agentblack

This is how it works.

I'm standing in the cold grey space of a cathedral, long abandoned. The air full of dust and fading light, thick black jacketed cables heavy with electricity and impulses snaking down from the cavernous vaulted ceilings, lazy hanging coils and loops. The fat cables bellies hanging down in slow smooth curves like jungle creepers.

Amongst them roost bad tempered crows, augmented with black glittering technology that pokes from under feathers or from empty eye sockets. They are foul mouthed creatures, and vomit obscenities in a croaking mynah bird voice. It bears some trace of an east end accent, like the disembodied voices of East End Nanas - Lungs tarred with a thousand dog ends and brains full of Blitz memory.

The crows taunt me as I make my way through the cathedral space, sidestepping mysterious pieces of heavy equipment and gear that lie scattered throughout, in place of pews.

A particularly persistent crow hops along the shadowy network of cables, screeching "Wanker" at me. Occasionally, it tosses a nut or loose bolt down at me from its vantage point.
It is a bad shot.

I approach the altar through the discarded arms of cranes and diggers, girders and canisters of oxyacetylene. Stripped of all its previous iconography, now light by neon and fluorescence, and arrayed with strange looking tools and material. The sharp burnt smell of ozone replaces incense.

At the altar Doctor Grueltrf works. I am not prepared for the sight of him. He is carried in a device that looks as though it acts as Invalid Carriage, Sarcophagus, and Siege Engine. It resembles some bizarre synthesis of insectile creatures, moulded in black kevlar and titanium, aluminium and carbonfibre.

At its base, it looks like a crab. It stalks around on thick armoured crab legs, great flexing appendages bending and pushing like hellish clawed fingers. At the front of the device, two powerful looking and sharply curved pincers are held, seemingly dormant, in the pose of a pugilist. They hold the promise of terrible injury in their pose. The bulge and swell at the base before narrowing to their razor thin curved edges, looking more scorpionoid in origin than crab.

Above this, Grueltrf's torso is held, emerging from an armoured sleeve. His legs are not visible, and I wonder for a second if he still has any; if he is surgically fused to his machine, his spinal cord blending with optic fibre, to exercise total control over his apparatus. Around him, radiating like spokes from the apparatus behind his shoulder blades are eight long curving spindles, jointed and arranged like the legs of a spider.

They are made from the same black and dully gleaming materials as the base of his device, and taper to a slow sharp point. They are tipped by a variety of heads, the purposes and function of which are arcane and unclear. The legs slide in and about the project that Grueltrf is assembling upon the retooled altar. Sometimes they spit a short burst of focused laser that either cuts or welds. Sometimes they provide a jolt of electricity to test a newborn circuit.
Most of the time they appear to stream light or sound at various points of the thing being assembled upon the altar, as if scanning and testing the integrity and tolerances of the device slowly taking shape.

And above all that, the mess and mass of cables comes together, in a vast and unruly knot of twisting lines and wires, all of various thicknesses. Some thick and heavy, nightmare tentacles full of raw power. Others are thin and snakelike, running streams and dense bursts of data, spewing binary chatters down their length. All descend from the tangled knots and balls above, in the shadowy darkness populated by the surly and ill mannered crows. They descend and connect into the back of Grueltrf's machine, providing it with power and information. A thick umbilicus of wiring and insulation that drags and twists as it follows Grueltrf orbits and tracks.

Grueltrf appears to be controlling this mysterious process, and manipulates a chinese puzzle in his real human hands, thin and nimble and pale. His monkey hands playing with their opposable thumbs, flesh and bones working, whilst his bizarre brain continues its incomprehensible work.

Grueltrf catches sight of me watching, waves me over. I am unnerved by the weapon like crab claws mirroring the gesture.

In front of Grueltrf and his weird technological throne, I feel small. Vulnerable.
I become very aware of what I am. A warm muscle body made of sinew and gristle with brittle little bones. A young man, with all my fighting reactions and reflexes inherited from my father, fuelled by my fierce little Y chromosome.
All those war hormones brewing inside my testicles, making me ready and willing and wanting to fight and fuck my way through all the partners and opponents I can muster.

A fighting monkey thing at home in the forest and fields playing with his flint spears and sniper rifles. And in this situation, utterly helpless.

In a dead church with Grueltrf and his mechanized body throne, I feel primitive. I feel cowed and subservient. I take a few awkward steps towards him, and try not to visibly flinch as the stamping crab legs close the remaining distance.
Unsure of what else to do, I offer my hand. Encased in his gear, the height difference is substantial. With a whine of servo motors, Grueltrf lowers himself forward to take my hand, the crab/spider body appearing to execute an exaggerated bow.

His pale face washed in the milky light of the fluorescent beams around us, Grueltrfs grin is endlessly sinister, heightened by his eyes, either hidden behind an array of optical gear that rotates and changes at seemingly random intervals. It reminds me of some combination of mutant chameleon and dread robotic dragonfly.

His lips are thin and stretched by his smile, his teeth thin and peg like. He tells me that he's very glad I came down. Very glad indeed. He says that I have a very important function to perform, that I have singular abilities that have brought me to his attention, and the attention of others.

He leads me through some doors, old wood, oily and dark, well varnished and cared for and necessarily over large to accommodate his 'locomotive ostentation', as Grueltrf refers to his mechanical augmentations.

Through the doors is a well furnished drawing room, decorated in Edwardian fashion, antique wall paper, well upholster leather couches, and a heavy smell of old brandy and cigar smoke in the air. He waits for me to settle into a deep armchair, waves out the crow that followed be in. It departs ungraciously, still screaming 'Wanker' with an impressive amount of venom.

His machinery settles to the floor, in an action I will eventually come to think of as 'sitting', and he smiles, his goggles still spinning, focusing, telescoping, flaring, and spinning again.

"My associates and I would like you to tell us about the future." Says Grueltrf. And this is how it begins.