Chain Story: The Colossus

This story is part of Michael Stackpole's Chain Story.  The Chain Story is a series of free fiction from accomplished writers tied together by the common frame of The Wanderer's Club.





After you're done with this story, be sure to check out others around here.  Here's a complete list of the stories I've published here on this site.  You can also read my work over at Huffington Post. (And check out Shawn Bird's site.  He provided the illustration of The Colossus).


And sure to check out my recent collections available on the Kindle. 

            "That was quite the story, Billy.  It must have been frightening for one so...  young.  Train Bandits are nefarious and for a pair of children to get involved, you're braver than you look.  If your friend escaped that explosion like it seems you're intimating, that would certainly be a story I'd never forget, but in truth, the story I want to hear is his," the old wanderer asked about the man tucked by himself in the shadows at the back of the room. Though everyone else in the room seemed dressed for the occasion, the man in the shadows was built lean, but had an air of working class about him.  The tattered ball cap and cracked leather aviator jacket went quite a long way to aid in that assessment.  He didn't look quite at home in the club, sitting there, lost in thought, nursing three fingers of oak-aged scotch.

            Every so often, his dark eyes would scan the room, though he didn't look like he was interested in telling a story.  Truth be told, he seemed to be looking for a customer.

            When the chap who brought by the drinks and lit the cigars whose smoke provided a thick ambience to the fanciful clubroom, the old man piped in, "Do you know anything about that fellow?"

            A voice from behind the old wanderer cleared his throat, making himself known.  "I have had the distinct pleasure of fighting side-by-side with that man."

            "And who might you be?"

            With a flourish, the gray-bearded man with steely blue eyes produced his card.  "Dr. Thaddeus Quentin at your service, sir.  Archeologist, scholar, adventurer and student of the unknown.  It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

            "Likewise, I'm sure, but you really know that gadabout sulking in the corner?"

            "Indeed.  And as I said before, I've had the pleasure of fighting by his side.  That, sirs, is Jack Smith--"

            "'Cracker' Jack Smith?  The infamous barnstormer turned international soldier of fortune?"

            "The very same."

            "And you've adventured with him?"

            "We fought the Colossus together.  That's my tale to tell really.  Like one of those adventure serials Burroughs writes."  His voice changed, tinged with equal notes of nostalgia and sarcasm, "The Astonishing Tale of Dr. Thaddeus Quentin and The Colossus."

            "And how does this Smith character fit in, then?"

            "Well, I was standing in just that spot, a bit tipsy from an evening of research and listening awe-struck by the sort of tales one is apt to hear in an establishment with a membership as exclusive as The Wanderers Club boasts, wondering how I would get to South America and back with no bodily harm and in possession of the artifact I had the opportunity to acquire by dubious means via my contact in the black market in La Paz.  That is when the redoubtable Mr. Smith caught my eye, much as he's caught yours."

            "I'd always imagined him a bit less...  gritty.  And a bit more..."

            "Heroic?"

            "Mayhap."

            "Well, I can assure you, sir, that despite his disheveled appearance, his salty reputation, and uncouth manner, he's one of the most valuable men in a pinch I've ever met."

            "Do tell."

* * *

            I'd engaged the services of Mr. "Cracker" Jack Smith  for my sojourn to Bolivia in order to collect a very rare artifact, a piece of the original modulating core of Babbage's difference engine.  The piece was said to have engravings of Babbage's future plans for steam-powered computational machinery that I was hoping to exploit to further my discoveries.  My contact there, Ugarte, a small Bulgarian with bug eyes and a reliable kind of greed that made him trustworthy solely on the basis of that predictability, informed me that the pieces I desired for my research would soon be up for sale on the black market.  He was confident that I would pay more for it than any of the riff-raff he normally sells to.  

For that reason, knowledge is expensive.  That's the problem with it, I suppose.  To me, a stamp may just be a stamp and I wouldn't pay more than a few cents for it, but to a properly educated individual, it could be a rare and valuable a work of art - and for that same stamp they would go to the ends of the Earth, and risk untold amounts of money and bodily harm in order to acquire it.  But it's a double-edged blade.  Though the quest would be more perilous and expensive, the price of that knowledge leads to a satisfaction.  Post-acquisition, that feeling is an unparalleled thrill, knowing the leaps and bounds my life's work could take afterwards.  But to most everyone else in the world, the modulating core would be just another scrap of carbon-scorched machinery that may as well end up in a junk yard.  Ugarte knew my interest and was exploiting me accordingly.

Knowing both the nature of Ugarte and the Bolivian black market, I wouldn't put it past him to pull a double-cross of one fashion or another.   He knew I'd be carrying with me a considerable sum of money with which to purchase the piece, so I couldn't be too careful. What he did not know was that I'd be bringing along a back-up in the form of Mr. Smith.  I was convinced then, and doubly convinced now, that if I went alone I may as well have purchased a one-way ticket.  I'm accustomed to a rough and tumble way about things during the adventures I embark on, but I knew when I was biting off more than I could chew.  I'd received Mr. Smith's references from a friend of a friend at the Wanderers Club and we met there to negotiate a price for his services.  Once we'd settled on a not unsubstantial sum, we embarked on our journey to La Paz the very next morning. 

We traveled by dirigible to the west coast of the United States, then by boat to Peru, where we traveled by train to La Paz.  My hands never left the satchel full of American dollars that Ugarte had asked for as payment.  The travel to La Paz was rather uneventful, though.  Smith and I kept rather to ourselves for the duration of our travel.  Smith spent most of our journey at the bottom of a bottle and I spent my time buried deep in my books.  Study was always my first love, adventuring was always an unintended side effect.

After much toil, the train arrived in a plume of steam at the station in La Paz, depositing Smith and myself gratefully in the Bolivian capital.  As we debarked the train, I noticed that Mr. Smith was in rather animated conversation with a local in the native tongue.  He made a wide gesture with his arms and pointed noncommittally, the local shook his head and pointed in a different direction.

"He says our accommodations have been...  compromised...  But he gave me the name of a rickshaw driver that'll take us to a different hotel."

"How did he know that?"

He regarded me with a countenance that screamed that I must be some kind of dimwit or nincompoop.  "Trust me, Doc.  I know what I'm doin'."

And with that he kept walking by me in the direction his informant had indicated.

I followed him to a narrow alley way not far from the locomotive platform, lined on one side by young, rough looking boys, each standing over their own bicycle powered rickshaw.  Each of the rickshaws were in such a state of ill repair that I dared to wonder why they weren't called "rickety"-shaws. Terrible jokes aside, Smith seemed to have a hyper-natural street sense which set me at ease.  He has about him an easy grace as he walked by each of the boys until he found the one he wanted.  The boy wore khaki shorts frayed at the edges and sandals, topped off with a sweat soaked, collared shirt.  His most striking feature, however, were his black eyes, like a doll's.  They set him apart from the other boys in the group even more than did his soft voice.

My feeling of being out of place was so strong that it was almost as though the brick walls between which we stood were closing in on my anxiety, but Smith's smooth countenance had a relieving effect on me.  Knowing that I'd hired him to defend me if things went south eased my mind, but I found it on some level disappointing to me.  It makes a man feel helpless, like he can't stand on his own two feet without a helping hand. 

"Get on." Smith indicated the boy's rickshaw with a quick toss of his head when they'd finished their conversation.

"Of course."

We loaded our gear onto his man-powered apparatus and were quickly on our way.  Seeing the poor boy labor so intensely down the streets of La Paz on our account felt oddly cruel, but it was his job and he did it capably and without complaint.  Indeed, without saying a single word.  The sweat stain on his back began as a small oval at the base, but by the time we arrived at the Hacienda, the ball of sweat was comparable to the Great Lakes.

Smith's new quarters for us were located in a squat wood and dingy-white stucco structure with yellowed windows drooping in old-fashioned panes.  He settled with the boy, who took our luggage in for us while we went in to see the master of this house.  He was a mustachioed man, as squat and worn as his house.  He spoke in a Spanish that gave him an air of excitability that I found quite unnatural.  It was doubly odd when Smith finally made the formal introductions the gold-toothy smile went from his face and the boisterousness left his demeanor.  Solemnly, he pulled an envelope from his drawer and raised it in the air towards me.

"For me?" 

"Si, si."

Reluctantly, I accepted the envelope that, upon close inspection, was addressed to me in Ugarte's oily, all-capitalized penmanship. 

I tore it open and relayed its contents to my companion.  "They're instructions.  A meeting time and place.  The east side of the market at three o'clock in the afternoon."

Smith checked the clock he had unfashionably fastened to his wrist with a leather strap.  "That's less than an hour from now.'

"I suppose we'd better get a move on."

"Yeah..."  Smith turned to the Inn keep and collected our thick, rounded keys and were sent up to the top floor so as to quickly stow away our gear before we departed for the market to meet Ugarte.  I could tell that Smith was deeply troubled by the letter.  How could Ugarte know of our last minute switch in accommodations unless someone Smith knew had switched sides and 'sold us down the river', as they say?  I was a bit disconcerted myself, but I soon settled into the idea that Ugarte would discover our whereabouts sooner or later, since it was he we were meeting with in the first place.  In a best-case scenario, there would be no need for any of these theatrics and we'd be able to conduct our simple transaction and be on our merry ways.  But things never wind up that way, which was why I was compelled to hire Smith in the first place.

I deposited my belongings, sans the satchel of money, in my room, then quickly dampened a rag and pat down my face and underarms with it, in a vain attempt to get cool in the face of such sweltering heat.  Though it provided me the briefest moment of respite, it was ultimately futile.  The moment I stepped back out of my room, the sweat collected beneath my arms and above my brow instantaneously. 

I decided to take a look around the hallway as I waited for Smith to come out when I noticed what I thought was the noise of a door clicking shut.  I turned quickly, expecting to see Smith waving me down, but the hallway seemed empty.

"Hello?"

Getting no reply, I asked again.  "Hello?  Mr. Smith?"

Still getting no reply, I began to worry, and despite my instincts telling me to flee, I took a step closer to the noise.  First one, then another. 

For just a moment, I wondered if I was simply worrying for nothing, suspicious because of the last hour of goings-on, but those particular fears were laid to rest when I felt a hand pull me to the ground and a cloaked figure put a knife to my neck.

"Where is it?" a throaty voice growled at me.

"What?  Where is what?"

I could feel the knife drawing a spot of blood on my throat.  Obviously, they must have assumed I knew what they were talking about.  "Where is what!"

And before this cloaked figure could tell me what it was they were looking for, my enforcer came to my rescue.  He pulled the would-be thief up by the scruff of their neck and just as quickly had their throat pinned on the floor beneath his knee.  "Who are you?  Who sent you?"

He pulled the mask off the figure to reveal a slender female, but he must have known her because his face grew instantly confused. "Katherine?"

"Let me up, you bloody oaf."  She coughed and struggled to breathe beneath his grip.

"What the devil are you doing here?"

"Get off!"

Smith hesitated before relenting, removing his knee from her throat and offering her a hand up.  My cursory glance led me to believe that she would most certainly need a tidy sum of cosmetics to conceal the bruise rapidly developing on her neck.  As soon as she was back on her feet, Smith resumed his intimidation routine.  "What are you doing here?"

She said nothing.  I noticed then that she was quite a shapely little thing and had a small, soft face, and smooth, silky skin.  It was incongruous to see so pretty a young lady be so roughly handled by a man of Smith's demeanor.  He pulled his hands off of her arms.  I couldn't tell if he was coming to his senses or just trying a different tack.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Katherine."  He softened his voice. "I should, but I'm not.  Just tell me what you're doing here."

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"I think you're working for Ugarte."

"Well, well, you do still have a brain left in that head of yours, Jack."

"What does he want?  We have the money.  Why the spy routine?"

"That's for you to find out, loverboy."

"What is the meaning of all of this, young lady?" I asked, unwittingly playing the part of the doddering old professor, blustering his way into a conversation completely out of turn.

"Your grandfather, Jack?"

"My client.  But I'm guessing you know all about that."

"Intimately.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have places to be."  The young lady made a move to step away from Mr. Smith, but he raised his arms, caging her in.

"Not on your life, sweetheart.  I'm not letting you out of my sight until the professor and I are safely on our way out of the country.  I've made that mistake before and I don't intend to repeat it."

She took in a breath of air and let it out with a laugh and a smile.  "You have learned, Jackie boy."

Smith harrumphed at her, grabbing her at the wrists, and leading her down the hallway.  "And besides, the way I figure it, we're all heading to the same place anyway."

"To see Ugarte?" I asked out loud, once again blushing at my foolishness.  I've always felt foolish in retrospect after blurting something obvious.  Thankfully, Smith didn't insult me and the young lady approached it with ambivalence, which was hardly surprising since she had much more pressing personal issues at hand. 

While I was in my room, Smith had organized for an automobile to pick us up to take us to the rendezvous point, but something told me that plans were about to change.  The car was an older model, one I hadn't seen in a while and I couldn't place the name of it.  It was much more comfortable than that bicycle-taxi we took earlier, and I felt much less guilty riding in it.  The passenger compartment into which the three of us sat was arranged much like an old stagecoach, with the two benches of seats facing each other.  Smith never left the girl out of his grip.

Smith mopped the sweat from his brow with his free hand.  "Never quite get used to the heat, do ya, Doc?"

"No, I suppose you don't."  I too wiped the sweat from my face.  The car was stifling.  "So, we're heading to the market place then, to meet Ugarte?"

A barely perceptible smile crept across the girl's face. 

"No," Smith said.  "We're going to see him at his club.  My guess is the rendezvous is a trap."

That barely perceptible smile on her face slowly melted into concern and confusion.

"And I'm betting he doesn't have the modulation core, either, doc."

"What makes you think that?"

"We have the money and we're ready to deal up front.  He sent her to kill us and take the money.  What does that tell you?"

"That he doesn't have the artifact, I suppose."

"What do you say about that, honey?"

"I told you, I wasn't going to say a word."

"But you're sweating now.  Pouting, even."

"Am I?"

"Relax, princess.  Your secret's safe with me. I'll be sure he knows you didn't sell him out if he makes it through the night."

"You surely don't intend to kill him on my behalf, sir." I wanted the modulating core, but I was uneasy with idea of shedding blood for it.

"I don't intend on killing anybody, but that seems to be his intention, and I'm more than happy to fight fire with fire."

"I see."

"And we'll see exactly how surprised he is when he sees us."

"Of course, but may I remind you, Mr. Smith, that more than anything, I would like the artifact with which we have embarked upon our journey to collect.  And for that, I believe we'll need Ugarte alive."

"We'll see, doc.  We'll see."

It was a ten-minute ride across town to Ugarte's club and it was filled with much silence.  The girl, Katherine, refused to answer any of Smith's questions.  I found it surprising how much Smith could ascertain by her lack of answers.  I couldn't tell if Ugarte was simply that sloppy and couldn't think things through or if Smith was a genius at deductive reasoning.  My guess was somewhere in the middle.  It only made sense.  The difference engine's modulating core was useless to Ugarte and I doubt there would be many other buyers he may have found this quickly.  There were only two possible explanations.  The first was that he'd found another buyer with a better offer and no longer wanted to hassle with me, but that was no reason to want my money and for me to be dead.   The only other possible explanation was that he didn't have it and Smith was a man of a certain reputation when it came to liars, cheats, and double-crossers.  If he found that he wasn't able to be in possession of the artifact by the time of our appointed date, it was entirely possible it would be easier for him to cut his losses, have us killed, and still make out with the money.

Ugarte certainly disappointed me in either case.  There were better ways to handle things like this, especially amongst learned men.  But it seemed as though Ugarte was only a thug passing himself off as a learned man.

His club could neither be described as opulent nor fancy.  It was a watering hole in the most basic sense, but there were evaporative air coolers and fans installed, which made it a popular hang out amongst the local denizens of the more base portions of the Bolivian underworld and black market.  At least that was what I had been told.  The place was in a state of disrepair and what seemed to be a massive hole in the side of the building was plugged up with tattered boards and rusty nails.

            "Go on in." Smith indicated the door with his head. "I'll be inside in a minute."

            Confused, I asked where he'd be while I stuck my neck out on the line.

            "I'll be right behind you.  Trust me."

            With my best effort to appear casual, I cautiously entered the front door of Ugarte's club.  I swallowed the tight lump in my throat as I came in and wondered to myself why such place of popular renown was deserted. 

            Ugarte, dressed in a white dinner jacket, was seated on the far side of the club with his back to the door.  He seemed busy with something, perhaps his accounts receivable, a chess game maybe, I couldn't tell at that distance.  He must have heard my footsteps, but mistook me for someone else, since he pointed toward the back and called out without turning around, "Put it around there."

            His accent was thick, full of breath, and squeaky.

            Seeing that he'd mistaken me for some form of delivery boy, I cleared my throat and said in a clear, firm voice, "Senor Ugarte."

            Startled, he turned around and stood, toppling the table in front of him over, skittering papers across the floor. 

There was a moment where his bug eyes were processing all of the information before him: that I had not been killed, that I still had my money, and I was not safely "taken care of" at his ambush in the market. Without a word, his flight response kicked in and he turned, leaping away comically, like a gazelle fleeing a lion cub.

I didn't move a muscle to stop him.  Conceivably, I was so stunned by his overreaction that I was frozen, left blinking to wonder where he might have gone off to.

Fortunately, I didn't need to act.  A loud thudding sound from behind the partitioning wall alerted me to the fact that Ugarte either slipped or must have been stopped.  My money was on the latter.

I made my way to the back of the club to find that "Cracker" Jack had certainly lived up to his name and provided Ugarte with a surprise: a right hook that knocked him unconscious and to the floor.

"Doc."

"Smith."

"Looks like we caught our friend here red-handed trying to escape."

"Indeed.  Where's the young lady?"

"She's no lady, Doc."

"Be that as it may, I trust she's okay?"

"She's in the car....taking a nap."

            "I see." I cocked an eyebrow with dismay.

            "Help me with him."

            And with that we heaved the dead weight of Ugarte's form up to his feet, his arms over our shoulders and we dragged him to a table inside the club.  Smith splashed water across Ugarte's face, soaking his slick, black hair and white suit.

            "Huh, wha?" he said as he was coming to, then realizing his predicament, "No!  Not you..."

            "Yes.  Us, Ugarte." Smith brandished the six-shooter he wore on his hip in a beat-up, leather holster.

            "It's not my fault."

            "You tried to kill us."

            "Well, it wasn't without reason, please don't kill me.  I'll tell you anything you want, please just don't kill me."

             "Why would we give you a chance you had no intention of giving us?"

            You had to almost admire Ugarte.  He sat there, as cowardly as could be, but never once looked away from us.  His bulging eyes always made direct contact with Smith's or mine.  He was the most courageous coward I'd ever seen.

            "Because you still want the piece.  I can tell you where it is.  Maybe then you'll let me go."

            "I think you're going to tell us anyway."

            "Of course, I will."

            "Excuse me." I leaned in towards them, "but how do we know we can trust him?  I mean, he has lied to me repeatedly and tried to do us in."

            "We'll just keep him along until he gives us what we want.  No surprises and we'll even let you keep the money."

            "That sounds fair, Mr. Smith.  A much more square deal than you were willing to offer us, Senor Ugarte."

            Ugarte sank in his chair, beneath the weight of Smith's pointed pistol.  "What's the matter, Ugarte?"

            He said something quietly, under his breath, something that was unintelligible to both Smith and myself.  Was that Bulgarian he was speaking? 

"Speak up.  What's that, Ugarte?"

            This time, a little louder, with more strain in the squeak of his voice, "I don't have it.  It's not here."

            "You don't have it?" I asked with much incredulity.

            "Well then where is it then, Ugarte?"

            "Stolen.  It's been taken and I didn't want to risk my neck to get it back."

            "Who took it?"

            "Not who, what.  What took it?  I don't know what it was, but they call it around these parts El Coloso and I didn't feel much like getting killed for the piece."

            "But you'd kill for it."

            "Killing is preferable to being killed, for any amount."

            I had to repress a crooked smile.  His logic on that score was quite sound.  But what could instill such terror in a self-styled lord of the Bolivian underworld? 

            "El Coloso?" Smith asked Ugarte, using the barrel of the gun to raise his head up under the chin.

            "It's Spanish for 'The Colossus.'" I translated for Smith, realizing after I did so that he spoke fluent Spanish.  For a second time I was grateful for his understanding and lack of desire to berate me for inadvertently speaking down to him.  It amazes me how often people assume I speaking down to them when it's really just my doddering nature.

            "What in the hell is it, Ugarte?"

            "It a monster.  A steel beast.  It came in and took the modulating core."  Was he close to sobbing?  It certainly seemed so.

            "A steel beast?  You really expect me to believe that?"

            "What do you think did that?" Ugarte turned and pointed to the covered up floor-to-ceiling hole in the wall that I'd noticed on my way in. 

            Smith cocked the pistol, mere inches from Ugarte's ear.

            "I'm telling you the truth, you have to believe me, Smith.  You have to.  Why do you think there's no one here?  All the natives think my place is cursed.   It smashed its way in, tossed around my customers, took the core and left the way he came."

            "And that's why you wanted to kill us?  Because your club was going under?" I added, once again blithely stating the obvious.

            "I needed the money and Katherine owed me a favor.  We were going to split it.  It was her idea.  I swear." The pitch of his voice grew higher and coarser with each word uttered.

            "What exactly did this colossus look like?"  Smith seemed dismissive of Ugarte's claim, but the hole in the wall was quite compelling.

            "It was eight feet tall, made of steel, it had a grate where the face would be and it was breathing steam.  Thick binocular lenses for eyes.  Barrel-chested, where it kept it's engine and motors...  It was carbon scored top to bottom, black.   It was the most powerful golem I've ever seen." As Ugarte described the monster, I could imagine the carnage it could cause.  And if it were operating with a miniaturized and more sophisticated version of the difference, it could conceivably be lethal and terrifying.  Perhaps even unstoppable. 

I certainly didn't like the sound of this.  It may as well have been called 'impending doom' rather than 'The Colossus.'

            "And where did this thing head off to?"

            "I don't know...  It just left."

            "If you had to guess," Smith lowered the gun slowly, crossing past Ugarte's heart. 

            "There's a village nearby...  People say it's haunted by El Coloso..."

            "How nearby?"

            "It's in the mountains.  There's no road.  You can only get there by foot or mule.  A days ride.  A day and a half on foot, maybe?"

            "And you're sure this thing has the piece?"

            "As sure as anything."

            "Well, let's get going then, day's a wastin'." Smith holstered his pistol and roughly pulled Ugarte to his feet.

            "What?  I'm not going up there..." Ugarte found the courage to challenge Smith once his gun was put away.

            Smith replied by going once more for his holstered gun.

            Ugarte gulped and relented without further hesitation.  "If you insist, I suppose I can come."

* * *

            We collected Katherine, who Smith had unceremoniously knocked unconscious, tied, and gagged in the back of the car, and made our way to the base of the mountain.  Smith took care of hiring a guide and five mules for the trek up to the "haunted" village.  It was mid-day and our guide expected that we'd be at the village some time around midnight. 

            My mount was an obstinate ass named Adolfo.  Our guide, Ernesto, told me that a soft pat on the head would get me a lot further with Adolfo than harsh words, but I was very quickly frustrated with him and was prone to growling at him through gritted teeth.

            It took about two hours for he and I to reach an understanding long enough to hit a stride, but it wasn't easy.

            The scenery we passed by was beautiful albeit monotonous in its repetition.  We passed beneath the same canopies, the same shrubs, the same flowers, and trod over the same dirt path for hours.  We may has well have been traveling in a circle round the base of the mountain for all the changes in scenery we encountered.  We stopped only occasionally to catch our breath, drink sparingly from our canteens and catch a moment's respite from the sun beneath the shade of a massive tree or stone out-cropping.  At dusk we supped.  Our guide built a small fire and cooked cans of beans and a tin pot of stew.  We passed around a hard loaf of bread and a lump of cheese.  Ernesto procured from his mule's saddlebag an impressive cask of red wine that we all took turns taking swigs from.  Ugarte was the lone holdout.  He drank little and ate even less.  Perhaps it was in protest of his treatment.  I had a hard time sympathizing with him, though.  He made his bed as was being made to sleep in it.

            "Eat, Ugarte.  You'll need your strength," Smith told him.

            "I'm not all that hungry."  Ugarte stood up and walked away from the group and beyond the tree the mules were hitched to.

            "I would not wander off too far, Senor," our guide called out after Ugarte.  "There are jaguars in these paths and there is safety in numbers if you don't know the ways of the mountain."

            Ugarte kicked a rock and stayed within our line of sight.  "You really put the screws to him, Smith," Katherine told my companion.  Truth be told, I was surprised she had the wherewithal to speak to him after how roughly he had treated her throughout the day, but I could only guess, based on their banter, that this was very normal behavior for their past history. 

            "He tried to do a lot more to me."

            "It was business.  It was nothing personal."

            "Nothing's more personal than my neck."

            "Because that was always the most important thing in your life: yourself."

            "What can I say?  I look out for number one."

            Ernesto stood and made his way to the mules, petting his own on its bristly head.  Ugarte stood alone, ahead on the trail.  He was still in the low light, from a distance it made him look like a part of the trees, an obstacle to move around along the path.

            And I sat, watching the fire die out.

            "It's time we get a move on," Smith said, raising himself to his feet.

            "I still don't know why you made me come along on this fools errand" Katherine stood up, obstinately.

            "Then you're not as smart as you look.  I told you why I'm not letting you out of my sight until I'm safely far away from here."

            She inched closer to him, her tone became flushed and full of annoyance.  "I'm not one of your groupies, Jack.  And I'm not a lap dog."

            "Don't I know it." They were nose to nose.

I nodded my head and stood up, stretching my back, trying hard to ignore their argument, but it became impossible when she slapped him with an open palm across his face.  It made a loud smack that echoed in the mountain, reverberating a hundred times in my ears.

With my attention turned to them, I saw that Smith had grabbed her hand at the wrist and held it tightly.  A moment passed and they shared their next volley of words in whispers behind gritted teeth.  I didn't catch their words, but I certainly caught their ton.  Because of that, I was taken aback considerably, trying hard to understand what happened next. 

            They locked lips...

            ...kissed passionately.

She pulled away, tried slapping him again, but that just led them to kiss once more, with twice the force of before.

Being the gentleman I am, I averted my eyes until the spectacle had passed.  Soon enough it was over and their relationship turned back to that hot and cold bickering of a couple whose flame has long since been snuffed by betrayal, but the old sparks are still there, smoldering in the ash.

We began our journey anew, but this time with the sinister shadows brought by the light of the moon to keep our company.  The sound of the mule's footsteps grew more and more ominous, each step on the dirt path echoing into the night, creating a cacophony of clopping that was unsettling in the dark.  Add to that a symphony of crickets and birds of the night and I could actually feel a chill crawl up my spine in the dark. 

More foreboding than the setting however was the mood of all involved.  The guide was silent, ever vigilant at the point of our caravan, Smith, who took up the rear, was gazing into the night for trouble.  The most unnerving thing was the chattering of Ugarte's teeth.  I should have been more frightened by this, seeing as how he was the only one among us who had seen the Colossus, but I assumed that his fear was for his life on account of his treatment at the hands of Smith.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Hours passed in this stressful state.  A hole gnawed slowly in my stomach.  If I hadn't been so confident that it was dread, I would have expected it to be an ulcer.  That gnawing feeling was exacerbated every so often when Ugarte would whimper quietly in the dark. 

My mind and body were exhausted by the days events and I tried hard to catch a bit of sleep atop my mount, but it was not meant to be.  The fear in my belly produced the most ghastly images of my subconscious every time rest was near.  A vision of a hundred bats swooping down upon us, scratching and screeching at our heads, startled me into wakefulness.  It was only the sound of fear Ugarte kept making amplified in my dreams.

Another time I drifted off and was knocked off my mule with a swift punch in the gut by a mechanical terror.  It was a steam-powered monster of some sort, but I could only make out the idea of him, the details of his vision eluded me in reality, left forever in the recesses of my dreamed secrets.

The startling jerk of coming out of that dream state mirrored the sensation of falling and it was one of those occasions that I realized we were at our destination.  It took a moment, since the only indication was Ernesto stopping us and loudly whispering that we'd arrived.

I looked around in the dark, looking for signs of the village we were heading for.  Seeing none in the dark, I asked more loudly than I should have, "Where is the village?"

"You're in the village," Ernesto lit his torch, illuminating the remains of burned out huts and toppled shacks all around us. 

We were standing not in a village, but the fragile remains of what once was a village.  "What happened to the villagers?"

"All dead."

With that, Ugarte leapt from his mule and ran past me, "I'm not staying here..."

But Smith was there to meet him and keep him with the group.  "You're not going anywhere, Ugarte.  Not until we get what we paid for."

"But you can't, you can't keep me here!"  He tried his hardest to shove Smith back, but Smith grabbed him by the back of his collar like a kitten and tossed him into the dirt. 

With a soft thud, he hit the ground and made a high-pitched sound that originated from the back of his throat.  It might have been mistaken for a war-cry, but was actually his total resignation.  "We're going to die out here, Smith.  All of us.  We can't hide from El Coloso.  He'll kill us all and it'll be your fault."

"Shut it, Ugarte," Katherine kicked dirt in Ugarte's direction.  "You'll attract it..."

Ernesto interrupted the proceedings, "It's not safe for us out here."

Without another word, he led his mule on foot toward the center of the village and we all followed, filled with fear for our lives.

It was at this moment that I wondered to myself if obtaining the modulating core was worth my life.  I had to quickly cast aside those thoughts.  I was here now and there was no turning back so pondering the potentiality of my death was apt to get me nowhere.  Or worse, dead.

Once in the center of the village, Ernesto brought us to one of the larger huts that still was still intact.  We hitched our mules outside and went in, Ernesto leading the way by torchlight.  The walls of the hut were built of an earthy stone, with small round windows carved into it at regular intervals.  Thick straw covered over the top in a domed fashion with a structure built of thick branches.  Somehow, beyond all reason, this hut seemed to be completely untouched by the destruction that shattered the rest of the village.

We started a small fire for light and heat in the center of the room and all sat around it, Ugarte begrudgingly so.

"What do we do now?" I asked.

"We wait for it to come to us." Smith said.

There was a collective gasp of shock in the room.

Katherine was the first to ask the obvious: "Are you crazy?"

"What else is there?  If he comes to us between now and morning, we'll know it's close.  If not, we'll start tracking its trail at first light.  In either case, I think this is the best place to start.  If you don't like it, tough."

"I don't like it.  I don't like it at all."  Ugarte's voice cracked nervously.  Sweat collected on his brow and pooled under his bug eyes. 

"I don't care."

Trying to be a voice of reason, I supported Smith, "It seems like the only sensible thing to do."

            And so we sat.  Waiting in the cold of night, warmed by the fire, waiting for what  I felt was to be certain death.

            Seconds ticked by as though they were minutes, each minute seemed an hour.  It was almost as though you could hear a clock ticking.  No one wanted to talk with an unspoken fear that The Colossus would hear us and come running to end us all.

            "Tick, tick, tick, tick," I could hear the clock in my head, over and over and over again.  "Tick, tick, tick..."

            The same thing must have happened to Ugarte, because it was at that moment he snapped.  "I have to get out of here!"

            Like a fool, he stood and screamed as he fled. 

            I expected Smith to stop him, to shut the damn fool up, but he did no such thing.  Smith simply let him by.

              I stood in a hurry, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ugarte running away down the trail, praying for his safety.  Not because I cared so much about his safety, but if he could make it away, I felt my chances were much better.

            My eyes had not adjusted to the lack of light, so all I saw was mostly black, but what I heard told all the story I needed to know.

            Ugarte's screams were met with the mechanical whoosh of the monster's arms and gears.  "No!" was the only word I could make out of Ugarte's screams.  There was a snap and a gushing sound, silencing Ugarte, and I knew at that moment he was dead, pulled in twain by The Colossus.

            I stopped. 

            My heart rate soared and though I could feel that gush of adrenaline kick into my body, I was petrified.

            I could say and do nothing, frozen and useless.

            It was only after a few moments that I realized that once the creature had dispatched Ugarte the whirring noises it made had come to a halt.  It had somehow, for some reason, powered down.  As my eyes slowly adjusted to the dim moonlight I could see it standing there over both halves of Ugarte's body, exactly as he'd described it.  It was hard to make out its proper shape in the dark since it was carbon-black.  Its thick-lensed eyes reflected the firelight back at me.  It had a broad visor beneath that, like the medieval armor of a knight.  From what I could tell, it looked top heavy, its legs seemed as though they'd never be able to carry as much weight as it must have been.  It's great arms tapered into massive steel gauntlets that sprouted from the top of the steel barrel chest its steam fittings and gears were housed in.

            But it was frozen, completely at rest.

            Either it had run completely out of steam or was programmed to wait for us to attempt egress from the village.  In any case, it wouldn't have done Ugarte any good, he was as dead as a doornail now, and no force in heaven or Earth could bring him back to the land of the living.

            "My God," I heard Katherine gasp from behind me.  It was the first time I noticed that I had not come to the doorway to witness Ugarte's death alone.

            If I'd have had more time and wherewithal to process it, I would have been quite impressed that Katherine didn't let out a shriek of terror that I expected was common from women in terrifying situations.  I could give you detailed dissertations from off the top of my head about steam powered computational theory, but about women I knew virtually nothing first hand, and women aren't exactly the sort of thing you can learn about in books.

            "It's not moving," I told her, though she could see that plainly for herself.

            I took a cautious step backwards, and another and another.  Stretching my arm out behind me, I reached my hand toward Katherine, getting her to back away slowly with me.  I caught her arm, marveling at how soft and cool it was, despite being covered in gooseflesh.

            We reached the center of the room and turned to see that Smith hadn't moved a muscle.  "It's pretty bad, isn't it?"

            "Indeed it is, sir."

            "I imagine that's why he left."

            "Who?"

            Smith pointed to the empty spot across the fire where Ernesto was sitting.  "Snuck out the back window while you were gawking at Ugarte."

            "We're in a damned tight spot, Smith."

            "I know."

            "Do you have a plan?"

            "Of course he has a plan.  He's the great Cracker Jack Smith.  He always has a plan," Katherine seemed disgusted, both with Smith and the situation.

            "Don't worry, I'll think of something."

            Katherine rolled her eyes.  It was incredibly obvious she didn't like having her life in Smith's hands.  For the first time since we embarked on our voyage, I wondered if Smith's reputation had been greatly exaggerated. 

            "Doc, I need to know--"

            --Smith was cut off by the ugly, distant scream of Ernesto dying reverberating across the mountain and into the village.

            Smith leapt to his feet.  My guess was that he thought if the Colossus were in the distance murdering our guide, it would be safe to leave and search for the modulation core...

            ...but as far as we could tell, the metal marvel hadn't moved so much as an inch from his spot, blocking us into our hovel. 

            The only difference was Ernesto's body strewn at his feet, his blood and innards mixed with Ugarte's.  "Doc," Smith whispered, "if we don't make it out of this alive, I'll be sure to give you a full refund."

            "That isn't very reassuring."

            But it was at that moment that my eyes finally adjusted well enough that I caught a sparkling glint across the midsection of the Colossus.  Unless I was off my guess, the modulating core had been embedded onto the exterior of his chest, near the base where its leg met the gears in the midsection.

            "Is that what I think it is, Doc?"  Clearly, Smith had seen it, too.  If he'd recognized it, he'd done his homework.

            "Indeed."

             "If we remove it, you think we'll disable it?"

            "I would doubt it.  If it was functioning properly before it stole it from Ugarte, it might not require it."

            "It could have had something in its place, a copy of it..."

            "It's possible."

            "Is it worth a shot?"

            For once I was right there with him, without having to ask questions about what he was planning.  The only thing I couldn't wrap my head around was the how.  "It tore Ugarte and the guide limb from limb.  How do you suggest the three of us get close enough to it to remove the core?"

            "Easy as pie, Doc.  A distraction."

            "And how do you propose we distract a metal monster who would just as soon rend us in half as look at us?""

            "Numbers seem to be our only advantage.  We can distract it and draw its attention from a couple of different directions.  Maybe we can confuse it.  That'll give one of us an opening to sneak up behind it and take the core."

            I was petrified.  All I could see in my mind's eye were all of the horrific ways I could imagine the Colossus being able to end my life.  I could almost feel a tear at my middle and my body separating in two with my intestines spilling out over the robot, it's giant arms acting as an impromptu stretching rack. 

            "...have to be quick about it.  Got it?"

            "Huh?  What?"

            "You'll have to be quick about it, Doc."

            "What...  What were we saying?"

            "I'll sneak out one side, Kate'll sneak out the other.  We'll make some noise and let it try and figure out who to go after first, then you sneak up behind and take out the core."

            "I'm not doing it, Jack.” Kate thrust a finger in his face to punctuate her words. "You two can go straight to hell if you think I'm going to risk my neck to get torn in half by that thing."

            "I don't trust you to take the core out, and I'm pretty sure this is the only way we're going to make it out of this whole mess Ugarte got us all into alive.  So you're going to have to just shut your mouth and do your part, just like the rest of us."

            I felt awkward being given the easiest and least risky of the three incredibly dangerous jobs, as though I were a child in need of protection.  "If the lady would prefer, I'll offer the diversion and she can take the piece."

            "I don't trust her with it.  She'll take it and high tail it as fast as she can."

            "Will you?" I turned to gauge her response.

            "No."

            "Do I have your word?"

            "If it means I don't have to go screaming like a banshee drawing that thing's attention?  Then yes."

            "Then she can retrieve the core and we'll conduct the diversion."

            "With all due respect, Doc, she's..."

            "With all due respect, Mr. Smith, I'm the one paying the bills for this excursion which has slowly turned into a suicide mission.  If I say the lady will be retrieving the piece for us, then the lady will be retrieving the piece for us.  I will be happy to pay her Ugarte's fee for it."

            Smith seemed unhappy with my yanking the purse strings over our survival, but it was not in me to let the lady take the risk while I was sheltered with the easy job.  I know it was a matter of pride on my part, but I had to do it.  And besides, I doubt we would have obtained her cooperation otherwise.

            "If that's what you want, Doc.  But I don't trust her."

            "And you never will, Jack."

            He smirked.  "Well, we might as well get this over with."

            We all walked slowly back into the room and watched on as Smith kicked out the fire.  Nary a word was spoken between the three of us.  Our stomachs were tied in knots.  I swallowed hard and scratched my left wrist with increasing intensity.  It was a nervous tick I had very little control of.  I didn't even realize I was doing it until Katherine grabbed my right hand to stop me.

            Once more, Smith wiped the sweat from his brow, and exhaled a deep breath, "I'll head out this way, you head out that way."

            "How will I know when to make a commotion?" I whispered.

            "You'll know.  As soon as it heads for me.   And as soon as it turns for him, Katherine, you be ready to sneak between its legs and grab the core."

            "You'll have to twist it out a quarter turn clockwise, pull, and then twist a quarter turn counter clockwise."

            "Glad you mentioned that now."

            "Better now than never."

            "And you're sure if I pull this thing out it'll stop?"

            "I have no guarantees.  Whatever happens once it's pulled happens.  I'm an expert on the theory, not the practical application.  And I've never seen anything that sophisticated.  It would be like a caveman commenting on the function of an aeroplane."

            "You're just a bundle of good news."

            In our conversation, we hadn't noticed that Smith was halfway out the back opening of the hut.  "See you on the other side, Doc.  You better get a move on."

            I took my position to crawl silently out the other window.

            "Good luck," Smith called out to me.

            "Godspeed," I replied.

            Stealth was never my strong suit, and neither was navigating in the dark.  I dropped to my knees and then got prostrate, crawling along the ground on my belly, quietly as I could.  It took all of my concentration to not relapse into my mind, imagining all of the horrible ways in which I would be torn asunder, and even then I wasn't successful.  It took far too much of my brain power to breath slowly and to shuffle along on the ground silently to keep those images completely from my mind. 

            In one instance, I could see the mighty monster grabbing my by my collar with one hand, dangling me over the ground and punching through my middle with his other mighty fist.  In another, I could see the thing punting me fifty yards into a tree, snapping my neck on impact.  With a creature of seemingly limitless power and an intellectual with a limitless imagination, anything was a possibility. 

            I arrived in my appointed position fifty yards behind and to the left of the Colossus.  As far as I could tell it was still in its fixed position outside the door of the hut we'd taken refuge in, waiting for us to brazenly walk out the front door, make a commotion, or I don't know what else.  I could neither see nor hear Smith from his position across the village.  For all I knew the Colossus could have eaten him alive and zipped back to his position in the blink of an eye, but I guessed this wasn't the case.  If I hadn't blown my cover, Smith, the consummate professional, certainly hadn't blown his.  Or so I hoped.

            Each second ticked by with all the force of a wave crashing against the rocks in my stomach, wearing my nerve down to a smooth stone in the surf.  Every second adjusted my eyes to the moonlight more and more, and wider my pupils dilated, the thicker the outline of the Colossus became.

            With nothing to distract my mind, I tried hard to decide what the Colossus looked most like, but its name seemed to be the best description for it.  It was a colossus, a mass of steel and power.  Even though its exterior was a cold steel, it seemed to have all the raw power of a jungle cat.  You could tell that beneath its skin was a mass of muscle and power ready to strike its prey at any moment. 

            Inching closer, I was desperate for Smith to make his move.  I wasn't sure how much longer I could last.  My legs and arms has fallen asleep and my nose was itching.  The smell of weeds, grass, and dust filled my nostrils and it became virtually impossible to keep myself from sneezing.

            I tried hard to keep it in, knowing that it would be certain death.

            Sadly, sneezing isn't a voluntary reaction, and I lost it.

            The sound of my sneeze cut into the silence of the night like a nails across a chalkboard in an empty room. 

            The concussive force of the violent discharge left a sharp pain in my back and neck, such as I hadn't felt in quite a long time, or so I thought.  The pain was the Colossus.  The space of time it took for me to sneeze was all it took for the Colossus to be on top of me.  I was caught in its grasp, its thumb was under my right arm and its forefingers had my clasped over my left shoulder, squeezing my neck to the side, dangling me in the air like a rag doll.

            "Smith!" I shouted.

            I saw a flashing report from Smith's position and could feel the PING of a bullet ricochet uselessly against the steel hide of the Colossus.  Two more bullets smashed into its head.  Of course!  Smith was trying to smash its optical array.

            The Colossus jerked me left to right, and then positioned me in front of his face, using me as a shield.  I tried my hardest to twist around, hoping to get a view of his face, looking for any opening to do some damage before he killed me.

            It was at that moment that I realized that I was probably going to die, so I was fearless.  If it was going to kill me, I might as well do everything I could to ensure the Smith and the girl wouldn't be killed, too.

            Seeing that I was now the target, Smith holstered his six-shooter and courageously ran toward me, to what end, I had no idea.  My hope was that he was going to somehow make the Colossus drop me, but whether or not he could find a chink in the Colossus' armor was still anyone's guess.

            Finally I'd wriggled my way around to face the Colossus and found myself with the closest view I'd had yet.  It was elegant in its design, like an the ornamental top of an art deco building with goggles elegantly laced into the zig-zag of the frontispiece where a mouth and nose might go on a human head.  My left arm was pinned quite tightly to my body because of the position the Colossus had grabbed me in, but my right arm was left with a relatively free range of movement.  I took a winding swing at its eyes with a meaty fist, but to no avail.  I may as well have been attacking a battleship with rock.  Twice more I hit its left lens with all the concussive force my arm could muster, but I probably damaged my hand more than I damaged it.  In fact the worst I probably did was smudge the glass.  Finally, it noticed my attacks and saw Smith drawing in closer.

            With no regard, it flung me aside, tossing me into the dirt.  I spun end over end repeatedly until I made impacted brutally into one of the burned out huts across the village.  I stood, dizzy, shaking off the impact.  Adrenaline forced me beyond the pain and without thinking I was steady on my feet, running toward the fray as fast as my legs could convey me.

            I had a resolve in me to see this through and not die in the process.  As a got closer to the conflict, I could see that Smith was caught in the clutches of the Colossus, being held up off the ground by the neck.  His pistol was hovering in the air in front of the giant's face.  "Shoot him!" I shouted, but he must have been out of ammunition, since no hot, lead fury came forth.

            It was then that I spied Katherine between the legs of the Colossus, reaching up toward the spot between its legs and torso the modulating core was tucked into.  It became quite apparent to me that the machine did not realize that its undoing was so close at hand.  She seemed too timid to act, so I did the only thing I could, "Hey, brute!  Over here!"

            I waved my hands and shouted, drawing all attention toward me.  Smith choked, trying to speak, "Doc...what're...you...doing?"

            But I had no time to respond, the Colossus took a step in my direction before it realized that Katherine was below it with her hand on the core.

            "Do it now!" I yelled at her, picking up a rock and flinging it at the oversized fiend.  It really quite confused, whatever it was programmed for, fending off three humans unafraid to fight back was not a part of that regimen.  If an artificial being as such could feel surprise, that is no doubt what the Colossus must have been experiencing. 

            "Clockwise!" I shouted, seeing her difficulty, "Then counter-clockwise!"

            I flung another pair of rocks, hoping that it might loosen its grip on Smith, who could barely breath.  If it had been bright out, I would have expected that his face was a deep shade of fuchsia from the struggle and the lack of oxygen.  His gun wavered in his flailing arm, back and forth, an empty threat of violence.

            "I got it!" Katherine was holding the modulating core in both hands, smiling.  I smiled for a moment myself, but the smile quickly faded into a grimace.  The loss of the core did nothing to stop the Colossus.  It turned and smashed Katherine roughly in her side, knocking her and the modulating core aside.

            Afraid that it might kill Smith, I charged it.

            As I charged, I realized that there wasn't much at all I could do to damage the thing, but I could at least give it something else to think about in order to save Smith's life if it was possible.

            My form smashed up against its right leg and I hit it with as much force as my aging frame could muster, but I may as well have been trying to tackle a building for all it noticed.

            It picked me up with its free hand by my collar and it was then that I guessed the end would come.  "Katherine," I gasped, hoping the distressed damsel would come to our rescue.  "Help us."

            From the corner of my eye I could see her consider us gravely and then smile.  Her posture changed from concerned damsel to sultry villain with a snap. "So long, Doc.  It's been nice knowing you, Smith."

            And with that, she left.  She disappeared into the darkness, somewhere behind me.  I couldn't see her, the Colossus still held me firmly in place.  I clawed at its arm, hoping that somehow it would drop me, but I had no such luck.  It was then that I realized if I couldn't shatter the lenses of his ocular receptors, perhaps I could obscure them.  With all the wind I could muster, I spit at the beast’s face. 

Direct hit! 

            My thick mucous coated his eye, forcing him to drop both Smith and I while it tried to wipe off the obstruction with its hands that were clearly too large for the job.  Smith hit the ground grasping.  He'd been squeezed to within an inch of his life and he had precious few seconds to catch his breath before the Colossus would be on top of us again.

            As it cleared its face, it tried stamping us with its substantial metal boots, each of us rolled out of the way, finding it much easier to dodge its attacks while it was blind.  "Doc," Smith called out, still severely winded, "You okay?"

            "I'd be more concerned about yourself at the moment," I managed to find the time between tumbles to reply.  The ground shook with every stamp of its feet and sound was enough to deafen me.

            But, as it turns out, it was playing our own game against us.  It was merely distracting us until it could regain all of its sight and senses.  It was then that I realized that one of its immense hands at scooped me up into its grasp once more.  Looking over, I noticed that Smith, too, was in its clutches.

            All seemed lost at that point, and since Katherine had fled with the modulating core to save her own skin, putting up more of a fight seemed rather pointless.  I decided to meet my fate with dignity and end the struggle on my part.

            My resignation was a bit premature, it would seem.

            As loud as the stamping of the Colossus' feet were, it would not prepare me for the report of Smith's firearm at point blank range.  It seemed as though he had one bullet left and shot the beast right through the glass of his ocular cavity.  We could hear the bullet ricocheting down, deep into the belly of the beast with a sound like a ball peen hammer smashing a piece of tin.  The gears and steam workings inside of his barrel chest whirred and whizzed to a grinding halt and we dropped from its weakened grasp.

            Smith and I must have been sitting on the ground there catching our breath for an hour.  Neither of us wanted to get up, the aches and bruises in our bodies were sharp and new and I knew they would feel twice as bad or worse in the morning.  A smirk crept across my face when I realized that I would live to see another sunrise.

            "Why didn't you shoot the damn thing before?"

            "I didn't have a clear shot."

            "Oh.  I see."

            "When you've got one bullet left, you better make it count."

            "Indeed."

            After a time, Smith stood slowly, offered his hand to help me up.  "Why, thank you."

            "We better get a move on if we want to get your core back in one piece."

            "The core is definitely of value, but I believe that taking the Colossus back to study would prove much more fruitful in my research."

            "Yeah," Smith shrugged with indifference, "I bet it would."

            And with that, we began our trek back down the mountain on foot to hire a cart and team of horses to haul the Colossus to the train station. 

            "And you sure you don't want to get the modulating core back from Katherine?"

            "I think at this point, it might be more trouble than it's worth."

            "I bet you're right.  She's a crafty one."

            "Still.  If we were to quicken our pace and overtake her on the trail, we might...persuade her to turn it over to us."

            A smile appeared on Smith's face.  It was the spirit of adventure I believe he liked the most, more even than the money.

            He put his arm around me and said with a devilish grin, "Doc, I've got to say, it's been a pleasure working with you."

            "I assure you, Mr. Smith, the pleasure has all been mine."

* * *

            "We found Katherine some ways down the trail.  Tragic really."

            "She wouldn't give up the piece?"

            "I guess she wouldn't have willingly if she hadn't been half eaten by the jaguars indigenous to the area."

            "My word," the bearded, old wanderer gasped.

            "And the Colossus, you have it in your possession?" asked another of the group of listeners that grew exponentially as Dr. Quentin told his tale.

            "Sadly, no," he continued.  "We hired a steam truck that was capable of negotiating the mountainous path, but when we arrived, the Colossus was no where to be found."

            "Vanished?"

            "Without a trace."

            "But you still have the core?"

            "Indeed.  And though it's been a help to my research, I'm keen to get my hands on the Colossus itself.  It was light years ahead of anything I could learn from Babbage."

            "I might just hire Smith for an expedition of my own."

            "It would be with my whole hearted recommendation.  He is beyond reproach, loyal, and reliable, as my story no doubt illustrated."

            "Verily."

            And with that, the group of adventurers in the fabled Wanderers Club forever in the future passed along any scraps of rumors and whispers they heard of the Colossus to Dr. Thaddeus Quentin, who came around often, hoping that the mechanical marvel would appear in someone else's tale so that he could find it, capture it, and write the final chapter of his own. 

            "Cracker" Jack Smith spent the next couple weeks looking for suitable work, but I'm sure he'll find some.  In fact, I've got a harrowing expedition of my own I'm considering...