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Description
Stone palisade. Timeless stone used to slow goings. It was the front of a regal building, a place where the well oiled gears of government could call home. The whole of government a clock ticking away in a circle. A single cog displaced will not be noticed until a perceptive passerby would look upon the face, seemingly in its future. TICK. Glass bottle. Burnt sand. Filled with an angry liquor and silenced with a rag. Burning with an Exothermic rage it flies through the void to meet the clock face sitting on the building. TICK. The glass greets the face with shrapnel. Burning fiery liquid drips down the minute, the hour, the stone, the air. A crash of glass thunder and fiery rain to make way for the tornado.
“Damn these people are crazy!”
“Shut up!” The other teenager lowered his voice so the droll of the crowd around them would be cover enough for the both of them. “Sure they are, mad as balls. But they're saner than the men in there.” He motioned with his shivering hand, pointing past the pillars now burning to a towering brass door emblazoned with hundreds of gears. As he took the neon yellow and blue bandanna from off his bleached white hair his arm hair stood on end in the icy wind. “It's warmer out here too.” He smiled widely and pulled the bandanna over his mouth tying it back. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and exhaled frozen breath through the cloth.
“You’re crazy too, ya know that?” The teenager smirked. She was shorter than the other by a few inches and had no bandanna about her head. Instead she was knelt down slightly, wrapping a half of the cloth around one of her hands, the other already covered in the yellow and blue rags. She barred her teeth as she used them to tie a tight knot with her covered hand. Clenching and unclenching her fist she turns it around, inspecting her makeshift gloves. Satisfied, she ties the long leftover strip around her ankle. “Besides, you look like someone ready to make trouble. Don't go blending in so soon.”
“Oi! Wouldn't you-” He was cut short by another yell from the crowd. He could no longer tell if they were good or not. The crowd itself had certainly transformed in the past hour or so. He stopped talking and shouted half-heartedly with the rest. After the whoop had quickly died down he turned to his friend. “See? This has some real potential.”
The other kid runs a finger under her nose and sniffs in, coughing at the dry, cold air. “Potential to get us killed. I knew this would be trouble, I was right. Did you see that firebomb?”
Firehead chuckled. “Went right over us, it did. Dead on shot to the clock too, good aim.” He looked up at the clock. Through the fire you could faintly see the hands. “If that thing held up to the fire It looks like it's nearly seven thirty.”
“It looks closer to seven twenty-five.”
“Close enough. What are you, part of civil protection?”
“If I was, I'd stay the hell away from here.” She glances towards the direction of the intense stares around her. She could barely see the tops of white plastic helmets lined up at the front, no doubt civil protection. “Speaking of CiPo, looks like they finally got here.”
“They took their damn time. Well at least you can tell your family you were at a true civil disturbance.”
Scope laughs nervously. “If I get my way, they won't ever be hearing about this.” She was still worried about the official forces being called in for something she was involved with. They didn't have a reputation for being very nice, or generally good. Despite the name, their methods weren't very civil and she had a feeling that they never once protected anything. “It's a good thing they can't see us. I don't like being near those...things.”
“You always have hated those guys. I don't see why they're always in that outfit. I've never once seen them without their masks on.”
“What the hell do they hide behind those things anyway? Don't know what they'd need respirators for in the city.” The two sat in their own silence as the din of the crowd ebbed and flowed over them. “Been nearly four hours now, I doubt any of the officials will even acknowledge our existence if they haven't already.”
“That's not the point. Don't you get it? They can't ignore this forever. This is the biggest thing since our ancestors discovered steam. It's like that but... better, more powerful.”
“See?” Scope rebutted, motioning her hands out of her warm pockets. “That's why they're worried. They're not excited that whatever that stuff is could revolutionize everything as you say. They don't want that to happen.” She sighed and looked up into the orange tinted sky. They sat there for minutes, not saying a thing, trapped in yet another silence between the two. After pensive looks at the illuminating fire going out on the clock face she spoke up again. “I've been thinking more lately, parents don't like that too much. Say I'll get in trouble, especially with me hanging around with a crazy older guy like you. Yeah, I know, its only like a month, but you try reasoning with them. There's something lately that's got me itching, ya know? I think It's this town. Not the people. Well them too. It's the city itself that really gets me though. I had never noticed it until recently but it's all the same.”
Firehead looks at her with a confused expression. “What do you mean, all the same?”
“The buildings I mean. From the center to the edges, this city is all the same. It was built from the center out, right? That's basic history. So why didn't the buildings change?”
“Maybe it was just a good design.”
“Yeah, but I've come up with better designs in my head. These buildings aren't perfect, just copies. We've made strides in clockwork technology in the past one-hundred years. Steam was implemented nearly two-hundred years ago, just after this city was built. Yet it's not built into the buildings even now. This whole city is some kind of broken clock. Like some piece got jiggled loose and now everything just stays the same.” Firehead sits stunned for a few moments.
“Wow, you weren't lying. I would never have thought of half that stuff.”
Scope shrugged. “I just get caught up in it all.”
Firehead looked over the many heads toward the line of civil protection. The crowd had begun to swell again as he smiled. “Looks like something's gonna snap soon in their little cage and I want a good seat. I'm moving up to the front, come on follow me.” He began to push people aside, making a small dent in the gathering.
“Wait up! Don't go too close, the civil protection is...” She trails off and sighs. Quickly she follows behind Firehead before the wake of people can close up.
Firehead continued to shuffle his way through the crowd, making sure Scope was right behind him. The crowd was so intent on their purpose they barely noticed the two making their way towards the front.
There wasn't an official announcement when the tunnels were discovered last week. Scope remembers hearing the news from Firehead when he met up with her that day as usual. He arrived just after the rumors. She asked him what the hell was going on and he was eager to tell. He told her about the tunnels and whatever had been found there, as much as he knew. Talking about the findings he mentioned the gathering that was going to be held at the executive building the next week. It was supposed to convince the leaders to let the discovered wonders be used and implemented. They figured it was a historic event. Nearby he had discovered something clearly dropped and forgotten by the civil protection squad that had raided the area soon after it had been discovered. It was a small metal rectangular block with two silver metal discs sticking out of one end. She was entralled by its cold touch and acidic smell. It seemed to be rather clean looking and she stuck her tongue out and touched it nervously to the two discs. She jumped back in surprise as she felt a jolt go through her body. She tried it several other times, laughing. She instructed Firehead to do the same and laughed even more at his look of surprise as he jumped back at the cold jolt. She laughed with him as night fell.
Sticking her wrapped hands into her pockets, Scope feels the icy cold metal of the discs touch her fingertips. She has to remember to thank him soon for letting her keep it. She smiles and catches up with Firehead. Even though they stood at the front of the line, the whole crowd was more than five feet from the line of civil protection. No one goes within an arms length of a CiPo guard of their own free will. She made a conscious effort to not face them directly as she stood with Firehead. Raising his hand he began to chant with the crowd as they started up again. “It does look like we have potential here” She whispers under her breath.
She is ready to raise her hand as well when she turns around to face the static line of guards. She feels something akin to anger but continues to glare over them. The dirty white metal covered most of their heads. The only place left uncovered by white, their face, was covered instead by black mangled metal tubes. Where their mouth would be was a circular indention in the metal where mesh covered their large air holes. She could imagine the rasping consistent breathing they were making that she would hear were it not for the crowd. Where they would look out was covered with two slick black glass lenses. Scope looked into the unblinking synthetic eyes and saw a small reflection of her, arm half raised. As the crowd grew in volume and intensity she turned towards Firehead.
“I can't handle this, if they haven't come out of that coffin now, they never will.” With an exacerbated breath she turned from him, ready to walk off. He lowered his hand and grabbed her shoulder lightly. He had to start yelling now to be heard over the crowd.
“You can't just stop now, we're so close I can feel it!”
“I can't be in the middle of this, I want to last until tomorrow!”
The crescendo behind them had brought itself to a deafening volume. “This is for the future, don't you understand that? This isn't some stupid little event, this is real history. This will be talked about for ages. What we do here will last longer than you ever could!”
“No! You know that more than anyone. You know what? I've had it with this, I'm off!” She ripped her shoulder away from his hand and walked away through the narrowing gap between the guards and the crowd of people, parallel to both. She rushed to the end of the crowd. The crowd had pressed themselves up against the guards just as she broke free. Turning around she could make out the crowd colliding aggressively into the immobile guards. They were led by Firehead, fist in the air. The guards simultaneously began to walk back against the crowd, pressing them backwards. Firehead shoved back into the guards, determined to make ground. He kept yelling to the crowd and ramming into the line. Pressed against two of the guards he shouted over the echoes of his voice.
“This is ours!”
“This is for us!”
“This is for our future!”
He pulled back and rammed into the shoulders of the two guards with full force. Scope attempted to find a way through the crowd but they had become a wall. As the crowd filled in where he was, the force of his push knocked a guard sideways. The guard removed his stick from his holster and raised it above his head. Scope madly clawed at shoulders around her, trying to see over the wall of people. She lifted herself over the mob. The guard smashed the stick down on the back of Firehead's neck. He fell out of sight. Scope's yell was swallowed by the crowd. She fell off of her perch and ripped herself into the mob. She pushed and shoved her way to the guard she saw and began to swing at it with all her might. Just as the blood soaked into the bandannas she wore the crowd surged with new life. She stumbled as the guard toppled to the ground on the other side of her lifeless friend. The guard's head smashed to the ground and cracked open with a metallic crunch as mechanical guts spilled out. The mob retaliated and violently attacked the small line of guards.
She did not see the line fall, the mob move forth. The crash of bronze and stone was silent to her. She knelt by Firehead's limp body and delicately removed the cloth from over his mouth. Clenching it tightly she felt a light prick. She took from the corner a small glass ball with frail metal wires sticking out at odd angles. Mechanically she takes out the small cold box from her pocket and wrapped one of the wires around a disc. The moment she touched the second wire to the last disc she was illuminated in an unfamiliar light. Looking up to the clock bathed in her light she read the time as seven twenty-five. Wiping her bloodied hands on his bandanna she placed it over his hands. She solemnly placed the bright light on the bandanna, illuminating the simple cloth. She slumped onto his body, exhausted. She cried with him as rain fell.

Description
Stone palisade. Timeless stone used to slow goings. It was the front of a regal building, a place where the well oiled gears of government could call home. The whole of government a clock ticking away in a circle. A single cog displaced will not be noticed until a perceptive passerby would look upon the face, seemingly in its future. TICK. Glass bottle. Burnt sand. Filled with an angry liquor and silenced with a rag. Burning with an Exothermic rage it flies through the void to meet the clock face sitting on the building. TICK. The glass greets the face with shrapnel. Burning fiery liquid drips down the minute, the hour, the stone, the air. A crash of glass thunder and fiery rain to make way for the tornado.
“Damn these people are crazy!”
“Shut up!” The other teenager lowered his voice so the droll of the crowd around them would be cover enough for the both of them. “Sure they are, mad as balls. But they're saner than the men in there.” He motioned with his shivering hand, pointing past the pillars now burning to a towering brass door emblazoned with hundreds of gears. As he took the neon yellow and blue bandanna from off his bleached white hair his arm hair stood on end in the icy wind. “It's warmer out here too.” He smiled widely and pulled the bandanna over his mouth tying it back. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and exhaled frozen breath through the cloth.
“You’re crazy too, ya know that?” The teenager smirked. She was shorter than the other by a few inches and had no bandanna about her head. Instead she was knelt down slightly, wrapping a half of the cloth around one of her hands, the other already covered in the yellow and blue rags. She barred her teeth as she used them to tie a tight knot with her covered hand. Clenching and unclenching her fist she turns it around, inspecting her makeshift gloves. Satisfied, she ties the long leftover strip around her ankle. “Besides, you look like someone ready to make trouble. Don't go blending in so soon.”
“Oi! Wouldn't you-” He was cut short by another yell from the crowd. He could no longer tell if they were good or not. The crowd itself had certainly transformed in the past hour or so. He stopped talking and shouted half-heartedly with the rest. After the whoop had quickly died down he turned to his friend. “See? This has some real potential.”
The other kid runs a finger under her nose and sniffs in, coughing at the dry, cold air. “Potential to get us killed. I knew this would be trouble, I was right. Did you see that firebomb?”
Firehead chuckled. “Went right over us, it did. Dead on shot to the clock too, good aim.” He looked up at the clock. Through the fire you could faintly see the hands. “If that thing held up to the fire It looks like it's nearly seven thirty.”
“It looks closer to seven twenty-five.”
“Close enough. What are you, part of civil protection?”
“If I was, I'd stay the hell away from here.” She glances towards the direction of the intense stares around her. She could barely see the tops of white plastic helmets lined up at the front, no doubt civil protection. “Speaking of CiPo, looks like they finally got here.”
“They took their damn time. Well at least you can tell your family you were at a true civil disturbance.”
Scope laughs nervously. “If I get my way, they won't ever be hearing about this.” She was still worried about the official forces being called in for something she was involved with. They didn't have a reputation for being very nice, or generally good. Despite the name, their methods weren't very civil and she had a feeling that they never once protected anything. “It's a good thing they can't see us. I don't like being near those...things.”
“You always have hated those guys. I don't see why they're always in that outfit. I've never once seen them without their masks on.”
“What the hell do they hide behind those things anyway? Don't know what they'd need respirators for in the city.” The two sat in their own silence as the din of the crowd ebbed and flowed over them. “Been nearly four hours now, I doubt any of the officials will even acknowledge our existence if they haven't already.”
“That's not the point. Don't you get it? They can't ignore this forever. This is the biggest thing since our ancestors discovered steam. It's like that but... better, more powerful.”
“See?” Scope rebutted, motioning her hands out of her warm pockets. “That's why they're worried. They're not excited that whatever that stuff is could revolutionize everything as you say. They don't want that to happen.” She sighed and looked up into the orange tinted sky. They sat there for minutes, not saying a thing, trapped in yet another silence between the two. After pensive looks at the illuminating fire going out on the clock face she spoke up again. “I've been thinking more lately, parents don't like that too much. Say I'll get in trouble, especially with me hanging around with a crazy older guy like you. Yeah, I know, its only like a month, but you try reasoning with them. There's something lately that's got me itching, ya know? I think It's this town. Not the people. Well them too. It's the city itself that really gets me though. I had never noticed it until recently but it's all the same.”
Firehead looks at her with a confused expression. “What do you mean, all the same?”
“The buildings I mean. From the center to the edges, this city is all the same. It was built from the center out, right? That's basic history. So why didn't the buildings change?”
“Maybe it was just a good design.”
“Yeah, but I've come up with better designs in my head. These buildings aren't perfect, just copies. We've made strides in clockwork technology in the past one-hundred years. Steam was implemented nearly two-hundred years ago, just after this city was built. Yet it's not built into the buildings even now. This whole city is some kind of broken clock. Like some piece got jiggled loose and now everything just stays the same.” Firehead sits stunned for a few moments.
“Wow, you weren't lying. I would never have thought of half that stuff.”
Scope shrugged. “I just get caught up in it all.”
Firehead looked over the many heads toward the line of civil protection. The crowd had begun to swell again as he smiled. “Looks like something's gonna snap soon in their little cage and I want a good seat. I'm moving up to the front, come on follow me.” He began to push people aside, making a small dent in the gathering.
“Wait up! Don't go too close, the civil protection is...” She trails off and sighs. Quickly she follows behind Firehead before the wake of people can close up.
Firehead continued to shuffle his way through the crowd, making sure Scope was right behind him. The crowd was so intent on their purpose they barely noticed the two making their way towards the front.
There wasn't an official announcement when the tunnels were discovered last week. Scope remembers hearing the news from Firehead when he met up with her that day as usual. He arrived just after the rumors. She asked him what the hell was going on and he was eager to tell. He told her about the tunnels and whatever had been found there, as much as he knew. Talking about the findings he mentioned the gathering that was going to be held at the executive building the next week. It was supposed to convince the leaders to let the discovered wonders be used and implemented. They figured it was a historic event. Nearby he had discovered something clearly dropped and forgotten by the civil protection squad that had raided the area soon after it had been discovered. It was a small metal rectangular block with two silver metal discs sticking out of one end. She was entralled by its cold touch and acidic smell. It seemed to be rather clean looking and she stuck her tongue out and touched it nervously to the two discs. She jumped back in surprise as she felt a jolt go through her body. She tried it several other times, laughing. She instructed Firehead to do the same and laughed even more at his look of surprise as he jumped back at the cold jolt. She laughed with him as night fell.
Sticking her wrapped hands into her pockets, Scope feels the icy cold metal of the discs touch her fingertips. She has to remember to thank him soon for letting her keep it. She smiles and catches up with Firehead. Even though they stood at the front of the line, the whole crowd was more than five feet from the line of civil protection. No one goes within an arms length of a CiPo guard of their own free will. She made a conscious effort to not face them directly as she stood with Firehead. Raising his hand he began to chant with the crowd as they started up again. “It does look like we have potential here” She whispers under her breath.
She is ready to raise her hand as well when she turns around to face the static line of guards. She feels something akin to anger but continues to glare over them. The dirty white metal covered most of their heads. The only place left uncovered by white, their face, was covered instead by black mangled metal tubes. Where their mouth would be was a circular indention in the metal where mesh covered their large air holes. She could imagine the rasping consistent breathing they were making that she would hear were it not for the crowd. Where they would look out was covered with two slick black glass lenses. Scope looked into the unblinking synthetic eyes and saw a small reflection of her, arm half raised. As the crowd grew in volume and intensity she turned towards Firehead.
“I can't handle this, if they haven't come out of that coffin now, they never will.” With an exacerbated breath she turned from him, ready to walk off. He lowered his hand and grabbed her shoulder lightly. He had to start yelling now to be heard over the crowd.
“You can't just stop now, we're so close I can feel it!”
“I can't be in the middle of this, I want to last until tomorrow!”
The crescendo behind them had brought itself to a deafening volume. “This is for the future, don't you understand that? This isn't some stupid little event, this is real history. This will be talked about for ages. What we do here will last longer than you ever could!”
“No! You know that more than anyone. You know what? I've had it with this, I'm off!” She ripped her shoulder away from his hand and walked away through the narrowing gap between the guards and the crowd of people, parallel to both. She rushed to the end of the crowd. The crowd had pressed themselves up against the guards just as she broke free. Turning around she could make out the crowd colliding aggressively into the immobile guards. They were led by Firehead, fist in the air. The guards simultaneously began to walk back against the crowd, pressing them backwards. Firehead shoved back into the guards, determined to make ground. He kept yelling to the crowd and ramming into the line. Pressed against two of the guards he shouted over the echoes of his voice.
“This is ours!”
“This is for us!”
“This is for our future!”
He pulled back and rammed into the shoulders of the two guards with full force. Scope attempted to find a way through the crowd but they had become a wall. As the crowd filled in where he was, the force of his push knocked a guard sideways. The guard removed his stick from his holster and raised it above his head. Scope madly clawed at shoulders around her, trying to see over the wall of people. She lifted herself over the mob. The guard smashed the stick down on the back of Firehead's neck. He fell out of sight. Scope's yell was swallowed by the crowd. She fell off of her perch and ripped herself into the mob. She pushed and shoved her way to the guard she saw and began to swing at it with all her might. Just as the blood soaked into the bandannas she wore the crowd surged with new life. She stumbled as the guard toppled to the ground on the other side of her lifeless friend. The guard's head smashed to the ground and cracked open with a metallic crunch as mechanical guts spilled out. The mob retaliated and violently attacked the small line of guards.
She did not see the line fall, the mob move forth. The crash of bronze and stone was silent to her. She knelt by Firehead's limp body and delicately removed the cloth from over his mouth. Clenching it tightly she felt a light prick. She took from the corner a small glass ball with frail metal wires sticking out at odd angles. Mechanically she takes out the small cold box from her pocket and wrapped one of the wires around a disc. The moment she touched the second wire to the last disc she was illuminated in an unfamiliar light. Looking up to the clock bathed in her light she read the time as seven twenty-five. Wiping her bloodied hands on his bandanna she placed it over his hands. She solemnly placed the bright light on the bandanna, illuminating the simple cloth. She slumped onto his body, exhausted. She cried with him as rain fell.