A Picture's Worth
Part 1
The nanoglass-domed, iron-ribbed roof stands majestic above me. Shafts of light cut through the ancient dust that swims through the colossal entrance hall. Polished brass rails curl around ornate spiral staircases. Floating holographic displays play host to Echo relics ready for auction, shimmering inside digital attribution frames.
The people, the early morning, the hustle. The conversation flows between auctioneers and bidders. The smell of rich coffee, the occasional eye that meets mine. That knowing look of importance that runs across all their faces. This place, with all its grandeur, where the young boy I once was, held by the immutable grip of Grand Anvil, could only dream of entering.
Now I am here, now I am part of this, making my way up and into the ranks I always dreamt of sitting beside. The elite of Horizon City.
Quick steps through the security checkpoint at the Old Silk Exchange. My brogues make a light clack on the polished marble floor before I stand for a moment, pause and breathe it in. The scale of it all. The meaning, history and beauty.
This grand hall, hundreds of years old. Built by the Arkwright family in the early days of their dynasty to facilitate their original colonial trades. Now the epicenter of the Echo relic commerce.
Where the same family turned corporate entity instituted the first auctions of the artifacts pulled
“Garnett!” the voice breaks my trance. “MILO!”
I turn, blushing, as I take off my top hat and shift it, with my baroque plasteel cane, underneath my right arm. “Ah, sir,” I say as I catch the eye of my boss, Charles Hawksmoor, head auctioneer and curator of the Old Silk Exchange, making his way through the crowds of people.
“Don’t ‘ah, sir’ me, Garnett, you’re late.” He makes his way past the last person and stands in front of me, looking the part as always.
Old, handsome, chiselled. A shock of grey hair as thick as a brush atop his immaculate and tanned face. Neatly pressed suit, bespoke of course, cut from the finest materials by the very best tailors of the Spire Quarter.
I compose myself, look down at my watch. “Sir, I’m—”
“No, you’re late, Garnett.”
“Yes, sir. Won’t happen again, Mr Hawksmoor,” I resign myself.
“Right, well, just make sure it doesn’t. This way, I have something special for you,” he says as a wry smile makes its way across his handsome face before he produces a small nod, turns and leads the way.
“Sir, is it about the—”
“Quiet, Milo, not here.”
He walks ahead as we make our way off the opening concourse and through the grand halls of the building. Holographic displays sit next to extravagant oil paintings. Vaulted ceilings of stone rise overhead, from which nanoglass chandeliers hang and glitter.
In and out and around until we’re outside his office door, a quick palm print scan and the enormous thing opens inwards as we make our way through.
The smell of rich mahogany, old leather-bound books, cigars and whisky hits me. Hawksmoor is about as much of a relic as the rest of this place, but he runs a tight ship. Keeps the elite bidders from the Spire Quarter happy, and the folks at Arkwright Industries paid with the vast sums made from the Echo relic auctions.
He moves around his vast desk, falls back into his Chesterfield chair, takes a cigar from the ashtray that I know is an Echo relic itself, and gestures for me to sit.
“Listen, Milo,” he says, lighting the cigar with a silver butane gas lighter. “I assume you’ve heard the rumours?”
I place my hat and cane on the small table to the side of the room, take my seat, fold one leg over the other, and nod. “Sir, yes, the new Echo relic? I believe—”
“Listen, Milo, this new piece. It’s a gem, a real gem. A plate-camera, carbon dated, three hundred and twenty years old. Intercept Teams retrieved it from Canal Nine in near-perfect condition.” He looks down at his cigar, rolls it in his fingers.
“Sir, we’ve had cameras come through the Seep chrono-spikes before, some in immaculate condition. They certainly achieve a good price on the markets.”
“Milo, now listen. This one—the condition—is not the only factor.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, well, Milo, you see, once the researchers at the Hub finished their analysis of the relic and classified its historical importance, naturally, they contacted us. Intercept Team security brought it our way, and I put our top cataloguing team on it. What they found, Milo…this piece, it has an intact and undeveloped plate still held within it.”
“Sir, I don’t believe this has—”
“Yes, exactly. Echo relics, some of which are these precious items pulled through from the past, indeed, but nothing of this quality has yet made it through. The cataloguing team believes that under the right conditions, we can still develop this plate and produce a photograph that was taken over three hundred years ago. A moment in time, thought lost, now ready to be shown to the world.”
An excited shiver runs through me.
“Exactly, Milo, this is big. How would you say—a double whammy? Indeed.”
“Sir, this could raise a fortune.”
“And that is exactly why I have brought you in, Milo.”
“To lead the auction?” I gasp. I’ve been working my way up the ranks for years, doing well from such humble beginnings, but the idea of what this could do for my reputation flashes before my eyes.
“Milo, attention, please.” He leans forward, places his cigar back on the ashtray. “You’ve seen what’s happening out there with the public? They are at our throats. They are sick and tired of historically important Echo relics being sold to the highest bidders. Being auctioned off to the elite of the Spire Quarter, housed in private collections. They demand more and more of what comes through in the chrono-spikes. You’ve seen the banners ‘HISTORY FOR ALL!’ and all stoked by that tabloid rag the Daily Echo, and of course, we continue to lose more to theft with each passing day.”
“I heard about the latest incident, sir.”
“Yes, and a real mess that was too,” he leans forward in his chair. “Two dead…”
“Sir?”
He focuses, looks back up at me. “Now listen, Milo, this is delicate, and for once, I believe there is a morally correct way of going about things. You still have connections with the museums around Horizon City, correct?”
“Yes, sir. As you know, it’s where I was first able to find a job that brought me here. I was part of the mover crews, before an appraiser spotted me and—”
“Yes, I remember the story, Milo. Look, I want to clear the air, so to speak. This piece, it can help calm the storm so we can continue with the Echo relic market quietly and with fewer future incidents. I want you to head out to the museums across the city, talk, in-person, to their head management, their top conservators. Tell them this will be an exclusive auction between museums only. The winner will receive the item, and we will provide, if required, the technology for them to develop the photographic plate via live broadcast. They can then store the camera and the photograph produced as they wish, on public display, for the masses of this great city to enjoy at their own leisure.”
“Sir, such a gesture—”
“Indeed, Milo,” he picks his cigar back up, takes a long puff, expels the smoke into the room. “This is big for us, and the city. For the world at large. You prove yourself with this item, this auction, and I will personally act as guarantor for you on a house within the Spire Quarter itself.”
“Sir,” I choke, wide eyes, sweat on my palms. The dream, here now. What I always wanted, to be the one, that boy that made it from Grand Anvil and its industrial wastes to the elite world of the Spire Quarter. “I-I don’t know what to say.”
“You’ve earned it, Milo. You’ve been good for us, in your own individual way, and now I see how your history can help benefit us here. You know the public better than any of those privately educated Spire Quarter soft-mouthed auctioneers I have out there, and you know how the museums work. Get out today, over to them, pitch the item, the auction, and all the rest, and get back here when you’re done. We’ll restore the reputation of the Exchange in the eyes of the public, get a good headline in the Daily Echo, and they’ll all leave us alone to do our business without all this other nonsense for a moment or two at least.”
“Thank you, Mr Hawksmoor,” I say, as I stand and put my hand out for him to shake.
“Less of that, Milo. It’s unbecoming. Get yourself going and make this an auction to remember.”
Part 2
“Mr Garnett,” she moves the long black cigarette holder from her lips with delicate fingers, Lady Aurea Lyn, third cousin to Lady Selene Arkwright herself, the heiress to Arkwright Industries. “Would you care for a drink?”
“Lady Lyn,” I look around the baroque room, up on the top floor of her sky-suite in the most exclusive end of the Spire Quarter. “I’m afraid to say I’m rather busy today. Can I enquire as to why you summoned me here?”
“Take a drink, Milo,” she says, dressed in her nanosilk white dress, glittering with a million tiny particles of gold, her slender body beneath it and her long, black hair draped over her shoulders. She moves over to the small bar area of the palatial room. “I insist.”
“Scotch, single malt, a drop of distilled water, if you have it,” I say, placing my top hat down on the chair next to me, holding my cane in my right hand.
“A man of taste,” she smiles with perfect teeth and gestures with the long cigarette holder to the servant at the side of the room, standing motionless.
The man nods and moves to the bar, takes the top off an ornate decanter, and pours a measure of the whisky before he picks a tiny silver jug, and drops a splash of water into it.
“Can you hazard a guess?” she says, pointing her cigarette holder at the man.
He’s old, dressed in the servant suit typical of those in the Spire Quarter, but there’s a look across his face as he hands me my drink, a certain level of apathy. “A temporally displaced person?” I say.
“Sharp eye,” she says, nodding. “He came through a few years ago, didn’t you, Chester?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says in a perfect old English accent before moving back to his corner of the room.
“I had a little bird at the Hub Echo reclamation and temporally displaced person centre on the lookout for someone that might fit the role. All these people that come through, pulled from some bygone era, most you know, they’re not worth much. They come through, and we must house them, feed them. They end up taking the manual labour jobs in Grand Anvil, living in the slums of Canal Nine, but a certain few are quite unique. Chester here was a servant to a grand family back some two hundred years ago. Naturally, once my little bird got word to me, I just had to have him.”
“Indeed,” I say, looking at her, the surrounding opulence, this place at the heart of the Spire Quarter, where I have always wanted to call my home. A shiver of disgust runs through me. I move to say something, but I wash it away with another quick hit of the scotch.
“And this is why. How did you put it? Yes, this is why I have summoned you here,” she says, falling back into a large leather chair, folding one leg over the other in one quick motion.
“Lady Lyn, the auction teams in Memory Row, at the Old Silk Exchange. We do not deal in people.”
“No, no, of course not, what a gauche idea,” she says, looking up at me. “But I have another little bird, one in your midst, who has got word to me about a certain Echo relic that will soon go up for auction. One that Hawksmoor himself has tasked you with finding a home for.”
“The plate-camera? How did you—”
“Yes, the very same,” she says, taking the end of the cigarette from its long holder, dropping it on the floor and bringing her polished high heel shoe down on it. “Chester, clean this. NOW.”
I’m silent. The man moves from the corner of the room, comes to her feet where she watches him get to his hands and knees, take a small handkerchief from his pocket, pick up the cigarette end and polish the oak wood floor. He stands, nods and moves back to his corner.
She looks back up at me, perfect eyes augmented for a glittering green, a foul smile pulling itself across her beautiful face.
“Lady Lyn,” I say, with a small cough. “This item is to be auctioned off to the museums of Horizon City only. There is to be no private auction. I am on special orders from Mr Hawksmoor.”
“I do not want a private auction!” She snaps before taking a breath and resetting herself in a nonchalant posture. “You will sell this item to me exclusively, a private sale, and I will ensure you are compensated more than fairly.”
“It’s…it’s not about that—”
“Milo, my dear,” she stands from her chair and comes over to me. “I wish to develop the photograph that is held within this relic to a private audience, the lead item in my next grand ball. Once you have delivered the plate-camera, not only will you be a guest of honour at the ball, but I will open the gates of the Spire Quarter to you. A residency perhaps, but more importantly, connection. You will become known among the elite, and we will grant you all that you have ever wished for.”
These little birds she has, prying into things, she must have read my file, my background, upbringing, where I came from, who I really am. “Lady Lyn,” I hesitate, looking at the servant in the corner, the person from another time, now here, to do her bidding, on a whim and at the mercy of one of the most powerful people in Horizon City. I catch another shiver running up my spine and hold myself against it. “Lady Lyn, I cannot simply steal the relic from the vaults in Memory Row. You must know this?”
“Milo, please, of course. I have arranged for a master forger to recreate the plate-camera.”
“What—how?”
“Ah, such details you do not need to know. You will go to him in Grand Anvil, where he will provide you with the replica. You will replace the original item, and the imitation will go up for auction to the museums. The sale will go ahead as planned. The winner will develop the plate to broadcast to a live audience, but it will be a failure. From what I understand, such a forgery to include the photo as well is just not possible. The museum won’t know that, of course. They will simply blame the chemistry of it. The museum keeps the forged item for the world to see, and I host my very grand but very private ball, where you will make your presence known, and we will accept you with open arms. And of course, be all the richer after I have transferred you a handsome sum for your services.”
I stand motionless, holding back the shiver that is building into something more. Fear, no, anger. These people, what they do, what they are capable of. This was my dream, but not this way, at the hands of doing someone else’s dirty work.
“Milo,” she says, coming in close to me, her scent a hypnotising aroma of fresh lavender. “If you don’t do this, Milo, then it is simple. Back to Grand Anvil you will go. A tarnished reputation beyond repair, and into the slums from which you once crawled.”
I push down the shake. See no way out. Her power rides through me with a sense of disgust, in complete opposition to her natural beauty.
“Accept the task, Milo,” she says. “Join us.”
“Yes, Lady Lyn,” I say. “I will see to it.”
“Good. Excellent!” she claps her hands with delight. “You will go to the forger in the old maglev rail stockyard in Grand Anvil. Thatch is his name. Now, come along. Let’s take another drink before you get yourself on your merry way.”
Part 3
“Bastards, the lot of ‘em,” Thatch tinkers with the plate-camera forgery in front of him, double-rimmed nanoglass lenses perched on top of his crooked old nose.
“Then why do it?” I say, standing idly behind him as he finishes the job, and I look around the maglev train carriage full of tech, new and old.
He turns his head away from the forgery for a second, a big smile of crooked teeth peeling itself across his weathered face. “Same reason anyone down here does anything.”
“The money?”
“More to it than that, my young friend,” he turns back to his toying.
“The gangs? King Vargo?”
“Ah, showing some intelligence now.”
“He has you on a chain?”
“How much of what Lady Lyn is paying for this forgery do you think I make? Even with the handsome sums these forgeries collect on the rare occasion my specialist abilities are called on, I only ever get a tiny cut.” He pauses, lets out a long sigh. “Yes, son, this world has its boundaries, and I know my place, not much I can do, as skilled as I am.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, taking my handkerchief from my breast pocket to wipe the sweat from my brow. “Everything that happened—the reactor, the Seep, temporal dilation—we really thought it would be a brighter future, didn’t we?”
“I’m an old man, nearly old enough to remember when they first brought the Chrono-Wave reactor online. Arkwright Industries, their promises, unlimited power for the city, and eventually out beyond. What happened, the incident, the Seep? Well, it didn’t exactly benefit us now, did it? Not our kind? Down here in Grand Anvil?”
“Wait…how could you tell I’m from here?”
“I can tell one of us from a mile off, even if you have wrapped yourself in the latest fancy suit and top hat from the Spire Quarter.”
I let out a sigh. “That obvious, is it?”
“Not so much, but I can still see it. In your posture, in the way you hold yourself a little too much like you need to belong.”
I lower my head.
“Yeah, well, let me tell you,” he says and turns back to me. “They brought the reactor online. It failed in its original intention. The Seep incident happened, right? And now we’ve got this city, run and owned by Arkwright Industries. The Hub, buried away down there near the reactor they keep online to ensure the Echo relics and people keep coming through. To study and engage with, yes, that’s what they first said, to learn about our history from the very source. Well, human greed is human greed, my young fellow. Now you have thousands of these temporally displaced people, some of them even ending up in the townhouses over at the Spire Quarter. Now you have these Echo relics auctioned off to the highest bidder, kept in their private collections. The Arkwright family and their company, who run it all. Vargo here in Grand Anvil, making sure he gets his cut from the ones he can steal. The slums of Canal Nine, the opulence of the Spire Quarter, your lot in Memory Row. No escaping where you came from in this city. No, I keep my head down, do my tinkering, make some sort of life as best I can, and that’s that.”
I stay silent. Where I came from, what I wanted to get to. Bringing me here to smuggle a forged Echo relic into the institution I always wanted to be part of. To make a deal with Lady Lyn and gain access to the elite I always dreamt of entering.
I look down at my gloved hands, then over to Thatch, sitting there nosing away at the forgery, the bright industrial spotlights of Grand Anvil seeping through the dirt-ridden windows of the old train carriage.
“Here you go, son,” he turns to me, holding the plate-camera in his weathered hands. “That’s about as good as it’s going to get with the time I’ve had. 3D-nanoprinted most of it, but I’ve hand-worked the rest to make sure it holds up under some serious scrutiny. Of course, the plate that’s in there, it’s far from an original. They’ll be able to develop it, but it’ll come out blank, sad for them, I suppose, but like I said, that’s just the way of things.”
“Thank you, Mr Thatch,” I say, taking the plate-camera, the physical weight nearly nothing, the moral weight, something else entirely.
“Just Thatch, that is young man, no mister around here.”
“Yes,” I say, looking back up at him.
“Listen, Milo, was it? Can I give you a piece of advice from an old man?”
“Please.”
“You do this for Lady Lyn? You might make your way up into that glittering world of the Spire Quarter. Be part of that elite that many of those down here in the old Anvil dream of being part of, make it big, a life of luxury and all the rest, but let me tell you, it’ll come at a cost.”
I lower my head, looking at the plate-camera in my hands with all the weight it carries. “I think I understand.”
“You sell your soul, Milo.” Thatch stands up with creaking knees, steps to me. “And you better make sure you’re willing to accept the price.”
I lower my head, looking down at the forgery in my hands, now knowing what I must do, where I must go, and how I must do it.
Part 4
A tremor runs through me as I place my hand on the polished brass doorknob of the stately wooden door, turn it, and push through.
The spectacle pulls the breath from my lungs. The grand hall of Lady Lyn’s Spire Quarter residence, the ball in full swing. Couples dance on the polished oak floor, dressed in their finest ballgowns underneath vast chandeliers. Arched windows let in the dusk light of the Spire Quarter’s setting sun. The walls play host to the finest portraits of the Arkwright family’s heralded ancestry.
Plinths dotted around the wide and open room stand with Echo relics atop in nanoglass housing.
I’m here. I made it.
Everything I ever wanted. All that I ever dreamt of.
“Milo!” Lady Lyn makes her way through the crowd and over to me, beaming, ecstatic, her gown flowing behind her, gloved arms out in front. “Look at you,” says as she comes to a stop in front of me, places her hand out for me to kiss, and I do. “Don’t you look the part. Congratulations, Milo. You will fit right in. I’m just sure of it.”
“Thank you, Lady Lyn,” I say, releasing her hand. “You look resplendent, I must say.”
“Oh, this old thing?” she laughs. “It’s nothing, really. Now come.”
She takes my hand and leads me through the crowd. People part for us, stand and watch, look at me. Nods and measured smiles, assessing whether I truly belong.
We come to a small stage at the end of the ballroom; the setup is there and ready. A technician stands beside a table with his equipment laid out, the plate-camera on a tripod next to him. All waiting and ready for the grand reveal.
“Thank you, Milo,” Lady Lyn whispers to me before placing a small kiss on my cheek. “Now you are one of us.”
I blush, giving her a small smile as she turns and steps up onto the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lady Lyn says into a microphone on a stand in front of her. “Please, may I have your attention. Our show is about to begin.”
The crowd turns and breaks into rapturous applause as the technician in white coveralls steps forward to the table in front of him.
Lady Lyn clears her throat, pulls out a small piece of telepaper from the sleeve of one of her silk gloves, and looks up to the crowd. “Now, I have been given the details here, if you’ll excuse me, to relay to you as we begin the development process.”
Small oohs and aahs come from the crowd.
“But first, I must thank our Mr Milo Garnett for helping organise this wonderful occasion. Without him, none of this would have been possible. Please, Milo,” she gestures to me.
I turn to the crowd, and their applause washes over me. I gasp in awe. The moment, this moment, of all moments. I push down the shiver that clatters up my spine, smile and take a small bow.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, for the reason we are all here,” Lady Lyn breaks the applause as all eyes fix on the technician.
I turn and watch.
“First, in a traditional setting, we would use a chemical bath to expose the silver-halide crystals of the plate. This would take up to ten minutes.” Lady Lyn looks up with a smile to a small ruffle of laughter from the crowd. “Here, today, and for you, it will take only sixty seconds. I will leave the rest up to our technician, and my AI will take you through the process.”
My heart jumps with a heavy beat. My hands sweat, hidden by my silk gloves.
The technician begins the process as a holoscreen flickers to life beside him. A beautiful, digitally rendered yet abstract face begins to narrate the process to the crowd in a neutral voice.
“A nano-valve burst injects super-thin carbon dioxide saturated water via micro-channels,” it starts. “High-frequency acoustic waves will shake the remaining droplets off the plate.”
The crowd goes silent, and my heart thunders. The room has eyes, and they are all on the technician. He gently lifts the plate from the liquid and clips it onto a small gantry, where it hangs as it develops before our eyes.
“A small voltage bias will now pull the soluble silver complexes off the emulsion,” the voice from the holoscreen says.
The plate’s face shifts from milky to clear as a white glow ripples over its surface.
“And now, to our reveal,” Lady Lyn announces as she turns from the microphone and watches in awe.
The seconds count down. My heart races in my chest. The blood screams in my ears. Sweat pushes itself out and beads across my forehead.
The technician blasts the plate with a clear mist, and as the fine water particles dissipate from its surface, he turns to Lady Lyn, mouth agape, not knowing what to do.
“No…N-no…” Lady Lyn blinks, stutters, racing over to him.
“Ah, ma’am,” is all the technician can muster.
She looks at him, as blank as the plate in front of them both. Nothing is there. No picture will develop, not here, not for her, not for these people to hold and take from the world.
She wheels back to me, eyes full of rage. “What have you done?” she says in a low voice, a small, feeble plea.
“I have kept my soul.”
Silence.
I turn to the crowd and begin walking back through them.
“You will pay for this!” she shouts from behind.
The assembled patrons of this grand ball part as my dress shoes clack on the polished oak floor, echoing through the room.
“I have already paid my price,” I say.
“You’ll never work on Memory Row again. You’ll be back to Grand Anvil before the sun rises!”
I stop, pause a moment, and turn my head over my shoulder. “And back I will gladly go,” I say before facing the door I must walk through, on my way to my old world.
“You! YOU—”
“I know where I belong,” I say as I take the doorknob in my hand, for the first time in a long time content, the original plate-camera housed safely in the vaults of one of Horizon City’s most prestigious museums, ready and waiting to be revealed to the world. “And now, because of you, I can accept it.”