The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(73)

Oblivious to all this, Solomon roamed the hills plagued with doubt, endlessly tormented about what his mission in life would be. Then one morning he emerged from the tumbledown shack where he had spent the night to find himself surrounded by dozens of automatons who broke into excited applause when they saw him, and he realized that others had taken it upon themselves to forge his destiny. The crowd of admirers included every kind of automaton, from rough factory workers to well-dressed nannies, to dull office workers. Those in close contact with Man, like butlers, cooks, and maids, had been carefully designed to look human, while those destined to work in factories or in the basements of government buildings surrounded by files, were little more than metal scarecrows, and yet they all applauded him with equal fervor for having beheaded the king of the humans, while some even dared touch his steely armor, treating him like a long-awaited Messiah.

Moved and repelled in equal measure, Solomon decided to call them “the little ones.” As they had come all that way to worship him, he invited them into his shack. Thus, the First Council of Automatons in the Free World was formed by chance, and during the course of it Solomon realized that the little ones” hearts were seething with hatred towards the human race.

Apparently the insults man had inflicted on the automatons” dignity throughout history were as varied as they were unforgivable: the philosopher, Alberto Magno’s automaton was ruthlessly destroyed by his disciple Saint Thomas of Aquinas, who considered it the work of the devil; but far more flagrant was the case of the Frenchman René Descartes, who, in order to exorcise his grief over the death of his daughter Francine, had constructed a mechanical doll in her likeness. When the captain of a ship he was traveling on discovered it, he immediately threw it overboard. The poignant image of the mechanical girl rusting among the coral enraged the little ones. Other equally dreadful cases kept alive the desire for revenge that had rankled for years in the hearts of these creatures, who now recognized in Solomon the brother who could finally carry it out. The fate of Man was put to the vote, and with no abstentions and one vote against, the result was resoundingly in favor of extermination. In ancient Egypt the statues of the gods were equipped with mechanical arms operated from behind the scenes that spread terror among the acolytes. The time had come to follow the example of those gods and unleash the ancient terror upon humans once more.

The time had come for them to repay their debts. Man’s reign had come to an end. He was no longer the most powerful creature on the planet, if indeed he ever had been. The time of the automatons had come, and under the leadership of their new king they, would conquer the planet. Solomon shrugged his shoulders. Why not, he thought, why not lead my people where they want to go? And he readily embraced his fate. In reality, on further consideration, this was not such a foolish venture, and was even achievable with a little organization. After all, the little ones were already strategically placed in the enemy camp, they had free access to every home, factory, and ministry, and could count on the element of surprise.

Just like someone leaving his body to science, Solomon allowed the builder automatons to see how he was made inside so they could begin producing an army of automaton soldiers in his image. They worked in secret, in sheds and abandoned factories while the little ones returned to their posts and patiently awaited their king’s command to pounce on the enemy. When it finally came, the synchronized attack by the little ones was unbelievably brutal and devastating. The human population was decimated in the blink of an eye. That midnight like any other, mankind’s dream ended abruptly and fatally as scissors plunged into throats, hammers crushed skulls, and pillows stifled the last gasps in a symphony of splintering bones and death rattles orchestrated by the grim reaper’s baton. And while this panoply of sudden deaths was occurring in people’s homes, factories blazed, plumes of black smoke spewing from their windows, and an army of automaton soldiers, led by Solomon, swarmed through the streets of the capital like a tidal wave of metal, meeting with little or no resistance, so that within minutes the invasion had become a calm procession. Early the next day, the total extermination of the human race began. It lasted a few decades, until all that was left of the world was a pile of rubble, where the few remaining humans, their numbers rapidly diminishing, cowered like frightened rats.

At nightfall, Solomon would look out over the balcony of his palace and cast a proud eye over the remains of the planet they had destroyed. He was a good king: he had done everything expected of him and he had done it well. He was irreproachable.

The humans had been defeated, and it was only a matter of time before they became extinct. Suddenly, he realized that if this happened, if the humans were wiped off the face of the planet, there would be nothing to prove the automatons had conquered them to take control of it. They needed a specimen; a human specimen to continue embodying the enemy. A specimen of Man, that creature who dreamed, aspired, yearned for immortality while wondering why he had been put on the earth. And so, taking Noah and his ark as his inspiration, Solomon ordered the capture of a pair of healthy young specimens from among the group of sorry survivors skulking in the ruins—a male and a female whose only function would be to procreate in captivity in order that the vanquished race, with its strange contradictory nature, would not die out.

Reduced to the status of mementoes, the chosen pair was kept in a cage of solid gold, generously fed and pampered, and above all encouraged to reproduce. Solomon told himself that keeping alive with his right hand the race that his left hand had destroyed was an intelligent thing to do. However, he did not know it yet, but he had chosen the wrong male. He was a proud, healthy youth who pretended to obey orders without protest, apparently grateful for having been spared certain death, but shrewd enough to know his luck would run out as soon as the girl he was compelled to live with had brought his successor into the world. However, this did not seem to worry him unduly, as he had at least nine months to achieve his goal, which was none other than to study his enemies from the comfort of his cage, observe their customs, learn their movements, and discover how to destroy them. And when he was not doing this, he was busy preparing his body for death. The day his concubine gave birth to a baby boy, he knew his time had come.