The Plant: A Steampunk Story

The Plant – A Steampunk Story

by Francis Rosenfeld

© 2015 Francis Rosenfeld

Cover Design by Melchelle Designs

Discover other titles by Francis Rosenfeld:

Terra Two

Generations

Letters to Lelia

Fair

Door Number Eight

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

About the Author

Other Books by Francis Rosenfeld

Chapter One

He was sure he had seen that plant before, although he couldn't, for the life of him, remember where. It was a nice looking vine too, if one was into that sort of thing. Plants, that is, something his mother always found a reason to coo over, God knows why!

Richard walked around the bend, passed the Belvedere point, without stopping to admire the view this time, and picked up the pace on the old cobblestones of the pedestrian trail that connected the town to the steam plant. Back in the day when everyone walked to work it used to be the principal thoroughfare to and from town, but since they had built the railroad for the commuter train nobody took the long walk along the side of the mountain anymore, and the trail hadn't been used in years.

The path started literally within a few feet of Richard's back yard, and in a very strange way it looked like it was supposed to emerge from it, as if it had been intended to originate somewhere inside his house and cut across the back yard. The work on it had obviously been halted at some point, most likely for no other reason than somebody got fed up with this town improvement project and decided that particular spot was as good as any to end it.

But it didn't feel that way to a curious child. When he first discovered it a few years back, while searching for flexible willow branches for one of his wooden catapults, the path felt magical to little Richard, who had just finished reading the Wizard of Oz and whose thoughts were brimming with fantasy, adventure and valiant deeds; the path seemed to have been laid at his feet on purpose and its symbolism gave him goosebumps, but his foreboding emotions didn't prevent him from following through to see what his destiny had in store for him at the other end.

The pedestrian route passed through a lightly forested area and changed dramatically as it passed through the valley, hugging the rocky side of the mountain, where it became barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side and was festooned by a heavy metal rail that guarded the side of a dramatic ravine, and then continued sinuously between large boulders and brambleberry bushes, following the course of the commuter rail almost to a T, but from a safe distance, like a reluctant guardian angel. There were a few cobblestones missing here and there, but the path was otherwise in very good condition, a testament to the dedicated craftsmanship of the workers who had put it together a long time ago.

The walk didn't take very long, about half an hour or so, and the trail wound up pleasantly, with a clearing and a look out point half way down the road, where one could see the entire town nestled between the mountains, like candy in a bowl, and the billowing chimneys of the steam plant puffing in the distance above the large ungainly mass of the factory building.

The eerie image of the steam plant always made Richard picture a sleeping dragon in his mind, and all throughout his childhood he made up all sorts of stories to explain the semi-spirited presence, stories which scared the daylights out of him, more often than not. Terrified, he watched the sleeping giant get engulfed by steam and expected it to rise menacingly upon the city at any moment. He closed his eyes to avoid the apocalyptic imagery and opened them half way a few minutes later, after nothing happened, to see the monster still inhaling and exhaling peaceful breaths of pressured steam, sound asleep.

Richard had feared the mythical giant for years, the monster who was always making strange noises, always huffing and puffing steam clouds, but he was all grown now, almost fourteen, and this kind of stuff was only scaring kids anymore.

The path ended, logically, at the large factory gate, which was two lanes wide and tied to the fence post with a heavy chain wrapped around both of them several times, secured with an impressively large padlock. The gate looked like it only opened if it had a reason to, and in Richard's case, it did not. Both the gate and the fence were tall and sturdy, without any of those wonderful horizontal elements that could have provided him step ladder help up and over.

Like all boys his age Richard was a master at fence jumping, and furthermore, 'fences are for grown-ups' seemed to be one of the guiding principles for his circle of friends. He could have asked one of them to help push him over the fence, but he covetously yearned to keep this discovery all to himself, at least for a while, until he could better anybody else with the knowledge of its details.

Instead, he circled the perimeter, getting scratched and poked by some very hostile bramble, keen on keeping its turf untouched by human foot, and his efforts were eventually rewarded by finding an opening in the wire fence, so small that any reasonable adult would have thought it could barely let a cat fit through.

But the fate of the universe is always at the whim of details. It so happened that Richard was wire thin and very flexible, and could sneak through openings so small they looked impossible to the average person. His friends had nicknamed him Snake for this very reason, a nickname that was much better than Ricky, for God's sake! Ricky! What was he, four? It made him picture himself in a romper covered with smiling hippos and colorful giraffes. He so wished his parents and sisters stopped calling him that, especially in company, that was so embarrassing!

After managing to pass through the fence without nary a scratch, he couldn't believe his luck to have this magical land of Oz all to himself and from then on he dubbed the trail, the factory and its surroundings his territory which he shared with no one and learned like the back of his hand.

Richard's interest in science had grown over the years, evolving from building simple wooden contraptions to more elaborate metallic gear boxes with intricate moving parts, and to this end he got into the habit of sneaking through the hole in the fence, enter through a basement hatch that for some reason nobody ever thought of locking and get straight onto the factory floor. He never thought twice about liberating a few screws and gears from the scrap pile, pieces he knew nobody would miss, but which were invaluable to him in the development of his strange geared machines that he was so passionate about lately.

Most of the components of his miniature gear boxes were assembled from pieces and parts from his dad's garage, so nobody in the family ever thought to check for the more intricate and custom made parts he could only find at the factory. Lucky for him, none of the family members showed any interest in his hobby, though they found it admirable in principle and encouraged him to participate in all the science fairs.

Richard didn't want to contemplate the wrath of Zeus if his father ever found out that his pride and joy and unquestioned heir to the manufacturing job he had been holding proudly for a couple of decades, was breaking and entering to appropriate machined parts, so he decided it was better for his health to omit mentioning this detail to his dad at the dinner table, when all the family members shared in the experiences of the day.

As far as his mother was concerned, the boy could almost feel her envision her eldest son going straight to Hell for his misdeeds, and knew she would anguish over this thought in a manner so horrid that he would eventually have to go there, just to give her some peace of mind.

Richard, however, was completely unmoved by their social expectations, because his heart told him differently. The first time he emerged from the narrow stairwell onto the factory floor, empty and silent on a bright Saturday morning, he felt like a god (yet again another thing he would never think of sharing with his mother, Hell and all), but he really did feel like the demiurge under the metal arches of the ceiling, so high up he could barely distinguish the details in-between, in the flood of light that poured through the giant windows, and among those huge, quiet machines he knew he could activate with one touch of his finger.

What was that plant again? his brain tormented him, making him obsess over the long flexible vine with lance shaped leaves sticking out of it, opposite, in a regular rhythm. Normally, he wouldn't have cared, but the weird part was he had found it growing out of one of the steam valves in use, and then winding around its scolding hot pipe like nobody's business, in a place where hot water vapors could hit it at three atmospheres.

He went over the details of it in his mind, trying to remember everything he could about it. The leaves were deep green, with very sharp edges, and felt rigid to the touch, almost like sheet metal. They bent easily under his fingers, but snapped back to their original shape, with not a crease or a dent left on them. The entire plant was warm to the touch, no doubt due to the fact that it was located inside that sunny window, whose southern exposure made the entire adjacent area feel like a heat collector. The plant stem had no spikes or thorns, but wasn't smooth either, if anything, it made Richard think of cable wire. On closer inspection he noticed the stem itself wasn't solid, but a strand of very thin filaments tightly twisted around each other. There were no flowers or fruit on the plant, at least not at the time. One last interesting detail about it, it seemed to almost float around its supports, without touching them, as if held in place by invisible sky hooks.

His first thought was to ask his biology teacher about this strange plant, and maybe even bring a cutting of it to class, to study it further, but then he realized she would tell his father, which would bring about a moment of reckoning, starting with an explanation about what he was doing inside the steam plant to begin with.

The factory was always spotless, not a nail out of place, not a scrap on the floor, not a drop of grease on a lathe, and it became his secret kingdom for a few very happy hours every Saturday morning, when the good working people of the town, for most of whom this mechanical realm was their place of employment, were enjoying a well deserved rest. Richard told his parents he was going out to collect rocks for a fictitious geology project and then took the worn cobblestone path out of town, to get to the factory and learn all its ins and outs. The factory was relatively large and it took him a while to figure out all the shortcuts and the logical flows of industrial processes that engendered the design of the halls, but eventually he learned the place so well he could travel it with his eyes closed, which he did, on occasion, just to prove himself right.

It was because he knew the factory floor so well that he noticed the plant immediately, even though it was growing in a steam pipe all the way in the back, facing a southern window, and sheltered from view, in an area that served for the storage of new parts and was kind of difficult to navigate.

His eye took a glimpse of something green and sinewy that simply didn't belong in this gleaming stainless steel and somber cast iron kingdom and he weaved his gangly body through a narrow space between two large metal pallets to get a closer look. And there it was, the torment of his mind, happy as can be, sunning itself in the quiet window like it was on vacation.

How does it live there? Richard's question tormented his mind. Maybe it grows back every weekend and gets destroyed on Monday, when the steam pressure starts getting pushed back through the pipes, the scientist inside him replied, and for the time being he had to accept this explanation, for lack of sufficient data, and wait to see what would develop in the future.

But right now he was late, he had promised his father he'd help rebuild the engine on their old car, and he knew his little geology research would come into question if he pushed the limits on the time he spent on it.

Richard didn't mind helping his dad, he was good with his hands and knew it made his father happy to see how skilled he'd become at mending those engine parts. He started walking even faster to get home before his father returned from his customary Saturday morning fishing trip and in his absentmindedness he almost missed the abrupt transition that the cobblestone path made to the grass in their back yard.

He balanced himself just in time to see his father walk into the garage. Richard hoped that the latter didn't notice his ungainly stumble, after all of the volunteering on the sports team and his efforts to turn his progeny into a strong athlete, but the boy wasn't the athletic type and his large motor skills were average at best, reason for which he never failed to disappoint on the field.

He walked into the garage where he and his father worked in a comfortable silence, broken only by a can you hand me the five eights hex or I need a clean rag. The car engine accompanied their sparse conversation with rhythmic revving, meant to test the work they had done so far. After a couple of hours, distracted and a little tired, Richard brushed his arm against the hot engine block, which still held at about two hundred degrees from all the tests they'd been running.

There is no way that plant could live in those steam pipes, not one way in this world! he thought, wincing over the burn on