Untitled
an excerpt

Chapter One
In which our hero strikes out on his own.

The docks of Weston Port were crowded and difficult to navigate, the winding paths being heavily obscured by both the early morning fog and the steam issuing from the massive engines on the airships. Sailors of various ranks jostled towards the market nearby to replenish supplies and purchase sundry items that their respective captains and ships required. Travelers dragged luggage behind them, peering through the fog, trying vainly to find the vessel that would carry them to their destinations. Many families were waiting for loved ones, welcoming them home from a long voyage, looking out over the throngs of people for that one familiar face.

Benjamin Shipwright was moving slowly along a row of large transport ships, watching men and women load and unload packages of varied sizes, many small enough to move by hand (or by several hands if the weight required more than one body to lift it) but quite a few were large crates and trunks and required specialized machinery to move it from the ship to the dock. Ben stood in awe, shouldering his heavy pack, looking on eagerly as a hulking steel and brass arm was maneuvered over a particularly unwieldy load and grasped the thing much like a child would grab a toy and hold it tightly in their fist.

The young Shipwright had never been outside of his hometown, a small but wealthy hamlet named Farthington, centered in Theed County (two counties over from Weston), and his father often frowned on his son’s habit of taking apart his expensive pocketwatches and gramophones and examining their inner workings. Ben found this amusing as his father could afford twenty of the most expensive pocketwatches one could find but Benjamin Shipwright Sr. seemed to object to this “tinkering” on more serious grounds. He thought it was a waste of time and a hobby too commonplace for any son of his. He continually urged Ben to take up more fitting sport for a young man of his stature, like hunting or polo. Ben ignored his father’s wishes and instead began venturing out of the hamlet and into the markets in the working sections of Theed County. Ben loved the smell of the grease and the steam and seeing craftsmen creating and repairing all the things his father loved to purchase and then ignore. He longed to learn how everything worked and, more importantly, how to fix them. Ben started buying up a few broken knickknacks from the local mechanics and shopkeepers every month and trying restore and repair them to what he imagined would be their original state. Soon after, Ben wanted to create his own devices. He had no idea what he could invent that someone else hadn’t already made and refined far beyond his very limited skill, but he still wanted to try.

As he watched the groaning machine grasp the package with almost human stability and precision, he hoped that he could find a ship that would take him far away from Farthington and Theed and his father and all that he knew. He had known almost nineteen summers and had yet to experience anything outside his backyard and his library. His father had just announced not a week prior that Ben would be betrothed to Miss Anne Parks, the daughter of one Sir Reginald Parks, a wealthy aristocrat who also happened to be a lawyer, like Shipwright Sr., like Ben was supposed to be. He’d met the young lady once briefly and, while she seemed of an amiable nature and pleasant manner, Ben recoiled at that thought of spending his life by her side. He felt quite sure she felt the same way about him. At this prospect, Ben turned tail. He gathered a few choice earthly possessions and a spare set of clothes and never looked back, only stopping once to look at the night sky to ask his mother to somehow allow his father to forgive him. He had left a letter, explaining his reasons for leaving and what he planned to do but he knew that his words fell on deaf ears and blind eyes. None of that mattered now.

Watching the crew members, dock workers, and mechanics hurry about and perform their jobs with earnest and true focus filled Ben with a sense of purpose. He came here to escape from the life that his father was trying to force him to live. He came to make his own way in the world, to experience all the joys that life was filled with, something real, not the forced happiness and shallow pleasures in which his family and their peers partake. He wanted to find truth in himself and in others, not in the trifles and the expensive trinkets that he was told mattered most. Ben was so enamored with his thoughts of truth and reality and experiencing the fruits of life that he completely took for granted his position of being vertical and conscious. The last thing he heard was the creaking of metal, the swooping of a large mass swinging through the air, and the thud of something coming into contact with the back of his head.