64
One thing Milo had learned to appreciate was knowledge.
He had begun to think that he couldn’t get enough of it.
It had helped him to eliminate Fergus while manipulating the narrative surrounding the boy’s murder and recover the Prime. And, while the Paddstones might know there was something suspicious about the whole thing, there was more evidence pointing to them than there was to him.
And that was all thanks to the golems he’d made.
So, he made more.
A small army of ten spider golems gathered in a room deep within the fortress.
They lined up in two small groups of four.
At the head of one was Click.
His golems were named Click 1, Click 2, Click 3 and Click 4.
At the head of the other was Clack.
His golems were similarly named, but for himself. Clack 1, Clack 2, Clack 3, and Clack 4.
Milo had started thinking of them as males, since they displayed a deep sense of what he figured was a kind of male dominance.
The two oldest golems faced each other grimly. They’d already exchanged poems for the month, and Click had won again.
This meant Click was still in charge.
The bigger golem marched up to Clack and thwapped him on the top of his shell with a heavy arm. Then it spat out a stream of little beeps followed by a buzzing clatter of gears.
Clack pulled himself low to the ground.
The other golems dropped, too.
The pecking order suitably reinforced, Click scurried a full circle around them all. Checking their condition. Making sure they were all clean.
He leaned in and checked the legs of one Clack 3. Raising up a crystal eye, the golem reached out and gently gave the other spider golem’s legs a sharp tap.
Then he scurried on, satisfied with the cleanliness of his soldiers.
He buzzed his gears again, delivering everyone’s orders for the day.
Then he stamped his legs.
The golems scattered like frightened insects. Each diving for a nearby grille and entering the pipes and ducts which squirreled through the fortress and through every single room.
The humans presumed they were simply to move warm and fresh air.
But their other purpose had been more important to the dwarves and was a purpose Milo’s team had resurrected. They were just paths for the golems to travel as they infiltrated where they weren’t meant to infiltrate.
No room was safe.
Clack 1 hunkered down in the Headmaster’s room.
Click 4 was racing to Vizzingbelle’s class.
Everyone had a task.
Clack stayed where he was, pressed to the ground. He hadn’t been dismissed. When the others were gone, Click stomped up to his little subordinate.
He looked down at him with a cold machine gaze.
Lifted one of his heavy arms.
And brought it down to give Clack a gentle pat.
Clack let out a purring of gears. Chirped once.
Then Click let out a chirp.
And Clack raced away, his mission taking him outside of the Fortress. As he ran, he shuffled words and tried to create a poem of deep meaning and elegant form. He wanted to be in charge one day.
But to do that, he’d need to be more eloquent.
More sensitive.
He’d need to plunge deep into the depths of his Machine Intelligence Matrix and find something so profoundly elegant that even Click would bow to him.
His arms twitched as he anticipated thwapping the bigger golem.
Click shook himself as Clack disappeared down the ducting.
The poetry slam had taken a lot out of him. Little Clack was a significant opponent, and Click wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to keep power over the group.
Already he was scraping the barrel of his favorite words.
What he needed now was inspiration! But the role of leader had him spending too much time on little things and not enough time on introspection. He wondered if he should let Clack win so he could spend a month really drilling deep into his back catalogue of experimental poetry.
He was sure if he had more time, he could compose some truly devastating pieces.
It might be funny to let Clack have a month.
Then the next month’s victory would be so sweet.
Still.
It went against everything Click believed. He should give his best at the slam. Anything else would be shameful.
With that decided, he slapped his arm down and then spun away. He climbed up the granite wall, shoved himself into the duct, and scooted along his way.
He shot upwards and then took a morning jaunt through areas where students who had been marked for observation were gathering. He listened. Watched.
Found nothing interesting and moved on.
He paused when he saw some Tinkers working on another door. The two men were working slowly. These days, they were always in pairs.
Click watched them, making sure they were only repairing and not sabotaging.
When he was certain, he moved on.
He managed to capture Master Haddrow sneaking into Master Garmtooth’s room. The two were having a practical joke war. Click didn’t see what Master Haddrow had left. While he wanted to know the outcome, he didn’t have time and the childish shenanigans of teachers didn’t interest Milo very much.
In the Dungeon Room, Click saw a few Tinkers working around what looked like a pad. He took a good look at them. They were discussing the next dungeon. Would Milo be interested?
He wasn’t sure, so he recorded what he could.
Then, when they broke up for lunch, he raced away to find something else.
Along the way, he bumped into Click 3 and Click 4. The two spider golems were responsible that day for finding any examples of students kissing. Tania had ordered them to get as many kissing recordings as they could, so Click had assigned two Clicks to the task.
He checked their results but was disappointed to only find two examples.
And one was just so vanilla it was shameful.
Humans had no sense of romance, Click decided as he shoved some more ideas into his memory to look at later. He hoped they would inspire something poetic.
Eventually, he dropped out of a grille and onto a desk inside a relatively new room in the Workshop.
Tania had worked with Fed to get a second little security room active.
One where she could collect all the crystals from the spider golems and go through them before editing what Milo would want to see onto a single crystal for the day.
He crashed down in front of her, earning an annoyed rap to the top of his shell.
“Give me some warning, will ya? Ya scared the panties offa me!”
The spider golem couldn’t imagine that happening, but bowed low so the crystal could be taken from him. When Tania had replaced it with a new one, he took a few skipping steps to one side and waited patiently.
Tania slotted the crystal and started sweeping through the memories recorded within. She worked fast, but her face maintained a look of dedicated focus.
Some of what she kept was surprising to the little golem.
She kept conversations between other students that seemed boring to him. Like, one where the students discussed Milo being fed by Tania the previous day.
Some of what they said amused her, but the look on her face didn’t look like she was doing it to tease him.
Whatever her reasons, he trusted them.
Tania was the big boss.
Everyone knew that.
Making Fed mad meant getting shouted at. Making Selma mad meant getting almost stomped. Making Mila mad meant she’d burst out crying.
But making Tania mad meant she reached for a screwdriver and a hammer.
Not good!
Letting out a tentative rattle of gears, Click shook himself as the thought permeated into his Machine Intelligence Matrix. He wondered if he could somehow conjure a poem out of it. Sometimes fear was as beautiful as other emotions.
He hadn’t thought of it that way.
He started sifting through words.
Tania went through what the Tinkers were doing. She made a few notes so she could check on them later. Was it cheating if she knew what level they were developing before they announced it?
No.
If they didn’t want her to know these things, they wouldn’t talk about them so openly with Click around. Sure, they didn’t know Click was there, but this was a big fortress. They should’ve guessed something was watching them long before now.
It wasn’t her fault that humans were simply too ignorant and unobservant.
Thinking of unobservance, she glanced at the wall beside her screen. About twenty small pieces of paper were stuck to it. Each was a sketch done with the pencil in her hand.
A sketch of the thing she loved the most.
She jerked the crystal out of its slot and held it up. Giving it a sweet little kiss, she gave it back to Click. “Take that to Milo,” she told the spider golem, who snapped a short salute and darted back into the ducts.
Leaving her to sit twirling the pen in her fingers.
She quickly made another sketch.
Tore it off the pad. And then she used some sticky gunk to attach it to the wall.
Now there were twenty-one pictures of Milo’s face staring back at her.
Tania smiled.