Elias Thorne's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Elias Thorne built a machine to prove the universe was bigger than London believed. The Royal Society laughed. His colleagues laughed. His landlord threatened him. He threw the switch anyway. Now he lay in a wet ditch under two suns, and the ferns above him glowed blue. He sat up. His hat slid off. Gears rattled inside the brim. Watches spilled from his coat pockets, and he counted them by habit. Three still ticked. The others had stopped the moment he arrived here. He wrote the numbers on his cuff with a shaking pencil. Proof. Whatever this place was, it obeyed different rules, and he meant to record every one. Behind him, his machine smoked. Cracked glass. Sparking coils. The round portal that should have opened onto Earth's future showed only a dead gray. He pressed a dial. It crumbled under his thumb. "Not lost," he said aloud. "Displaced." His voice cracked on the word. The fungi around him pulsed with light. A vine curled toward his boot, then pulled back, as if it had tasted him. Elias laughed once, high and thin. Perhaps his mind had finally broken. Perhaps the Society was right. Then the undergrowth split open. Something tall lunged through it. Blue skin, smooth as slate. Two amber eyes, wide and burning. Yellow markings glowed across its face. It stopped short when it saw him and screamed. Elias screamed too. He scrambled backward into the wreck. His hand closed on a loose brass rod, and he held it out like a sword. The creature raised its own hand. From a fold of leather it drew a compact brass tool, and with a flick it snapped open into a bright fan of blades and prongs. Elias froze. The thing knew machines. It aimed the tool at his chest, then hesitated. Its amber eyes moved from his face to his ticking watches to the smoking portal behind him. For a long moment neither moved. Two suns. Glowing ferns. A small man in a gear-stitched hat and a tall stranger in leather and brass, each certain the other might be a nightmare. The creature spoke. The sounds meant nothing to Elias. But the tone did. It was not a war cry. It was a question. Slowly, Elias lowered the rod. He tapped his own chest. "Thorne," he said. "Elias Thorne. From London." The words were useless and he knew it. The stranger studied him. Then it crouched, folded the blades away, and pointed one long finger past him at the dying machine. It said something short. It touched the cracked portal frame, and its markings flared brighter, almost afraid. Elias understood one thing clearly. This being recognized his machine. And whatever it recognized, it did not like. The stranger stood, gestured for him to follow, and started walking. Elias looked back at the ruined portal, his only road home. Then he gathered his watches and stumbled after the only mind on this world that might explain it.