The auditorium plunged into darkness as a second power generator flared like a star, then died.
“Oh come on! What went wrong this time?”
I cursed, fumbling for a light as I tried to blink spots from my eyes. Between constant shocks, flares of light and crackling electricity, I was on a hair trigger for any slight motion right now. This couldn’t be safe, but it was what I had to work with, so it’s what was happening.
“In Lugann’s name, I pray to thee, let there be-”
“No bloody prayers!” I hissed. One of my assistants had been trying to summon light, to invoke one of the gods to solve the problem for us. And sure, it’d bring light, but it’d ruin the entire point of the demonstration. They shut up, but I felt red in the face, a little embarrassed at the outburst.
“I’ll uh, I’ll try to figure out how to fix this the regular way. I’m not an electrical engineer, but… somebody head outside and make sure the guests are fine, don’t want them to find any excuses to leave early.”
I heard the door to the foyer open, then close, light illuminating the room through the doorway then vanishing again. I breathed a sigh of relief just to know that was covered. “Bloody Priest’s Union are already breathing down our necks, they’ll probably take any excuse to pull out at the first-”
“Second.” A voice corrected me
“Second sign of trouble, thank you, Professor.” This wasn’t the first generator we’d blown. Hopefully it’d be the last. “Why do you even want them here, anyway? I hardly see what they’ve got to do with, well, a scientific demonstration.”
The professor huffed, and even in the dark I knew he was puffing up his chest, stung. “Surely they have an interest in the latest scientific advancements?”
“If you could tell me what interest that would be, it’d help. I need to know these things to organize this stuff for you, Raspe. Do you have any idea how awkward it was talking them into this without even being able to properly tell them what we’re doing? You say this’ll revolutionise every industry, and seven hells, you’re probably right, but it’d help if you’d give a plan for how to apply this to any industry.”
We’d had this argument before, and he sputtered indignantly but as usual didn’t really give me a reply. “If people actually agree to let me make more, it will obsolete divine magic entirely. I’m just the researcher, but even I can tell it shouldn’t be hard for them to figure out how to use my invention productively.”
I decided not to get any deeper into that debate tonight, too late for it anyway, we hadn’t reached an accord about a production and rollout plan a month ago, and we wouldn’t now.
I finally found the little box of matches I’d gotten after the last generator blew for just this occasion. I’d left it on one of the desks. It took a little fumbling in the dark, but I got it open, picked out a match, and struck it.
The dim orange glow illuminated the floor and myself. It illuminated two stagehands trying to help us set up for our big demonstration, and it illuminated Professor Rudolph Raspe, my supervisor. He was an older, balding man with a tan complexion, and a hoarse voice that sounded like an Authan Islander imitating an upper class Lysium accent poorly enough to be close to an offensive caricature. It sounded like that because, well, that’s what he was.
Now I could see, I looked back down towards the mess of wires leading between the power generator we’d set up and the machine we’d come here to demonstrate. At least they hadn’t gotten too much more tangled whilst we were fumbling in the dark. Lovely.
“Nine chartered gods, how much bloody electricity does this thing need?” I ran a hand through my hair, sweating. “I pulled every favor I had trying to get ahold of these things. Do you have any idea how rare non-divinely powered electrical generators are? A few weirdos build them for fun, but…”
Professor Raspe stroked his beard a moment, staring at the mess of wiring. “Ah, I see the problem. You plugged it into the wrong place, of course that will produce a short circuit. See, here?”
He tapped a plug in the back of his invention. The Godbox, as people were calling it. It looked like a priest’s confessional booth had a child with a clockmaker’s nightmare. A mess of cogs and electrical plugs lined the back, the sides were made of heavy lead, and the front was covered in a cloth veil, concealing a chamber inside for a person to step into to operate the device. Raspe insisted the devices inside were sensitive, needed to be operated in total darkness.
The thing was painted white and lined with red velvet, all according to the professor’s aesthetic sensibilities.
I eyed the dozen possible plug sockets in the back, about half of them filled. “No, I don’t see. They all look the same to me, maybe we should mark them? I’m not an engineer. I’d be more help if you actually explained-.”
“Nonsense, my dear.” He chuckled. “You’re doing a wonderful job as my assistant-”
“Apprentice.” I cut him off.
“-apprentice, yes, right.” He waved me off, nodding vaguely. “I couldn’t have built the Ontologic Uncertainty Chamber without you.”
I held off on reminding him he’d signed off on the name ‘Godbox’. It was on all the posters I’d made advertising this demo. I let out a sigh whilst suppressing a growl, then shut up and started rearranging the wires as he pointed them out, working by dim matchlight.
I had one of the stagehands follow the wires back to the generator behind the stage to swap out the fuses. I was left waiting in agonizing silence to see if changing the fuses would restore the lights, or if I’d see another shower of sparks, a moment of brightness, and then everything going dark again.
“You seem to have this in hand, at any rate. Jolly good, as you say around here. Maybe we won’t have to postpone this to another day, yes?” Raspe beamed a smile at me, and I felt a flicker of frustration at his cheery attitude.
“We wouldn’t have had to postpone it the first time if you’d told me in advance you wanted- ah, forget it.” I sighed, burying myself back in my work.
Raspe seemed less than concerned. “I prefer to play things by ear. Can never know everything, can you? Just enough to get by, and we are getting by. The show will go on!” He let out a triumphant laugh, that I was less than impressed by.
“Overbudget, overtime, and- have you even looked at the budget reports I’ve been passing to the university for you? If nobody in the room decides to donate a hell of a lot of money to your research after tonight…”
I was interrupted as the lights came on. The stagehand must have got the fuses. The back of the Godbox exploded with sparks, and I shrieked in fright.
But then it settled down. Cogs started turning, current started coursing, through the lights and through the machine. Enough relief flooded me that I felt like my legs were going to give out as I slumped against a wall.
“Wonderful! Okay, I think we’re ready. Usher everybody in.” Raspe clapped his hands together, grinning. “Showtime, no?”
I jolted upright in alarm. Already? We’d barely set up the chairs, we’d agreed to refreshments and the vendor hadn’t arrived. We were meant to be starting in half an hour, we couldn’t just-
I rushed to get my hand on the door before he could. “Not for another half- okay, you know what? You two, continue setting up. Professor-” I was his subordinate, but… “Maybe we oughta go chat in your office?” Far away from the stage and the crowd and his ability to make impulse decisions that would muck up the event I’d spent weeks planning for him. I put on a paper-thin smile that I could just feel cracking like plaster.
“...You’re trying to keep me out of trouble, aren’t you?” He saw right through me. He smiled back, but sad, almost hurt. I opened my mouth to say something, before he interrupted. “Let’s go to the office, then, shall we? We’ll have tea. I’ll trust your people to run this. For all our little arguments, you really have done a great job so far, yes?”
I felt a little warmth at that. He was actually capable of self-awareness after all, huh? I clapped a hand on his shoulder, smiled. “Tea it is. Come on, Professor. Let’s rest our legs a second.”
“And so the thaumic energy is conducted rather than blocked by the gnostic imposition, leading to-”
Raspe’s words flowed through my mind like water over a rock at the bottom of a pool, never actually soaking in and grinding my brain down ‘til it was smooth.
I was exhausted, I’d been on my feet for hours in the middle of a summer heat in a building that lacked any kind of air conditioning.
I was fanning myself in a little academic office, Raspe’s, a corridor away from the lecture theater, whilst keeping him distracted with little snacks and tea and excuses to ramble about his research. It was keeping him out of trouble at least, and he didn’t seem to notice that I wouldn’t have been able to follow his words even if I’d been trying.
I sipped at some tea and made appropriate “Uhuh, uhuh…” noises here and there. It was the best I could do.
“Ten minutes ‘til we go!” A voice called from the door. One of the stagehands, I figured.
“I’ll be out in a minute!”
Ten more minutes of this. I’d manage, I was sure. I took another sip of the tea, turning back to Raspe to make a polite comment pretending I’d taken in any of what he’d just said, when there was another knock at the door.
“I said I’ll be out in a minute!” I called.
It opened anyway. A woman stepped in, a priest.
Her outfit was understated, a simple red dress, but she had a necklace with a tiny crow’s skull in it, wreathed in a circle and with eyes inlaid with sapphires. A channeling necklace, fancier than anything I’d ever seen a civilian wear. As close to a badge of office as priests got.
She was an old friend of mine, and Raspe’s too. Hell, she’d introduced us.
“Sarah! How’ve you been doing? Has the slave market - sorry, I mean temple, been running okay?” Raspe stood, going over to shake her hand, entirely abandoning the prior conversation.
“That’s Bishop Sullivan to you now, as you well know.” She chided, a stern look on her face. “And I’ll thank you to not use that language to refer to the holy institution of-”
A pause, as a slow, slow grin broke across her face. “Hah! That look! What, you thought I’d get a fucking stick up my ass just because I got promoted? It’s been going well, just settling into my new position.”
She extended a hand, and Raspe shook it firmly, laughing along with her. “How about your attempts to turn yourself into one of the unshackled gods, you old heretic?”
“Now now. Isn’t your own philosophy that we should rule gods, not the other way around? I should think you’d love the idea of a man figuring out how to do what they do.”
“Sure, but then we’d need to bind you in a contract too, eh? Keep you from going all mad tyrant and ruling over us with an iron fist like the old days.” She chuckled.
“I assure you my reign would be benevolent.” He huffed, puffing his chest up. “My only law would be that I get to read every new physics papers before anyone else does. Or any imported ones from the continent. Or-”
“And burning Integralists at the stake.” I cut in. It was the one thing I knew him for from before I met him, he wrote articles in the papers spitting fire when they became one of the dominant philosophical factions in the church again.
“Quite. See if they can rationally construct their way out of hot pokers to the ribs.” He grunted, unseriously. Sarah tried to suppress a very improper smirk at the mental image.
“How about you, Alex? Got tired of feeding the poor and went in it for yourself, huh? Any plans for ultimate power?” Sarah extended the same grin to me as she’d given Raspe. I tried to return it.
“Trust me, if I had ultimate power, I’d… well, I’d do… something. Other than sit and… coffee.” Sit and coffee. I winced a little, that wasn’t even a sentence, never mind a witty retort. My brain was foggy from exhaustion.
Sarah paused, narrowing her eyes at me. “Shit, you doing okay? That was crap. Usually you’re better at talking shit than that. You need a break, maybe?”
“Too much to do, the presentation’s soon, and-”
My stomach picked the worst moment to rumble. Audibly. Sarah’s eyes widened in exaggerated horror.
“Of course you’re pissed if you’re hungry. I- Raspe, go get the little snacks, pronto! Come on, no time to waste!”
Raspe looked confused a moment, adjusting his lapels faintly. “The ah, the little snacks?”
“This little raccoon hides ‘em at all her jobs. Where’s your stash, Alex? Come on. You can tell us.” Sarah met my eyes, insistent. I met her gaze right back, held it a second… then crumbled.
“Third row of desks in the lecture theater, second from the wall.” I admitted. Sarah lit up.
“Perfect. Go professor, it’s an emergency!”
Raspe didn’t take my hunger as quite the catastrophe that Sarah was bigging it up as, but he still shuffled out of the room. I almost wanted to beg him to stay, just to keep him out of trouble, but…
Yeah, okay, I probably ought to eat before everything kicked off. I sat up a little, looking at Sarah. “You just had to out me. He’s gonna start looking for stashes, now, stealing ‘em. You’re paying for any he nabs, you know.”
“I can afford it. As can you, by the way. How are you still skipping meals after I got you this job? Last one I got you, you put on twenty pounds, gorging your ass as soon as you could afford to buy. You’re still-”
I flushed. I was a little pudgy, not exactly skinny, but yeah, thinner than I’d used to be. Though a lot less so than I’d been before that, right after I moved to Eccless with no money, no family, and no support.
I put a hand over my belly defensively, saying “Too much to do. Raspe’s driving me up the goddamned wall, he never knows what he wants, he’s utterly ignorant of financials, I’m doing his money, his purchases, his timetabling and meetings, his-”
“Told you he’d be that way. So quit if you hate it so much, I can get you another job, at the university or the church.” She said it casually, blasé, and yet with enough sarcasm I knew she didn’t mean it as a real suggestion. She took the seat Raspe had been on. Leant forward, pented her fingers under her chin. “Unless you like it better’n you say?”
“...It’s important work. It’s… it’s important work, and I love the work. I just wish the prick would explain a damned whit of it. None of the science makes sense to me, and he took me on as an apprentice promising to teach me it, but…”
I looked around at the room around me. Professor Raspe had filled the walls with diagrams, papers, charts, none of which I understood a bloody word of despite his attempts to explain them. It’d help if it was even in my language, but mixed in with the clean, crisp white paper of the stuff he’d drawn himself was yellowed parchments from books hundreds of years old he’d gotten from across both continents, ranging as far as the Coil States and the Dreaming Empire.
Sarah looked around about as blankly as I did. She was young, for a Bishop, late twenties, but almost as frustratingly well-read as the professor was, and had just as unrestricted access to restricted texts. As she squinted at one paper, for a moment I held out hope she might actually be able to read whatever the hell it was they spoke in the Dreaming Empire, but she shook her head.
“Yeah, this looks like a fucking mess.” She squinted at a few of them. “If I didn’t know better I’d assume Raspe was just bullshitting to try not to lose his job. You’re sure-” She paused, gave me a measured look, like she was trying to figure me out. “Look I was joking about him trying to turn himself into an unshackled god, but- if he’s got an omnipotent box, why hasn’t he…?”
“Largest distance we’ve gotten it to work at is a hundred feet, and requires an egregious amount of electricity to power.” I explained. She guffawed.
“It changes physics, Alexandria.” She said, slowly, like she was talking to an idiot. “Distance and electricity’s behavior is part of physics. Use it to change distances and create electricity to feed itself.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I tried telling him to do that! He mumbled something about the anthropic principle and wandered off! I figure it’s ‘cause it’s not possible. He- Look, you can do some pretty amazing stuff with divine magic, no?”
Sarah winced at the term. “It’s not-”
“Magic, it’s a science, I know, sure.” I rolled my eyes. “Same here, right? Only looks like magic ‘cause I don’t understand it. There’s gotta be… limits, boundaries, rules. Hell, Raspe clearly knows ‘em, or why’re the controls in the dark? Why electricity, why a box at all and not just… thinking and willing the effect into being? He’s building it this way for a reason, means there’s rules, he just needs to… explain them.” I let out a breath, deflated a little as I looked at the nonsense diagrams covering the walls.
They didn’t feel like they followed any kind of rules. Might as well be magic to me, really.
“You sure he’s not just bullshitting?” Sarah asked. “I mean, look, I like the guy, but-”
“No, no, I’ve actually seen it in action, it-” I stood, excited to show her this. The Professor had pulled a demonstration in this very room. I tugged her towards the back, and atop one of the desks was a little patch of air, maybe the size of my fist. The light through it was distorted like a heat-haze, or like I was looking through running water. I gestured towards it. Sarah looked unimpressed.
“...Okay? That’s… underwhelming.” She said.
“No, no, look at this.” I took a pencil and placed it into the hazy patch, then let go. It didn’t fall to the ground, instead floating in the air, spinning slowly from the slight twist I’d put on as I released it. “He set the constant of gravity to zero in this region, it doesn’t work.”
Sarah squinted at the pencil, sighing, before placing one hand on her necklace, eyes closed. It took me a second to realise what she was about to do
“Dammit, no prayi-!”
“Oh mighty Convox Birds, I beseech thee…” She murmured, and with a faint hum of divine light, a sheaf of papers started to float too. She didn’t even look smug, she just pointed at it as I ran a hand through my hair.
It wasn’t quite the same. The divine power didn’t distort the air the same way. It felt cleaner. More natural. Not to mention that as much as it looked effortless in the moment, I knew the logistics behind making it work were immense, a mountain of paperwork, sacrifices, and negotiations with the gods.
“We’re trying to keep the place clear of divine energy, dammit, people will detect-!”
“All the way in the lecture theater? No chance.” She waved a hand, dismissive. “You get my point though. I hope your big demonstration isn’t just a… levitation trick.”
I gripped the desk a little tightly. I really had no idea what Raspe was planning to do for the demonstration. “I’d been trying to talk him into accelerating time over some potted plants, you know, demonstrate agricultural uses…”
“You’re really trying to piss off the Priest’s Union, huh…?”
“I don’t know why they’re so mad at this project, it’ll make their lives easier-”
“They’re worried you’ll obsolete them, Alex.” Sarah hissed. The papers she’d made float dropped, prayer wearing off, scattering across the floor. That was the other thing we could do that Prayer couldn’t. The little gravityless patch had been created weeks ago.
Sarah started picking the papers up, bashful. “Sorry. But- look, I work with these people, I’m one of the Priest’s Union, dammit, and I’m worried you’ll obsolete us. Every time we manage to contract a new minor deity to provide prayers to, I dunno, provide stronger winds for sailors, half my job becomes to convince the people who used to make sails not to fight us over it. They’ll bitch, and moan, and pull strings and convince people not to go with it, if they don’t go on strike outright. And that’s for sails, you’re- if this can really do whatever it likes with just electrical input, no pissing about pleasing fickle divines, no other sacrifices, you’re obsoleting- well, half of what keeps this country running.”
“Shouldn’t you be happy about that? You won’t need to work anymore.”
She folded her arms, giving me a glare. “Fuck, Alex, this isn’t just a living for me, this matters, you know that.”
I set my jaw, staring right back. My face was feeling hot, and it wasn’t just the blistering heat. “I know, it’s to- I get that you help people, in your position.” Blessings on the crops, food for the poor… and I’d been the poor in question, before. “This’ll make that easier, not harder, Sarah. Come on, think it through. And what about the careerists? Chartered know most priests are only in it for the money, if they didn’t have to-”
“Yeah, people tend to be real happy when you put them out of a job. They’ll kick up one hell of a fuss”
“Then the bastards can bitch and moan at me with their stomachs full and roofs over their heads! Better you be jobless and damned fed than hungry and-” I was yelling. Sarah hadn’t exactly flinched, but I still shrank back a little when I realised I was doing it. “...Sorry. You’re- don’t shoot the messenger, not you I oughta be getting pissed at. I know you don’t mean… you in particular.”
Sarah gave me a soft, almost apologetic smile of her own. “Just saying what you’re in for if this thing is real.” She didn’t seem to mind, but I still felt like a shit. I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly.
“Big if.” She continued. “It still strikes me as- well. Seriously, if you have an omnipotent machine, why does it need electricity? Why even demonstrate it to beg for funding rather than just… you know. Making your own funding?” She sighed. “Guess we’ll ask him at the demo, huh?”
“Guess we’ll see at the demo.” I smiled, softly. I checked the clock on the wall, three minutes to go time.
I ought to go to the stage, was my first thought. Then I realised something.
“...Raspe never got back with the snacks. Did he-”
Sarah let out a laugh. “Go find him! Make sure he’s not wandered off. I’ll go find myself a seat in the audience. See you in three minutes.” She paused, thoughtful. “Or I won’t, if he’s pissed off somewhere.”
“You’re not gonna help? You’re the one who sent him to-”
Two minutes fourty-five seconds. The clock ticked down whilst I was sitting here arguing.
I dashed out the door without any further arguing.
The stage was set, everything was ready. The curtains were still drawn but the seconds were counting down. We’d shifted the electrical generator behind the stage, wires trailing across to the machine, finally fully set up.
Raspe had been waiting on the stage, having been chowing down on my salted almond nuts himself, the bastard.
Peeking through the curtains, every seat was filled. Raspe couldn’t decide if he wanted this to be an academic lecture or a stageshow, and had insisted on a pair of stage curtains to be installed around the front of a damned university lecture theater.
Some of the audience were people I recognised, if only from Raspe’s ramblings. - a motley collection of gentlemen in spectacles near the back were the Society of the Infinite Staircase, an academic society Raspe was close with, albeit a weird one. Sarah had taken her place in the seating alongside a few younger priests in almost commoner garb, Foundationalists amongst the church, who I worked with on charity drives.
Other church factions were present, cliquing off from the main group, Integralists with stern looks on their faces, the most prominent second sect.
And lastly, rough looking men in overalls representing trade unions, not ones I recognised. I had no clue why they were here, but they were. A few members of the press here, one ostentatiously rich Baroness or Duchess or something in the back corner, peering down her spectacles. That guy in front was a parliamentarian, I’m pretty sure.
Wasn’t sure what party, and honestly wasn’t sure what party would even care about something like this, the Seculars maybe? Oceanis? Some bloody minor party I’d never heard of?
I was sweating from more than just the heat, but everything was in place. I exchanged a look with Raspe as I stood with him on the stage.
“...Sure you’re ready? No last-minute adjustments?”
He placed one hand on the machine and gave me a grandfatherly smile. “I’ll do my best. Just let the curtains go up, give a speech explaining my work… and show them what it looks like when gravity stops, the speed of light triples, and the strong nuclear force… okay, no, actually, best not mess with that.” He chuckled awkwardly. “Those after flashing lights and spectacle might be disappointed, but those with intelligence will recognise how much this will overturn the spirit of the era. That will be enough for me.”
We hadn’t rehearsed a speech, nor tested using more than one of the Godboxes functions at a time, but I was still relieved to know his plan was that simple.
I gave him a thumbs up, and went to go do my part.
I went backstage, or more accurately, out into the university hallway. We’d cordoned off the little area and called it a backstage, stuck the generator there, a few props, plus some stacks of papers we were going to distribute explaining the machine later.
The door to the lecture theater was propped permanently open, to let electrical wires run through, as well as the complicated bloody rope system to pull the curtains open.
It was a mess, and I stumbled and nearly tripped over the wires. I cursed as I saw the clock on the wall pass the hour. I knew nobody would be keeping time that accurately, it’s not like somebody was announcing a countdown, but we were seconds late, and that annoyed me, at least.
Still, I grabbed the generator, pulled the switch, and sent electricity pouring through the wires. I could hear the machine come to life from here, through the open door. The cracking and clicking of stiff gears turning echoed through to the hallway, and then there was a familiar… wrongness.
The Godbox did weird things to sound. It made sense, frankly, given inside its area of effect air pressure didn’t necessarily quite work like usual. I’d experienced it from the inside once, it was like hearing sounds underwater, or through thick earmuffs. From outside, there was an erratic, deep thrum I could feel in my belly. I couldn’t even see the machine, but I felt that pulsing sensation from here.
I heard murmurings from the crowd, they could hear it too. It was good showmanship, building anticipation before they saw the big reveal.
I grabbed the rope and pulled the curtains open. I saw the crowd through the doorway, their shocked faces. A chorus of gasps. I couldn’t see the stage, only their reactions, their expressions turning to confusion.
Then horror.
Then screams.
Screams?
“He- he-!”
People stood up. Sarah was praying, hand on her holy necklace. Some people rushed towards the stage, others away, out the back door. What was-
I stepped through the threshold and back onto the stage, trying to get an actual look at what everybody was staring at.
It was Raspe.
Raspe was floating in mid-air, a dozen feet off the ground, his tie pulled tightly above his head like a noose. His face was a bright blue, head tilted at an unnatural angle, neck broken.
The air around him was lensed like a fish-eye.
I took a step forward, every bit as paralysed as the crowd, unsure whether to rush forward or run far, far away. My stomach lurched, bile rising, fighting a dreamlike, liminal sense of unreality to convince myself what I was seeing was real. It was real, he was hanging there and I ought to be doing something about it, dammit. Shut off the power generator, get him down, marshall the crowds, something!
The power. This had to be the Godbox. Something had gone wrong. I had to do something, cut the power, stop the machine.
Before I managed to take a step, the lensing in the air stopped.
Raspe dropped to the ground with a sickening crunch.
And I saw the Godbox was gone.