Excerpt: Mechronica

An Undignified Arrival

In the cylindrical cargo compartment of the pneumatic transit vehicle, the darkness was nearly complete. Plato Brassbinder, awakened by the cessation of the constant motion that he had been unconsciously feeling for the last several hours, slowly became aware of his surroundings. He was uncomfortably tucked into a narrow crevice between a pallet of rectangular boxes of rough hewn wood and a stack of cold metal distributor vanes lashed to the curved wall of the compartment. As he extracted himself, he could hear his bones creak and feel the complaint of each of his individually cramped muscles. From his waistcoat he withdrew a pocket watch on a chain, but when he held it before his face he found it to be all but invisible in the gloom. He could make out the rounded shape of the thing, but there was no hope of his possibly determining the time. Well, this likely meant it was after dark, he reasoned as he replaced the watch in his pocket.

The darkness, as noted, was not entirely complete – a wavering glow leaked through a pattern of threadlike fissures surrounding the access doorway at the end of the container. It could only be, Plato realized, the approach of someone carrying a light source outside the compartment. He quickly pulled himself to his feet and brushed down his rumpled clothing even as the light brightened and the unmistakable crunch of footfalls in gravel grew louder. The metallic clunk of the door latch echoed within the curved interior of the compartment, and he fumbled with the buckles on the crumpled courier bag at his side, finally managing to open the flap. He extracted a battered handheld analytical tablet from the bag and turned to face the closed access door, just as it swung outward with a grinding squeal.

“Good evening to you, sir,” he said loudly as soon as he was able to discern that the lantern-carrying person who had opened the door was indeed a man.

The man stumbled backward, his hydro-luminescent globe swinging crazily in his hand, and very nearly fell sprawling into the gravel, but managed to catch himself by desperately clinging to the door handle. Clearly shocked at the sudden appearance of a passenger in the cargo cylinder, he could only stand there, open-mouthed and staring.

Plato glanced about officiously, then stepped forward and squeezed past the man to step out of the compartment.

“You have my undying gratitude, my good man” he pronounced. “Wouldn’t you know it – I inadvertently found myself enclosed within the compartment after my cargo audit at the last stop,” he explained. “No harm done, though, thanks to your meritorious devotion to duty. Your superiors will hear of this; you may rely upon it.” He tapped significantly on his tablet with a fingertip and then strode purposefully away across the transit yard, leaving the other man speechless in his wake.

There was no moon this evening, curse the luck, so Plato wasn’t able to immediately gain a sense of absolute direction, but a brief glance at the surrounding area was enough to reveal the location of the transit station. The small knot of dim figures walking slowly toward the lighted building no doubt consisted of the recently disembarked passengers who had obtained more traditional traveling arrangements aboard the pneumatic transit vehicle. He adjusted his angle slightly to orient himself more directly toward the station.

Plato forced himself not to look back, taking comfort from the fact that the man’s uniform had announced him as a lowly Pneumatic Transit Authority security officer, and not a member of Augerton’s famed Civil Guard. Not only that, the officer was armed only with a truncheon, and was a good fifteen pounds overweight - in Plato’s estimation, this man was far from likely to...

“Err... excuse me! You there!” The man had apparently recovered his voice at last.

Pretending not to hear, Plato picked up his pace, imperceptibly, he hoped. But no – the sound of ponderous footsteps in the gravel became more closely spaced, and the guard’s voice took on an added sense of urgency. “Hold up there!” the man huffed from too close behind.

Plato pulled out all the stops and pelted across the yard, his bag slamming rhythmically against his hip and his tablet gripped tightly in his outflung left hand. Upon nearing the transit station, he veered from the inviting glow of the main entryway and headed instead for a dim alley at the side of the building. He ducked into the shadowed opening, hoping fervently that the alley would not be fenced at the other end – or at least that the fence, if there proved to be one, would be readily scalable.