The Unpocalypse Series - Volume 1

Elly - The New Automaton Theater

Elly Welles, even after her hair had gone white with age, still came to her usual table on the patio at Cafe Floria at least a few mornings each week. She wore a dark blue dress with a high neck and long sleeves, and pinned to her bun of white hair, a small hat with silk flowers on it. She sipped her coffee and thought how the fall weather grew cooler each day and soon she would have to forego her favorite outdoor seat until the following spring.

A middle-aged man in a pristine suit approached her table and reached for her hand in greeting, and she offered it. He clasped her hand and held it. "Mizz Welles. It's lovely to see you again. It's been far too long."

"Adam, thanks for coming. Please, sit." The man set a leather folio on the table and sat across from her.

"Is this finally it?" he said with an expression that was half-friendly and half-feigned sadness. She smiled in return.

"I asked you to bring the papers, didn't I? I'm 70. It's time. If I had more energy - if I thought I had more time, I'd still be working on the damn thing!" They both laughed. "You know me. I can't stop until it's perfect, but this one... My eyesight is going. I get tired. I had to just say 'that's good enough' and let the public see it."

"Are you excited? Is it getting good reviews?" he asked. She gave him a knowing look.

"Don't be coy. You've seen the reviews."

"Alright, so I have heard some of the reviews are not great, but you know, it was an impossible goal. You invented Automaton Theater thirty years ago. So many people have copied you and tried new things since then. It's just not as novel as it once was," he shrugged, "and you took almost twenty years on this one play. People waited so long and then gave up on it. Now that you finally released it, they've forgotten about it for ten years at least."

"So, you saw my notes about the staff and the budgeting right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I've had Arthur as my apprentice and lead engineer since the beginning of this project. He knows every gear, spring, and cam. He knows every note of the music - all the suppliers we used. I asked him to submit a written assessment to you twice a year for parts and maintenance costs, and to have two trained apprentices on staff all the time."

"I know. I read the notes."

"No, I'm afraid you might not get it. This is likely the most complex machine in the world. It will run for a few years with minor maintenance and repairs, but in twenty years, forty years, cams and gears will start to wear down. The whole thing could get very unbalanced - out of sync - cascading failures and blockages. It will take Arthur at least ten years to train apprentices up to his level. It will take them ten years to train someone under them. This machine needs to run for decades at least. Every day. It needs to be open and never miss a scheduled showing, if at all possible."

"Elly, yes. Point taken. I will budget for it. I will protect your estate and fund the theater until the money runs out." He opened the folio, pulled out a stack of papers, and flipped to a specific page and pointed. "Do you see this number? With your fortune, I would guess that's at least fifty years. I will be passing this account onto my daughter, most likely. Your theater will outlive us both." She looked at him and nodded. He then pulled a fountain pen from inside his breast pocket, uncapped it and handed it to her. "While you have that open, can you sign the last three pages?" She took the pen and obliged him. The steel nib scratched and swirled noisily on the heavy parchment.

"So, what did you think of it?" she asked as she handed back his pen. "Did you use the tickets I sent?"

"I saw it. It was very impressive - the scale I mean, but I don't think I understood it. There were parts, like the thing with the stars and the heavenly bodies, where frankly, I wept, but by the end, I'm not sure what I watched. It was quite abstract. It was nothing like your first play." Adam gauged her look to see if he'd upset her. "If I can ask, as your lawyer, estate manager, and hopefully friend, can you let me in on the secret? What is it about? Who is it for?"

"What if I told you that the play is a message from the future, written in the past, for four boys who may come to see it tomorrow or five years from now, or fifty? What if I said I have no idea when, and that's why it must remain open every day for every scheduled showing?"

"I'd say you have just the right amount of eccentricity that you theater types are expected to have."

"You are a gentleman for saying so." At this, she smiled, they said their goodbyes and Adam left.

Elly sat for a moment to finish her coffee. She found herself thinking about the old woman she'd met all those years ago, who had called herself "Granny". She must have passed on by now, but Elly thought of her often, just as she thought about what Granny called "The Machine". The old woman talked about The Machine as though it was a god, or The God, or maybe the universe. Whatever the case, she made it seem like The Machine had a will, or a plan, or at the very least, ran according to some divine rules. When Granny had given her that one peek into the workings of The Machine, it had revealed her life's greatest task, and now she was done with it. Done.

She took another sip of her coffee, but it had gone lukewarm and lost its appeal. She set the cup down thinking her life had done the same. It had been barely over a month since her new play, The Unpocalypse, had opened and she already ached from her newfound feeling of obsolescence. She had worked for almost twenty years with such a sense of purpose and felt each day like she was doing something enormously important. Now it was done.

She made her way to the front sidewalk of the cafe, prepared to make her short walk to her home. As she stepped up to the curb to cross, a valet said, "Allow me, ma'am."

He walked out in the street, blowing a silver whistle and waving a little broom back and forth across the ground. He made his away across the street, cleared away the few bits of manure in the crosswalk and made his way back to the middle of the street. He stood there with his arms out, like a traffic cop and blew the whistle again. This was her signal to cross and the signal to the cross-traffic to allow her.

Elly took a few steps into the street and tried to ignore the sour smell of horse manure that hit her. She was vaguely aware, to the far left of her vision, of a horse carriage slowing down for her. As she reached the middle of the street, she tipped the valet with a large silver coin. She heard an unfamiliar rumbling sound to her right. Then, one of those motor-velocipede things pulled to a stop for her just short of the crosswalk. She could see its awkward skinny shape out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to look at the preposterous thing. She was sure that four-wheeled motor-powered carriages would soon catch on in favor of horse carts, but these silly two-wheeled contraptions, offered no stability and no protection. She expected to see either a very young man or a dandy riding it, because only a young fool or a show-off would... when she saw the rider, she felt zapped as though by a thick current of electricity.

There was a man, perhaps in his 30s, riding the machine. He had a beard and goggles and a funny helmet. If the machine had been a bicycle instead of a motored-cycle, and the beard were gray instead of black, he would look exactly like the character in the play: the wise old man who helps the four boys. It wasn't just a resemblance; it was uncanny. The sunken cheeks, the prominent nose and brow, the tall lanky frame. She felt the world click and whir like an enormous automaton. She knew at that moment she was inside it, part of The Machine, and so was this man. She wanted desperately to stop and interrogate him. What did he know about the boys? Were they alright? Had they even been born yet? Maybe the black beard instead of gray meant it was decades early still. She hoped her estate money would keep the theater running until they could see it. All these thoughts just piled up in her mind in the span of a few seconds.

To the man on the bike, it just looked like the old woman crossing the street was confused for a moment. Perhaps she had mistaken him for someone else. She smiled at him, sweetly, then she moved on.