Poor, destitute, in shambles...why must we live like this?...day after day the same thing...all we see is pipes, grinding gears, and the stink of oil...it's getting old...hear the trains sailing passed up above as the higher born travel on their daily commute...so full of themselves…

“Lilith!”

“I hear it, I'm on it hold ya horses.” Lilith sprinted to a squealing pipeline.

“I have no horses!” Maxine yelled down to her from above at the cabling system.

“It's a figure of speech Maxine!” Josephine yelled from behind Lilith.

Lilith laughed and rolled her eyes, Russians you'd think they'd get humor and sarcasm but apparently Maxine missed out on that.

Welcome to Metall Stadt, a well oiled working city created by the engineers of old. Mostly German based, this glorious pile of junk has been home to many for the past 300 years, after the fall of the world in the year 2100. Those who live here have never known anything else, and depending your station also depended on what you knew...Lilith for example is a station 3, meaning her family came from nothing...and all she will ever be is nothing...she's a Fixer, which as the name implies...she fixes what's broken….Lilith has never seen uptop...uptop are station 1, or deemed royalty... occasionally when a pipe breaks, or swells she gets a glimpse of the sun through the cracks in the ceiling...or the floor of the town...but it wasn't all bad, those that lived here were as close as family. Lilith and her little sister Mary Anne grew up with Josephine and Maxine when her family moved here; they came from a Russian based platform that apparently succumbed to the evils in this world...Lilith and Josephine asked many times what it was like? And about the outside...Maxine told them all she could remember and the way she described outside was beautiful..well compared to the dark, oil stained, smoke filled grunge they lived in...so everytime Lilith got to go to Level 2 to help fix the trains and subways she'd glance up and imagine what Maxine told her it looked like..and that always got her through…

“Lilith!” Maxine and Josephine both yelled in unison, it brought Lilith down from her cloud.

“On it, I'm done!” She took her goggles off and wiped her brow, “flip the switch!”

“Flip the switch!” Josephine yelled back to Maxine.

“Flipping the switch!” They really needed to get their walkies fixed, this yelling was for the birds...Lilith heard a sizzle and a buzz then the lights flickered on...success!

My bad, let me introduce myself...I'm Lilith, Lilith Von Uhrwerk, I'm a 20yr old smart ass that loves to build and fix things... yes it's what I've done all my life but I'm a Tinker, I've been working on building a robot that one day will help repair and build things to help out making it so one day maybe future children will have a chance to be who they want to be, not what they are destined her to be...my sister Mary Anne, is 10 and has always loved books and dreams one day of being a historian, she's read all the manuals we Fixers have and she's helped me tweak a few things to have them function better than before...she is amazing and I wouldn't be able to live without her...I want to give her a chance one day to do what she wants...she's all I got, pops died a few years back from a steamer that exploded...mom didn't live long after Mary Anne was born, they said a chest cold but no one knows for sure and being a station 3 resident doesn't get you top of the line care...if we get care at all, most days we are listed as high as Rats, yes the actual little rodents that crawl the sewers...though ours aren't so little, they're the size of cats...one kid I grew up with swears til this day he saw one the size of a dog...we don't believe it one lick.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

So yeah until I make a working robot, or I become rich and marry above my station I'll be here forever and my kids will continue to do so...if I ever have kids.

Lilith climbed back up the pipe she repelled down and was greeted by Josephine, “well done I must say well done,” and stuck a hand out to lift her up.

“Thank ya Josie, I try ya know.” Lilith did a small bow.

Nicely played Lil,” Sebastian came trotting down from the staircase that lead to level 2, he rides the trains and is a mechanic. He gets to work both level 2 and occasionally level 1 on their trains, he's promised one day to take Lilith up to see the sky...at least once.

“Bastion, how goes things from above?” Lilith smiled at him.

“Stale as usual, which is why I come down here,” he nudged closer to the girls and leaned back on the railing, “always fresh.” He winked at Lilith.

The girls laughed, “keep trying Sebastian one day you'll win her over.” Josephine turned to walk away.

“What do you mean try, she's smitten with me, aren't ya Lil?”

“Don't ya know it,” she walked over to him and leaned in close, “something about them dirty upper mechanics just grind my gears.” Smiled and followed behind Josephine.

Sebastian smiled after her and he thought to himself 'what a girl’ he lit his cigarette and went back up to board his train for the next shift.

The day ended with a loud siren, as it always did every day...change of shift...for Lilith it was time to go home.

“Lilly!” Mary Anne came running up to her as she came in the door of their little apartment bunker, “I made dinner.” Excited she presented Lilith with a bowl of soup.

Lilith smiled at her, “thank you love.” Then patted her head and sat down to eat it...they didn't have much in the way of food down here, there wasn't any meat unless you wanted to eat the rats and that's usually a hard pass, “found you a new book today.”

Lilith presented her with a book titled, “mortal engines by Phillip Reeve...I've heard of this I've just never seen a template of it before...how did you manage one?”

“Bastion met a man on the train, an enthusiast, collector of old things...the man especially liked things from the old world that were similar to our current one,” she flipped the tablet cover, “for instance they had cities built tall like ours, running on machine...but theirs moved on wheels, traveling the world.” She waved her hands in a big outreach motion, “could you imagine that?”

Mary Anne was excited, “thank you so much, thank Bastian for me!”

“You can tomorrow, he's coming over for the day.” Lilith put her bowl in the sink.

“I surely will, thank you again!” And with that Lilith heard little feet dart to her room...to start reading no doubt.

Sebastian was a good man, about the same age as her...a little older, he was around and helped out after her father died. There was no hiding it, he loved Lilith and she in return liked him and felt she owed him for being there for her, and all he ever wanted in return was her love...so she gave it to him because it was the easiest thing she'd be able to do.

So for the past 2-3yrs since her father passed on she'd been seeing Sebastian and it was a good thing, the best thing she's had in her life besides Mary Anne...a girl couldn't ask for anything more, she was blessed.

But things don't always stay that way….