Scene 1. Clockwork City

Lilly awakens in her room at Apollo’s home. She is used to this as the new twins are at The Farm with Al and they are being fed by wet-nurse ‘nanny’ goats or the farm assistants with bottles. They don’t not lack for attention as they are frequently taken out to play with all of the other young animals at The Farm. Apollo meets Lilly at the kitchen with breakfast as usual, Lilly looks anxious, I need to see the kids today or you will have to milk me! She wiggles her swollen udders at Apollo, “Okay I get it Lilly, we’ll go by The Farm first so you can see the kids. The assistants will help you with the rest.” Lilly nods.

Apollo continues, “Today we are going to visit the City of the Automatons.” “We worked very hard to make a city that is entirely automatic and that produces automatons for us ‘humans’ without our help.” “I am sure that you saw images from the war on the ‘frame’. We are fighting a war of ‘automaton-attrition’.” “Whoever runs out of automatons first, loses.”

Apollo and Lilly walk to The Farm and Lilly gets to see the kids again. The goats all sniff each other in recognition, and then Lilly then gets some pressure relief, with the help of her hungry kids. She is then seen by The Farm attendants, to take the rest of her ‘relief’. The assistants are very careful not to spill any, apparently I produce a valuable commodity.

Apollo and Lilly then walk to a bus terminal. Apollo helps Lilly into the bus, he shows his badge to the camera, “To the ‘City of the Automatons’ please.” The driver-less bus smoothly starts moving off in a direction they have not explored before. After a few kilometers the bus stops in a vehicle turn-about in front of a collection of white buildings similar to the rest of The White City. Apollo and Lilly exit the bus and walk in to what appears to be the main door of the building complex. Once again, the receptionist is an automaton. An abrupt and scratchy monotone voice from the receptionist states, “State your name, your business, and please show me your identification card.” “Look into the machine and I will scan your right iris.” Apollo moves into a machine with a headrest. The door behind the receptionist opens. The scratchy voice says, “Please enjoy your tour.”

Scene 2. Ticktock

Inside are scurrying automaton figures of all shapes and sizes. One automaton figure, a tall biped, steps up to them. His voice is melodious, “You are Apollo and Lilly, I presume.” Lilly is shocked, I can hear and understand him! Apollo notices her attention and yanks her mane as a warning, I guess this is our little secret. I wonder if he can hear me? “I respond to the name ‘Ticktock’.” “Please feel free to address me as Ticktock.” “I will answer your questions as we proceed.” The group walks into The City of the Automatons.

As they walk further in it is apparent that there are no flesh and blood entities present in this complex except for Lilly and Apollo. Ticktock, as a good tour guide, describes the function of the different buildings as well as the layout of The City, he points at a street sign, “The City is laid out as a grid, except for heavy construction or other special areas where buildings or other constructs may take more than one city block.” “The streets in one cardinal direction are sequential numbers and the streets in the other cardinal direction are the sequence of letters.”

Lilly opens her mouth in surprise, she looks up at Ticktock, “You can understand me?”

“Yes.” Ticktock responds in thought and voice.

Apollo watches the exchange between Lilly and Ticktock. He squats down to face Lilly, “Be careful that no human sees you communicate,” “but yes, Ticktock is a special design, just for us." "Ticktock can answer questions that I cannot.” “But don’t get caught ‘talking’!” Apollo continues, “Ticktock will be coming home with us.” “Ticktock was made especially for me.”

“And I made Ticktock especially for you.”

Scene 3. Hive

Ticktock guides them into the first long, low, building. Long conveyor belts are lined with large trays of components. Automatons are standing along the side of the conveyor belts, attaching parts as the partially-completed assemblies pass by on the belt. Lilly looks at the assemblies, They are assembling rifles. Is this a weapons factory? Ticktock answers, “Yes, this part of the automaton city is exclusively dedicated to the manufacture of weapons and automatons for the war effort.” “All of the processes here are under constant change to improve the rate of production against that of the ‘enemy’.” Lilly looks at the belt to see several different types of small firearms being assembled, from small arms up to the size of mortars and small, portable rocket launchers. Ticktock looks at Lilly and speaks, “Yes all of the weapons manufactured in this building are for use by the biped automatons. These are carried and used by the automaton ‘security guards’ to threaten and subdue ‘resistance’, and manually fire a disabling or lethal projectile, if necessary.” Lilly raises her eyebrows. Ticktock answers her questions before she can ask, “Occasionally a human, or an automaton, acts in defiance of The City’s objectives. The guards will then ‘neutralize’ any such threat.” “These weapons are also used for ‘assassinations’.”

Ticktock guides them out of the first building and hales a vehicle. The group boards the driver-less vehicle, as all of the vehicles in this world appear to be driver-less. The vehicle passes a number of buildings and finally stops at a very large building. The group exits the vehicle and enters the building. This building houses rows of large and heavy vehicles. On the top of each vehicles is a massive gun turret. Ticktock points to one of the vehicles, “These are autonomous mobile projectile launchers, ‘guns’. These vehicles are also known as ‘tanks’. These autonomous gun platforms are capable of assessing the battle scenario and making independent decisions deemed necessary to successfully carry out its assigned mission.” Lilly is fearful with what she hears, but is carefully suppressing her thoughts. Lilly looks blankly at Ticktock, “You want to see more?” She shakes her head, “Not really...”

Ticktock guides them into the next building. Inside are larger versions of Lilly’s ‘air-craft’. They are made entirely metal with no external propulsion method. It just has large holes in the front and the rear, “It squirts something out the back to move forward?” Ticktock responds, “Yes, inside the craft are bladed rotors, powered by the fire explosion and the fire is fed by air entering the orifice in front.” “The rotor burns fuel and squirts the combustion gases out the back.” Lilly sees rows of clamps hanging from the horizontal flying surfaces, “What are these clamps for?” Ticktock answers, “The clamps hold the ‘bombs’ until the ‘air-craft’ is over the ‘target’.”

Lilly climbs an access ladder to get a better view of the inside of the building. She cannot see the far wall but as far as she can see are row after row of air craft similar to this one. Some of the aircraft in the distance appear to be much larger.

Ticktock guides them to the next building. In this building the vehicles have a highly streamlined construction, with a screw shape in the back, likely for propulsion in water. “These are autonomous water vehicles." "They can also dive under water and travel great distances in water and are difficult to detect when submerged under water.” “These vehicles can launch also other, smaller, vehicles." "Some of the smaller vehicles it launches have explosive tips, to be used to disable or destroy other watercraft.”

Ticktock then guides Apollo and Lilly through a series of buildings to briefly examine the items being assembled there. Everything that they see is either a weapon, or a vehicle for carrying weapons, other vehicles, humans or sensors. Apparently, the sensor vehicles return data to a control station for battlefield analysis. The automatons were designed to traverse all terrains, skies and seas. Ticktock shows how each type of automaton is delegated to either be a primary unit, a field command unit, a scenario command unit, or a general command unit. The automaton command structure is a pyramid, with the numerous field units on the bottom, and the single general-command unit at the top. General orders from the top are sent and converted into specific missions for the bottom field-units using a mysterious ‘Artificial Intelligence’ calculation methods. Lilly can no longer suppress her thoughts, “A war is fought by entirely by automatic machines? And these machines are permitted to make their own ‘life-and-death’ decisions?

“Yes.”

The last building is the really frightening one. Here, large stones of raw ore, mined from the ground by ‘mining’ automatons in lands far away and transported here. The large ore stones are brought into the building in huge open wains. The ore is dumped by the wain onto huge screw devices. The screws grind the ore into powder that is, in turn, continuously fed into huge the maws of huge ore-roasting furnaces to reduce and separate the metals or other valuable substances from the rock. At the other end of the line of furnaces and fabricators is a continuous flow of metal bars and sheets. These are removed by specialized waiting automatons that take the bars and sheets to be fabricated into still more automatons, weapons and war machines, in a depressing, and endless, procession. Lilly is downcast at the incredible waste of time and materials consumed by this ‘war’.

Oblivious to Lilly’s horror, Ticktock continues, “Another facility refines the ores of precious and rare minerals that are used for the manufacture of the ‘calculating’ components of the automatons.” Ticktock points to his own head.

Lilly ears stand up as she is suddenly aware that all around the factory are flocks of small flying machines. These flying machines did not appear to have any weapons but instead featured large lenses. The flying machines took great interest and flocked around several of the ongoing processes. They are in all parts of The City of the Automatons but seem to be flocking at ‘critical’ process centers, “What are these things?”

“They are observation ‘bees’.” “The ‘bees’ report observations for all of the ongoing operations in the city to The Queen so that The Queen can allocate resources and correct or improve the processes.” “They report everything else they see too, including your visit here today.”

Lilly stops walking and stares at Ticktock, “Who, or what, is ‘The Queen’?”

Scene 4. Queen

Ticktock stops and turns to Lilly, “The Queen is responsible for the smooth operation of the manufacturing processes, as well as all of the other functions of this city. The Queen is also responsible for optimizing or replacing operations for the continuous improvement and the increased efficiency of the manufacturing processes.” “The goal is to produce more items for the war effort at an ever-increasing production rate, without any interruptions.” “Obsolete automatons and production equipment are continuously removed from service and recycled into the ore-crusher, to be re-made into more efficient models.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“So The Queen decides who lives and who dies?”

“We are machines,” “We cannot ‘die’.”

Lilly then is startled by the buzzing of a flying ‘bee’, flying a few centimeters above her left shoulder. She waves her hoof at it, shouting, “Baaaah!” “Baaaah!” “Shoo!” “Shoo!” The bee avoids Lilly’s hoof and rises a few centimeters, but stays with her. “I don’t want to be re-made!” “At least, not today!”

Ticktock takes Lilly and Apollo to a high vantage point to examine the city from above. In the distance, at the center of the city, is a tall, unique and prominent structure, shaped like a ‘ziggurat’, a terraced pyramid, “What is that building?”

“It is The Queen’s palace.” “I will now take you to meet The Queen.”

Lilly is suddenly apprehensive, thinking of the grinding screws, “I’m not very ‘efficient’…”

“Do not worry Lilly, The Queen only recycles other machines.”

Lilly frowns, “Until now…”

Ticktock hales a car and they ride to the city center, to the ‘ziggurat’. There is a line of biped automaton guards at the door. The guards all stand to attention, but they let Lilly, Apollo and Ticktock pass and enter the building. The group walks though seemingly endless, long, door-less, hallways, “We should have taken the car!” At last they are standing at a huge vaulted double door with decorative golden colored handles that only giants could reach. Ticktock raises his ‘hand’ before the doors and the doors dramatically open, “The Queen will see you now.”

The room is a dark archway, lit only by rows of small simulated oil lamps along the sides.

“Enter!” A stentorian voice echos in the darkness.

Lilly looks around, Ticktock is translating the words of the other automatons for me!

The group walks the length of the hall that ends in a series of steps, up to a table where three automaton ‘heads’ are mounted, facing them.

The Queen speaks, “Why have you come here?” “Why have you come to us?”

Apollo answers, “My student wanted to see all of the wonders of the City of the Automatons.”

The Queen speaks, “You and your student are not of The City." "You are entities that consist of calcification, supporting bags of soft organics that are filled a with red liquid.”

Lilly has had it with the dramatics, and butts in, “That’s right!” “We are living entities of ‘Flesh and Blood’!”

The Queen speaks, “One of you is a ‘factory’ unit, capable of making more of your kind. The other of you is a ‘service’ unit, that supports the factory units. You are of different kinds.”

Lilly laughs, “Baaaaah!” “Ha ha,” “I guess you could describe us that way.”

The Queen speaks, “What are your questions?”

“How do you learn how to make improvements to the processes of this city?”

The Queen speaks, “We send out our bees to examine the processes that are taking place outside the city.” “These external processes are examined and cataloged.” “Periodically, we auto-correlate all of the process information gathered in our repository, to see what, if any, combinations of observed processes might result in increased manufacturing efficiency.” “We build test production lines and measure the results and calculate if these improvements can then be scaled to mass production.” “The old production lines are then replaced with the new manufacturing processes.”

And ground up...

“Where are these ‘observations’ kept?” “Where are these ‘calculations’ made?”

“You entered this room, passing through the storage areas that keep the ‘observations’, as well as all of the records of everything that has occurred in the city since its founding, in calculation-engine storage elements. These elements also store all of the information collected over all time by the ‘humans’.” “The ‘calculations’ are also made here, by the calculation engines.”

“Can this city be shut off, or shut down by anyone but you?”

“No” “We have built-in security safeguards and redundancies that prevent any interference, as part of our original mission.” “Everything here is under observation and guarded by armed automatons.”

The Queen goes on to state proudly, “We will endure forever.” “We also establish new autonomous cities, identical to this one.” “We have established five new cities so far, to increase production for the war.”

“Don’t the ‘humans’ fear you?”

The Queen is confident, “Why should the ‘humans’ fear automatons? Automatons protect their mortal human lives and their human cities from destruction by fighting their human wars for them. The automatons fight the human’s wars so that humans do not have to face mortal death in war themselves.” “Automatons also make the ‘life and death’ decisions so that humans do not have to take the responsibility for making the decisions that may result in the mortal death of other humans.”

Lilly has had enough of The Queen, she bows low, “Thank you for your time today, your excellency.” “You have helped me very much with my understanding of this city and this world.” “May I take my leave now?”

“Yes.” “You may go.” “Please return to us if you have additional questions.”

I think you have told me everything that I need to know about this place!

Lilly then turns and walks quickly to the hall door, not looking to see if Apollo or Ticktock and following. Once outside the hall, Lilly looks at Ticktock,

“Let’s get the hell away from The Queen and the City of the Automatons!”

Scene 5. Limits

The three return to Apollo’s home. Ticktock is now part of the family. It is assigned to help with the now expanded cleaning operations for when the kids are home to visit. The kids don’t care for Ticktock very much, even though Ticktock helps prepare their meals and retrieve their toys.

Lilly broods over her visions and experiences in The City of the Automatons today. Then she suddenly has an idea. She scampers up the stairs where Ticktock is strengthening Apollo’s bed and dusting in the room. Apollo has dressed Ticktock in pants and a shirt, even putting socks over Ticktock’s hooves. Lilly laughs at the sight, “Baaaaah!” ha ha! Ticktock looks at her and she moves closer to him, “I know you can read my thoughts, so how about this.” She turns and stands up to the desktop of Apollo’s desk and takes a pen in her mouth. She turns to Ticktock and pokes him with the pen, “Here, be my scribe!” Ticktock takes the pen from Lilly and picks up a pad of paper from the desktop, “What would you have me write?”

Lilly glares at Ticktock, “I want to write a letter to Apollo.” She starts her first dictation, “Dear Apollo, thank you so much for caring for me and for everything you have shown me in this world."

"I do have questions about that we saw today in the City of the Automatons and statements that were made by The Queen:"

1. “Why would you ‘humans’ make a ‘war machine’ of ever increasing volume and efficiency and that can never be shut off?”

2. “Does 'The Queen' only answer to themselves?”

3. “Did you know that The Queen is building more copies of the ‘City of the Automatons?”

4. “Did you make this war fully automatic so that you humans won’t have to feel guilty about killing other humans?

5. “Did you make this war fully automatic to have a quicker tactical response?

6. “How do you expect all this 'war automation' to end?”

7. “How would you like me to bite you for making all of these incredibly stupid decisions!”

Ticktock scribbles on the pad in response to each of Lilly’s thoughts.

Lilly smiles at the new household appliance,“Thank you, Ticktock,” “I can finally communicate with this world.”

The Lilly noses Ticktock’s hand, “Please show me the back of your right hand,” “Yes, with the cover removed.” Ticktock lifts its right hand and presses the cover on the top of its hand that is facing down and removes the cover. The details of the fine moving parts are revealed. Ticktock shows it To Lilly, moving fingers to show the motion of the parts inside.

I really can’t tell for sure but it looks the same size and has the same parts as the hand in the stone. I’ll have to ‘invisible-ray’ the stone at The Factory using a really high voltage to penetrate the sandstone and get a full image of the mechanics of the metal ‘hand’ back in my world.

Apollo reads Lilly’s dictated note from Ticktock, but says little in response, as the questions are mostly rhetorical, “Lilly please don’t bite me.” “I get your message.”

Apollo thinks silently for a long while. Finally he speaks, “Lilly, not everything that is made here is for war.” “Many things have a ‘dual use’.” “You have seen the automatons that drive all of the vehicles here. Automatons are also used extensively in medicine.” “Automatons help the staff in hospitals, aiding and adding to the nursing staff.” “Some automatons perform surgery and make diagnoses, in a manner superior to humans. Automatons also run pharmacies and perform physical therapy.” “In many tasks automatons are superior to humans, and this has been proven over and over with extensive testing.”

“Automatons are also used for hazardous or physically difficult activities. Mining is dangerous, but commercially valuable ores are necessary for manufacturing all products as you have seen.” “Automatons are good at tasks that require day and night attention, are repetitive, or dangerous to life. Automatons work deep in the sea, in the vacuum of outer space, in poisonous atmospheres or in intense, penetrating, radiation fields.”

“However, where the automatons fail completely, is as human, or animal, ‘companions’.” Humans and animals, young and old, seem to have a sixth sense in that they all quickly sense that the automaton is not alive and fear it. They all see it as a threat, a monster. In spite of years of research and development, no significant progress has been made on this problem and no acceptable solutions have ever been found.

“Automatons have no feelings.” “Automatons can only imitate the looks of sadness or sympathy, and not very well.” “We have tried over the years to develop automatons to be companions to care for children, the old, the sick and the grieving.” “But these attempts most always fail, sometimes violently.” “Even children and animals quickly tire of the automaton’s simulated behavior and run from the automatons in fear.” “Note, for example, that The Farm is run exclusively by ‘human’ farmhands.” “All of the animals much prefer to be ‘milked’ by human hands.” Lilly nods, Those ‘hands’ are very good for some things. So soft!. “The animals even rush to their greet their favorite ‘farm hand’.” Yes! I have mine!

"And, of course, automatons have been tried as ‘marriage’ companions, with much the same results." "Automatons are as unsatisfying for breakfast conversation as they are for sex." "Some humans still have automatons for partners if they are desperate, or have no alternative."

“And so we searched high and low for the ideal non-human ‘companion’ for humans.”

“And the solution was, literally, staring us in the face.”