House of Clockwork Women: Clock Chronicles, #1

By Adam Abels

An up-and-coming rock band, Forbidden Fruitcake, has hit a roadblock on the uneven road to fame.  But this time it's a real roadblock, on a desert highway.  The band bus has blundered into at a hijacking in progress.  However, the event is interrupted by a curiously competent hiker. The only way to block the crime is by hiding the parts of a top secret shipment inside each of the band members. This gives them unexpected superpowers. Now they are endangered by forces who want to recover that shipment and the superpowers that go with it.  The band takes refuge in Hareem House, a Las Vegas brothel run by a wise madam and a female artificial intelligence. These partners oversee a diverse collection of attractive female robots. The Forbidden Fruitcakes are besieged inside – but they're not unhappy about it.

Meanwhile there's a mad scientist who wants to extract what's inside each of the band members -- by any means possible. Then Dan, in town for an unrelated conference, lands in the middle of protest movement against the brothel. This culminates in a battle, of women against womandroids. Then comes the inconvenient moment when the superpower matures -- and shows what else it can do. 

In "House of Clockwork Women," science fiction humor has met the seductive female descendants of Viktor Frankenstein's creature. Now there are robots in the service of man.  Or – more accurately – men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. T. Walbridge
• Release date: Mar 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393999249

Adam Abels

Adam Abels is an example of a recently evolved hominid.  He is a  retired biologist who monitors artificial intelligence as it evolves to rise from  artificial stupidity.  He also tracks the evolution of alternate energy generation and  storage.  He suspects that most of those attempts will prove impractical.  Evolution  is blind: it doesn’t know what will work until something does. When in absolute ignorance; try anything. Workable tech will  emerge. The same may be true for social media. Adam has three biological children.  He has zero non-biological children, so far.  Also, a wife, who doesn’t try to run his life. As opposed the array of household  technical devices.  To say nothing of the dog. Never ask Adam what his favorite microbe is.  He’ll tell you at great length. His favorite (rare and endangered) animal is the Pacific Northwest tree octopus. Pandas get far too much attention. Octopuses are more huggy but less furry. Adam writes about near-future technologies and their complications. Mostly about people who misuse the tech.  And the people, and the tech itself,  who are (and which) are fighting back. 

Book preview

The House of Clockwork Women

Adam Abels

Dedication :

To Kermit and Rowlf who sang—

I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along.

Chapter 1  Wilderness and Civilization

Directly to the west, something danced in the shimmering heat just above the  double yellow line where hot asphalt curved over the rise. The endless desert was bisected by the dead straight road, all broiling in earth tones as hot silver sun hammered down. Scattered along the sides of that route were  scraps of standing, pale gray, broken wood, skeletal remains of  trees.

The sound of a rhythmic pounding was coming from somewhere, along with the fainter sound of idling engines. The heat mirage beyond the rise grew higher and rippled sideways, almost resolving into an approaching object. The pounding was the beat of muffled music coming from one of several stalled vehicles on the road. There were no other sounds, neither insect nor bird. A contrail cut across the molten blue sky.

The image of a human head emerged above the road, a face with a pale beard. The image shifted and changed as it rapidly topped the rise. It formed into the shape of a hiker in shorts a light shirt and boots. He was carrying a pack and wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Running now, he crested the little hill, the pack made his striding rhythm awkward. His beard was blond not white; he was a young man.

Breathing hard, he staggered up to the last of the string of parked vehicles. It was a station wagon with a family inside. All of them apparently asleep.

The hiker yanked open the driver’s side door and without apology, touched the driver’s neck to check the carotid pulse. In that moment of stillness, he studied the rest of the family: wife in the front seat, two children securely strapped into the back – heads lolled forward, but all of them were breathing. The engine and air conditioning were still running, so the hiker slammed the door shut and moved on to the next car which was a late model white sedan. The temperature inside must have been over 130 degrees. The dash lights were blinking, the air conditioning must have stalled the engine. The hiker unbuckled the sweat-soaked driver, the sole occupant in the car, dragged him outside, and laid him in the relative coolness of shadow next to the vehicle. A pulse check on the driver seemed to make the hiker unhappy.

The next car was another station wagon. Male driver and female passenger. As the hiker approached, the car’s engine galloped a few times then died. This driver was also unconscious but in better condition. With no concern about pulse, the hiker simply unbuckled the man, dragged him onto the ground, and laid him out in that car’s shadow. Then reaching into the car again through from the driver’s side, he attempted to get to the other passenger. His pack caught on the top of the door. Swearing softly, he slipped it off. Then he hauled the woman out through the driver’s side of the car. He laid her limp body in the meager shade of the car just beyond the driver’s feet.

The hiker then had to step back across her to reach into the vehicle one more time, this time for the keys to shut it off. The engine died. He could again hear the steady, pounding-drum accompaniment to distant music.

The hiker stepped around the inert bodies to the back of the station wagon, lifted the gate, and yanked a large cooler toward himself. He popped open the lid, studied the contents for a second or two, then grabbed three cans and ran the few steps back to the first car he had come to, where the overheated driver lay on his back. Kneeling by the body, he opened all three cans and drenched the man’s shirt with the cold beer. He paused to his check pulse and breathing once more. Then he stood and stepped quickly back to the other station wagon. This time he collected his pack from the dirt and parked it on the open rear gate where he transferred one six pack of cans from the cooler into the pack. After quickly slipping the pack on again, he hefted the cooler itself and carried it back to the beer-drenched unconscious man. He let the melted water from the cooler drain pour onto the man’s body. Then he dropped the empty cooler and reached to pull a seat cover out of the car. He laid the seat cover across the unconscious driver, dumped the ice from the cooler on top of it, then dropped the drained container.

Quickly turning away, the pale-bearded hiker sprinted forward to the last vehicle at the front of the row. It was a huge RV. Apparently a band bus; it had the name of a rock group on the side.

Just ahead of the front bumper, a stop sign on a pole lay across the lane. The flagman who should have been holding the sign was nowhere to be seen. The bearded hiker jerked open the vehicle’s door and was immediately hit by amplified music and an invisible avalanche of chilled air. He stepped up and into the vehicle, pulled the door shut behind him, and snapped the lock. The young man in the driver’s seat was slumped over the wheel. There were other male passengers visible further back in the bus. All of them were sprawled, unconscious. The vehicle’s interior was disorganized, but only from too-casual housekeeping. A cursory check showed all the passengers were alive, apparently just asleep. There were five men, including the driver, all in their early twenties. The passengers’ limp bodies added to the disorder in the confined space. The hiker dropped his pack on an unoccupied spot on a bench.

The music continued to pound. It was a heavy beat with a hard-edged lyric and a male vocalist. Conversation would have been impossible. The hiker rearranged the unconscious men in the available spaces on the floor and on the benches. He reached into the pack and detached one beer can from the rest. When he popped the tab, there was no hiss, just a soft curl of vapor. Standing by one of the unconscious men lying on the cushioned bench, he poured something out of the can into his left palm. It was not beer. Most of the can had been empty, but what did come out was yellowish and translucent, a kind of gel. In a few seconds, the material began to quiver. It was drawing heat from his hand.

The hiker didn’t move. He was waiting.

Then he grimaced and abruptly reached down, turned the man’s face downward almost into the cushion, then he tipped the semifluid into the hollow at the base of the skull. It rested there momentarily still shivering, and then seemed to shrink and vanish. The hiker moved around the inside the vehicle, repeating the same operation with the other unconscious bodies: Pop the can, pour out the semi-fluid, warm it briefly, then apply it to the back of the neck. The music hammered on. It was a song about alienation. Advertising posters for this troupe, a rock group named Forbidden Fruitcake, were inexpertly attached to all the blank walls between windows. Bass Guitar, one of the band group, had the first neck treatment, then it was Drums who had been driving, then Lead Guitar, then came Second Guitar. Keyboards was last. There were only five in the band. The six-pack had one leftover can. When the hiker finished with Keyboards, he gathered up the cans including the unopened one, then he stepped into the small bathroom. The sunlight outside flickered briefly on the frosted bathroom window. The blond-bearded man pushed on an electrical outlet over the sink; the outlet popped open revealing a compartment with a stash of small plastic bags filled with white powder. He flushed them all down the toilet. Then he flattened the five empty beer cans and slid them into the compartment behind the false outlet. He opened the sixth beer can, palmed the contents, and. while carefully holding the odd gel in one hand, he flattened the final can with a foot, picked it up, shoved it into the compartment, and snapped the small panel shut.

At the front of the vehicle, the light beyond the windshield was pulsating in brightness—inconsistent with the beat of the music.

Shadow edges sharpened as a large object descended toward the ground.

The hiker took a few steps forward, grabbed his pack with his right hand, sprawled on the floor, belly downward, with the pack as a forehead rest, and then... facing downward... he carefully released the contents in his left palm into the hollow at the base of his own skull.

A helicopter was landing on the bright road just ahead of the RV. But inside, nothing  was audible but the hammering rock beat.

He braced his hands on the floor, level with his shoulders. The door of the RV acquired an inward dent, then another, then a third, much deeper than the first two.

As the last of the pale gel vanished, the hiker’s fingers twitched into claw shapes; the music reached a final discord, and the door burst inward.

The man arriving by taxi was tall, newly clean shaven, wide shouldered, and as blond as his Viking ancestors.  In his late twenties, he was ruggedly good-looking.

The cab had come to a stop in front of the most ornate structure in Las Vegas, a city that cultivated extremes in architecture and extremes in monuments. Among the square miles of steel and glass, this archaic confection was built in Moorish Revival style. The entry was dominated by a scalloped archway worthy of any of the ancient caravanserai along the Silk Road. The windows were smaller arches framed in ornate arabesques – tiers and tiers of windows.  And topping these were domes and minarets.  In another American city the building would be seen as garish bad taste.  In Vegas it was a simple advertisement for itself.

Architecturally, this was a distant derivative of India’s Taj Mahal, colors added,  having passed through the curious sensibilities of George IV, in the form of the Royal Pavilion in England.  After that this vision was passed on to the even more curious sensibilities of Mr. P.T. Barnum who had a version built for himself in Connecticut.

It would be overgenerous to say that the style had evolved.

The original, the Taj itself, was a mausoleum, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jehan, in honor of his favorite wife.  He had many wives—a harem.

A protest was in progress on the sidewalk, spilling out into the street, so the taxi had to creep to a halt at the curb.  The passenger got out and reclaimed his baggage. Two uniformed doormen opened a path through the sea of protesting women to let him pass.  There were two TV network vans parked beyond the crowd’s edges. Some of the protestors’ placards included words that would be blurred out in the network news reports.

The hush of the thick-carpeted lobby contrasted with the hubbub outside.

What’s that about? Nick asked the desk clerk as he signed in.  She was Hispanic, pretty, and seemed barely past her teens.

Protest, she answered. Against Hareem House and the fembots. Symbot headquarters is in Seattle but protesting here gets more attention.

So, they’re sex workers?  Some of the protesters had looked too middle aged and too middle class.

Some are, she said. But there’s a women’s conference in town so it’s a big crowd." She gestured toward the lobby doors that just opened for another man and another wave of niose.

Strange bedfellows, Nick said, palming the credit panel in the counter.

Both groups had fembots, she said.

What about you?

I’m not afraid of the competition, she shrugged, I’m cool with ‘em, they’re nice people.

He realized that she was in a position to know fembots pretty well; the Broadbent Hotel and Hareem House, physically and financially, were a single unit. The two faces of the institution were actually back-to-back to form the ornate structure that took up the entire block. He’d come in on the Broadbent side. The protest was probably worse on the Hareem side.

On his way to the elevator, he noticed that the lobby had an understated elegance, a quiet contrast to the building’s flamboyant exterior.

After stowing his luggage in his room, Nick came back down and through the lobby, headed for the Cave Bar.  He went straight through there toward the men’s restroom. Then directly to another door beyond the stalls.  This led to another bar, a mirror image of the first one.  But this one was called the Cave of the Shadows.  The unmarked passageway through the men’s room was the only way in. This was one of the worst-kept secrets in Vegas but the obvious message was that it was a bar for men. Only men.

Nevertheless, inside, it looked like a mixed crowd. An illusion: every woman was a fembot. The Cave Bar that he had just passed through had had a few ordinary couples and quiet background music.  The crowd here was much bigger and louder, and the place was practically full. Every man had the company of a fembot, a fully functional female robot.  Apparently the couples were drinking together. Another illusion.  A ritual, in fact. Robots don’t drink. But habits live on. On the other hand, the guys only had to pay for their own drinks. Drinks that were, of course, overpriced.

Nick slid onto an empty barstool and ordered a local beer. The barkeep was nominally female and definitely beautiful, like every other fembot in the room – though they were all distinctly individual.

New in town? she asked as she delivered the beer.

Yeah, here on business, he said as he touched the credit pad. Her demeanor didn’t change, but now she had access to exactly who he was and that his business involved Hareem House itself. Furthermore, it involved Victoria, the artificial intelligence partner who oversaw operations. The other partner was a former madam – Shirley Sweet, entirely human.

The bartender studied his face briefly; You look good without the beard," she said, then moved on to another customer.  He looked at himself in the mirror between the bottles. He was as blond as she was, but in her case it was synthetic, not just to her roots but down to her toenails.

Tell us about yourself, said another fembot who was suddenly on the stool to his left.

Yes, said the one who had appeared on his right. You look like an interesting guy.

He looks in the mirror again. Even at that false distance the amount of exposed cleavage was distracting. There was no mistaking the business his new companions were in.

Except...they already must have known everything that Victoria knew about him.  No real need for questions and answers. 

More ritual, he decided.

Not much to tell, he said. I write climate models predicting the future migration of croplands. I just finished a paper on the moving edges of the Great Plains.

His listeners followed up with some remarkably intelligent questions. He enjoyed explaining his work no matter what the environment. It wasn’t long before he had to move