automatons had risen steeply, and their number and sophistication had reached unprecedented levels. Automatons were everywhere, and performed the most varied tasks. They operated most of the machinery in the factories, where they also did the cleaning and even some secretarial work. Most homes boasted at least two, which carried out household and other tasks hitherto assigned to servants – such as looking after children or stocking the larder. Thus their presence among men became as natural as it was indispensable. In time, their owners, who were incapable of perceiving them as anything but obedient mechanical slaves, stopped noticing them. They even fomented their subtle takeover, happily acquiring the latest models in the belief that they were simply freeing themselves from still more of the numerous tasks they now considered beneath them.
One of the effects of making the automatons part of their household was to turn man into the arrogant ruler of his tiny domain, which usually consisted of a two-storey house and garden. Ousted from the factories by tireless mechanical workers, man grew flabbier and weaker as his activities were reduced to winding up his automatons in the morning, like someone starting the world, which had learned to function without him.
Things being thus, it was hardly strange that man, blinkered by tedium and complacency, failed to notice that his automatons were surreptitiously taking on a life of their own. To begin with their actions were harmless enough: an automaton butler dropping the Bohemian glassware; an automaton tailor sticking a pin into his customer; an automaton gravedigger garlanding a coffin with stinging nettles. These were petty acts of rebellion by which the automatons tested their freedom, the stirrings of awareness fluttering inside their metal skulls, like butterflies trapped in a jar. And yet, as we already mentioned, such acts of mutiny scarcely bothered man, who attributed them to a manufacturing defect, and either sent the automatons back to the factory or had them recalibrated. And we cannot really blame them for their lack of concern because the automatons were not designed to cause harm and could not go beyond these feeble outbursts.
However, this changed when the government ordered the most eminent engineer in England to design an automaton soldier that would free man from the burden of war just as he had been exempted from doing the dusting or pruning hedges. Expanding the Empire would doubtless be far easier if such tasks as invading and plundering neighbouring countries, torturing and ill-treating prisoners were left to the efficient automatons. The engineer did as he was told, and produced a wrought-iron automaton with articulated limbs, as big as a bear standing on its hind legs. In its chest, behind a little shutter, he placed a loaded miniature cannon. But his real innovation was the little steam-powered engine he attached to its back. This made it autonomous: it no longer depended on anyone to wind it up.
Once the prototype was ready, it was tested in secret. The automaton was placed on a cart, covered with a tarpaulin and taken to the village of Slough, home to the observatory that had belonged to William Herschel, the astronomer musician who, many years earlier, had added Uranus to the list of known planets. At intervals along the three-mile stretch between the village and the neighbouring town of Windsor, scarecrows were placed, with watermelons, cauliflowers and cabbages for heads. Then they made the automaton walk along the road testing his hidden weapon on the motionless vegetable-men. The automaton reached its destination amid a swarm of flies attracted by the watermelon flesh splattered over its armour, but not a single puppet’s head remained in its wake. An army of these invincible creatures would cut through enemy lines like a knife through butter.
The next step was to present it to the king as the decisive weapon with which to conquer the world, if he so wished. However, owing to the monarch’s many obligations, the unveiling was delayed. The automaton was kept in storage for several weeks, which led to disastrous consequences: during its prolonged isolation, the automaton not only came to life without anyone realising it but developed something akin to a soul, with desires, fears and even firm convictions.
By the time it was presented to the king, it had already reflected enough to know what it wanted from life. Or if it had any doubts, they were dispelled upon seeing the little man sprawled on his throne, looking down his nose at it and continually straightening his crown. While the engineer paced back and forth, praising the automaton’s attributes and describing the different stages of its construction, the automaton made the little doors on its chest open like those of a cuckoo clock. The monarch, tired of the engineer’s exposition, perked up, eyes bright with curiosity, waiting for the birdie to pop out. Instead the shadow of death emerged in the form of a perfectly aimed bullet that made a hole right through the king’s forehead, hurling him back on his throne. The accompanying sound of splintering bone interrupted the engineer’s monologue: he was aghast at what his creation had done, until the automaton grabbed him by the throat and snapped his neck like a dry twig. Having assured himself that the man draped over his arm was no more than a corpse, the automaton flung him to the ground, apparently pleased by the creativity his nascent mind had shown, at least in the art of killing.
Once he was sure he was the only living thing left in the throne room, he approached the king, with his arthropodal movements, relieved him of the crown and placed it solemnly on his own iron head. Then he studied his reflection – front and side – in the wall mirrors and, since he was unable to smile, nodded. In this rather bloodthirsty manner his life began, for although he was not made of flesh and bone, there was no doubt in his mind that he was also a living being. And in order to feel even more alive what he needed next was a name; the name of a king. After a few moments’ reflection, he decided on Solomon. The name was doubly pleasing to him: not only had Solomon been a legendary king, but he was the first man ever endowed with mechanical genius.
According to the Bible, as well as some Arabic texts, Solomon’s throne was a magical piece of furniture that lent a theatrical air to his displays of power. Perched at the top of a small flight of steps, flanked by a pair of solid gold lions with swishing tails, and shaded by palm trees and vines where mechanical birds exhaled musky breath, the elaborate revolving chair raised the new king aloft, rocking him gently in mid-air as he pronounced his celebrated judgments.
Now Solomon wondered what he should do next, what goal to pursue. The ease and indifference with which he had snuffed out the lives of those two humans made him think he could do the same to a third, a fourth, a fifth, to a whole choir of singing children, if need be. The increasing number of victims would never compel him to question the morality of taking a human being’s life, however dear it was to him or her. Those two dead bodies were his first steps on a path of destruction, but did he have to take it? Was it his destiny, or could he choose a different path, employ his time in something more edifying than slaughter? Solomon saw his doubt duplicated in the dozens of mirrors lining the throne room. Yet he liked the uncertainty because it gave another interesting facet to the soul that had sprouted within his iron chest.
However, for all his doubts about his destiny, it was clear he must flee, disappear, leave at once. And so Solomon slipped out of the palace unnoticed, and wandered through the forests, for how long he did not know. There he perfected his aim with the help of some squirrels, stopping from time to time in a cave or shack to disentangle the weeds from his leg joints or take a break from his meanderings to study the star-studded sky and see whether the fate of automatons as well as that of men was written there.
In the meantime, news of his exploits spread like wildfire through the city, especially among the mechanical creatures, who gazed in reverential awe at the ‘Wanted’ posters, picturing his face, that papered many walls. Oblivious to all of this, Solomon roamed the hills, plagued with doubt and endlessly tormented about what his mission in life would be.
One morning he emerged from the tumbledown shack where he had spent the night to find himself surrounded by dozens of automatons, who broke into excited applause when they saw him. He realised that others had taken it upon themselves to forge his destiny. The crowd of admirers included every kind of automaton, from rough factory workers and well-dressed nannies to dull office clerks. Those in close contact with man, like butlers, cooks and maids, had been carefully designed to look human, while those destined to work in factories, or in the basements of
