Time: One Week After the Wedding.
The heat of the Scrapyard was unforgiving, but Julian Vane didn't mind. He sat on the roof of Vane & Rivet, his legs dangling over the edge.
The shop below was buzzing. Rivet was arguing with Surv (the Harmonic Surveyor) about the aesthetic value of rust on a hover-bike fender.
"AESTHETIC IS IRRELEVANT. AERODYNAMICS IS IMPEDED BY OXIDATION," Surv's synthesized voice drifted up.
"It looks cool, you floating geometry set!" Rivet yelled back.
Julian smiled. He looked at the object sitting next to him.
The Obsidian Box.
The gift from the Usher at the wedding. He hadn't opened it yet. He had let it sit there, radiating a low, cold hum that resonated with his Anchor Arm.
"The Anchor is lonely," the Usher had said.
Julian reached out with his black iron hand. He touched the lid.
There was no latch. No hinge. He simply applied a fraction of his gravity field to the stone.
Open.
The lid dissolved into smoke, revealing the contents.
The Instrument
Inside the box, resting on a bed of velvet-like moss, was a rod.
It was about twelve inches long, made of the same matte-black material as his arm—Anchor-Stone. It was tapered at one end and weighted at the other.
It wasn't a weapon. It wasn't a key.
It was a Baton. A conductor's baton.
Julian picked it up with his iron hand.
HUMMM.
The moment the baton touched his palm, the sensation changed.
For months, his Anchor Arm had felt like a dead weight—a crushing burden he had to constantly mentally manage to keep from breaking the world around him.
But when he held the baton, the weight... shifted.
It didn't disappear. It became Balanced.
The baton acted as a counterweight, a focusing lens for the gravitational energy. The constant low-level pain in his shoulder vanished. The hum in his bones turned into a clear, steady tone.
He moved his arm. It felt light. Fluid.
He flicked his wrist.
A ripple of gravity shot out, silent and precise. It hit a floating dust mote ten feet away and held it perfectly still in mid-air.
"Control," Julian whispered. "He gave me fine motor control."
The Blueprints
Underneath the baton lay a data-crystal. It was rough-cut, glowing with a soft green light.
Julian picked it up.
"Surv!" Julian called out. "Get up here. I have data."
The white octahedron floated up through the roof access hatch.
"QUERY: UNIDENTIFIED CRYSTALLINE STORAGE DEVICE. ORIGIN: DEEP CRUST."
"Scan it," Julian tossed the crystal to Surv.
Surv caught it in a beam of light.
"PROCESSING... DECRYPTING PRE-COLLAPSE ARCHITECTURE... COMPLETE."
Surv spun rapidly, projecting a massive hologram over the roof.
It was a schematic.
It looked like a Titan. But it wasn't bipedal like the King, or a vehicle like the Strider.
It looked like a Beetle. A massive, six-legged construct with a wide, flat back. Inside its shell was not a reactor, but a factory.
"DESIGNATION: THE GEO-FORGE," Surv analyzed. "FUNCTION: MOBILE RECLAMATION AND TERRAFORMING."
"Reclamation?"
"IT CONSUMES SCRAP METAL AND TOXIC SOIL. IT REPROCESSES THE MATTER. OUTPUT: CLEAN SOIL, WATER, AND COMPRESSED BUILDING MATERIALS."
Julian looked at the schematic.
The Silent King didn't just want Julian to hold the door shut. He wanted him to clean up the mess on the surface.
"It eats rust," Julian realized. "And it poops gardens."
"Rivet!" Julian shouted. "Close the shop! We have a project!"
The Scavenger Hunt
They gathered in the garage. Julian laid the holographic blueprints on the main table.
"It's huge," Rivet said, eyes wide. "Bigger than a tank. Where are we going to get the parts?"
"We're in a Scrapyard," Julian spread his arms. "We're sitting on the parts."
He pointed to the diagram.
"We need a chassis. Heavy duty."
"The Mining Crawler in Sector 9," Lyra suggested, polishing her rifle. "The one the bandits used to use. It's rusted out, but the frame is solid."
"We need a grinder," Rivet said. "To chew the scrap."
"The Rock-Crusher at the old quarry," Julian said. "I can lift it."
"We need a brain," Surv chimed in. "I VOLUNTEER. MY PROCESSING CORE IS COMPATIBLE. I CAN SERVE AS THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM."
"You want to be a beetle?" Rivet asked.
"I WISH TO BE... USEFUL. AND BIG."
Julian picked up his new baton. He Twirled it in his iron fingers. It felt natural.
"Alright," Julian said. "This isn't a repair job. This is a build. We're not fixing the old world. We're building the first machine of the new one."
The Construction
The next three months were a blur of welding sparks and grinding gears.
News spread. Scavengers from all over the waste heard that Vane & Rivet were building a monster. They started bringing parts.
"Found this turbine in a dune!"
"Got some hydraulic pistons from a dead walker!"
They didn't ask for money. They just wanted to see it happen.
Julian was the crane. With his Anchor Arm and the Baton, he moved tons of steel with the grace of a painter. He welded beams with one hand and held up roofs with the other.
Lyra ran security, keeping the curious Warlords at bay. But even Jaxon eventually sent a truckload of chrome plating as a "donation."
Slowly, the beast took shape.
It was ugly. It was a patchwork of mismatched metal, painted in a hundred different colors. It had the treads of a tank, the jaws of a crusher, and the back of a cargo hauler.
But it had a heart. A massive, jury-rigged engine that Julian had tuned to perfection.
The Awakening
Time: Nine Months Post-Retirement.
The Geo-Forge sat in the yard. It was the size of a house.
"Surv," Julian said. "You ready?"
The white octahedron floated toward the interface port on the beetle's head.
"INSTALLING... DRIVERS UPDATED. SYSTEM ONLINE."
The massive machine shuddered.
Lights flickered on along its flank. Not the harsh white of the Empire, or the purple of the Dissonance.
Amber. Warm, industrial amber.
The six massive legs extended, lifting the chassis off the ground.
"DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE," Surv's voice boomed from the machine, deeper now, resonating through the hull. "I AM... HEAVY."
"How do you feel?" Rivet asked, patting the metal leg.
"HUNGRY."
The First Meal
"Let's test it," Julian pointed to a mountain of toxic sludge and rusted car frames at the edge of the property. "Clean it up."
The Geo-Forge lumbered forward. It moved surprisingly quietly for something so large.
It lowered its front grinders.
CRUNCH-GRIND-WHIRR.
It ate the pile. It swallowed the rusted cars, the leaking barrels, the trash.
Inside the machine, the processing plant roared.
From the back of the Titan, a chute opened.
It didn't spew smoke.
It laid down a brick. Then another. Interlocking blocks of compressed, clean grey stone. A road.
And alongside the road, a sprayer coated the ground with a nutrient-rich brown slurry—reprocessed soil.
"It works," Isolde whispered (she had come down from the city for the launch). "It's an ecosystem engine."
Julian walked alongside the machine. He held his baton.
He tapped the side of the Geo-Forge.
"Good boy," Julian smiled.
He looked at the wasteland stretching out before them. Miles of garbage. Miles of poison.
"Surv," Julian ordered. "Set a course for the horizon."
"OBJECTIVE?"
"Eat it all," Julian said. "Turn the rust into a road."
The Conductor's New Orchestra
As the massive machine began its slow march into the desert, leaving a clean, paved path in its wake, Julian stood with his family.
Lyra took his flesh hand.
"You built a gardener," she said.
"The Silent King holds the basement," Julian said, watching the amber lights fade into the dusk. "I'm just tidying up the living room."
He looked at his black iron arm. He twirled the baton.
For the first time, the dirge was gone completely.
There was only the hum of the engine, the wind in the wires, and the laughter of Rivet chasing the machine.
It was a resonance he could live with.