian. A monolith. Surrounding him was a large dome of glass, actual glass, supported underneath by a continuous forcefield, stretching out a circular base a quarter-mile across. Below, there was a vast pleasure garden, made of trees and jungle fauna and artificial streams and waterfalls. Standing on the edge of the concrete platform, he could see little figures dancing and running through the forests far below.

     He looked up. The tower, as he already knew, stood at the edge of juncture of the canyon, where suddenly it split, like a forked path in the sky. Along one path, the path of the canyon became more steppe-like in descent, level after level of buidlings getting shorter and shorter the farther form the edge you got. The other path was a steep drop. Dadalus would turn right on the fork, along this path. C4 didn't know why. He just figured it would be unexpected was all. C4 wasn't really thinking. He stared off, for the moment, towards the buildings lying at the point of the fork, the place where the two canyons departed from. There, in their majesty, were the twin Legacy Corp Towers. One white, one black, rising high above the buildings around them, like a pair of Clockmen in a crowd.

C4 turned about, walked to the end of the concrete platform. He was not thinking. In the back of his brane, the Clockmen argued insistently with one another over this or that position, where they needed to be, whether or not they were guiding Dadalus through their positioning, whether Dadalus cared³. C4 turned back around and, without looking, started running.

     He ran as fast as he could, jumping at the last possible moment. He did not attempt to control his descent. Everything just seemed right for a moment. He was operating on instinct. Fierce joy filled him.

     C5: C4, the fock you doing mate?

     C1: Yes, C4, why have you not been contributing to the conversation?

     C4: Not now.

     The slope of his descent was shallow enough that he managed to clear the glass dome. Greenery passed beneath him as if he flew over the canopy of forest. Then he was free, across open air, falling diagonal, into whatever he hit first.

     He was not remotely surprise when the first thing happened to be Dadalus.

     C6: Excellent!

     C3: What?

     C8: Finally, some success.

     C7: Contact!

     C5: I say, good show, old chap.

     C2: Well, maybe this day won't be a total waste.

     C10: Yay!

     C1: Aha! Our feint worked!

     C12: Good work everybody.

     C9: Well, that didn't make sense at all, but whatever.

     C10: Just go with it.

     For a moment, C4 and Dadalus were a tangle of limbs, working furiously towards freedom, or perhaps only understanding. They spun about in lopsided spins, Dadalus' wings throwing the pattern of their descent in doubt. C4 held on for all he was worth. There was no concern in his head now, beyond hanging on.

     In his desperation, he was wresting, struggling to gain some upper hand in their struggle. He found himself, face to face, chest to chest, with the Gray Mothman, their legs dangling wildly in space.

     “Good Morning, Citizen!” greeted Dadalus cheerfully.

     For a moment, C4 was disarmed. Confused.

     Something shattered around them, exploded, like glass.



1. Curves at least in the real world, almost never, to the point of total exclusion, follow any actual calculative mathematical formula. Instead of conforming to the systems of calculus, there are almost always flaws in the execution of the mathematical formula that is being attempted. Thus at any given moment, the object following the supposed pattern in not where it is supposed to be.

2.Clockmen, being robots, never ever required sleep.

3. C5 insisted that he didn't.