Automaton Zero

Neetra turned to Dimension Borg. “So, the intergalactic war Harbin starts is somehow the Next Four’s doing,” said she. “You told us it’s what will happen if Gala’s plans are completed. That fits with the Prophecy, because the Next Four come from the Dark Advents, and the final conflict’s described as the culmination of those time-periods. But Gala showed Joe she was the saviour of the first Dark Advent. She freed Nottingham, and cured the plague that was responsible for all the suffering.”

“Quite so,” Dimension Borg returned. “And did she show him what else she did on that same bright day?”

Another flick of the pincer brought a new portal speeding over to Neetra. There was Gala, aged sixteen, in an upper room of Nottingham Castle as it had been in the era of her birth. Neetra knew from Joe’s descriptions that the blubbery man she faced was the Burghermeister, self-appointed dictator of Nottingham ousted by Gala’s conquering exploits.

“Let me warn you, girl,” the Burghermeister was threatening Gala, “you’ll find me more than equal to any terms you may care to dictate!”

“I seriously doubt that,” was the young Gala’s reply, whereat she summarily slaughtered him with the broken blade of her cutlass.

Neetra stared, wide-eyed and pale, as the choking Burghermeister died in a pool of his own blood. “Barely older than me...and already she was a murderess,” our heroine breathed. “I knew we couldn’t trust her...I knew all along...!”

“It was so with every living one of those you call the Next Four,” Dimension Borg proclaimed. “In youth, they were heroes of their individual Dark Advents...but they tasted power, and it made them crave more. In time, each of them because most feared and corrupt tyrant their Dark Advent produced. Such is the way of all carbon-based life. Such is the road your so-called saviours and champions will ultimately follow.”

“Like you know the first thing about us,” retorted Neetra. This topic was drawing too close to her current thoughts on Joe to be entirely comfortable.

Dimension Borg’s crimson optics smouldered. “You forget that for six centuries I studied your organic kind from my prison,” he declared. “I saw every weakness, every vanity. I learned with what ease you can be made to succumb to the darkness. And I am not only one who knows of this.”

“Let’s stay on the subject,” Neetra put in coldly. “You’re wrong anyway about at least one of the Next Four. Steam’s not like them. He isn’t from a Dark Advent. He’s a replacement for the original member of the Next Four who they lost.”

Dimension Borg remained silent at this, but his glaring face seemed to be telling Neetra he had already given her enough information for her to be able to do this part of the legwork herself. So she thought for a moment, and found he was correct. After all, her trip to the third Dark Advent had already come up, and Steam had not only been with her then but also demonstrated a surprisingly thorough working knowledge of that epoch. In addition there was the mysterious connection between the mechanized man and Professor Mao’s daughter Jiang Jiang, who had said that meeting Steam on the occasion of their visit to the library resolved conundrums perplexing even her supernal mind, and of whom Neetra had recently learned there was some kind of psychic echo or presence dwelling deep within Steam. Our heroine looked back to Dimension Borg.

“The third Dark Advent,” she announced. “The lost member of the Next Four Steam replaced was the tyrant of the third Dark Advent.”

Dimension Borg waited a little longer.

“And that was Colonial Administrator Ferron,” Neetra went on, trying to recall as much as she could. “Is he the missing one of the Next Four, and the reason they needed Steam? But Ferron wasn’t human, maybe not even real at all. That’s in the book too, it calls him – what was it? – the dark firstborn of the forge. So Steam’s the replacement for whatever Colonial Administrator Ferron really was?”

“Impressive,” grated Dimension Borg, bringing another time-portal to them. “Behold. There has been but a single instance in which the two met.”

The unfamiliar man Neetra was looking at could only be Ferron. Steely-eyed and severe, immaculate in a costly suit of third Dark Advent cut, he was installed in the barest of offices that boasted only a bookcase of ledgers and a desk with a tall black telephone on it. The other man in the portal, who Neetra did know, was Steam.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Ferron demanded, confronting him. “Who are you?”

“Friend of a friend of a friend, mate,” was Steam’s reply. “But I’ve not got time to chat. Something I’m after here, and you’re in me way...’scuse us a minute.”

With that he twisted Ferron’s head clean from his shoulders, and Neetra saw that once again the Prophecy had not lied. Ferron was no human. The body that thudded to the office floor, oozing black oil and spitting sparks, was that of an android.

Meanwhile Steam took from the desk drawer the Time-Shifting Device that our heroine now realised was the object of his violent visitation. Then she heard him inform the truncated mechanoid he could have the thing back when he was finished using it, and also that there was something else he wished to do while he was there. Displaying once again his intimate knowledge of this time and place, Steam touched the one file on the bookshelves that was apparently the lever to open a secret passage beyond, and set off down the dark tunnel. Presently he arrived at the tiny windowless chamber to which it led, and Neetra had more reasons than one to catch her breath when her gaze and Steam’s fell on what sat there.

“You look, flesh-sister, on the dark firstborn of the forge,” Dimension Borg boomed. “That is Automaton Zero. Built by human scientists at the dawn of the technological age, he is the first sentient mechanical being made by man. Creator and master of the mere mask that was Ferron, true ruler of Earth during third Dark Advent, and original fourth member of the Next Four.”

That much would have been apparent enough to Neetra from the great robot’s ownership of a Time-Shifter, even were it not for the cell’s awesome array of computers and equipment or indeed the android Ferron itself, all of which were far too technically advanced to belong to that time and could only have come to it via The Chancellor. But there was more than this to make Neetra gasp and stare speechless at the imposing bodywork of Automaton Zero. True, it was blocky and unwieldy and of more-than-human girth, but nevertheless any observer would have noticed at once what Neetra did about its tooled sheet-metal of vivid purple and the bronze-coloured cogwheels that jointed the scaffolding-like limbs. All these features were duplicated to the last bolt and rivet in the slim automated physique of the man watching from the shadows.

“That thing’s body,” our heroine breathed. “It’s...it’s Steam!”

Nor was this mysterious resemblance was the only one. Observing Automaton Zero’s angular bulk and rounded head, Neetra could not help adding to Dimension Borg: “Looks a lot like you too.”

“He is my earliest ancestor,” was her host’s reply, “and your parents were aware of him. They studied experiment by their scientific predecessors that had once before brought about what they sought to achieve in me. Such was possible, for as retroactive history draws closer to Nottingham’s creation and point of convergence with pre-Nottingham Earth timeline, such coalescing begins to occur.”

Neetra had enough to take in without trying to wrap her head around this concept on top of it all. She raised a hand to her brow.

“So...Steam meant that he’s Gala’s friend, and she’s Automaton Zero’s friend, and he’s Ferron’s friend,” she declared weakly. “And that explains where he got the Time-Shifter. He never did tell the rest of us.”

Dimension Borg summoned another portal. Within it Neetra saw Automaton Zero and Ferron inside the computer-lined cell, talking to each other while the latter was having his head reattached. There was a swirling of red light as the Time-Shifting Device that Steam had taken appeared beside them.

“And it appears the half-organic stranger who decapitated me was as good as his word, master,” said Ferron. “He has returned the Time-Shifter to us as he stated he would.”

“I AM GRATIFIED BY THIS,” droned Automaton Zero in his wax-cylinder voice. “THE OTHERS REQUIRE EACH OF US TO POSSESS THESE IF OUR MACHINATIONS ARE TO REACH FULFILLMENT.”

“The machinations of which he speaks are known to you,” Dimension Borg concluded, flipping the portal away. “It was Automaton Zero, not Steam, who Next Four meant to stand with them on day they revealed their existence to you, and deployed Time-Shifters together in task for which they were invented.”

“Which was kicking your gigantic metal butt,” slipped in Neetra, who was still feeling slightly nettled. “So what happened? Where did it all go wrong for Automaton Zero?”

The next time-portal flew their way at Dimension Borg’s command. Far out in the desert, two enormous robots were battling it out while the world around them steadily collapsed into a cataclysmic whirlwind of searing green. One of the combatants was Automaton Zero, swelled to impossible size, and casting out with her psychic powers Neetra found that his silver-gleaming opponent was piloted by her friends the two professors and Jiang Jiang, along with four others who Neetra had not properly met on her trip to the third Dark Advent but of whom she knew. These seven souls had been known as The Wandering Dragon, and they were the only ones to stand against Ferron and his mechanical master throughout their evil reign.

“Acting on his own initiative, Automaton Zero embarked on a plan to bring very forces of time and creation under his control,” Dimension Borg narrated above the titanic struggle. “An early part of this was to precipitate world war on Earth, but ultimately repercussions of his deed were felt in every corner of universe, even this distant galaxy, as Automaton Zero brought fabric of reality itself close to destruction. Those you call The Wandering Dragon resisted him thus and saved time-space continuum, but neither faction then had power enough to finish the other.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Neetra, and she was starting to smile. “Because I’ve just figured out the ending. There’s only one way it can have gone. A certain little friend of mine achieved her destiny, didn’t she?”

Dimension Borg was silent as he whipped a new portal over. Neetra knew him well enough to tell that this was proof enough she was correct.

“Way to go, Jiang Jiang,” our heroine said softly, her heart aglow with the first good news she’d heard all day.

Sure enough, there lay Automaton Zero in pieces. At some time he had been reduced first to his normal proportions, and then to a smoking heap of purple and bronze junk. The Wandering Dragon were standing over him, Jiang Jiang levitating aloft and still somewhat luminous from striking the final blow. Rays of morning sun were shining through the clouds above as if with newfound hope. The third Dark Advent was over.