Ghost in the Machine (Steam and Cyber Series Book 1) Read online

“What is gone, sir?”

  “God damned thieves. My presentation is ruined,” he said with a growl. “Stolen!” His throat gurgled with angry mutters and he jerked his head back and forth as if he was arguing with the ether. He mumbled through gritted teeth, “Did you not prepare your worthless guards for scenarios such as this?”

  “Sir, what has been stolen?”

  “You idiot! You dolt! My steam powered processor! My Tabulator! The world’s future, you simpering ape!”

  “Information processor?” the coachman answered, nonplussed by the professor’s insults. “Like a human brain?”

  “Better! Humans are notoriously fallible. Our calculations are riddled with inaccuracies and errors disastrously costing money, lives, and efficiency.”

  “I have confidence in my brain’s ability, sir.”

  “That is because you are an idiot! Information should be stored. With machine precision! My machine eliminates human error,” spit flew from his mouth, landing on the coachman who politely ignored the wet blast.

  “We shall file an immediate Police Report,” said the coachman.

  “Bah! Police Report! Return to London! Forget High Wycombe altogether,” growled the professor. “Be off with you!”

  The professor stewed in his own rage and remembered the trousered female who broke into his private car from the train’s roof. “This is no longer yours,” she said to him slowly while she held his machine. His limbs still jittered and trembled from the aftereffects of her electric shock weapon. Shaking his head, perspiration dripped from his brows.

  Chaos reigned at the train station upon their arrival. Reporters gathered around Professor Anson assaulting him with unwanted questions. Word leaked out regarding the usual train that had departed with few passengers and blacked out lights. Anson glimpsed in the direction of the reporters, remaining silent as they ran towards him.

  “Get me out of here, quickly,” whispered the professor to the coachman through clenched teeth. “Direct me to my zeppelin.”

  Anson had sliced his fingers fighting the goggled she-devil and blood now dotted his gloves. On the far periphery of his vision and consciousness, a fleeting shadow rushed towards him, flying across the rails. He saw an owl fly over the shoulder of a black haired young man crossing his path. The professor blinked rapidly to clear his eyes, feeling like he had just walked through a pane of shattering glass.

  June 15th 1865

  The roads were choked with dust and mud and the air choked in a thick haze. Josephine clutched her cape around her shoulders, burrowing her face deeper into the folds of the cotton scarf around her neck. Maneuvering through the trestle tables of various vendors on the streets, Josephine stepped over a peculiar orange-streaked tabby cat, stretched languidly on the front steps of the apothecary shop.

  “Not the brightest of days today, is it?” asked the dispensing chemist as she walked in. “The weather looks like it’s only going to get worse.”

  The summer simmered with turmoil, its unusual fierce heat brought about the city’s worst fog, stained yellow-brown, creating a thick choking sensation. The combination of sewage, coal fires, and unwashed bodies produced a London of stultifying odor. Heat and pollution had driven out the ruling class from the city, and those who were left managed through its misery.

  “Can you recommend a homeopathic remedy for headaches? I’ve also been having a bit of ringing in my ears,” inquired Josephine.

  “How long has this been going on, dear?” asked the chemist.

  “Over a week.”

  “I can get you a tincture for your ear, an imbalance in your inner ear fluids is most likely setting these pains off. Do you have any dizziness?”

  “No. Thankfully.”

  He smiled as he turned to his cabinets. He pulled out a miniature amber bottle while she collected a few other convenient items, liniment, a box of bandages, and facial cream. Josephine usually enjoyed the jovial chemist with his sprouts of white hair and red cheeks as he tallied her purchases, but today she was in no mood for chitchat. Curtly thanking him, she shot him an apologetic smile, signed her bill, stepped over the cat that refused to budge, and left.

  “She’s an odd bird, a sad little thing,” the chemist muttered under his breath as Josephine walked out. The creaky door swung behind her and caught the cat’s tail. He shook his head as she walked away.

  “’Tis to be expected,” his wife called out from the side of the store. “The way her family was all blown to bits about the garden all those years ago.”

  “Indeed, shame, that was. Poor girl.”

  Josephine hiked back to the Minister’s apartments through an unsavory collection of neglected streets lined with bleak tenement buildings. She deemed it best to avoid any accidental social encounters so she chose an ambling way through the city’s bleaker areas. Most Londoners chose to forget the Old Nichol slum in Bethnal Green existed, but she trudged through the old Rookery, tottered through its narrow muddy streets, and skirted past cesspools of filth and animal carcasses. Grass was extinct in this dark and putrid maze; the congested buildings blocked the sun and trapped the worst of man’s odors in its alleys.

  Cobwebs of scum covered the river’s water with prismatic oils. Large masses of rotted vegetation wedged against bridge posts and the water ran red from the leather tanner’s fluid offal pouring into the river. Josephine scarcely bypassed a child without an irritation around the eyes since the continuous inhalation of carbonate of ammonia and other deleterious gases irritated their mucous membranes.

  As Josephine hurriedly entered the Minister’s official apartments, she dropped her packets on the nearest table, and tossed off her cloak and scarf. “Hello Bodhi. You’ll never guess where I’ve been.”

  Bodhi looked up and a pair of spectacles slid down his nose. “You could have been anywhere, I suppose.”

  “Well, on my way back from the chemist, I walked through the Rookery. It’s quite horrible, Bodhi. A blight on London.”

  “You should never wander through those slums, even in the daytime, and especially alone. You are lucky to be in one piece.”

  “We cannot afford to avert our eyes to this area. The seeds of poverty grow under our noses, into crime and political turbulence.”

  “Josephine, calm down and put away your packages,” said Bodhi. “We are guests of Caroline’s father. At 10 Downing Street, no less. Let’s not seem ill-mannered.”

  “I just walked in, Bodhi. Of course I will put my things away,” Josephine said in a huff. She walked down the hall to arrange her items and called back to him. “What I witnessed needs to be addressed. London is in crisis!”

  Bodhi had moved some of Caroline’s furnishings. He set up shop on the worktable in the middle of the dining room. His journals, bits of clockworks and his tools littered the table.

  “You dare to remark on my mess?” Josephine looked wide-eyed and incredulous. “Has Caroline seen this? She is as quite particular, in regards to her decor. You have taken too many liberties, Bodhi.”

  Bodhi glanced up, raising his goggles and settling them on top of his head. “Do you think she will find offense with these minor items of utility strewn about?”

  “It’s a bit much,” she said. Josephine pulled up a chair next to his by the makeshift workstation and threw herself down. “Bodhi! Are you mucking about with the Tabulator? I don’t know if you should muddle with the innards.”

  “I’m intrigued, Josephine. The wires and connections exchange complex sequences of information. Quite amazing, really.”

  Yeshua, Nico, and Minnow entered from a side room. Minnow had on a long chartreuse dress without sleeves that showed off her shoulders. She looked like an abandoned baby bird, everything bone protruded from her pale skin. Nico, in loose denim jeans, topped by an equally slack but only partially buttoned shirt followed her. A tattoo snaked around Nico’s neck and a black and red chaos star decorated his inside wrist. A long leather jacket covered Yeshua from head to toe. His T-shirt underneath peaked out.
It read, “Avoid the Singularity.”

  Bodhi sighed and tossed his goggles on the table. He wanted to figure out the Tabulator, but was clueless. It was flatter than any other typewriter or adding machine. On one side a thin wire snaked out from under the board and attached to a tiny side slot. “Perhaps a power charge?” he muttered to himself.

  “Nothing happens when I manipulate the keys. They don’t respond at all.” Bodhi said as he slumped back in a chair.

  “You probably will need to dismantle it,” said Josephine “in order to figure it out. But I wouldn’t suggest it.”

  “I don’t want to disassemble the mechanics by digging around blindly.” The board was quite beautiful, its outer casing made of rich bud rosewood delicately carved. The keys were smooth ivory graced by gilded engraved letters and numbers.

  “Look at the side and underneath,” said Nico. “Lift the board from its base, find the small chip inside on the circuit board next to the point from where the wire snakes out.”

  “I don’t understand what you are talking about,” said Bodhi as he carefully separated the board from the encasement. “I can’t find it.”

  “Now, feel for a tiny groove near the wire end. The Tabulator should have a chip on the board, an area where a microchip is directly mounted on and electrically interconnected to the final circuit board,” said Nico.

  Bodhi put on his goggles and slid his hands along the base of the board. “Is this where it should be? Seems like a very short interconnected path to carry information.”

  “Let me see,” ordered Josephine. “I want to look. Where do I feel?”

  Yeshua walked over with Josephine, he stood behind her and enveloped her right hand under his. He leaned into her from behind, guided her fingers stroking along the side of the board.

  Caroline entered with wine and a tray of glasses. “Hello everyone! I’ve found a wonderful merlot. Let’s have a night of celebration, shall we?” Caroline poured the wine into six long stemmed rose glasses, each made of crystal with gold rims and hand painted flowers. She smiled, “Cheers everyone! It’s quite exciting, right now,” Caroline said. “The entire country is in a tiff! All of Parliament is aghast at the Tabulator heist. It’s the topic of all conversation.” Bodhi rested his wine glass next to the Tabulator. He turned the Tabulator upside down very gently, searching for a power switch. “Are fingers being pointed at anyone?”

  “No,” she answered. “The good news is no one is quite sure who the thieves could possibly be. Nor do they seem to have a sense of how many people could be involved. There is much speculation that this is an international job to sabotage England, but other theories suggest a small time internal caper. It goes without saying no one suspects the chrononauts.”

  Caroline walked across the room to hang up her cape. “We need to remain on our toes, as the police are all over the place. Downing Street can remain our hub. No one would ever suspect the Tabulator is right here, under everyone’s noses. And no one dare search my father’s residence without enough notice for us all to make a mad dash.”

  Nico walked over to the Tabulator, flipped it around several times, and then manipulated the wires. “It’s not going to work, Bodhi. You can’t power it up without the driver.” He placed it back on the table. “I can’t believe how primitive this beta computer is,” he mused. “Anyway, you need a hard drive. Anson calls it ‘The Engine.’ The Tabulator needs to synchronize with a hard drive/engine to boot up any information for input or output. And these loose wires here,” he fingered three colored wires, holding up the ends, “need to be attached to the hard drive. Plus there is no epoxy on the board’s chip, the resin used in over molding the integrated circuits, to protect the connection. This is a dud.”

  “What? Oh my God, in that case Anson might meet with Watson after all. The engine is the brain of the Tabulator! We don’t have the processor,” Minnow panicked. She paced the room, anxiously yanking at her hair. Her bony white fingers toyed with her hair like a rough comb.

  Josephine forehead scrunched in concentration as her headache worsened. “Bodhi, is something missing?”

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Quite possibly. I can’t figure it out.”

  “Caroline,” Josephine whipped around, her wine skimming the edges of the glass in a panicked spin. “It doesn’t work! Did we leave something behind?”

  Caroline was stunned for a moment but recovered quickly. Keeping her composure, she reviewed the evening. “You wanted to get the Tabulator. I did just as I was instructed. I guarded the doorway. The only item we discussed was the Tabulator; there was never any talk of a hard drive, engine, or anything else. There was nothing else in the box, was there?” She nervously poured another glass of wine.

  “No, I didn’t see anything else. I thought I had everything,” said Josephine. “We may have failed.”

  “I don’t think we have failed. Not yet,” said Caroline. “My father is attending a state dinner tomorrow night and Anson is on the guest list,” said Caroline calmly. “Maybe we can search his house.”

  “Good, and tomorrow is Thursday so Henry should also be at Francesca’s,” said Yeshua, continuing with Caroline’s suggestion. “Caroline, escort your father to the dinner, keep Anson busy, and we’ll run surveillance with possible break and entry.”

  “Henry indicated during our questioning that security would be an issue. An almost impossible hurdle,” Bodhi reminded.

  “Yeshua and I will be there. Not an issue,” said Nico. “Minnow, can you get us off the grid tomorrow?”

  “Yep,” she said.

  “What is the grid? And how do you escape it?” asked Bodhi.

  “It’s complicated, and sharing too much information sharing probably isn’t wise,” said Nico.

  “But sharing information may have been predetermined, and we are your partners,” said an insulted Bodhi. “We deserve to know.”

  “But keep it simple,” inserted Josephine, “I already have a headache.”

  Nico, Yeshua, and Minnow looked back and forth at one another, wondering how much technical information they should reveal. All three reached for their wine glasses but none of the three took a drink.

  “It’s called ‘glitching’ the feed, it’s a way of avoiding it,” said Nico.

  “Is this better discussed over tea?” asked Caroline.

  “I’ll have water,” said Yeshua. “Basically, the feed was launched when the global positioning satellite system that was placed in space and left hanging above the earth after the Space Race and Cold War, began to be used for civilian purposes.”

  “Space Race? Like Outer Space?” asked Bodhi incredulously. His eyes widened as he paced the room. “In the earth’s atmosphere?”

  “Cold War?” asked Caroline.

  “Yes, the satellite systems were outside the earth’s atmosphere and were originally used by the US Department of Defense for tracking military maneuvers and covert surveillance. But after the Cold War, he Defense Department granted the Transportation Department access for civilian use. The GPS units provided driving directions, item location and tracking, that sort of thing.”

  Josephine rubbed her temples and downed the rest of her wine in one gulp.

  “People sucked up the technology. More information. Quicker information,” said Nico.

  “Omni built the grid from this?” asked Bodhi.

  “Eventually,” said Yeshua. “It was a skeleton they built upon.”

  “I can hack the reading of global positioning system has on our barcode. I can manipulate our information and this allows me to change where we are in time. We can be off the feed for two hours,” said Minnow. “Anything longer raises suspicion.”

  “I need a cold cloth,” mumbled Josephine. “Happy now, Bodhi?”

  Minnow looked directly at Josephine. “Our goal is simple. We want to shift the power back to humans.”

  “All right. Let’s say you succeed. Let’s say Anson doesn’t meet the American and their partnership never happens.
What if your version of the future still happens? We could be on a wheel of inevitability,” said Caroline.

  “It’s possible. We don’t know. Nothing is guaranteed. Perhaps we keep repeating our actions. But we will keep questioning the grid and subverting it, by any means. We won’t stop until Omni, as it exists, is rendered inoperative.”

  “What if the future is even worse?” asked Caroline. “What if you disrupt things so much while you are here, one of you isn’t even born to fix things?”

  “The paradoxical possibilities are endless,” said Yeshua. “At some point, you have to take action, regardless of future uncertainties.”

  Yeshua stared at Josephine and played with the back of his labret with his tongue. The silver stud moved from side to side with the perfect rhythm of a metronome. She stared back at him, his movement as hypnotic to her as a clock’s pendulum.

  London

  June 20th 1865

  Bodhi and Josephine appreciated the near hopelessness of stealing unnoticed into Professor Anson’s house. After the robbery, Anson’s security had doubled with assistance from Queen Victoria’s personal equerry, guarding him as if he were a national asset, an emblem of intellect and science.

  “You know, Professor Anson’s father was a humanitarian and philanthropist, as well as a scientist of note,” mused Bodhi as he negotiated the crowded streets with Josephine towards the omnibus stop. Omnibuses traversed the London streets in numbers in excess of three thousand, clogging the streets and moving the masses. These horse-drawn oversized coaches commenced their routes at nine in the morning and continued until midnight, running every five minutes during the busy parts of the day. “The omnibus is sure to be crowded this time of night,” Bodhi added.

  “I would imagine everyone is in quite a hurry to return home to their families,” said Josephine.

  “Or to a gin house,” said Bodhi as they pushed through the crowded streets

  “Wait a minute, did you say Anson’s father? A humanitarian? Surely you jest,” said Josephine. “He must have been a very different man than his son.”