“What home?” shot back another girl.
“Maybe we should explore this road. See where it leads.” This was Carl Rehnquist; he was knitting.
“No way,” replied Cynthia Schmidt. “From what Carol tells us, that place is freaky.”
“And dangerous,” added Lizzie Collins.
“What about Unthank? What about the promise of all that money?”
“And our freedom!”
“Ha!” retorted Michael, sucking on his pipe. “That’s a joke. He’ll just put us right back to work.”
“And make Elsie and Rachel take him into the woods.”
Elsie shuddered at the idea. It was true: They undoubtedly would be Joffrey’s key to getting past the Periphery Bind. The idea of being a shepherd for Unthank and what would likely be a constant stream of other industrialists seemed like a fate worse than death.
“This is our home. This is our place.” Michael had spoken the words; the entire room had fallen into silence in their wake. “There’s nothing out there for us. In the outside world, we were orphans. In here, we’re a family. Right, Carol?”
The old man wore a thoughtful frown. He was rubbing the gray stubble of his cheek, his mouth slack. Finally, he spoke. “Well, as much as I have come to love the place, I can’t say I wouldn’t mind seein that outside world again. I s’pose my son’ll be gettin on forty by now. We never did talk much after his mother died, but I guess it wouldn’t do no harm to just drop in.”
One of the children nodded in agreement. “I’d like to eat a Starburst again,” said one, and a few other kids tittered with laughter at the suggestion.
“Or chocolate!” threw in another. This elicited a new round of enthusiasm.
“Caramel sundaes! Whipped cream!”
“Nickel video games at Wonderland!”
“The Burnside skateboard park!”
“Coffee! So much coffee!” The kids all wheeled to look at this one; it was Carl Rehnquist. Apparently, now that he’d tasted the fruits of the grown-up world, he was keen to explore more of it.
“That’s the thing, ain’t it,” countered Michael. The passion was rising in his voice. “You go back out there, you’re kids again. No drinking coffee. No swearing. No smoking. No staying up late. And you gotta go to school, every day. That’s the rules.”
The collective mood of the children was considerably tamped down by this very true observation. They began to grumble to one another, cataloging all the daily expectations thrust on them by the adult world. Here, in the Periphery, they made their own rules.
“Besides, where are we going to go?” This, again, was Michael, pressing his advantage. He paused to let the full implication of the words sink in. “We’re not going back to Unthank’s, that’s for sure. But we don’t have parents. We don’t have families. There’s nothing waiting for us beyond those trees.”
The youngest of the children, a girl named Annalisa, began to cry.
Michael continued, “No, I say we stay. Let the magic Mehlbergs leave if they want to, but I, for one, am not going with.” He looked over at his friend and hunting partner, Cynthia. “You with me?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know, Michael,” she said, after a time, her eyes downcast. “I just don’t know.”
Before Michael could upbraid his friend for not backing him up, Martha Song stepped forward. She’d been watching the proceedings quietly from the back of the room. She cleared her voice and spoke. “Why don’t we just make this, out there?”
The room quieted to hear Martha’s proposal.
“Who’s to say we can’t have this place, this family in the outside world? Things aren’t that much different, right? I mean, you guys are freaked out about being forced to go to school, and yet you’re fine with doing the chores that are assigned to you every day. I got a theory about that; it’s because it wasn’t given to you by an adult. Because we’re all taken as equal to one another, and you realize that the, you know, well-being of the house depends on what every kid does—it just makes sense. So what if you can’t smoke or drink or swear in the outside world? Big deal. I think we’ll all have plenty of time to do that when we’re grown up. And that’s another thing: While this whole time-stop weirdness is pretty cool and magic and all, I’d actually like to make it past nine. I was kinda looking forward to being a teenager, actually.”
A mumble of agreement came from the gathered children.
“I say we all leave. All of us. All together. And we find some nice, abandoned house on the outskirts of the city and we build this”—here she made a sweeping gesture with her arm—“again. But this time, we’ll have Starbursts and chocolate and skateboards and the whole lot. What do you say?”
Carl Rehnquist jumped to his feet and began applauding madly, his knitting falling to the floor. When he noticed that no one else had been so enthusiastically moved by the girl’s speech, he blushed and sat back down. “I think we should do that,” he said meekly.
But the speech had been persuasive. The Unadoptables gathered in the cottage now looked at one another in a new light, with a new hope. This thing Martha was proposing—it did seem possible. And perfect.
Carol, his wooden eyes staring out over the heads of the gathered children, could almost read their thoughts, so palpable was the desire in the room to leave their in-between purgatory and pioneer a new home. He cleared his throat and spoke. “Very well. A show of hands. How many would like to leave this place, start afresh in the outside?”
Though he was bereft of sight, his vision having been painfully stolen on the callous whim of an evil woman, Carol could hear the sound of dozens of jumpsuits rustling as nearly every kid in the house raised their hands in near-unanimous consent. He could hear the sudden in-breaths from each child as they reckoned with their future, surprised at their own ability to create a powerful consensus. He could then hear laughter—celebratory laughter, laughter in disbelief—trickling up from the youngest kids until it infected everyone in the room. What Carol wouldn’t have heard, though he guessed at it, was the newfound sadness that etched itself on the boy Michael’s brow.
He’d been the only holdout. When the vote had been called, his arm had remained fixedly at his side. He was watching the jubilant kids as they slapped one another on the back and swapped high fives. He stayed silent amid the celebrations. Inwardly, he mourned.
Unthank was holding the cog. It glowed mysteriously in his hand as its three gears moved smoothly around the shining core. It emitted a faint hum as it moved; an aura of turbulence surrounded it too, as his fingers felt the constant pull and contraction of the magnets at work. It truly was a thing of beauty. His eyes became wet with tears of relief and joy. He sniffled a little, smiling at the miraculous outcome of his hard work.
“Joffrey!” called his mother.
A look of confusion clouded his face. What was his mother doing here?
“Joffrey!” she called again. It was the unmistakable tone of Priscilla Unthank at her most petulant. “Come down for supper!”
Joffrey looked around him; he was in his childhood bedroom. Posters of comic book supervillains lined the walls. A calm blue fish swam in an aquarium on his desk. He’d gotten the fish when he was eleven. He’d desperately wanted to have a pet then, but his tremendous allergy to cat dander prevented him that simple childhood pleasure. He’d named the fish Harold, for reasons he could barely remember.
“Aren’t you going to go down?” asked Harold, the fish. “She’s made your favorite: Möbius Meat Loaf.”
“Oh no,” said Joffrey, a cold realization dawning on him. The beautiful cog still spun in his hands. “Please, no.”
“Joffrey!” yelled his mother. “Why will not you come down?” Priscilla’s voice had suddenly developed a distinctly Eastern European dialect, which Joffrey found odd, considering that she was originally from Salem, Oregon.
“Just a moment,” said stunned Joffrey Unthank, trying to work out his surroundings. He wanted the illusion of the finished cog to rem
ain just a little longer. The feeling of having achieved the impossible task was as true a bliss as he’d ever felt.
“Why will you not? You say we make movies. Hollywood movies. But you will not eat the meat loaf!” His mother’s voice had now morphed completely into that of Desdemona’s. The fish winked at him from behind the glass. It was clear what was happening.
“No!” Joffrey moaned to Harold. He looked down in his hands. The cog was gone; in its place was a giant, meaty heart. It beat calmly, spitting little fountains of blood onto his Star Wars bedsheets. Flecks of the warm, sticky liquid spattered on his face and his hands.
“Joffrey!” called Desdemona.
“Please, no!” he said again, increasingly desperate. The fish began laughing.
The voice of Desdemona was close now; she was knocking on his bedroom door and shouting, “Joffrey, what are you doing?”
And then he woke up.
The knocking persisted. He was in his office. The wetness on his cheek was, in fact, the surprising quantity of drool that had spilled from his mouth. It was pooling onto the stack of paper that had been his makeshift pillow; on top of the stack was the Möbius Cog schematic. In a sudden panic, he grabbed the end of his tie and wiped away the liquid, relieved that it hadn’t blurred out some consequential phrase or equation.
The knock came again. “Joffrey! Door is locked. I know you are there.” It was Desdemona, at his office door.
“I was just napping,” said Joffrey, his voice hoarse. “What is it?”
“This man is to see you,” said Desdemona. “Roger. You remember.”
Unthank’s eyes went wide. He looked at the calendar on his desk (“A Prairie Home Companion Joke-a-Day!”) and saw that it cited the date as being Wednesday. The fifth day of his commission; the deadline for the production of the Cog.
“Uh,” he muttered while he braced his hands on the desk, taking stock of his surroundings. “Yeah. Go ahead and send him in.” He straightened his tie, still damp from its use as a sponge, and flattened the rumpled mess of his hair. He then pushed himself out from behind his desk and walked to the office door. He threw the latch, unlocking it.
Before long, the door swung open. Desdemona gave him a searching look, briefly, before ushering the visitor into the room.
“Roger,” said Joffrey, doing his best to feign attentiveness. The pall of the dream still hung over him; he was having a hard time fully transitioning back to his strange reality.
The man wore the same vintage suit; the pince-nez still remained affixed at the bridge of his nose. “Well?” said the man, after very little time had elapsed. “You’ve finished the Cog?”
Unthank gave a quick, toothy smile to Desdemona before he shooed her from the doorway and shut the door. “That’s just the thing, Roger,” he said. “I’m awfully close.”
“Close?” The man had been about to sit in one of the office’s chairs. Unthank’s admission had stopped him dead. “What do you mean, close?”
“This is a gorgeous piece of work, I can tell you that. A real once-in-a-lifetime part. I think the guy who made this should win a Nobel Prize or something. I mean, it’s that good.” Even Unthank was aware of his own stalling.
“Listen, Mr. Unthank: You either have the Cog or you don’t. Which is it?”
“I don’t.” The sudden confession felt strangely good.
“And why don’t you?”
“I need more time.”
“More time?” Roger’s face had grown considerably redder. His manicured beard twitched at his chin. “We don’t have more time.”
“A piece of this complexity, sir—I can’t imagine that your competitors are having any more luck.”
“My competitors are dead,” said Roger.
Unthank gulped, once, very loudly. “Okay,” he managed.
“But I can’t expect that there won’t be others to rise in their place. This needs to happen now, Mr. Unthank. Or I shall have to find another machinist.”
The implications of being fired by this odd and vindictive man seemed to be very serious indeed. “I don’t think you’ll need to do that. I—”
His stammered rebuttal was interrupted by a loud knock on the door. Unthank smiled sheepishly at Roger before calling, “What is it?”
“Joffrey, dear.” It was Desdemona. “Mr. Wigman is here to see you.”
Roger cocked an eyebrow. Joffrey felt rivulets of sweat appear at his brow. “Tell him …,” he began. An unannounced visit from the Chief Titan? It immediately spelled trouble to the beleaguered Unthank. “Tell him I’m busy.”
Another knock came. This one was a good degree louder, as if coming from the fist of a much larger person than lithe Desdemona Mudrak. “Machine Parts!” came a man’s thunderous voice. The two words sent shudders of dread through Unthank’s body. It was Brad Wigman himself.
“Quick!” hissed Unthank. “Into the closet!” Roger gave him an affronted look.
“Why on earth …,” Roger began as Unthank started pushing him toward a door opposite the desk.
“Unthank, I can hear you in there,” came Wigman’s voice. “What’s going on?” He tried the handle; Joffrey had locked it after he’d let Roger in. “Dammit, man. Let me in.”
Unthank was busy trying to hush Roger’s murmurs of objection as he guided him to the closet door. “Just trust me,” he said. “It’s better that he doesn’t know about you.” The man in the pince-nez finally conceded and allowed Joffrey to shutter him into the closet, surrounded as he was by ink cartridge boxes and cases of Lemony Zip.
Just then the door to the office flew open; Desdemona had, at Wigman’s behest, fetched the key and undone the lock. Unthank turned from the closet and saw the doorway filled—very nearly to capacity—with the broad-shouldered frame of Brad Wigman, Chief Titan.
“Hi, Mr. Wigman,” squeaked Unthank.
Brad’s eyes searched the room suspiciously. “What’s going on in here? Why’d it take you so long to get the door?”
“So sorry. That door tends to get stuck. Been meaning to fix it.” Here Joffrey walked to the door and mimed a careful inspection of the handle. “Jeez,” he said, appearing baffled. “They sure don’t make ’em like they—”
But his cheap explanation was cut short. Wigman walked directly up to him, as he was often wont to do, and stood so close to Unthank’s face that he could smell the Chief Titan’s mouthwash of choice: Sprig O’Cinnamon. “Cut the crap, Machine Parts,” said Wigman. “What are you up to?”
The two of them stood that way, face-to-face—though it was more akin to face-to-clavicle, as Unthank only came up to his boss’s collarbone—for a time. The little droplets of sweat that had appeared on Joffrey’s forehead only moments earlier turned into proper bulbs of perspiration and began dripping down the side of his face. Wigman’s eyes followed one such drop as it traveled from the man’s hairline to his chin. Unthank could only smile.
“Just, you know, working,” was all that Joffrey could manage.
“What are you working on there, Machine Parts?”
“Just, you know, some stuff. Making, you know, machine parts.”
“What kind of machine parts?”
“Bolts,” replied Unthank. “Screws. Spigots. Alternator caps. Crank shaft housings—”
“Actually, I happen to know that you haven’t been making any machine parts, Joffrey. I happen to have that information on good authority.”
“Oh, really?” Unthank was desperately trying to unknot his vocal cords; it felt like a python had curled its way around his throat and was squeezing. He swallowed hard, though it didn’t seem to have much effect.
“Yes, really,” said Wigman. “I had my girl bring up some recent records. It appears that production is down seventy-five percent this week. I asked around; turns out some of your clients haven’t heard from you since last Thursday; they say all their shipments are late.”
Unthank squirmed under Wigman’s glare. How did he know to look? Someone must’ve tipped him off. His
mind searched for answers.
“So,” said Wigman, “I guess I’ve come to do a little recon myself.” With that, he stepped away from Joffrey’s face, releasing him from the cloud of Sprig O’Cinnamon, and walked toward the bookshelf. His eyes wandered over the fanciful names on the bottles that lined the shelves. He knelt down and flicked a finger at one of the white transponder boxes. “You got some weird stuff in here, Joffrey,” he said. “But I’ve never been one to hold a guy’s obsessions against him.” By this time, he’d made it over to Unthank’s desk. Remembering the schematic, Joffrey dove to stand in the way between it and the Chief Titan.
“Listen,” said Joffrey, his voice unknotting slightly, “why don’t we take a walk? I’ll show you the machine shop—it’s been so long since you visited. Maybe go grab a bit of lunch at the Rusty Sprocket? I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”
“What’s that?” asked Wigman dryly.
“What’s what?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Machine Parts,” said Wigman. He jabbed a finger in the direction of the paper stack on the desk. “What’s that blueprint thing?”
Unthank craned his neck to look in the direction of Wigman’s pointing finger. “Oh, that? That’s nothing, really. Just a little something I’m working on in my spare—”
Wigman pivoted and stepped around Joffrey. He grabbed the schematic from the desk and shook it flat. His left eyebrow risen to its most impressive height, Wigman studied the plan. When he’d finished scanning the page, he turned to Joffrey. “If you don’t tell me what this is and what it’s doing on your desk, I swear I’ll—”
“That, sir, is a Möbius Cog.” These words had not come from the quivering mouth of Joffrey Unthank. Instead, they seemed to be issuing from the closet on the far side of the room. Both Joffrey and Wigman turned to see the words’ source.
Roger Swindon stood in the open door of the closet, straightening the lapel of his coat. An aghast silence from Unthank and Wigman had followed his abrupt entrance; Roger chose to fill it with an explanation: “I’ve commissioned your man there to make it for me. The fate of the Wood—your term for the place, I believe, is the Impassable Wilderness—hangs in the balance. The Möbius Cog must be made, Mr. Wigman. It is that simple.”