Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 11: Computer Geeks Need Love Too, Part 1

The city of chrome and circuitry was something of a tentative jaunt into madness and magic. One would think technology and the arcane did not mix well, and often times they'd be right. The problem with someone like Nebuchadnezzar was the fact that he bent these normative rules and shoved them so far up the asses of mainstream thought that he really did seem like a man out of space and time.

Nebuchadnezzar could control technology through an otherworldly influence, much like I had been able to control blood and flesh at one time. For him, instead of vital essence and skin, it was electricity and electronics, the smooth curvatures of a computer and motherboard, the fine, delicate chips of a processor unit. The man was able to rig up any weird device and make it work, despite logic dictating that said device should not be able to work.

For the Circuit-Shanty, this meant that the whole of the city was one giant supercomputer, working in and out like a machinist's wet dream. Factories laid everywhere from the start of the chrome road to the end, where the platinum castle sat in all its glory, near the harbor. People—or more aptly, cyborgs—paced the lanes in their metallic frames, loading things onto mini-shuttles that would carry the metal and precious earth to another factory to be refined, where it'd be shipped away to another factory to be assembled into what-have-you.

And it all worked with a vile precision and proficiency. Nebuchadnezzar ruled over it all, overseen each formula, his mind in a constant motion that rivaled the polymaths of old or—if I could say it once more—a computer's processing ability.

We stopped at the front of the castle, where his clockwork soldiers lined up outside the tall metal doors. They circled me and mine, their riveter guns trained on us, mounted on stubs that had once been arms. They carried no emotion, no warmth inside of themselves; Nebuchadnezzar had a fine time creating the limiter chips that punished the flow of free thoughts and such loathsome weaknesses as empathy. Nebby was a cruel leader; in the old days I may have been envious of some of his strategies. Now, I simply found him disgusting.

"Jo, Geraldine, Lilly, Corbin," I said. "We all go together."

"He said he only wanted you, Jo, and Geraldine," Corbin replied, looking up at the giant monitor above the tall castle doors. It had an ever-watching eye glaring out over the vast city scape. "Do you think it wise to test him here?"

"I will not go in without you and Lil," I told him. "Jason, Tom, and Thimble." Jason, the jester, and the Penitent stepped up to the plate. "Can you three watch over the men? If anything happens—you know what to do."

"Aye," the big guy said. "Give me the babe, I'll take care of the little one too."

Lilly handed Jason the alien-baby. Keith seemed to like everyone but me; he felt comfortable in Jason's arms.

"Master," Jason said as he cradled the babe protectively. "Do you think we should talk like this in front of his castle, he can probably hear—"

"I can hear you," Nebby said as the monitor with the eye extended out a few feet and the image of the ocular organ went wide.

I quickly turned my head to the screen and made a sour face, voicing my thought on it. "Well of course you can."

"I'll allow it, for now," Nebby said, the eye mimicking mischievous intent with a curl of the brow. "Come in, come in, to my Neverland."

The doors swung open quickly, the path set on mechanical tracks to help the weight of the doors move in precise fashion. A slightly greenish, pale cloud of fog began to pour of the doors, out over the steps and into the courtyard. Well, terrific, ominous—maybe poisonous—fog clouds were always a great way to foreshadow things. What choice did I have though?