Read Online The Falling Machine by Andrew P. Mayer - Free Book Online Page A

was even an open slot in the floor a few feet in front of it, as if someone had attempted to construct a miniature moat.
    Although Sarah had been in this part of the laboratory a number of times before, she had never gone beyond that door, or even seen it open.
    Her eyes went wide when she realized that on the left wall, laid out flat on a steel slab, was the Automaton. A set of six of the electric lights had been placed all around him, and he seemed like a mechanical angel bathed in their brilliant glow.
    The mechanical man had been completely stripped. The plates that usually covered his body were removed and neatly stacked on a nearby table, leaving his insides clearly visible. Rows of meshed cogs slowly rotated, glinting as the lights reflected against the serrated edges of the turning gears.
    As she walked up to him, Sarah could see that Tom's arms and legs had been shackled to the surface of a steel slab. Close up it was clear that no one had bothered to make any real attempt to repair him beyond his new face. His right arm was still damaged, with the rods scorched and bent from the dynamite.
    Almost without thinking Sarah pulled out her handkerchief and gently began to try to polish the soot off of his damaged arm, but it was tattooed into the metal.
    In the quiet of the laboratory she could hear the rhythmic ticking that came from his heart, a brass sphere in the center of his chest. It was suspended inside a metal cage in the middle of his body. Gear-tipped rods sprang out from it in every direction, their teeth resting against a series of larger cogs in his chest. Those, in turn, moved the other cylinders, gears, and rods spreading out across his body.
    A pipe on the right side of the heart let out an occasional hiss as a rotating gear pulled open a spring-loaded cap at its end and released a small puff of steam into the air. Underneath was a large bolt with a wing nut at the end of it.
    The heart of the Automaton was the one piece of his anatomy that Professor Darby had gone to great pains to point out to Sarah when he had first invited her down into the lab. “This,” he had told her, pointing out the device, “is everything that makes the Automaton what he is. Inside of it is something that I call the ‘perfect gear.’”
    “But however does it work?” she had asked him.
    Darby had given her a look, one that she had never seen him make at any other time in all the years that she knew him. It was a boyish grin, and for a moment she could see him as he was when he was thirty years younger—a clever young man still facing a world full of secrets to uncover. Then he rolled his eyes. “I have some thoughts, of course, but I don't actually know.”
    Resting her hand against the cage, she could feel the rhythmic pulse of the machinery as it turned inside of the Automaton. She felt the stinging squeeze of tears as the memories and emotions of the loss of Darby welled up inside of her.
    “Miss…Stanton,” came the words in the Automaton's singsong tones, “is that you?”
    She jumped back slightly. Somehow she had convinced herself that the machine man had been unconscious, even if he was never truly “conscious” to begin with. “Tom?” Her throat felt thick, and the words came out slightly choked. “It's Sarah!” She took a moment to swallow and try to clear her voice. “I'm here. How are you?”
    “It's good to speak with you Miss…Stanton. It has been a few days since I have had a visitor.” At least someone had bothered to repair his ability to speak. She supposed that was the minimal work needed to make Tom presentable for the funeral.
    She reached over and began to pull out the long pins from his shackles. “What have they done to you, Tom?”
    The Automaton tried to lift himself up, but was trapped by the restraints. Sarah opened them easily, and Tom folded himself up until he was eye to eye with her. The harsh glow from one of the electric bulbs shone down directly into his chest, turning