The Hundred Reigns 254: The Workshop of Horrors (13) (Patreon)

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The picture came out with Magda and Coil smiling back at him with wooden teeth.

The only thought that occupied Simon’s mind when he saw it was: when? When did the Crafter manage to abduct those two without his knowledge, considering they went through a daily pictobox test as part of their security protocol? It had to be during the Planetary Exposition’s preparations when he was busy showing Shabram and Aegio around. 

I should have kept them both in my Party at all times, Simon blamed himself. He hadn’t been cautious enough. How could the Crafter create copies capable of mimicking them so perfectly? Either he could duplicate memories instantly somehow, or…

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Simon asked upon handing the picture to the fake Carlo. Shabram and Aegio were busy asking all sorts of questions to the Coil couple impostors, with Simon and his blackmailer watching from the sidelines. “I sensed a hidden presence near our home a few months back. I believed it was one of Bert’s agents at the time, but it was one of yours, wasn’t it?”

“The experiment was under constant surveillance long before your interference.”

“He is your son,” Simon snapped angrily. Hearing the Crafter speak of Coil in such a way reminded him too much of Balzam. “How can you treat him like that, or even use him as a hostage?”

“My son?” The fake Carlo of Muse appeared puzzled for a second before suddenly remembering human emotions. “True, I should feel concerned in this situation. He is alive. The girl is alive.”

Simon frowned in distaste. “And they’ll only stay that way if I go along with your plot.”

“Our analysis of field data indicates an 87.3 percent probability that you have developed genuine affection for them, and will meet our demands to ensure their safety.” The fake Crafter studied Simon’s expression for a moment. “Are we within the margin of error?”

Simon remained quiet. The truth was that he did care for Coil and Magda, and couldn’t let them remain in some deranged scientist’s claws. This was clearly a trap of some kind, but he would only need to touch those two to teleport them away to a safer place, and he carried many powerful tools with him in his Inventory… including a certain secret weapon. 

Besides, he had come to Lampwick partly to access the Crafter’s Tower and he was finally being offered access. This might just play into his plans. “Give me a bit to prepare—”

“No,” the fake Crafter cut in. “We will not give you time to report to your superiors. You must leave now. The airship is ready.”

“My superiors?” Simon frowned. “Who do you think I am?”

“A spy for Endymion’s intelligence seeking to infiltrate our nation.” A somewhat accurate guess, if wholly incomplete. “Your creativity has piqued our interest, but we will not hesitate to eliminate you should you offer resistance.”

They didn’t know about his true identity then, at least for the moment. However, if they had the ability to copy or extract someone’s memories, then they would discover his secret while rummaging through Coil’s mind. He had to rescue him and Magda as soon as possible.

“At least let me tell my date I have to leave on business,” Simon said. “Or else my disappearance will be noted.”

The fake Carlo pondered his words before nodding a bit too quickly for a natural gesture. “You have four minutes.”

How generous. Simon approached the stage, where the fake Coil was busy explaining what each of his machine’s levers did. His dry tone and explanations didn’t bother Aegio, who found everything fascinating.  

“I’ll have to leave for business,” Simon warned Shabram out loud, before adding telepathically, “We’ve been burned. The Coils in front of you are impostors.”

“A shame. Will it be long?” his spymistress replied, her expression giving no hint of her responding to the telepathic message. “Should we evacuate?”

“I may be gone for a while.” “Use a teleporter gem and take Aegio away as soon as you leave this exhibit.” “I will return as soon as I can.”

“I understand. Work is work.” Shabram patted Aegio’s shoulder. “Dear, Simon has to go now. Please kiss him goodbye for the day.”

“What?” Her son didn’t hide his disappointment. “Already?”

“Are you leaving?” The fake Coil asked, his voice, tone, and speaking cadence such a perfect mimicry of the real one that it sent shivers down Simon’s spine. “Trouble?”

“No,” Simon lied. He could sense the fake Carlo’s gaze on his back. “I’ll be back soon.”

The Coil impostor stared at him unblinkingly. He copied the original in a way so accurate that Simon might not have been able to tell he had been replaced without the pictobox. “Good. We have much to do.”

“Yes… indeed.” Simon politely excused himself and then followed the false Carlo off the stage, staying in telepathic contact with his agents. “Silk, Velvet, are you on the Exposition’s premises?”

“Yes,” the twins replied at once, as expected. One had adopted her Elsa Nightingale disguise while the other lurked nearby. 

“Then put on your best invisibility spells and follow my instructions.” Simon glared at the fake Carlo’s back. “We’ll be robbing the Crafter soon.”

—----------

Simon and the fake Carlo left Lampwick on a small, miniature airship. 

The device was fully automated by a small crew of Turks, and only had one salon for a room. The automatons served Simon tea and biscuits, and the view from above was splendid enough that he could almost forget he was flying inside a golden cage. The fake Carlo had no bodily concerns and didn’t bother touching the refreshments. 

They haven’t detected them yet, Simon thought as he glanced to his feet. A high-level Rogue Perk allowed its user to hide in someone’s shadow, which their Assassin Vassal inherited. This might change once we reach the Mechanical Tower though. 

Silk and Velvet liked to use this trick to take their enemies by surprise and practiced it so often that they discovered a loophole in it: namely, an Assassin could hide in the Rogue’s shadow, who could then enter someone else’s. They now stalked Simon’s steps under the cover of Anathemic Secrecy, waiting for his order to spring into action. 

“Why?” Simon asked the fake Carlo after telepathically confirming that Shabram and Aegio had teleported back to Endymion safely, and giving Agrat her instructions. He could now act with impunity. “What is the point of all this? Why replace so many inventors with puppets?”

“Not all were replaced,” the Carlo impostor replied. “Others were built from nothing.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Simon sipped his tea, and no Poison or status ailment notification showed up on his System screen. It seemed he was in no immediate danger. “You promised me the truth if I went along peacefully, so you could at least answer my queries.”

The fake Carlo stared at him without blinking, all pretense of humanity gone from his face. “What is creativity? What is imagination?” 

Were they playing a question game now? He would rather have Anna and her stick of truth here to make it livelier. “The mind’s ability to conceptualize the unknown and the impossible.”

“Imagination is the ability for a mind to create novel ideas without direct input from the senses,” the fake Carlo corrected him. “What generates it? What allows a mind to conceptualize something that, by definition, is not rooted in sensorial information or tangible reality?”

“Is that what you are trying to figure out? If you can build automatons human enough to be capable of creativity?” Simon guessed. “So Jym was right, he is the control group.”

“Yes. We pitted a baseline, if uncommonly intelligent, human of flesh and blood conditioned to avoid using any Class or magic against perfected mechanical imitations of highly-intelligent humanoids, then assessed the results.”

A chill traveled down Simon’s spine. “Conditioned?”

The answer came with a flat, emotionless tone. “His memories were altered with fictional traumas meant to subconsciously instill a pathological aversion to anything related to Classes and manaliths, to ensure he wouldn’t rely on a Crestone and falsify the results.”

“You…” Simon’s fingers trembled with anger. “You brainwashed your own son?!”

“He was reprogrammed to fulfill a specific task,” the puppet replied without remorse. “This was no different than giving a golem new parameters—” 

“He’s your son, not a trained dog! Your own flesh and blood!” Simon snapped angrily. The Crafter’s treatment of Jym hit too close to home after his family’s own experience with Balzam Magnos. “Even if you’re just a copy of your creator with an echo of his memories, surely you must see how wrong this is!”

The fake Carlo’s reaction was most disturbing. The puppet didn’t cruelly dismiss his point, no; it stared at him with a puzzled look as if he had presented it with an unsolvable riddle. It reminded him of the scalefolks’ innate apathy for others, except Casval and Vouivre had both proved capable of feelings. The man-machine in front of him lacked even that diminished sense of empathy.

If the real one was anything like his copy, then Carlo was indeed the perfect Crafter; a prodigious intellect unfettered by morality, and dedicated only to progress at any cost.

“What difference is there between a golem and a son, besides the creation process?” the fake Carlo inquired with a mimicry of genuine curiosity. “In both cases, they are the fruit of their creator’s will. Their property. Why should a son be treated any better than a child of steel, because they are born from flesh rather than the mind? Some models might have an advantage over others like a soul, but in the end, they both owe their existence to their creator, same as any tool. Should a starting design prove faulty, the flaws must be corrected and the next iteration improved upon.” 

The only reason Simon resisted the urge to murder this soulless thing on the spot was that the real Carlo remained out of his grasp for now. If this puppet’s words represented a fraction of its creator’s true feelings on the matter, then the Crafter warranted no mercy from him.

“What have you done to him?” Simon asked dryly. “Jym’s intelligence is too abnormally high to be natural. Did you modify him in the womb?”

The puppet shook its head. “He was born that way. Having determined that Carlo of Muse would not live forever, our government decided to engineer the perfect replacement. To minimize chances of failure, female donors of exceptional intelligence were selected to bear a child of superior abilities.”

“Your government…” Simon struggled not to vomit. “Signed off on this?”

“Yes. Overlord Gargauth made many attempts to obtain the Crafter Crestone, as did his successor, and the Class itself is not loyal to any nation. The Republic’s ministers decided to completely eliminate the risk that it would pick a foreign national should anything happen to my original self.” 

This was Norbelle all over again; a child engineered to become the perfect Summoner and weapon for her nation against its enemies. It didn’t surprise Simon that a nation would prepare successors to ensure their precious Noble Class wouldn’t escape their grasp—many groomed such replacements—but the lengths Muse had gone to chilled him to the bone. 

“Prospect 12’s emotional centers were underdeveloped from birth in comparison to the deductive and memory-related centers of his brain,” said the fake Carlo. “He received a highly intensive scientific education from birth, alongside a chemically-enhanced diet to hasten his mental development.”

“You treated him like a lab rat.” 

The puppet once again looked puzzled by the suggestion, unable to understand why it was wrong. “Prospect 12—”

“His name is Jym Coil.”

“—was raised to become the perfect Crafter to lead this nation to prosperity, until we came up with a better solution and reassessed our priorities. He would have had the honor of being his father’s replacement had probabilities decided otherwise.”

“How generous of you,” Simon replied with a sneer of disdain. “Instead you graciously cast him aside once he had outlived his usefulness and brainwashed him for another experiment.”

“Your contempt is highly hypocritical, coming from the agent of a warmongering civilization sending saboteurs into our ranks even as your government feigns peace overtures,” the puppet replied. “If it is any consolation, Prospect 12 has been selected for the greatest honor a human can aspire to.”

“What, being replaced by a puppet stealing his achievements?” The Crafter might just rival dragons in inhumanity. “What do you even need self-aware and creative automatons for?”

“The Crafter Archetype suffers from crippling limits,” the fake Carlo admitted. “It struggles to conceptualize or invent anything outside the memory pool provided by the Worldsoul. Comprehending how creativity works would let us improve upon the Crestone’s functions.”

“You want to alter a Noble Crestone?” Simon struggled to believe his own ears, his heart skipping a beat. If it was indeed possible, then there might be hope to alter his own wicked Class to more positive use. “Can it even be done? The devices channel the archetypes themselves, and restore themselves when damaged.”

Instead of answering immediately, the fake Carlo looked out the window. Simon eventually imitated him when he received no answer and discovered they had finally reached Muse’s capital of Gulliver. 

The city stretching out beneath them seemed both familiar and different compared to Lampwick. Whereas the latter still had stone and wooden buildings, particularly around its port, Gulliver had been forged entirely in metal. Steel and glass towers dominated a landscape of bronze and copper bridges, brass streets filled with pipes, and mechanized factories pumped steam and alchemical fumes into the sky. A monolithic, multi-tiered mechanical palace dominated this urban landscape.

The landscape for miles around the capital had been left barren from overmining and manalith exploitation, yet Simon could see quarries everywhere; an army of golems and workers dug into the settlement’s foundations, working on gears and pylons stretching into the earth.

What are they doing? Simon wondered. His improved Perception allowed him to see workers transporting pipes and other material into the earth’s depths. It’s not repair work. They’re building something.

“We assessed a high probability that Endymion’s government is aware of an impending planetary disaster,” the puppet Carlo said all of a sudden. “Are you?”

“Yes, I know of the upcoming Second Doom.” Simon squinted at the city below. It didn’t surprise him that the Crafter of all people had predicted the coming catastrophe. “Are you building bunkers? Hasn’t the Oracle shared her evacuation plan with you?”

“She has,” the fake Carlo confirmed. Muse’s policies had aligned with Illusea when it came to dealing with the Overlord, so it would make sense for her to let them in on her grand migration scheme. “However, we deemed it suboptimal. Fully evacuating Muse’s population within the given time frame would force us to abandon most of our resources, homes, and infrastructure to restart our civilization from scratch. Our nation’s greatest inventors were thus secretly put to work on alternate scenarios and potential solutions.”

“You intend to fight back,” Simon realized. “This is what you built the Champions for.”

“It surprises me that Endymion is aware of that project,” the false Crafter replied with what could pass for sincere annoyance. “Security protocols should have minimized chances of discovery. Human error is a plague on percentages.”

Simon scoffed in contempt. “Bold of you to say that as a mere imitation of human life.”

“Humans overestimate the concept of humanity in order to feed their ego. There is nothing about organic life that a machine cannot replicate.” 

“Except imagination,” Simon taunted him back. “You and your maker have failed. His own discarded son built something his most advanced puppets couldn’t even dream of.”

“Present failure is the price future success must pay,” the fake Carlo replied dismissively. “However, you are partly correct in that we could not mechanically replicate imagination within our allocated timeframe; hence why we had to co-opt local savants and foreign minds.”

“Such as mine,” Simon guessed, his jaw tightened. Why would the new Crafter need thinking puppets capable of imagination? Something didn’t add up here. “You intend to replace me like all the others.”

The puppet didn’t deny it. “A duplicate is already in the works, and will replace you as soon as we finish copying your memories to ensure Endymion does not suspect your disappearance. In return, you will be granted a pardon for your crimes against the Republic, a cutting-edge laboratory in our Mechanical Tower, and near-limitless resources for you to work with.”

“So long as I work on your projects, of course,” Simon guessed, pondering what to say next. “And if I refuse, you’ll kill the Coils?”

“They will not die.” Somehow he managed to make it sound sinister rather than reassuring. “There is no other outcome besides cooperation. Your consent is entirely optional.”

He thinks he can kill me easily, that I am merely a talented spy easy to force into obedience. Simon would delight in proving him wrong as soon as he could ensure Jym and Magda’s safety. Your original self’s days are numbered. 

The miniature airship reached the Crafter’s Tower by sundown. The gleaming, partly invisible golden building glimmered in the fading light at their arrival. Simon held his breath as his gaze wandered to its top, half-expecting the Sniper to somehow detect his true identity and shoot him down. He prayed his Anathemic Secrecy-generated false stats would deceive this place’s defenses.

You have crossed a barrier. You can no longer teleport, and divinations will be interfered with.

No bullet came to blast his skull apart. 

The airship flew past the empty wasteland surrounding the Crafter’s Tower and approached it. Flickering, half-invisible walls split open to reveal an entrance into some kind of miniature airship hangar. Masked, humanoid golems worked on repairing half a dozen of them inside wide metal walls coursing with mana.  

A voice echoed inside the airship once it began to dock, neither male nor female. It came from the very walls themselves, speaking without much emotion. 

“Welcome to the Mechanical Tower,” it said, like some kind of automated greeting. “It is now the 16th of Floreal, and you are currently in the Airship Bay on Sector 5. We hope you have a pleasant stay.”

“Where are we going?” Simon inquired, feigning nervousness. “I want to see Magda and Coil first.”

“You can meet them after the surgery,” the false Crafter replied as automatons opened the airship’s main bulkhead; a perfect copy of Carlo of Muse awaited the group on the other side. “Yours is already scheduled.”

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