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.

Book I: Part 14: Alison

     ‘Oh bother,’ said Mosses Meddleson.  ‘What a nuisance.  I’m terribly sorry about this Miss Amberginnegan.  Miss Amberginnegan?’
     Alison had not heard the announcement, or at least hadn’t been paying attention to it.  The closest thing Alison Amberginnegan had ever had to an adventure was when, at the age of fourteen, she had traveled to the Orcas installation, a small artificial island in the Wetworks where she and her mother had taken pills that turned them into seals. 
     ‘Isn’t this like magic?’ her mother had said, and she had nodded, and remembered. 
     They spent six days living in the water, where everything was shocking blue.  A sense of weightlessness would overtake her on deep dives, giving her the illusion of flying.  Swimming after fish, going out into the deep to where the coastline and its skyscrapers sank below the horizon, she would surface, adrift on an endless sea, the only civilization the occasional Wetworks installation dotting the waves. 
      And then, when the six days were up, she and her mother made their way back to the Orcas installation, shed their pelts, and returned to the pedestrian life.
     ‘Miss Amberginnegan?’
     ‘What? Oh, sorry.’  She blushed and stared at her lap.  ‘How long have I just been sitting here?’
     ‘About a minute, I think.  Are you all right?’
     ‘Yes, I’m fine.  I was just … reliving a memory.’
     ‘Reliving?’  Mosses Meddleson leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard.  ‘It must have been quite an intense memory, to relive it.’
     ‘Oh, it was.  Well, not for me, that is … um….’  She stared off to the side and bit her lower lip, which quivered.  ‘See the thing is,’ she began in a voice higher than usual, ‘I have this condition?  Called Eidetic Hyperthymesia?’
     Mosses Meddleson frowned in a sympathetic way.  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Amberginnegan, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that before.’
     ‘It means I have really detailed memories of things?  I remember everything.  I mean, everything.’
     ‘Oh, so your memory’s photographic, then?’   
     ‘Well, yeah, but that’s just the eidetic part.  I mean, I can do all the photographic memory things, like read a book and know all the words in it, or what look at a deck of cards and then recite the order back. But its more…I remember everything that happens to me, ever.  Not just facts, but things that happen to me too.  I can remember any or it, instantly.’
     ‘So, you can recall everything that has ever happened to you? In perfect detail?’
     Alison nodded, her face becoming lost within the bramble of her hair. 
     ‘Why, why that’s astonishing!’ exclaimed Mosses Meddleson. 
     ‘I suppose so.’ Alison’s voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.  ‘Everyone I tell about it tells me that.  It’s pretty normal for me, though.’
     Mosses Meddleson looked flustered.  ‘Oh, well.  Obviously.  Pardon me, I didn’t mean to be rude.’
     ‘Oh, no, I-I didn’t mean anything like that at all!’  Alison squeaked, sinking lower into her chair. 
     Mosses waved a hand in the air, as if to say ‘No, please, think nothing of it,’ and smirked knowingly.  ‘Ah, Miss Amberginnegan, what a fantastic gift you have, no doubt another gift from old Allathir.  My! Think of all the wonderful things you could do!  Why, with a mind like that, you could learn, well, everything!’
     ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, smiling.  She thought he was being a little hyperbolic.  Her hand absently began playing with her skirt.  ‘I mean, I just … I just feel lost, most of the time.  I get … confused?  Like, I hear a word, or see something?  Or smell something?  And I’m off.  Like I’m time traveling.  Reliving something I did, or read, or thought sometime.  Sometimes, the memories just keep, like, sparking other memories?  And there’s just all these things going on?  Like, like, being in a department store, in the VAST aisle? And trying to pay attention to everything at once?’
     Mosses Meddleson nodded as if he understood perfectly.  ‘Ah, a kind of sensory fugue state.’
     ‘I, I guess.  And besides, I don’t think I could learn everything, anyways.  I mean I would need forever to learn everything, right?  And I can’t do that, so….’
     For a moment, Mosses Meddleson, looked horribly, horribly shocked.  ‘You don’t?  But how, when…oh.’  He nodded to himself, and looked downwards.  ‘I see, I see,’ he said quietly, to himself, as if Alison had suddenly disappeared.  She imagined herself doing so. 
     His expression changed suddenly, as if to hide some nasty faux pas, and then he was smiling again.  Smugly this time.  ‘Oh, I object to that, Miss Amberginnegan,’ he said, ‘I object to that very strongly.’
     ‘You do?’ squeaked Alison. 
     Mosses Meddleson opened a drawer in his desk, rummaged daintily through it, then pulled out a small bottle, which he tossed lightly over to Alison.  She didn’t manage to catch it, but it landed in her lap nonetheless.  Its cap curved upwards, and there was a lining along the bottom, making it look like a miniature chalice.  The label on the side, after listing itself as the property of Mosses Meddleson, read

        STASIS 50 mg cap zenith
        QTY 60
        By Vail Hall, Dis.
        Take once a week with water.

     ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
     ‘Those are pills, Miss Amberginnegan, pills developed by your father, in fact, long ago, that prolong the human life span indefinitely.’
     There was a weird sensation in her fingers, like energy was flowing out from the bottle and paralyzing her.  ‘Really?’
     ‘Oh yes.  They halt the aging process, keeping the body at a happy equilibrium.  They prevent cancers from forming, make the body resistant to all but the gravest disease—which are all curable now, by the way, if you can afford the treatment.  Which, of course, you can.  Taking these pills, a person can remain at the height of health forever.  Why, I myself am 1066 years of age.’
     Alison started, then looked at Mosses Meddleson with new eyes.  She set the pill bottle down on the table, and tried, as much as a person can who is sitting, to back away.  Somewhere a box opened; the world shifted around her, and became very large and strange. 
     Mosses Meddleson did not seem to notice.  ‘Do you not see what you have come upon, Miss Amberginnegan?’ he said.  ‘Why, you have found a source of eternal life that you can easily afford.  In fact, you own a source of eternal life.  You can do anything.  Everything.’
     Mosses got up hurriedly and walked over to Alison, he grabbed her by the arm and drew her up out of her seat, and began guiding her towards the window.  She came, blankly, cowed by  the man before her, with his wealth, his great age. 
     ‘I had heard, but I did not believe, my girl, that things had been so, so different for you all these years!  But those days are over now!  You have entered a new world! Look!’ 
     They stood at the window, looking out over the city, the wide chasms and shadows and buildings lying below. 
     ‘The people down there, they live brief, pointless lives, with little import but the propagation of their species.  But we, Alison, people like you and me, we are part of the elect.  We are chosen, you see!  Look at them down there.  From this window, you can barely see them.  They scurry about like, like insects, while we stand above, like, well, like Magicians!  No longer must you dwell down there in the darkness, Alison.  You have been selected by fate.  You have been given a destiny.  History will be merely a record of your actions upon the world!  Everything you could wish to accomplish—why, even learning everything there is to know—you can do.  You should do.  Why you almost have to do it.  And why not do everything, when you can live forever?’
     At that moment, the voice that came from everywhere and nowhere returned. ‘Attention residents of Legacy Corps Tower One,’ it said, ‘Due to the actions of the Dread Dadalus, the Winged Anarchist, the structural integrity of this skyscraper has been weakened.  All residents on levels 1852 and above should evacuate immediately, either to a floor below, or out of the building entirely.  As this is 150 levels worth of evacuation, I think that leaving the building would be the best course.  Having a smashing afternoon.’

Book I: Part 12: Alison

    ‘You see, Miss Amberginnegan, with your father’s passing, he set aside a portion of his power, his legacy, his wealth, to you.   For the last three months, it has been … in a kind of limbo, if you will.  And the legacy has been set aside—protected—within these stony buildings, until the heir was found to come to and claim it.  Now you have done so, Miss Amberginnegan.  And under our protection, your father’s legacy has been passed on—to you.’
    Alison stared straight ahead. 
    Mosses continued.  ‘Now, of course, if you so desire, you are quite free to withdraw your legacy, and take it elsewhere, or attempt to manage it yourself.  Which of course, we here at Legacy Corps  would be perfectly understanding of.  However, as your executors, we are also happy to maintain and protect your various holdings, assets, and inventions, and will maintain all the ties that will ensure your fortune remains your own.’
      Alison’s throat was dry.  She swallowed, wetting her mouth, then spoke.  ‘How, uh, how much, that is, I don’t mean to sound greedy, but, how much is the, uh...legacy?’
    Mosses Meddleson rocked backwards in his chair.  ‘Ah, well, with a fortune this large, there’s no actual amount, just an abstract concept.’
    ‘Huh?  I’m sorry, I don’t understand.  How can money be an abstract concept?’
    ‘Well, it has a lot to do with the modern economy.’  Mosses Meddleson began pressing buttons on a console and took a remote control out of his desk.  ‘I have prepared a short visual presentation.’
    The lights in the room dimmed.  Along one wall a white screen appeared. 
    ‘You see, often people, corporations—or discorporations, as the case was with your father—earn money based on an investment, or by providing a service.  When income exceed costs, profit results.’ 
     On the screen appeared a stick figure, standing next to a drawing of a huge pile of gold. 
     ‘Some ways of acquiring profits are through patents, or inventions.  You register your invention with an enforcement agency, and then, as people use it—or apply it to other inventions—the enforcement agency makes sure they pay you a percentage of their profit.’ 
     The stick figure walked into a building with a sign reading ‘Enforcement Agency’ over it, then quickly exited, walking back to his gold pile.  Other stick figures appeared and entered the building, and arrows from the building traveled to the pile of gold, which grew larger and larger. 
     ‘As the invention becomes more and more ingrained in peoples lives, and more permutations are built upon it, The profits for the invention increase at a faster and faster rate.’ 
     A graph appeared, the y-axis labeled ‘profit,’ the x-axis ‘time.’  A straight line appeared upon it, headed upwards across the screen. 
    ‘The profits increase and increase, and if more inventions are created—and in the case of your father, many, many more inventions were created—they beget more and more inventions, and more and more profit is accumulated, causing not only profits to go up, but the rate of profit to rise as well.’ 
     Several more graphs, identical to the first, appeared on the screen, connected by plus signs.  They disappeared, replaced by a new graph.    
    ‘Here is a graph of accumulated profit.  The x line is time, the y profit. You see how the slope gradually rises over time, the line going higher and higher?  That’s due to the inventions becoming more and more ingrained in society, often so that we don’t even notice they exist, or they form...a kind of bedrock, upon which many of the tasks we perform throughout our lives are built.’ 
     The line on the graph began moving higher and higher, faster and faster, its slope curving, until…. 
     ‘Well, sometimes, all those accumulated growing rates, they keep getting higher and higher, as more and more profit is acquired more and more rapidly, until the rate of profit becomes so fast, the line becomes vertical.  And a singularity is reached.’
     The line on the graph went straight upwards. 
     ‘Profits has been accumulated so fast that the actual amount of wealth is infinite.  The magician's multitude of inventions are effectively a foundation of society, to the point that society as we know it, could not exist without them.  This singularity of wealth occurred for your father long ago.
    ‘Miss Amberginnegan, you are inheriting a portion of infinite wealth.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Yes.  Quite exciting, isn’t it?’
    ‘What, uh, how much is a portion of,’ Alison gulped.  ‘Infinite.  Wealth.’
    Mosses Meddleson smiled.  ‘Why, infinity, of course!  Oh, Miss Amberginnegan, you are now one of the Kings and Queens of the City!  There are only 87 individuals in all of the City with as much wealth as you.  Why, you can purchase anything, so long as someone is willing to sell it to you.  Which means, of course, that you could theoretically own one eighty-seventh of all property in the city, if you were so inclined.  Maybe more, if you are ambitious.  Why, you can do anything! Anything any person could imaginably want to do, you can do.  Miss Amberginnegan, you are about to embark on a great adventure!’
    A monotone voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere spoke over the intercom system. 
    ‘Attention residents of Legacy Corporation Towers,’ it said.  ‘We regret to inform you that Dadalus, the Winged Anarchist, is at present loose inside your skyscraper.  There is no reason to panic; Clockmen have arrived and are dealing with the situation.  However, it is advisable that at the present time you stay in your current location, and await further news.’

Book I: Part 11: C4

     When C4 walked out of the spirelike hallway into the lobby at Central Command¹, C5 was there waiting for him.  The Clockman was leaning upon the railing, his elbow arched outwards into the void, slouching in a manner that was not inelegant, and wiping his pinch-nez with his pocket handkerchief. 
      "Fancy seeing you here," said C4.  He walked carefully and precisely up to his colleague, measuring each step to be exactly the same length (0.5 meters)².
     "Aye?  Oh, you're here too then, eh?" said C5, feigning looking over towards C4.  "That's a surprise, then."
     With the possible exception of C1 (whose head was a giant clock) C5 possessed the most alienating visage of any of the Clockmen in C4's unit³.  That was because C5 didn't have a visage.  His face was a smooth, almost completely featureless, a shiny metal mannequin's head.  
    "Nah, I'm only having a laugh," said C5.  "I knew you'd be about.  Heard you had a great nasty spill then, yeh?"
     "Yes," said C4.  "But I am better now."
     "Naturally, naturally.  As expected.  In fact, they sent me along to collect you, dont'cha know, after they heard I was about the area."  C5 replaced his pinch-nez to his nose, where it snapped magnetically into place.  The pinch-nez were actually the method by which C5 saw, transmitting visual signals to his brane.  Each lense of the pinch-nez was a coin-sized clockface, lit, when in use, to a light shade of blue, and telling the time in small holographic minute and hour hands.
     "Really?" asked C4. 
     "Oh, aye.  Though all honesty, mate, I had no fockin idea you'd be about when I first showed up.  That was just Fortune at work.  Really, I came here for a quick pick-me-up.  Notice anything different about me?"  C5 threw his hands wide in a gesture of presentation.
     "New suit?" replied C4. 
     "Ach, I knew there was no fooling you, mate." C5 had previously been dressed in midnight-blue, pinstriped, doublebreasted, two-piece suit with notched lapels and a single vent, accompanied by a matching fedora.  Now he was wearing a plain black, singled-breasted, three-peice suit with peaked lapels and double vents, accompanied by a matching black bowler hat.  His tie, formerly a solid red, was now a slightly metallic ooze of all the colors of the rainbow.  However, his shirt was still white, and his shoes were still black leather (but then, a different black leather).  The red handkerchief was the same red handkerchief that C5 always had, but then, C4 knew that C5 always hung on to it, through every wardrobe change, for reasons that could only be called sentimental.  
     "Well?  Be honest.  What's your opinion?"
     "It's quite nice.  The look suits you."
     "Suits me?  Fock, it's a pun.  Ha!"  C5 returned his handkerchief to his side pocket.  "Eh.  I figured it was time for a change, yeh know?"
     "I understand the sentiment."  C4 turned his head metronomically to the left, as if to stare off at some point of interest.
     "You could use a change, yourself, mate."
     "Hmmm."
     "You never change."
     "So, is this why you weren't involved in the chase earlier, then?" asked C4, desperate to change the subject.
     "Oh, aye." said C5, seemingly noticing nothing.  "And you wouldn't believe the great fockin stink C1 put up about it.  But what was I supposed to do?  Rush off in me knickers to fight the great horrible Dadalus?  And do what, exactly? Take a great flying leap of a building with me counterpart?  No offense, mate."
     "None taken," said C4, with a wave of his hand.  "You said you were to collect me?"
     "Hmm?  Oh, aye.  Yeh, they got back on his trail a while back.  Hold on."
     C4 felt a package arriving, and accepted it.  A collection of PLM⁴ coordinates and streams of timestamped VAST recordings.  A conception was formed of what had occurred to the Pteranarchist, since C4's fall into grace. 
     "So that's where we are headed, then, is it?" asked C4.  He sent a package of PLM coordinates to C5⁵.
     C5 nodded.  "That's where we're headed."
     C4 nodded in return.  "Well, all right then.  Let's bridge."
     Coordinates were exchanged.  Boxes of rainbow light opened over C4 and C5, and they were gone.

Book I: Part 5: C-4

    The time was 11:00:11 am. 
    ‘What? No!’ he called out. 
    Dadalus had opened his wings.  The sudden uptake of air to blew him off course, throwing him into the side of a billboard and causing an explosion of flames, sparks, and electrical surges. 
    He fell downwards and outwards, back into the open air, and saw Dadalus above with wings fully open, gaining distance at an acceleration of 11.1 meters per second squared.  He wished that he had a jetpack. 
   He slammed into the forcefield alongside the building.  He bounced off the side, then collided with the forcefield again.  Then fell outwards again.  Luckily, his own force field absorbed most of the impact, but that didn't mean he felt very good.  He paused for a moment, and saw himself reflected in a building, falling downwards.  A reflection.  
    That was C4.  
    There he was. 
    And then he was gone.  The buildings were now enclosed in darkness.  He had gone past the reach of the sun. 
    The momentum from the last collision was pushing him across the void.  Dadalus was gone now.  The time was 11: 02: 00 am.  He calculated at what level he would fall into the force field next, which panel he would crash into, and reaching out with his mind, across current and waves and signals, all in an instant, he opened it up.
    He fell in through the panel, smashing into the ground, then bouncing along the floor like a tin can getting kicked down the street.  He skidded along the ground before coming to a stop, wedged face-first into a crevice in the far wall.  Excited confused voices erupted all around.  People started to form a crowd.
    Slowly he got up, shaken, and a little worse for wear.  His suit was torn and frayed, and his joints felt stiff.  But his personal forcefield had once again absorbed most of the impact.  Maybe his chest cavity was a little collapsed though. 
    The crowd was a multitude of organic organisms mulling about covered in various cybernetic attachments, lining a long street, lit in dim green lights hovering along an invisible path 30.2 feet above the floor.  Shops filled with similarly accessorized souls lined the interior walls.  Everything not lit green was blacklit.  Loud music assembled in machines filled the air.  A subterranean cyberrim: a playground for the idle experimenters of the higher levels, set lowdown to add a patina of authenticity too their play.
    “Hey, brother, you aces, or what?’  It was a person from the crowd. 
    Now, the proper response in such a situation would be to say ‘Move along.  Nothing to see here.’  Yet this time, he didn’t really want to do that.  Usually he just made the required calculations for a situation and followed out those conclusions.  What he had always calculated was that the condition of AI Inc. property is not the concern of some random passerby, and questions concerning it should not be considered or dignified with a response.  But that wasn't what he wanted to do.  This time, what he really wanted to do was answer the question. 
    But he wasn't supposed to want anything.
    Something was wrong.  
    He set the processors to work investigating it.  Now normally, whenever this process of self-investigation began, another part of his mind would decide to send a report to Central Command.  But this time that second part of his mind paused—because another part had already run another operation (one that he hadn't even been aware of, at least not until after the fact) and concluded that he might not want to do that.  Apparently, this third part picked up on what the first system had concluded, or had intuited what that part was about to conclude, which was that something was influencing his thinking besides his programming.  Another part deduced that this influence, was not being communicated from outside, or at least seemed not to be, and in fact, seemed to be coming from inside himself, whatever that meant, and not just from any particular place inside himself either, but from everywhere.  It was as if there was voice inside him, speaking, but without saying any words, and saying everything at once.  
    He wasn't quite sure, but he assumed that this sensation was what people meant when they referred to "free will." 
    He became frightened.  There was no protocol to follow in the case of becoming disinclined to follow one’s programming.  Then he began to feel exhilarated.  Not only did he not have to follow protocols anymore, he realized he had absolutely no desire to do so!
   He didn't want to do as he was told!
    Suddenly there was a voice in his head.  ‘C4, this is Central Command.  Do you copy?’  The time was 11:01:01 am.
    He Froze. There was no desire to obey, there really wasn’t.  He ran a couple of quick calculations.  If he didn’t respond, they would know something was wrong.  They would take him in, and analyze his brane, find the free will, and remove it.  Cut it out, cut away the strangeness, the charm.  He needed the strangeness, he knew that now.  Now that he felt this new way, the past felt like a prison.  Some sort of torture.  A precise, calculated, defined torture, like being immobilized from a organic neck injury.  But instead of one's body being paralyzed, it was one's mind.  Oh, how had he existed for so long like that?  He didn’t want to do any more calculations, but….
    ‘Yeah, guven, you all-right?’ 
    It was a second person from the crowd.  For a moment he froze.  The time was 11:01:02 am.  A second had passed.
    ‘C4, this is Central Command.  Do you copy?’ 
   He calculated what to do in his predicament. 
    ‘Central Command, this is C4,’ he said inside his head. ‘Please move along, nothing to see here,’ he said out loud. 
    ‘Are you all right, C4?’ said Central Command.  ‘The last anyone saw of you, you had jumped after The Pteranarchist.’
    ‘Hide it,’ he told himself.  ‘Act naturally.’
    ‘Failed to apprehend Dadalus,’ he said to Central Command.  ‘Fell over 3000 feet, but I am fine.’
    ‘That is quite the fall.’ said Central Command.  ‘Why did you jump after him, anyways?’
    ‘I thought it possible to catch up with him, due to his wings, and engage him in combat during freefall.  But the wind threw off my calculations.’  He fabricated a host of false calculations he had done in preparation for his jump, with errors in wind prediction pointed out. 
    ‘Well, just unlucky, then.  Good plan though.  It’s always hard to predict what the wind will do.’
    ‘Thank you.’  He did something close to sighing in relief, except that he didn’t breath, or display any movement at all.
    ‘Report to maintenance.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You fell over 3000 feet, C4.  You are bound to have various damages.  They must be attended too.’
    ‘No really, I’m fine.’ No, no talking back!  Serious error!  Serious error! 
    Central Command sighed.  ‘What is it with you Clockmen and your tough-bot programming?  Like you don’t need check-ups and polishes.  Just get to maintenance already.  At the least your suit is a mess.’
    ‘Aw, quacks, it’s just a stupid clocker,’ said a pedestrian.  He had buzz-cut orange hair and wore a tattered sharkskin jacket.  He held hands with a women with blue hair and lips, wearing an orange dress.  ‘Let’s go, Mona.’
    People began to disperse.  He shuddered inside.  A trip to maintenance risked him getting found out.  But he couldn’t not go, could he?  That would lead to suspicion, especially now that he had been reprimanded about not wanting to go.  At least they thought it was programming.
    He took a step, and his leg locked in place.  He thought that might happen.  Well he couldn’t run off with a broken leg, could he?  
    Shazzers, had he really thought about running off right then?  
    Did he just use an expletive? 
    C4 shook his head.  What a situation.  The time was 11:03:33 am.  Before his thoughts had a chance to get away from him, he took a Bridge from the Cyberrim to Central Command. 

Book I: Part 3: C4

    The time was 10:54:31 am.  C4 was not facing the walkway.
    Photons traveled earthward, absorbed and reflected in various frequencies by metallic surfaces.  Water clusters observable in the human visible spectrum were swept along air currents in clusters high above.  Bodies defying gravity by manipulation of quantum forces traversed three dimensions along rigid geometric patterns.  Nonartificial organisms swarmed over surfaces of hardlight, metal, plastic and concrete in seemingly random patterns that could nevertheless be modeled, and predicted.  Vibrations of heat and light formed messages to be interpreted and processed.  A matrix of kinetic and potential energy , open to processing and interpretations. 
    C4 stood along the edge of the walkway surrounding Creaton Tower, overlooking the Mediatrane Chasm.  C4 stood below an ornamental lamppost, its light causing minute rises in temperature along C4's head and shoulders, with C4's hands clasped behind C4's back, staring outwards at the view.  Behind C4 streamed a chaotic mass of bodies, moving left, right, forwards, back, lacing through one another like colliding molecules.  C4 did not need to look at them directly.  C4 possessed advanced radar technology that rendered three dimensional models of their spacial relations.  Powerful audio equipment detected their conversations, heart rates, palpitations, adding an additional layer of data to the model.  Cybernetic receptors processed all electronically stored information originating in the walkers' bodies and appliances: pictures, music, conversations, movies, sensory records, biological manipulators, received and exported signals.  With this information, C4 knew the names, ages, locations of origin, species, basic habits and interests—and in some cases plans and goals and destinations—of every person who walked behind, making the application of visual information, the mere modality of color, completely superfluous to their observation, and thus much better applied to the walkway’s view.
    The rays shot down deep into the canyon, and the metallic orange tower opposite C4 looked built from sun-kissed sparkling glass.  C4 liked the way the buildings sparkled, admired the way the Laws of Physics played out to create something of aesthetic beauty, liked the way flying machines, rendered minuscule by the distance, flew across the vista, creating the sense of a continuity in their travels along their flyways, the way the external elevators and leechcars moved along the surface of buildings and rose and fell in deliberate patterns, the supple graceful curves of the towers that seemed almost grown instead of designed.  C4 like these things because C4 was programmed to like these things.  C4 had been programmed with a sense of aesthetics. 
    C4 also appreciated the cloud’s shadows, moving along while stretching down the lengths of the buildings.  The moving shadows registered as fascinating, though there was no specific algorithm which lead to the computation that this was so.  The precise explanation as to why it was such was elusive, as if the appreciation had merely been included in C4's hardware.  Perhaps it had something to do with what could cause such a huge shadow, as it was really only water in the air: the idea that the insubstantial could have an effect on something real.  But then, of course, they didn’t really have an effect, did they?  Just shadows: phantasmal absences of light. 
    In another compartment, C4 was analyzing the encounter with the man with the oddly colored hair in the cheap suit who C4 had caught staring at C4 25 minutes ago.  C4 was analyzing the man’s actions and calculating whether this was relevant information to report to Central Command. 
    C4 was a Clockman.  The Clockmen were the highest level of Autonomous Automaton¹. Clockmen, despite being a unique class of robots, all fulfilled a common function in the city.  Clockmen were Peacekeepers.  While such functions were not limited solely to Clockmen, marketing and word of mouth detailing the Clockmen’s exceptional attributes and abilities had made them synonymous with that profession. 
    All Clockmen dressed in well-tailored suits and hats. 
    Besides their faces, which each robot was allowed to customize to suite their designated personality, the Clockmen all had identical construction.  They were all specifically calibrated to be taller than those addressed without being explicitly imposing for the maximum percentage of city inhabitants, which resulted in them all being a height of 76 and 7/8th inches. 
    The deviations in appearance had been based on carefully conducted studies to make the Clockmen seem personal, but consistent, and distinct among the crowds. 
    The time was 10:54:34 am.  C4 heard a voice inside.  
    C4? it said.  
    Yes? C4 replied. 
    Situation Critical, it said.  
    What came next was a wide web of hypertext.  The information overlapped and unspoiled after entering C4's database in a single strand that, like a geometrically precise contour line drawing, folded over itself until it formed a distinct pattern, simulating four dimensions of information. 
    Time for a another Memo². 
    The web became a facet of the multidimensional database, a point jutting out from C4's brane.  
    The memo was constituted by a video recording of Dadalus, the Pteranarchist, landing on a citystreet, walking through the citystreet, walking into a diner, sitting at the diner, and harassing an occupant inside.  The occupant was obscured, just out of sight of the video recorder.  There was also information detailing the exact relation by the diner and street to C4’s present location. 
    The memo dredged up all of C4’s files concerning Dadalus, who C4 had never seen before in person, as well as all programming relating to Dadalus.  C4 switched to High Alert Mode. 
    The time was 10:54:35 am.  C4 bolted instantaneously, running through the street, yelling ‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Concerns, disperse!’  
    As C4 ran, files explained the shortest route to Dadalus’ location; it was on C4's level, one building over, on the other side of the building from his initial location.   
    While approaching the opposite side, C4 saw that the holograph bridge joining the two was packed with people moving in both directions, their density slowing their pace to a crawl.  C4 was just now receiving this information.  C4 cursed the satellite relays.  You would think they could get everything in at once, but there is always some lag at some way station or other³!  It would take too long to nudge through the people on the bridge.  
    C4 sent out a signal to the force panels along either side of the buildings to temporarily shut off.  The time was 10:57:49 am.
    ‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Concerns, disperse!’  Continuing to run towards the brink, C4 calculated the physics of a jump, across 110 feet, onto an level surface. 
    The time was 10:58:05 am.  C4 reached the edge, and at the last possible moment jumped.  Putting all required force into the jump, C4 swept up into the air, and out, over the gaping whole below.  C4 considered how far down it went, on and on below, while traveling up and up, then paused for a moment in air and began to descend, falling down and down, the wind echoing up against legs, a primal hollow howl. 
    And then C4 felt himself hit a hard surface, and roll, so as not to break the ground, across the far street.  C4 heard screams, and intakes of breath.  Then C4 was up and coming out of the roll and into a run with graceful precision, and then was off again. 
    ‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Concerns, disperse!’ 
    The time was 10:58:41 am.  C4 felt sensors heightening.  His systems were running at 95% of maximum, to prepare for the battle coming ahead.  C4 had to be ready for anything with Dadalus, ready with a million contingencies plans, ready to act at a moments notice.  There was no way to predict exactly was the Pteranarchist would do.
    The time was 10:59:06.  C4 was rounding the building and coming upon sight of the diner.  ‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Clockmen business, disperse!’  He was upon the diner! 30 feet.  25.  20.  15. 10...
    Dadalus jumped through the window of the diner and dove off the edge of the building.  The time was 10:59:45 am. 
    ‘No!’ yelled C4.  C4 followed, jumping right down after him. The time was 10:59:47 am.
    Thirty-two.
    Thirty-two.
    C4 was counting the seconds.  Dadalus had two seconds on C4, exactly.  C4 found it eerie how precise the timing was.  That was three sets of 32 feet per second.  Every second, C4 fell 32 feet more than during the last second, and Dadalus became 32 feet farther away. 
    Thirty-two.
    Thirty-two.
    Lights from billboards flashed around him.  C4 felt as if on a pathway, leading immediately towards some final point, but with numerous routes available to reach it. 
    Thirty-two.
    Thirty-two.
    Below was the Pteranarchist, just out of reach, it seemed, yet the distance was growing.  If C4 could just grab his boots, maybe something could be done. But they were both accelerating at the same rate, and the Pteranarchist was falling away.  The wings were closed, and effected his fall not in the slightest.  If he would just catch the wind right, maybe twitched a little, C4 thought, I will have him.  But the gray wings and boots remained out of reach. 
    Thirty-two.
    C4 decided to shift concentration away from the feet below, to think of the other things.   C4 started looking at the billboards.  C4 found them boring, having no interest in products.
    Thirty-two.
    Thirty-two.
    They fell deeper into the ravine; daylight was leaving them behind.  Like entering space, but going in, not out. The light of the billboards, the electronic luminescence, became starker in the absence of the natural. 
    Thirty-two.
    Falling faster now.  The billboards became indistinct, abstract. Bleeding streams of light passing by.  C4 tried thinking of them as separate entities.  A part of C4's brane began counting them.  The feet lay ahead. 
    Thirty-two.
    3.14 x 103. Odd.  A very close number.  C4 passed a billboard that had been short circuited, a very rare occurance.  Irrational. 
    C4 decided to count the light streams.  Number of light streams divided by number of possible light streams…added to the total number of billboards equals…
    Thirty-two.
    The number was pi x 103 to the 103^rd digit.  Somehow.  Maybe.  Was there an error?  For a moment C4, contemplated pi.  For a moment.  The time was 11:00:00 am.
    Thirty-two.
    Opening up before the viewpoint of C4's consciousness was a perfect circle: the kind that can only be imagined.  Its image fixed C4 in place.  C4 understood precisely where before lay the circle's center.  C4 fell towards it.  C4 felt the center grow nearer, and as if came forward, the circumference receded.  It occurred to C4 that the exterior of the circle was false anyways.  A lone border, imaginary.  No thickness, no consequence.  You could be outside it or inside it without moving.  But a center, a center you could find, it was always there: calculated from what was without, and from what was within.  Within a certain space.  The center grew larger and larger.  C4's being spring out from the center of C4's self, growing out, surpassing C4, going beyond.  C4 felt the form—no, not the form, only the cages upon the true self, not this crude metal shell—grow beyond, surpassed by the center which surpassed the circumference.   The circumference shrank into nowhere and the center expanded out into everywhere, point and border turned upon each other in an event horizon.  An infinite loop, inwards and beyond.  A mirror reflecting a mirror reflecting a mirror....  It was so clear now!  An illusion!  Only an illusion that needed not be followed!
    Thirty-two.
    The time was 11:00:01.  C-4 felt as if he was going to explode. 


     1. In The City, there are two major classifications of robots; Androids and Automatons.  Androids are robots made to seem humanlike in appearance.  They range from basic machines with plasticine skin to constructs so intricate and complex they bleed, have organs, and can reproduce: basically silicon-based life forms.  Automatons are very evidently machines, and go from vaguely human-shaped to a manifold of outrageous, but functional, shapes. 
    The Autonomous classification means the robot is endowed with Independent Thought Processors.  Non-Autonomous robots have no distinct personality and are either aspects of a larger hive mind or golems receiving all commands from an outside source.  Though Clockmen routinely share information and files with fellow Clockmen, and receive orders from a central authority, they each have distinct personalities and are permitted to carry out their instructions in whatever method is allowed within the strictures of their Personality Programming.
     2. A Memo, in Clockmen jargon, is a set of instructions from Central Command and the accompanying data to put the instructions in context and aid in their efficient performance.  Encoded in memos’s is usually a set of instructions which confer a certain duty upon the recipient.  It is often the case with Clockmen that these messages needed not be stated explicitly in the memo, as most memo’s  contained information that force a Clockman to follow prior Programming.  
    3. For the purposes of interrogation and personal interaction, Clockmen are programmed to synthesize emotional states. 

Book I: Part 1: Arthur

    Arthur stared into his reflection in his cup of coffee and tried not to look at the huge gelatinous blob behind the counter.
    He was sitting at the bar in a diner with a nineteen-fifties feel to it.  The floor alternated black and white squares like a chessboard.  A shiny blue jukebox sat along the side wall.  The walls and corners were filled with paraphernalia for some beverage called Clock: metal posters, old calendars; a giant bottle with the logo emblazoned on it (an orange clock-face) sat in the corner.  The only other patrons had granite-hued faces, square jaws, and Cro-Magnon brows.  They wore white coveralls stained with some kind of slick that, instead of black, shined vibrantly in all the colors of the rainbow.  The rock-people stood like pillars around the diner, drinking Clock and watching some unfamiliar sport on a flatscreen floating lazily in the air.  Glasses floated in formation behind the counter, attached to nothing and immobile.  The huge blob wore a dirty white chef’s uniform and was cleaning glasses with several pseudopodia.
    Arthur was an accountant from Chicago, Illinois, USA, in the twenty-first century, AD, and he had no idea how he had gotten here.  He worked for the accountancy firm Edgars, Eggers, and Edwards, and had recently been driving to an appointment to be held at the office of the firm’s newest client, a Mr. Maxwell.  The appointment was at five, and on the way Arthur had gotten stuck in rush hour.  Desperate not to be late, he pulled over and attempted to cover the last couple of blocks on foot.  Whether he made it or not he did not know; the next thing he could remember was stepping out of a green tube that went far down past the floor and up into the sky, and finding himself on a sidewalk several thousand feet in the air. 
    He was staring at a vast, dizzying cityscape, comprised of untold levels of colossal curved metallic buildings.  Cars suspended on cables or flying through the air swooped and whizzed across canyons that fell into darkness, the height of the buildings finally blocking out the light of the sun.  Multiple levels of enormous terraces with shops and walkways lined the buildings’ exteriors.  Huge billboards and floating video screens displayed products Arthur didn’t recognize; bright flashing colors hung in the air like radiation, an afterglow that bounced off stained glass, plastic, and mirrored surfaces of multiple hues.  Venders called out products; newsstands and restaurants were mixing olfactory emissions of decomposition and steamed comestibles.  City-noise and music formed abstract avant-garde soundscapes that fought against the wind-tunnel vacuum echoing up the chasms. The wind was pushing forcibly against his body.  Arthur began to feel confused and frightened.  He had lived in Chicago all his life, but this was a little too much to take.
     He started to notice the people.  His eyes fell randomly from one pedestrian to the next, constantly being drawn to the next by some bizarre new feature.  One person was dressed in what vaguely resembled punk fashion, with a Mohawk that didn’t seem to be a Mohawk at all, but a red shark’s fin sprouting from his skull.  Another wore a business suit not unlike Arthur’s, but instead of Arthur’s drab brown patterning, the suit was neon purple.  Another seemed to have a skin disease resembling the surface of a microchip.  One had eyes of an opaque solid color, another mechanical arms, another wires growing from her back.  Arthur saw a pair of dogs walk by holding a conversation in what sounded like German; a six foot humanoid dog creature stared at them and grimaced.  A small dinosaur scampered by.  One eight foot tall creature had no eyes, nines fingers and black shiny skin.  It wore no clothes, and walked with an unnatural grace—as if gravity were a source of minor annoyance. 
    As Arthur watched these and other strange people walk by, he started to drift into a state of shock.  His mind going blank, his eyes fell upon a figure that stood under a lamppost growing unbidden from the edge of the ledge.  The figure wore a loose-fitting yellow suit with red and off-white pin-stripes, a white boater hat with suit-matching ribbon, and alligator shoes. Tall and solidly built in a masculine fashion, the figure stood stock still in stark juxtaposition to the flurry of motion behind it, staring out over the canyon before it, it hands held behind it, its head moving slowly back and forth across the panorama with the precision of a metronome.  It was a sight that was, if not completely familiar, at least relatively mundane. 
    The figure turned and, across the stream of bodies between them, looked directly at Arthur.  The face was a shiny metallic egg-shape, with only the faintest hints of nose and cheekbones.   Instead of a mouth there was a long rectangular speaker, protected by a sturdy metal grill.  Instead of eyes there was a pair of deep-set clock-faces, illuminated from behind by a dim blue light.  As if to mimic human puzzlement, the robot tilted its head slightly to the side.  
    With the sudden realization that he was being watched, and embarrassed that he himself had been caught watching, Arthur quickly looked away, then wandered off into the crowd. 
    Arthur was not aware of how long he wandered, but eventually he came to the diner, which was the first thing that looked even vaguely familiar.  Above the front window, which was the size of the entire establishment, was a red canopy with the words Joe’s Diner written in white.  Whatever part of his brain was still working at that point ordered a coffee, and it wasn’t until afterwards that he noticed he was being served by a huge gelatinous blob. 
    While sitting there staring into his coffee, his brain started to calm down, his initial shock at his situation started to subside, and he started trying to think through just what kind of situation he had gotten into. 
    He decided to take things slow. 
    Okay, he had coffee, or at least he thought it was coffee.  It looked like coffee.  So wherever he was, he was in a place that had coffee.  And he had ordered coffee, which meant that they understood what he said—the huge gelatinous blob understood what he said—so people spoke English around here.  Things spoke English around here.  Other than that he couldn’t really think of anything he could definitely say about wherever he was. 
    He put his head in his hands and ran his fingers over his hair, which he felt sure was thinning.  He looked at the wall beside the bar, which was a mirror that ran all the way to the ceiling.  His suit looked worn and sweat-stained.  Well, he had run to Mr. Maxwell’s building, hadn’t he? No, his suit was too worn for it to be just that.  It looked like he had been living in it for months. 
    He checked his watch.  The date function had stopped working but the time read 10:51.  He checked the clock on the wall of the diner, which also read 10:51.  Perhaps only eighteen hours had past?  Or maybe eighteen plus some unknown multiple of twelve?  Maybe not.  Maybe his watch had just somehow matched up with the time where he was, skipping ahead or backwards or something.  He couldn’t think of why that would happen.  Still, maybe he couldn’t trust his watch. 
    How long had he been gone?
    Where was he?
    “No, no.  Take it simple,” he thought.  He looked around for his briefcase.  He knew he had had his briefcase.  He remembered clutching it against his chest as he ran.  But it was nowhere in sight.  Maybe he left it behind in the green tube.  Now that was depressing; there went all the papers for—
    His appointment with Mr.  Maxwell. 
    He grimaced.  He had never missed an appointment before, and had prided himself on being punctual.  So much for that. 
    But maybe that was the least of his problems.  What if he never got back?  What if he stayed lost wherever he was?  What if he died here?
    “No, no.  Focus, Arthur,” he told himself.  “You’re used to dealing with this kind of thing.  You can deal with this.  You’ve been through therapy.  Just, just concentrate on the little things.”
    He checked for his wallet.  Still in his side pocket, where he always kept it.  There was his driver’s license, his picture of mom and Gwen, the picture of father, credit and debit cards, about sixty dollars cash …
    Then it hit him.  The weird people, the aliens, the futuristic buildings ….  Wherever he was , or whenever he was, there was very little chance that they would accept his currency. 
    He had no way to pay for his coffee. 
    “Ya want anythin’ else?”
    The huge gelatinous blob was staring down at Arthur, who stared back up with an ashen, quivering expression. 
    “No,”  said Arthur, tersely, feeling ill. “No thanks, I’m fine.” 
    “Ya sure?  Ya don’t want pie or anythin’?”
    “No! No, I’m fine.  Just the coffee, thanks.”
    “Well, if that’s all then, yer bill is thirty credits.”
    “Uh, ok.” Arthur stared at the mirror again.  Maybe if he didn’t look at the blob, it would go away. 
    “Would ya like ta pay now?”
    “No.”  Arthur started to sweat. 
    “Ya sure? I can just ring up the transaction if ya produce yer credits card.”
    Credits card?  Not credit card, but credits?  Maybe it was just a colloquialism, but Arthur felt sure he was in very big trouble.  “No, no thanks, I’ll pay later. When I’m ready to go.”
    “Well, if yer only gettin’ the coffee, why not pay now? That way, ya can just leave when yer ready.  No hassle.  I can take care of it while yer drinkin’ yer coffee.”
    “No, no that’s all right.  I’ll just pay when I leave.”
    “But if ya pay now, ya can leave whenever ya feel like.  And ya can sit there as long as ya feel like.  No rush.”
    “Well I don’t want to inconvenience you right now…”
    “Nah, don’t worry about it.  I’m not doing anythin’ right now.  In fact, I might be busy whenever ya want ta go, so …”
    Arthur stared at the countertop.  His hand tensed around his mouth, and his cheeks ballooned.  He wondered how exactly they dealt punishment in this place.  Did they cut off your hands? Lock you in jail?  Maybe the blob would just make him wash dishes.  Why, oh why, did he have to come in here and ask for coffee?  He could have just kept walking. 
    He felt the huge gelatinous blob’s hoards of eyes stare down at him, its head draw closer. “Ya are planning on payin’, aren’t ya?” it asked, a edge creeping into its voice. 
    A bell rang behind Arthur. 
    “Oh, quiblaatz,” muttered the huge gelatinous blob.
    Arthur turned around and saw what looked, at first glance, like a giant gray moth walk through the door.  An anxious murmur rippled through the rock-people.
    Arthur looked again.  It appeared to be a man, tall and athletically built, wearing some type of suit made of  thick gray material with the texture of felt—except stiff, like armor.  It wore a helmet with large opaque eye-coverings reminiscent of a fly, or a fencing mask.  Where a mouth presumably would be were three vertical slits, the middle one slightly longer than the exterior two, all three between one and two inches.  On its back was what could only be a rocket pack, which was positioned between a formidable pair of large mechanical wings which, though taking up as much space as they were, appeared to be folded up.  It walked up to the bar and sat down next to Arthur. 
    “Hey Joe, how is it going?” asked the moth-man, with voluminous warmth and cheer.
    “Listen,  I thought  I told ya ta stop comin’ here,” said the huge gelatinous blob.  (The blob was Joe?)
    “Really?”  The moth-man leaned back in surprise, then shrugged.  “Must have slipped my mind.  May I have the usual?”
    “No, ya can’t have the quibblin’ usual.  Yer a menace ta society and, and  wanted by the Clockmen.  I’m not servin’ ya, just like I told ya last time.  Now, zoom off!”  The huge gelatinous blob was quivering.
    “Menace to society?” The moth-man sounded confused, but no less cheerful.  “Says who?”
    “Says everyone.”
    “I doubt very much that everyone says much of anything.  They disagree too much.”
    “Oh, crips what everyone says.  It’s still a fact that yer a menace.”
    “On what evidence?” The moth-man sound hurt. 
    The blob seemed astonished by the question.  “Ya destroy everythin’ ya come in contact with!” it spurted.
    “This place is still around,” said the moth-man casually.
    The blob paused.  “Is that a threat?”
    “No, an observation.  I’ve come in contact with this place before and it’s not destroyed, therefore I do not destroy everything that I come in contact with.  May I have my usual?”
    The huge gelatinous blob—Joe—looked flummoxed.  Several of the rock-people had quietly slipped out of the bar.
    “Can I just have my usual?  You know I’ll pay.”
    “Look, I can’t serve ya.  Yer a terrorist.”
    “No I’m not.”
    “Yes, ya are!”
    “I never try to terrorize anyone.  It’s not one of my goals.  I am trying to set people free from the totalitarian forces controlling their lives and choices.”
    “Well, it’s still a fact that ya terrify people.” 
    “That’s not my fault.  I make no attempt to control anybody’s mind but my own.”
    Joe sighed.
    “Look at it this way, I will be out of your hair sooner if you just serve me.”
    “I can’t serve ya, yer a terrorist!”
    “Fine.  Serve me my usual or I blow this place up.  See?  Now you are serving me under duress.  You are now longer responsible for your actions.”  The moth-man said this with no more malice than he had placed in his initial greeting. 
    Joe sighed.  “Fine.”  He turned around and started fiddling around with utensils and levers. 
    Arthur stared quietly into his coffee, not moving.  He didn’t want to attract any attention from a terrorist.  The moth-man sat with his chin resting on his hand.  Arthur started to sweat again.
    “My my my,” said the moth-man, “it’s so hard to obtain sensible service in these parts.”  He was looking right at Arthur. 
    “W-what?” said Arthur. 
    “I said, it’s so hard to obtain sensible service it these parts.”
    “Uh, yes, I suppose so,” replied Arthur, shaking.
    “It seems sometimes as if we have all gone mad, lost all sense of perspective,” said the jolly moth-man.  “And thus, afflicted by our delusional perceptions of the dimensions of reality, are rendered incapable, or are made unwilling, of giving aid to our fellow creatures.”
    “Uh, yes,” said Arthur, still hesitant.  “I suppose so.”
    “Ah! A kindred spirit!” cried the moth-man.  He offered Arthur his hand to shake.  Arthur, not seeing any way out of it, returned the gesture.  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said the moth-man, shaking vigorously.  “My name is Dadalus, by the way.”
    “Daedalus?” asked Arthur, waiting for the shaking to stop and thinking only about his crushed hand. 
    “Oh, no-no,” said the moth-man, stopping immediately.  Da-da-lus.  I am dactylic, you see, not amphibrachic.”
    “What?”
    “Nevermind.” Dadalus waved his hand, as if shooing off a pesky bug.  “Enough about feet.  And your name is?”
    “Uh, Arthur.”
    “Just Arthur?”
    “Uh, no.  Arthur Walpole.”
    “Ah, I knew it!  Most people have more than one name.  Mind you, nothing wrong with singular names of course.  It is just that people usually have an honorific, or a patronymic, or a professional title, or some vestigial remnant of one of the above, that they tag onto their given name.  Sometimes they have additional ones they often leave out of conversations.  Any interior names Arthur Walpole?  Or just a pair of bookends?”
    “Uh, well, I have a middle name.  Luther.”
    “Oh, excellent! Very appropriate!  I myself have at the moment no additional names per se, but I have developed a tendency towards picking up titles.  I am most often called Dadalus, the Pteranarchist.” 
    “Ah,” squeaked Arthur, nodding to himself.  He stared down at his coffee.  What had he gotten himself into?  He looked back up.  Dadalus was still looking at him, his head resting on his fist.  “Look, can I help you with something?”
    Dadalus started.  “What?”
    “Uh, can I help you with something?”
    “Hmm, what an interesting question.”  He stared directly at Arthur.  Into Arthur’s eyes, maybe, but Arthur couldn’t really tell.  “You know, I don’t think I have been asked that in a very, very long time.  ‘Can I help you?’”  He looked off in wonder.
    Why had he said that?  Why was he talking to this, this thing?  Was it just politeness? 
    Terror.  It was terror.  He didn’t want to be destroyed. 
    Best to be polite. 
    “Well,” said Arthur.  “It’s just, you know, you were staring at me, and it seems, that is, I mean, you had trouble getting served and, well, I don’t know what exactly I could actually do, but I thought it appropriate to…”  Dadalus was now staring directly at Arthur again.  “…ask?”
    Dadalus put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder.  “I know exactly what you mean,” he said.
    “You do?” 
    “Of course.” Dadalus solemnly raised a finger.  “For you see, Arthur Walpole your question is a perfect encapsulation of the state of Anarchy.”
    “What?”  Arthur was not expecting this at all.  “It is?  How?”
    “Well, you see, Arthur Walpole,”  began the winged creature, settling into his seat, “when we are faced with the stark reality that we are lost, hopelessly lost, in an ocean of chaos, in a winding twisting labyrinth of experience, and we feel so turned and twisted and tossed that we have no idea where we are or where we are going, we occasionally, briefly, come upon that startling realization that all those we see, that seem like the crashing waves and the hard, high walls, are just as lost as we are.  In the same predicament.  And like the rays of the sun, the realization hits us that we are all one.  Our suffering is theirs, and we are all in this together.  And when this inspiration is followed down its pathway, we arrive at the center of all things: the beatific state of Anarchy.”
    At this point Joe the huge gelatinous blob, glaring angrily at Dadalus, came by with a coffee and pie.
.      “Thank you!” said Dadalus cheerfully.
    “Curl ya thank yous,” said Joe the blob, and turned toward Arthur. “Don’t listen ta a word he says, ya hear?  He’s a terrorist.”
    Dadalus sighed.  “We’ve been over this already.  And some of your other patrons need help at the other end of the bar.  Shoo.”
    Joe slid to the opposite end of the bar grumbling.  Dadalus turned back towards Arthur, bouncing slightly, and continued.
     “You see Arthur, Anarchy is not a state of Chaos, as it is commonly misrepresented.  It is a state without rulers.  For when we all realize we are one, the need to place one being above another disappears.  The real state of Chaos is this.”  Dadalus waved a handed outward, toward the diner window and the vista beyond.  “When people submit to rulers, they submit to Chaos, for they are deciding that they need control to be kind.  Rulers are not order; rulers are control.  In Anarchy, one decides not to submit to Chaos, but to be oneself.  In such a state, rulers become unnecessary. You see?
    Arthur shook his head.  “I don’t think so.”
    Dadalus shrugged.  “That’s ok.  I’m certain it will make sense eventually.  I’m fine.”
    “What?”
    “You asked me earlier if I need anything.  I never got around to answering until now.  And I am fine.  Thank you for asking.”
    Arthur nodded.  “Oh.”
    “And how are you?” Dadalus leaned forward. 
    “Me?” asked Arthur sheepishly.
    Dadalus nodded solemnly. “Yes.  You asked me if I needed help.  It is only sensible that I ask you the same.”
    A flickering hope appeared in Arthur that this could be a way out of his predicament.  Perhaps he would be ok!  But … he really couldn’t see himself getting mixed up with a terrorist or an Anarchist or something, so.…  “Uh, well, I really don’t want to trouble you for anything….”
    “Nonsense!” said Dadalus waving a hand in the air.  “Let me pay for your coffee.”
    The hope flickered bright again, then went dim.  “Oh, no, I couldn’t.…”
    Dadalus threw a couple of orange coins on the bar that he seemed to draw by sleight of hand.  “Oh no, I insist.…”
    Suddenly, a commotion could be heard from outside.  The sounds of running and low metallic voices were coming closer, the voices speaking loudly but indistinctly to people as they approached.  Dadalus looked up, leaned back and stared out the window.
    “Oop,”  He said.  “Looks like I have to be going.  It was fun chatting, Arthur Luther Walpole.  Pity we couldn’t continue this conversation, but then, existence is fleeting and transitory, isn’t it?”  He threw some more orange coins on the bar.  “Keep the change, Joe!  Arthur, you are welcome to my coffee and aval pie.”  Then, turning and looking straight at Arthur, he said “Be seeing you.”
    Dadalus jumped up and ran through the window.  Glass flew everywhere.  He ran towards the edge of the terrace and, his wings expanding, jumped off without a moment’s hesitation, diving down into the vortex of billboards and street lights below. 
    “Jesus, he just broke all that glass!”  cried Arthur.  He turned to Joe, momentarily forgetting that Joe was a huge gelatinous blob.  “He just broke all that glass!” 
    “Yeah, he does that a lot,” said Joe, sighing glumly.  “Don’t worry, the glass will reform in a bit.”
    Arthur turned back.  As he watched, the shattered fragments floated up into the air from the light blue pavement.  With patient precision, they each retraced the path of their descent and took their original positions in the windowpane.  Silently, the fissures disappeared.  It was like watching a film played backwards in real space. 
    “Oh,” said Arthur.  “Neat.” 
    He turned back towards Joe, who was absorbing the orange coins into his protoplasm. 
    “Well, glad that’s over with,” said Joe.  “Ya want anythin’ else?”
    “Uh, no.  No thanks.”
    “Awight, well, take yer time.”  And the huge gelatinous blob slid away. 
    “Well, that certainly was odd,” thought Arthur.  He stared down at the counter, where sat two coffees and a slice of pie.  Carefully, he took a sip from one the coffees.  It tasted exactly like coffee.  He tried the pie, which, despite being a bluish grey paste upon a yellow crust, tasted uncannily like it was made with fresh apples.  Feeling better, he ate the rest of the pie, gulping it down in huge mouthfuls, and drank both of the coffees in quick succession.  On the wall, the clock hands changed from 10:59 to 11:00.  The clock face lighted up a dim shade of blue.