Quantum Steam Theory - Part 4 of 5

Tweet A handful of prostitutes drowned their sorrows with cheap gin at the bar. Toothless men in filthy clothes huddled around battered tables, nursing pints of pale beer. Selina half expected to see Enrique behind the bar; the pub smelled just like Enrique's basement dive. Instead, a rotund bald man stood polishing chipped glasses.

“Excuse me, could you tell me where I am?” asked Selina.

“Ain't from round 'ere, eh?” asked the barkeeper.

“No, no I'm not. I'm not familiar with this part of the city at all and I was wondering if you could tell me what it's called,” said Selina.

“This is Whitechapel, love,” replied the barkeeper.

“Whitechapel? I never heard of it. In what part of Vertigo is that?”

“Vertigo? What do ya mean, Vertigo? You're in London, love.”

Selina stared at the barkeeper. The unfamiliar place names buzzed in her ears.

“What's that ya got there? Is that a Bible?” asked the barkeeper.

He gestured to the black book she still clutched to her chest.

“What's a Bible?” she asked.

“Exactly who are ya, and what are ya doin' in my pub?”

“Um...sorry to have wasted your time...I just remembered, I have somewhere else I need to be...”

Selina backed away from the bar. She threaded her way between the tables and burst out of the cramped pub.

Twilight skulked outside. Selina looked around, still desperate for a familiar sight. She watched a thin boy in faded tweed help an older man light the gas lamps lining the street. Drunkards made impromptu beds on benches in the yard outside the grand white building.

Selina noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. A gang of four young men loitered by the door to the pub. Their overalls looked like those worn by the dockworkers in Vertigo City. Streaks of dirt clung to their gaunt faces. They stared at her, a predatory look in their eyes. These were not men from whom Selina would get directions.

“Who's a pretty bird, then?” said one of them.

Selina said nothing.

“Not gonna talk to us, darlin’?” asked one of the men.

“I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I'm late for an appointment,” said Selina.

“Gentlemen? Lord preserve us, she calls us gentlemen!” said another of the men. They hooted with derision.

Selina hurried down the street away from them. She wove her way among gaggles of people heading back to their dosshouses after a day's casual labour. Selina threw glances over her shoulder. The four young men followed her. She looked around, hoping to find a friendly shop or tavern where she could find shelter.

“You not gonna stop and play with us, chicky?” called one of the men.

“If you don’t stop, we’ll have to make you play,” shouted another.

Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3

Quantum Steam Theory - Part 3 of 5

Tweet She expected to land on her face on the cold library floor. Instead, she lay face down on wet cobblestones. A hackney cab careered past, the thundering hooves of a black stallion inches from her outstretched left hand. Selina scrabbled to get to her hands and knees, and crawled out of the gutter onto the filthy pavement. The book lay open, and mud from a passing cart splattered the empty pages.

Selina leaned onto the cobbles to grab the book. She stared at it in amazement. She flicked through the pages again, trying to find the void. Empty and muddied pages flicked past, with no sign of stars or space.

“'Ere, clear off, you! This is my patch, and I ain't sharin' it with no newcomers!”

A strident voice screeched in her ear. Selina looked up into the pinched face of a middle-aged woman. Knotted red hair hung about her shoulders, and she wore a faded green dress. White face powder settled in the wrinkles around her cruel blue eyes, and two angry red circles of rouge burned on her cheeks. She looked like one of the prostitutes on Commercial Street.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude,” said Selina.

She stood up and looked around her. The woman looked like a Commercial Street whore, but this was not Commercial Street. A muddy gash cut down the street between the uneven pavements. Crooked buildings crammed together around narrow alleys and filthy courtyards. Dirty windows gazed down at her. Scrawny children played in the gutter, oblivious to the degradation around them. Even the Vertigo City slums didn't look like this.

Selina hurried down the street away from the harridan. She clutched the book to her chest. She passed more women in gaudy clothes. Some of the younger ones exposed their chests to the passing carriages, hoping for trade. Selina looked down at her own pale grey shirt and dark grey jodhpurs tucked into knee-high black leather boots. She felt over-dressed. The men stared at her, and the women threw curses, afraid she might steal their business.

The street opened out onto a wider street, an imposing white building on her left behind tall railings. Thick pillars held up a grand portico, while a pointed tower rose from the roof like an accusing finger. Two lengths of stone topped the tower, forming a cross. Selina had never seen such a building before. The architecture of the portico reminded her of the grand buildings of the former Council district of Vertigo, but she couldn't guess as to the purpose of the cross.

A pub stood on the street corner to her right. Gold lettering spelled out 'The Ten Bells' above the door. Light spilled out of the door onto the broken pavement outside. Selina darted across the street between two carts and slipped inside the pub.

Part 1 : Part 2

Quantum Steam Theory - Part 2 of 5

Tweet Ancient books lined the shelves along the corridor. Rotting leather clung to faded tomes, the cracked spines shoved at awkward angles. A sharp smell of neglect and decay permeated the space, and moss bloomed on the exposed brickwork. Selina looked up to see cobwebs looped across the low vaulted ceiling. A large brown spider covered in black stripes sat in a web. It watched her as it unwrapped a dead fly from a silken shroud.

Selina cast her curious gaze over the spines of the books. Some of them bore titles in a language she didn't recognise. She wondered how old they were, and where they were from. She ran her hand along the shelf, and flakes of cold leather drifted to the floor. Selina couldn’t see anything about weaponry. She at least expected Turpin’s Treatise of War or Bartholomew’s Guide to Ballistics.

“Well this was just a waste of my time, wasn’t it?” said Selina.

She directed the question to the spider. The arachnid ignored her in favour of its dinner. Selina shuddered. She could cope with the concept of an animal with eight legs, but as with quantum steam theory, concept and reality were two different things.

Selina turned to leave when a book caught her eye. The flickering lamp light danced across a golden lion embossed on the thick black leather spine. The book seemed out of place among the decaying remains of the other tomes. She pulled it from the shelf and ran her hand over the blank cover. The only clue to its contents was the embossed lion, but Selina had no idea what a lion signified. She wondered if it was the national symbol of whichever country the book came from.

Selina flipped open the book. She expected the same dense print that filled her quantum steam theory textbook, or at least engravings. Instead, the pages were completely blank. Tiny tears and watermarks bordered the pages, but no text marked the creamy white paper. Selina couldn’t even find a publisher’s note or a contents page. She flicked through, inhaling the dusty smell of old paper.

Selina felt a draught on her neck as she flicked through the book. Suddenly, the pages fell open to a black space in the middle of the book. She gazed into the space, seeing stars and distant galaxies laid out before her. A jolt passed through her hands and she dropped the book. It landed on the floor at her feet, still open at the universal void. A strange pull grasped her stomach, and Selina felt herself fall forwards.

Part 1 : Part 3

Quantum Steam Theory - Part 1 of 5

Tweet Selina Mothshaw sat at a heavy oak table in the Vertigo Central Library. The book in front of her lay open at a chart. Dense text covered the page around the graph. Selina tried to read the opening sentence for the sixteenth time.

“Quantum steam theory can, in effect, be described as the optimum state in which all matter resides, such matter being defined as that which is existent within the ordinary spectrum of reality as it is laid out in the Principles of Rumbaud, chapter 4, sub-section 23, paragraph 14. Quantum steam theory is to be applied to all such questions of existence as can be most commonly considered by the thoughtful member of Vertigan society. The theory...”

She pushed the book away. Selina tried to remember what prompted her to choose quantum steam theory when her classmates opted for molecular physics or steam philosophy. Her father's words echoed in her head, telling her that a quantum steam theory qualification could net her a job with the Weimar Corporation’s research division. Selina didn't want to be a steam theorist, but without a viable alternative, she had little choice but to follow her father's advice.

Selina stood up and paced around the table. No one else sat in this section, and the librarians had already cleared away the books and papers left by other students. Her footsteps echoed around the vaulted room, the sound of hob-nailed boots on polished wood sounding like an army on patrol.

Selina looked at her college work. The books lay unread, and doodles of automatons and weaponry cover her ledger. Selina thought she might apply for an internship with Weimar's arms division.

Selina wandered away from the table. A map of the library tacked to a bookcase caught her eye. According to the diagram, the section on weaponry lay at the very back of this floor. She pulled the map from the tacks.

Selina slipped between the stacks into the next reading area. A huge map of Vertigo City lay on the table. Hand-painted monsters lurked in the river, and pencil marks traced a route around Justice Park. A book on anatomy weighted down one corner. Selina wondered if another student was researching the Meat Beast.

She left the map behind and walked among the high shelves. She peeked into another reading area. Four boys sat around a table, flicking wads of chewed up paper at each other. A fifth boy sat apart, attempting to concentrate on a thick book bound in green leather. The other four boys ignored him.

Selina consulted the map. The weaponry section lay around the corner. Her route took her into a narrow corridor. The ceiling dipped, and wooden floorboards gave way to bare flagstones. A damp chill hung in the air. Selina shivered. Selina thought of her quantum steam theory homework, and considered heading back to the reading area. Half of an equation floated through her mind, and she grimaced. She ventured further into the depths of the library.

Part 2 : Part 3 : Part 4

The Second Tale - Part 2

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I’m walking along Commercial Street, the slums of Downtown far behind me. My super hearing picks up faint strains of classical music. Wagner. Someone is in real trouble. The echo on the music says they’re in a large building. Vertigo Central Station. I put Downtown behind me and start running north.

It’s one of my gifts, if you could call them that, to hear human emotions as music. I thought everyone could do it until I got to school and realised I was a freak. That was what they called me. Freak. It took me fifteen years to fully embrace what I could do. Fifteen years to realise that I’m not a freak. Vertigo City just produces strange people. We thrive here.

Wagner stops dead, cut off mid-crescendo. I speed up, sprinting through the streets, but I already know I’m too late. Vertigo Central Station sits at the crossroads of Vertigo Avenue and City Boulevard. It’s a cathedral of transport, a cavernous hall of marble and cold stone from the old Windspit Quarry in the Hills. The rush hour throng flows through the main booking hall. People hurry home at the end of a busy day. Bankers, receptionists, lawyers, doctors - all of them oblivious to the anguish and resentment simmering outside.

The throng flows around a small circle of people near one of the booking office windows. A woman sprawls on the floor, her beige overcoat soaking up blood. I assume it’s hers. A man crouches beside her. He wears too much hair cream and his leather gloves smell new. Blood spatters his shoes.

“Look! It’s The Hero!” shouts an onlooker.

I look down into the woman’s not-unattractive face. She looks like any one of the hundreds of poster girls plastered across town, selling hand cream or soda or products guaranteed to achieve domestic bliss. Pretty, but generic. Pretty, generic, and dead.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, one minute I was behind her, next minute there was a bang, she screamed, and she fell to the ground,” he says. “I think she’s been shot.”

“You didn't see anyone?" I ask.

“No. There were people everywhere. It took me long enough to get people to step over her," he replies.

“Anyone know who she is?”

“She’s got a Council ID in her purse. Says she’s Ida Willcott. Justice Department,” says a blonde woman.

She’s holding the dead woman’s bag, guarding it from view. The dame is dead, and this stranger still wants to keep her purse private. Stupid, really.

“Well, Ida…what’s your story?” I ask.

I pull off my gloves, press my index fingers to her temples, and let her start talking.

Back to Part 1

The Second Tale - Part 1

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Late afternoon, late February. It's getting dark already. My shadow strides away from me in the deepening twilight. I follow where it leads. The Christmas lights outstay their welcome in the street. The blinking or broken bulbs loop their way from one lamppost to the next. Their lazy flashes skitter across the wet sidewalk, sparking in the puddles. It's pathetic enough in December. Now it's intolerable. Just like the rest of the city.

Every day, I watch the slow, steady decay of the crumbling metropolis. Notices of condemnation appear on a daily basis all over town. Entire streets disappear into demolished oblivion. The homeless take refuge in the dying shells of these unwanted buildings, and most of down town is a haven for the dispossessed. The apartment blocks stand empty, hunkered over abandoned stores advertising long gone wares in broken windows. No one ventures onto the streets in this neighbourhood. The eerie silence is only broken by gunshots or the squalling cries of hungry babies.

A man shuffles towards me, one shaking hand held out while the other clutches his oily rags at his throat. He stinks of cold, clammy death. At first I think he is one of the Risen, but I see his bloodshot eyes and realise he's just a down-and-out. I bury my face in my collar to avoid the stench. He sighs when I walk past. I have no intention of stopping. I refuse to give his kind money. You just have to take one look at those scrawny arms poking out from beneath his rags, punctuated with needle marks, to know how he'll spend it. I want to help but he's beyond my reach.

I head into an alley between the remains of a retro café and a hardware store. Bodies, swollen with rain yet frozen by the cold, lie under disintegrating cardboard shelters. Hungry eyes watch my progress as I cross from 34th Street out into Mayhew Square. I could bring them food, or help them build shelters, but it won't help. Not in the long run. I'd just need to come back the next day and do it all over again. The City Fathers sit back and do nothing. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and all the while the city rots.

Sometimes I hate who I am. They call me The Hero, and yet there is only so much I can do.

The Launch of The First Tale ebook!

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It's finally here! The First Tale e-book is now available for 99c from Smashwords. Click here to buy! The e-book collects all thirty episodes of the serial that ran on this blog, although naturally it's been edited and tweaked to improve the flow, even out the tone and in a couple of places, even add a little extra action.

So now you can read the whole story of the Vertigo City Resistance and the Weimar Corporation in one go, if you so choose! It's available in all the usual Smashwords formats, including MOBI, EPUB and PDF.

As a special bonus, if you buy the e-book, there's a link on the back page to the extras I bundled together, which will hopefully add a little to the experience of Vertigo. I'm talking newspaper clippings, propaganda posters...and of course, another copy of the wonderful cover illustration of Commander Liss Hunt by the exceptionally talented Jimmy Misanthrope.

Of course, if you like it, feel free to leave me a review!