Immortal Gears – A Timekeepers Story

By Luca Nobleman

“My, my, you have aged. Haven’t you, old friend?” Dorian whispered through his electronic voice box. He paced the control room overlooking Alice and the Timekeepers clashing with his stony, anthropomorphic titan down in the cavern. Alice piloted her 1910s diesel mecha, as always.

She was not the young Victorian blonde that he, the dashing Dorian Gray, had once charmed into divulging Wonderland’s location all those years ago. She was now an elderly, battle-hardened soldier, bent on annihilating Dorian. But it was fine. Intended, in fact. Their attempt to infiltrate his lair would surely fail, yet their presence would grant him the sacrificial souls required to unlock the curse binding the all-powerful Motherstone to this multiversal nexus.

Dorian had finally discovered the original fountain of youth on the nondescript, rocky planet Seo, which orbited the black hole Leviathan. It was where the ancients had crafted the Motherstone: the original seed giving rise to the universe’s Caerulum crystals, glowing blue lattices of solidified soul. Once Dorian had the Motherstone, he would have eternal life. And the power to rule the multiverse.

The gears within his cybertronic body whirred to life as he stepped away from the window. His mechanical body was a gift from Basil Hallward, an admirer-turned-zealot, and the most talented roboticist ever. Dorian had beguiled her years ago while visiting another world. But she was gone now. Her death had been a critical necessity.

Dorian shot a glance at the glowing tank looming behind him. His original body, aged and decrepit, floated within the liquid Neuropres—kept alive by the multitude of tubing and wires Basil had surgically inserted into his heart and spinal cord. It was nearly a skeleton at this point. A decorative atrocity. A reminder of his tenuous chimerical condition.

But it wouldn’t matter much longer. Dorian would soon be free of the frail body’s bond to his mind, and then—

“Still at it, Dorian?” A digitally augmented voice echoed through the room.

Startled, Dorian spun.

A masked figure stood, aiming a scarred hand at him, crackling with arcane sparks.

“Ah, at last, we meet,” Dorian addressed the Codifier as the fiery energy within his forearms activated. Soon, he would decimate the Timekeepers’ leader—the first soul for his sacrifice to gain the Motherstone.

***

Alice grunted as she piloted her mecha, dodging another boulder hurled by the titan.

“Let him go,” she growled through clenched teeth, holding tight to her last cigarette like a beggar to a twenty-pound note.

Flashes burst from her mecha’s arm gun and blasted the titan’s thumb, converting it into a mass of falling boulders and simultaneously releasing from its grip the—what did Harmony call it? The Horror?

The Horror, Harmony’s demigod pet, dropped to the ground. Unfazed by the fall, the massive horned sloth scrambled back up the Titan’s leg, biting and scratching.

The other Timekeepers fought vigorously. Phezznibbet and his army of similarly overgrown squirrels leaped through the air, bouncing from one flying rock to the next, coming within feet of the Caerulum at the titan’s core. If they could remove the crystal, the titan would fall.

“We’ll keep it distracted. You find Dorian,” Phezz called into his comset.

***

Miriel stepped closer to the cybernetic man before her. Though he appeared as a handsome twenty-something, she knew his youth was a façade. The glances she had stolen at the tank harboring his living corpse attested to this. A silicone mask covered a purely mechanical skeleton. Her stomach turned, thinking of how he’d extracted his mind and inserted it into the cyborg body he now controlled.

“Why did you kill Basil?” Miriel nearly spat. Rage at the death of her sister boiled within. She wished she had never introduced the two.

“Oh my, Codifier. You have much to learn.” His voice remained calm—evil, but calm.

Codifier. He still doesn’t know who I am.

“She had to die…” he feigned a sad countenance, “so I could live. The sacrifice of a soul is always required when extracting a mind and implanting it somewhere else. And I couldn’t sacrifice my soul. It’s too important.” He grinned. “My work here is too important.”

Bitter bile burned Miriel’s throat.

“You think you and your Timekeepers will save the day, do you?” he said. “You have only provided me with the souls I need to accomplish the final step—”

“Enough, Dorian.” Miriel ripped the mask from her face.

Surprise tightened his silicone features. “Miriel? My love.” The digital words escaped his false lips.

“Oh, shut it,” she snapped. “You love no one but yourself.”

His wide eyes transitioned to a hard, psychotic glare. “I’m a new man now. A new being.” He waved his hands over his body as though presenting a piece of fine art. Then, he pointed toward his body in the tank. “The chrysalis will soon crack, and I will be free from that wretched condition you call mortality.”

Miriel couldn’t pull her eyes away.

As she transfixed her gaze, Dorian jumped, slamming a button on the nearby console. He froze, waited, but nothing happened. With a snarl, he slammed the button repeatedly.

Rustling emerged from the corner of the room.

Dorian scowled and turned.

A cute little crab-like alien dangled from a severed mass of wires held by a young woman.

“Did you need this?” Harmony smirked.

With that, Dorian’s cadaverous body within the tank writhed as more little alien crabs slashed the wires keeping it alive.

“No!” Dorian screamed.

Just as Miriel released blue fire from her palm, he punched a code into his arm-embedded quantum spark regulator, dematerializing.

“He’s getting away!” Harmony rushed toward the vanishing cyborg.

“Oh, don’t worry, Harmony.” Miriel sighed. “He’s just gone to another dimension. We’ll find him again. And now, thanks to you, he isn’t immortal.”

Harmony nodded, whistling to the swimming alien crabs. “Come, friends.”

***

Dorian rematerialized, neural static screaming. Echoes of traffic and Times Square lights bombarded the dark alley. “Time for Plan B,” Dorian seethed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luca Nobleman is an author, surgeon, and nerd. To what nerdiness level? Pikachu? He crocheted his own once. Magic the Gathering? His wife rents a storage unit for all his cards. Star Wars action figures? His desk could maybe fit one more K2SO. But it’s okay, because his four children sure like having an extra grown kid in the house. Luca is the author and audiobook/podcast voice for the Dreaming Machines novel series.

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