Chapter Text
There’s a spot behind the brewery.
The brewery – the Alchemy Jug, it was called, ‘because they turned water into gold’ – was a seedy spot at the end of their city. If you walked, and kept walking, and then walked some more, through the muck and the mire of city life and a swamp of brick and concrete; you ended up at the Alchemy Jug.
It was an industrious place, their city. All the splendor and promise and charming, coughing glory of the bottom side. Like the feeding ground of termites, under the ruts and structural supports of a spindly sort of shack. A shack climbing taller, and taller, until it pulled the stars down to earth, and covered them in smog, and opened them up to harvest their hearts.
All the promise of their world; because their city was right on the border, between high and low. It had upperclassmen, and lowerclassmen, and slum’s workers – had coal mines and inventors and even the odd alchemist, now and again. All the promises of their world; all the murmurs of dreams and wishes upon stars long since blotted out. I want to invent something so wonderful that I can climb out of here. I want to be an apprentice to an alchemist – I want to be one, one day. And the newspapers had stories of it, of boy geniuses and rising success and blindingly brilliant new inventions.
Bad news was there too, of course. But it was very… careful, bad news.
But Basil was losing himself in the details. Again.
There was a spot behind the Alchemy Jug.
The Alchemy Jug was a seedy little spot. It was on the edges of town – which was how it got away with alchemy imagery, despite not being approved by any higher-up’s. The Officers didn’t come down there often. Let them drink and stay drunk, they probably said. They’ve earned it, after nights wiling away in the mines. And they sat back, and watched, because there was no real threat in men and women and children drinking away their paychecks. It kept them content. If you had something to look forward to, at the end of the day, then you were less likely to fight to change how everyone’s day unfolded. You’d just slog through it to get to the light at the end; time, and time, and time again.
Barfights happened, sometimes. Basil heard them, as he passed the Alchemy Jug. Shouts and swears. Men bloodied women, women bloodied men, men bloodied children, women bloodied children, children bloodied each other. It didn’t matter too much, as long as they could still lift a pickaxe, or a wrench, or put their hands in small crevices where adults couldn’t reach. Between plates of hot metal and screaming, wrenching gears.
There was a child who begged outside, sometimes. His hands were stained with oil and shiny burn scars – some old, some new. Basil gave him money, when he could. The child usually used it to buy drinks. Basil didn’t stop him; he wouldn’t have known how to, if he wanted to. He wasn’t completely sure he wanted to, either.
It was things like that, that never got in the news.
Maybe it just wasn’t news to anyone. Maybe everyone knew it happened, really, deep down, but they just got uncomfortable when they thought about it too long.
Right. Lost in the details.
The Alchemy Jug was on the edge of their city. And, beyond it, there was a spot.
It was a crater. The land around it was clear, mostly. There were some exhaust pipes, of course – it was hard to find anywhere that there weren’t exhaust pipes. Basil had no idea where they wormed up from. Where they were mining today, what noxious fumes they were pumping out and away from their workers, without considering where it would end up. Not that Basil wanted the miners breathing it in.
The crater was probably from a war. There’d been a lot of those, in the past. There still were lots of them, probably. Basil wasn’t all too sure. But it meant there were signs, posted up around the area, with blaring lights to catch attention; WARNING. Chemicals in this area are known to cause extreme sickness of the body and mind. Stay away.
Whatever had caused the crater must’ve had something foul inside it. And it meant they didn’t build around here, or make new mines, or set up new inventions.
It was all razed earth. Like they’d tried to pull one of the stars to earth, tried to trap it, carve it open; and the star had fought back. Had left a mark of itself. Had made all humans leave it be, leave their earth be, in an area half a mile wide. Had left a blister on the land for their trouble.
There was a spot, just beyond the Alchemy Jug. Beyond warning signs that blared sedately, beyond begging children and bloodied barfights and all the news that would never be plastered against ink and paper. There was a crater in the land, where no humans could touch anymore – and, in the center of that crater, there was a ladder.
There was a ladder, that lead down. All splinters and cold stone and iron supports. Nuts and bolts to hold together the teeth of it, the struts, to let people down easy and smoothly – Basil didn’t know the terminology. He wasn’t an inventor.
And, at the bottom of the ladder – after a climb so long that you might start to think it lead to the center of the earth, and your arms were beginning to ache and cry for solid ground again, no matter how smoggy the air was – there was a trapdoor. A trapdoor that you could cut your skin open on, if you grabbed it too easily, and let the splintered wood or the rusted iron latch bite too hard.
And, once you opened that trapdoor; there was a mine.
That was what Basil thought it was, at least. It was like a mine, in that it was long and narrow and there were vents lining the walls. But there were no rocks, here. No stray boulders, no stalactites. No smell of coal. It was all long, narrow. The walls were smooth. Stone, clearly, and cool to the touch; but smooth. Almost polished. Made of bricks. The ground was perfectly flat, level. It was a perfect semicircle, extended forever into the dark, and there were lights on the walls. All of them had long since burned out.
It was dead. A carcass. A sacrifice, to a world that Basil had been born too late to read about, in what few history books he could get his hands on. Long since carved open and left to rot.
But the walls were still smooth. The ground was still so perfectly level. The air was heavy, this far under the earth – but there was no smog. No smoke. No stink of oil and grease and rusted metal.
It was quiet, here.
There was a spot, behind Basil’s world. Just beyond all he was and all he’d ever be. A spot, marked by razed earth and signs screaming of danger. And if you found that spot, and sat on the perfectly level ground; you couldn’t hear any machinery.
Basil had sobbed, the first time he’d found it. Had cried, completely, unabashedly; all wracking, heaving sobs, all blubbering snot and gasping breaths. Had cried, because it was peaceful, and beautiful, and so horrible and terrifying and annihilation.
Because there wasn’t a world without machinery. There was just this carcass – this cold, stony carcass.
There wasn’t a world with starlight, anymore. But if you went far enough down; you might find the hollowed-out corpse of a world that used to be quiet, in the right places.
Basil was a foundling.
That meant some pretty simple things. It meant his parents hadn’t wanted him. It meant he’d grown up in a ward, with a dozen other boys.
Corporal punishment was normal in the ward. It was normal in school, too. Basil’s hands had known the bite of steel rulers since he was four. He was put into the work track from a very early age; he learned how to worm his hands between wires and re-string inventions that needed it from age six. He lifted his first pickaxe at eight.
The world always needed more coal miners. The sooner he learned, the sooner he could be in a mine, carving the earth open for her organs.
But Basil had nothing to complain about. Plenty of kids were foundlings. Plenty of kids that weren’t foundlings still had to learn to work early – to help feed their family, or their extended family, or their neighbors, sometimes. Those on lower sides tried to work together, when they could.
Sometimes – only sometimes – he wondered what his parents were like. He wondered if they were glad he was gone.
When he was really, really young, he wondered if they would’ve been proud of him, for how good a rivet catcher he was. He wasn’t so great at mining. He was okay at re-stringing and greasing.
He didn’t think about those things anymore.
Basil was an optimist.
That might be hard to believe, after everything you’d just heard. But he was.
“Toxic fumes! T-toxic fumes in the mines!”
It was why he did this.
He had a sign. Painted wood, carved from scraps left to rot and die. YOUR LIFE IS AT RISK, the sign screamed, in black, jagged letters. Basil had long since stopped using parchment and cardboard for anything but his pamphlets. The fog and exhaust from steam pipes got them soggy.
He shouted out. Stood on the end of East Corner’s – a street that did end in a corner, but did not head east. It had been named ‘east’ for some reason, ages ago, beyond the obvious or the apparent.
Maybe that was why Basil stood here, to shout about conditions in mines people already worked in, and should know the conditions of already.
Maybe it was because this was where the least people would listen. Where there were the most minds to change, slowly, through constant exposure.
When he was younger, he’d posted himself up on corners and shouted about things, too. Bad working conditions. Child labor. Exhaust pipes. Smoggy streets. Smoggy skies. A choked planet, suffocating in its own blood, mankind’s boot pressed into its head.
People ignored children that pissed them off, for the most part. People hit adults that pissed them off.
By the evening, he had a new shiner across his jaw, and had lost precisely zero of his pamphlets.
And that was the setting he met Aubrey in.
“Toxic fumes, huh?” she said, in a conversational sort of tone – and Basil startled, with his whole body.
She was leaned against the nearest building. There was never a building very far, in this city. Or anywhere. Her posture was loose. Tired.
“Oh! Y-yes, that’s right, I–” he fumbled for his pamphlets. “Ah, here, it’s– I’ve detailed all the– I’ve detailed everything in here, it’s really… it’s horrid,” he finished, a little lamely.
She took his pamphlet, looking vaguely interested. Her hair was unlike anything he’d ever seen before; cut to the scalp over her ears, bangs longer, but tied back. All jagged and black. Split ends.
“Hm,” she glanced up at him. “I work in the mines.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, well… well, I’d s-suggest you wear a mask?”
“Like yours?”
He adjusted his bandana, self-consciously. “M-maybe not exactly like mine,” he said, weakly. “But– something to g-guard your mouth…”
“What about the eyesight damage?” She tapped one knuckle against the page. “Says here you can lose up to forty-five percent of your eyesight from the fumes.”
“Ah, well, I actually have s-something for… I– I mean, it’s j-just a prototype, but…”
He fumbled for his notebook. He wasn’t an inventor; not by a long shot. But he sketched out ideas of flowers and starry night skies and fields of trees – kept dreams in his head, lest he let himself be brought down to earth. Dragged down to be hollowed out, like the stars before him.
It was a simple visor. The kind most inventors probably had in their labs. He showed the woman the page; she raised her eyebrows.
“It’s, it’s made from ch-cheap materials, so… if we c-could start mass-producing it, it– it should keep workers safe from, from any fumes or, sparks, or… anything.”
“I see,” she said, slowly. And then; “you think you can convince people to start that mass production, makin’ a commotion on the corner of the street?”
Probably not, Basil thought. “...Yes?” he said.
“Hm.”
Silence. Or, as close as the corner of East’s could get to it. The whir of machines. Coughing of exhaust pipes. Churning of gears.
“What’s your name?” she asked, suddenly.
Basil blinked. “B-Basil…?”
“My break’s nearly over, Basil.” She pressed her fist against his shoulder, and pushed him. A mockery of a punch, that almost made him flinch. “But we can meet up afterwards?”
“Oh,” he said. “Okay. I’ll, um, be here. Shouting.” He cringed.
“Cool.” She gave him short, simple smile, that left as soon as it came. Her teeth were crooked, her jawline blunt and prominent. She looked, glaringly, like a lowerclassmen. Like a worker. Like a miner.
And that was how Basil met his first friend.
She brought him to a workshop.
He recognized it as such, instantly. The smell of grease, oil. Exhaust. Loud whirring, the churning of gears. Wrenches and nuts and bolts and screwdrivers left on every available surface.
“Sunny!” she shouted out, when she stepped in.
She’d introduced herself as Aubrey, on the way here. She’d filled the quiet, when he couldn’t. Chatted casually, easily, asked him questions, filled in gaps in his life story.
She was, first and foremost, friendly. Easy to talk to.
‘Sunny’ looked nothing like her.
Aubrey was, first and foremost, a worker. A miner. It bled off her; in the soot staining her hands, and the smell of coal following her like a ghost. In the stone dust that filtered through her hair, caressed her neck.
Sunny was, first and foremost, an inventor.
It bled off him. In the gloves on his hands, made from something black and sturdy-looking. In the large, billowing coat, fastenings secure, stained with chemicals and smelling of burnt hair. In his pale skin and nimble fingers and the goggles that covered his eyes.
“What?” was the first thing he said. His tone was short. No-nonsense.
And then, his head shifted, just enough that Basil could tell – under the googles – Sunny was looking at him. “Aubrey, I’m not harboring another of your projects,” he said, flatly. Blatantly.
Basil shrunk away.
“Oh, shut up, asshole,” Aubrey said, but she didn’t sound angry. Not really.
She stepped forward, and Basil’s pamphlet slapped onto a table, between wrenches and grease stains. “There’s fumes in the mines.”
Sunny’s posture straightened a little. He picked up the pamphlet, and carded through it.
Paused. Kept flipping.
Basil held his breath.
“What are we doing about it?” Sunny asked; and instantly, all the harsh, blatant obviousness of his voice left. He was robotic, willing.
“We can make masks for everyone pretty easy, but it’s the eyesight that’s a proper issue.” And Aubrey, in turn, had stopped being the slouching, casual coal miner. Her voice was brisk, precise.
“Goggles aren’t cheap,” Sunny agreed. “Proper ones, anyway.”
Aubrey shouldered Basil, roughly. He startled. “Basil?”
“Huh?” He glanced, rapidly, between the two of them.
Aubrey gave him a look. Probing, in a gentle sort of way. “Show him your design,” she said, softly.
“Oh, um,” he fumbled for his notebook. “Right, I– I mean, it’s j-just a prototype, so–”
He flipped, hurriedly, to the proper page, and stepped up towards Sunny. Towards tall, imposing, pale inventor Sunny. Towards the smell of chemicals and oil and burnt hair.
Passed Sunny his design. Passed Sunny – Sunny, who was clearly a real, proper inventor, with a real, proper workshop – his hastily sketched design with random, scribbled notes. “I– it’s made from ch-cheap m– m– materials, so I–”
“Not cheap enough,” Sunny cut him off. Looked past him, to Aubrey. “You really think you’re gonna pass this,” he slapped a hand against Basil’s notebook. Basil flinched. “By the overseer?”
Aubrey was toying with a screwdriver she’d scooped off his desk, by now. She snorted. “No way in Hell,” she said. “I’ll get Hero to do it.”
Sunny visibly stiffened. “He won’t.”
“Sure he will,” Aubrey said. “You’ll convince Mari, and Mari’ll convince him.”
Sunny, somehow, stiffened further. “Flowers’ll bloom out of these hills before I convince Mari to make Hero stick his neck out like that.”
“Hm.”
Somehow, the lack of response seemed to just make Sunny more tense. “It isn’t happening, Aubrey.”
“Mm.”
“Seriously. Besides, even if we did get Hero to agree, the Overseer wouldn’t approve a– stop looking at me like that.”
“Sunny.” Aubrey sounded tired. “You know we have to try.”
“Based on what, again?” He scooped up Basil’s pamphlet again. “On some half-baked studies, parroted by some cra–”
Basil looked away.
Sunny stopped. “The Overseer won’t swallow this shit,” he said, setting down Basil’s pamphlet again.
“So we make it cheap,” Aubrey said. “We make it cheap, and we get Hero to run it by her. Convince her that she’ll bleed money if her workers are dying down there – and that, even if it isn’t true, the expense is hardly anything anyway.” She flicked the screwdriver, with one chipped nail. “And if that won’t work, we can just blow it all to Hell.”
Basil blinked.
“What?” he asked.
“Fucking–” Sunny glared at Aubrey, through his goggles. “He doesn’t even know yet. He doesn’t know yet, and you brought him here. To my shop.”
Basil felt like he’d missed something important.
“Yep.” Aubrey popped the ‘p.’ “I got a good feeling about him.”
“I can’t mop up all your charity cases, Aubrey,” Sunny turned away. Leaned against the large, wooden table in the center of the room, machinery brimming off its edges “Bring him to Kel’s or something next time.”
“You’re avoiding the subject,” Aubrey said.
She glanced towards Basil; who was busy trying not to say something like, what was that about blowing things up, again? “Ignore him, he’s… prickly,” she muttered to him, loudly enough Sunny could obviously hear her.
“It isn’t cheap enough.” Sunny sounded angry. Basil shrunk away.
“Can you make it cheap enough?”
“No.” Sunny stopped. “No,” he repeated, more firmly. “No, I…”
“You’re thinking about it.” Aubrey had a crooked smile, to match her crooked teeth.
“I can make it cheaper,” he said. “Not cheap enough.”
“I think you can.”
“I’m not a fucking miracle wor–”
The visors were approved, and Basil was given a box.
It was innocent enough in appearance. All copper, bronze, screws and contained wires. It got hot if you used it long enough. It was small enough to fit in one hand, and it had a small, thin cord of metal coming out its top.
“Radio,” Sunny said, after he passed it to Basil. “It’s for communication.”
Basil looked at it. Looked back up at Sunny.
“Aubrey told you to give this to me, didn’t she?” he asked, smiling softly under his bandana.
Sunny turned away. “...It’s best to talk in a way that Officers can’t hear,” he said, in a deliberate, emotionless sort of tone.
He had his hands propped against his table again. A massive, wooden counter, covered in old burns and grease stains and knick-knacks of all shapes and sizes. A machine – some sort of automaton – was hanging over the table. Wires were exposed on its surface.
Sunny had googles and a mask. Sometimes, he wore a full-face visor. He didn’t need to hide his face.
But he was turned away regardless.
“You’ve seen radios on steambikes and in blimps, I’m sure,” Sunny said, starting to busy his hands with some device or other. “These are designed to be portable. If you push the antenna down, it’ll just look like a normal box, and the Officers won’t know what it is. If they find it on you.”
Basil’s chest was tight.
He stepped a little closer.
“...I’m sorry,” he said, quietly. Hardly a murmur. “I didn’t mean to– to p-poke fun, I… I d-didn’t mean anything by it.” He clutched the box – the portable radio – closer to his chest. “Promise.”
“Right,” Sunny said. His voice was clipped. “You can get out of my workshop now. It smells bad, I’m sure.”
“S-Sunny–” Basil’s hand reached for his shoulder, automatically – and Sunny’s hand darted up, to smack his away by the wrist.
Basil flinched.
“I didn’t realize we were on a first name basis,” Sunny said, voice terribly venomous. “Basil.”
“S– s– sorry,” Basil stumbled back. “I– I’ll g– g– g– go, I– I’m s-sorry–”
The muscles of Sunny’s back tensed.
And Basil ran, like the coward he was.
Aubrey next met him with a bottle of liquor.
It was something filthy. Something meant to get you proper drunk. Whiskey, probably, judging by the color. “You drink, Basil?” she asked, as she approached.
They’d found a bench, on a street corner. It was divided by arm rests. It was late evening – not night, because staying out too long at night meant Officers crawling about.
“N-no,” Basil said.
“You mind if I drink?” She sat down next to him, and uncorked her bottle.
“No,” Basil lied.
She looked towards him.
Her eyes were blue. A steely, bland sort of blue. Hard and cold. Distant, even as her gaze darted up and down his face. Seemed to commit his expression to memory.
Basil fidgeted with his coat.
She re-corked the bottle. “Eh. We’ll stay dry for tonight.”
Basil tried not to sag with relief, and probably failed.
“So,” Aubrey said, conversationally. “I heard Sunny was an ass the other day.”
Basil startled. Shifted away, a little. “N-no, he– I was the j-jerk,” he said, and meant it. “I– I was invading b-boundaries, it’s… n-not his fault…”
“He doesn’t feel that way,” Aubrey said.
Basil looked up at her. “He d-doesn’t?”
“No. He wouldn’t admit it,” she said. “But he’s sulking with his machines. He feels like an asshole, because he is one.”
“Oh, I d-don’t think–”
“Don’t defend him. He wouldn’t want you to.”
Basil stared at her. “...You know him r-really well,” he said, softly.
She glanced at him. Reached up, and pulled down her mask – to give him a mysterious sort of crooked smile.
“I try to know everyone well,” she said.
Sunny had made them all masks. They were black – simple enough, made of some fabric that was comfortable, if a little stuffy.
Basil looked away again. Reached down, to toy with a pebble among the stone pavement. “Okay,” he said, quietly.
“I’d like to know you well,” she said. Casually. Like she was trying not to startle him.
It was a lost cause.
Basil tensed, automatically. “...Okay,” he said, again.
“So, where do you–”
Basil was laying on his back.
He worked. Same as anyone else. His occupation hadn’t changed in the last decade or so – he re-strung inventions and instruments. Toyed with wires and the like.
At the end of each day, he was bone-tired. His hands were sore. Sometimes he burned them, wrenching his fingers between plates of hot metal. His legs were sore, too, from running through workshops, shouldering past men and women and children alike to reach the newest machine that had started breaking down. Printing presses, mostly.
Basil laid on his back, and thought about his days.
He’d had a more eventful last few days than he’d had in a while. The weight of his new portable radio – which wouldn’t work underground, apparently – was heavy on his chest. Like it contained all the bundled, dense materials of connections made.
That was all something electronic was, he supposed. Connections.
He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t an inventor.
He was in his mine. That was how he thought of it, though it wasn’t really accurate. His mine. It didn’t belong to anyone, most likely. It was a corpse. It was meant to be eaten over again, by nature. To be waited out.
Smooth stone. Quiet.
This was something unnatural. But this was where Basil went, to feel close to the earth. To feel the pulse of life under his feet, he needed to find somewhere silent. To feel the warm embrace of nature, he needed to be away from the thick smog and stifling heat of the streets – to be underground, laying against the cold, lifeless stone of a mine, long since abandoned.
Basil laid on his back, and took a few moments to unpack the last few days. The acquaintances he’d made. Odd people he’d met.
It was the only time in his life he could say he knew an inventor. He didn’t feel very starstruck. Really, Sunny struck him as exactly what he’d expected, from inventors – withdrawn and snappish and full of ideas he’d only unfurl through wires.
Aubrey… wasn’t what he’d come to expect, from coal miners.
But he only spent a few moments thinking about them, really, before he was thinking about the sky again. The beautiful, bright blue sky, which had an atmosphere to protect them from the sun. An atmosphere slowly being devoured and choked in its own heat.
Basil laid back, against cold stone, and thought of what it would be like when the world died.
There would be no explosions. There would be no climax. There would be no big, satisfying payoff. Not for what they’d all done to it.
It would choke on itself. It would die, drowned, in its own blood and oil and coal and steam and heat. There would be a rich, endless tapestry of lives, playing out on its surface. There would be homeless children begging for money, and men bloodying men in barfights, and inventors whiling away in their workshops, and alchemists burning away the laws that governed our world – and then, there wouldn’t be.
Not sudden. Never sudden. Sudden is satisfying; a snap of your fingers, the tumble-click of a door closing. No, it would be, and then it just… wouldn’t.
Acid rain would flood the streets. Storms would tear open sidewalk pavements. The earth would be razed, die and rot and leave corpses to hang from building windows.
Sometimes, Basil thought it was what they all deserved. Only sometimes.
And Basil laid, against cold stone, and thought of it all; and thought that, in the end, the earth would be quiet. Just like his mine. One moment, it would be loud, and the next, it would be cold. Empty. Silent.
Basil laid, amidst cold stone and level ground, cradled by the earth’s ribs – and felt like the only real friend he had left was dying, while her doctors looked away.