government buildings surrounded by files, were little more than metal scarecrows, yet they all applauded him with equal fervour for having killed the king. Some even dared touch his armour, treating him like a long-awaited Messiah.
Moved and repelled in equal measure, Solomon decided to call them ‘the little ones’. As they had come so far to worship him, he invited them into his shack – and the First Council of Automatons in the Free World was formed. During the meeting Solomon realised that the little ones’ hearts were seething with hatred towards the human race. Apparently the insults man had inflicted on the automatons’ dignity throughout history were as varied as they were unforgivable: the philosopher Alberto Magno’s automaton had been ruthlessly destroyed by his disciple St Thomas Aquinas, who considered it the work of the Devil; but far more flagrant was the case of the Frenchman Rene Descartes, who, in order to exorcise his grief over the death of his daughter Francine, had constructed a mechanical doll in her likeness. When the captain of a ship he was travelling on had discovered it, he had thrown it overboard. The poignant image of the mechanical girl rusting among the coral enraged the little ones. Other equally dreadful cases kept alive the desire for revenge that had rankled for years in the hearts of these creatures, who now recognised in Solomon the brother who could finally carry it out.
The fate of man was put to the vote. With no abstentions and one against, the result was resoundingly in favour of extermination. In ancient Egypt the statues of the gods were equipped with mechanical arms operated from behind the scenes that spread terror among the acolytes. The time had come to follow their example and unleash the ancient terror upon humans once more. The time had come for them to repay their debts. Man’s reign had come to an end. He was no longer the most powerful creature on the planet, if indeed he ever had been. The time of the automatons had come, and under the leadership of their new king they would conquer the planet. Solomon shrugged his shoulders. Why not? he thought. Why not lead my people where they want to go? He readily embraced his fate.
In reality, on further consideration, this was not such a foolish venture, and was even achievable with a little organisation. The little ones were already strategically placed in the enemy camp: they had free access to every home, factory and ministry, and could count on the element of surprise.
Just like someone leaving his body to science, Solomon allowed the builder automatons to see how he was made inside so they could produce an army of automaton soldiers in his image. They worked in secret, in sheds and abandoned factories, while the little ones returned to their posts and patiently awaited their king’s command to pounce on the enemy. When it finally came, their synchronised attack was unbelievably brutal and devastating. The human population was decimated in the blink of an eye. That midnight, mankind’s dream ended abruptly and fatally: scissors plunged into throats, hammers crushed skulls, and pillows stifled last gasps in a symphony of splintering bones and death rattles orchestrated by the Grim Reaper’s baton. And while this panoply of sudden death was occurring in homes, factories blazed, plumes of black smoke spewing from their windows, and an army of automaton soldiers, led by Solomon, swarmed through the streets of the capital like a tidal wave of metal, meeting little or no resistance. Within minutes the invasion had become a calm procession.
Early the next day, the total extermination of the human race began. It lasted a few decades, until all that was left of the world was a pile of rubble, where the few remaining humans, their numbers rapidly diminishing, cowered like frightened rats.
At nightfall, Solomon would look out over the balcony of his palace and cast a proud eye over the remains of the planet they had destroyed. He was a good king: he had done everything expected of him and he had done it well. He was irreproachable. The humans had been defeated, and it was only a matter of time before they became extinct. Suddenly he realised that if humans were wiped off the face of the planet, there would be nothing to prove the automatons had conquered them to take control of it. They needed a specimen to continue to embody the enemy. A specimen of man, the creature who dreamed, aspired, yearned for immortality while wondering why he had been put on the Earth. Taking Noah and the ark as his inspiration, Solomon ordered the capture of a pair of healthy young specimens from among the group of sorry survivors skulking in the ruins – a male and a female, whose only function would be to procreate in captivity so that the vanquished race would not die out.
Reduced to the status of mementoes, the chosen pair was kept in a cage of solid gold, generously fed and pampered, and above all encouraged to reproduce. Solomon told himself that keeping alive with his right hand the race that his left hand had destroyed was an intelligent thing to do.
However, he did not know it yet, but he had chosen the wrong male. He was a proud, healthy youth who pretended to obey orders without protest, apparently grateful for having been spared certain death, but shrewd enough to know his luck would run out as soon as the girl had brought his successor into the world. However, this did not seem to worry him unduly, as he had at least nine months to achieve his goal, which was none other than to study his enemies from the comfort of his cage, observe their customs, learn their movements and discover how to destroy them. When he was not doing this, he was busy preparing his body for death. The day his concubine gave birth to a baby boy, he knew his time had come.
With astonishing calm, he allowed himself to be led to the place of execution. Solomon himself was going to shoot him. As he stood in front of the youth and opened the little doors in his chest so that the hidden cannon could take aim, the boy smiled at him and spoke for the first time: ‘Go ahead and kill me, then I’ll kill you.’
Solomon tilted his head, wondering if the youth’s words contained some hidden message he needed to decipher or were simply a meaningless phrase. He decided it did not matter either way. Without further ado, and feeling an almost jaded disgust, he fired at the insolent boy. The bullet hit him in the stomach, knocking him to the ground.
‘I’ve killed you, now kill me,’ he challenged.
He waited a few moments to see if the boy stirred, and when he did not, he ordered his flunkeys to get rid of the body and return to their chores. The guards obeyed. They carried it outside the palace, then threw it down a slope as if it were a piece of refuse.
The body came to rest next to a pile of rubble, where it lay face up, covered with blood. A beautiful pale yellow full moon lit the night sky. The youth smiled at it as though it were a death’s head. He had succeeded in escaping from the palace, but the boy he had been when he entered it had been left behind. He had emerged from there a man with a clear destiny: to gather together the few survivors and train them to fight the automatons. To achieve this he would only have to stop the bullet in his stomach killing him, but that would be no problem. His will to live was stronger than the bullet’s desire to kill him, stronger than the piece of metal embedded in his intestines. He had prepared for this moment during his captivity, preparing to endure the searing pain, to understand it, subdue and diminish it until he had worn down the bullet’s patience. It was a long duel, a dramatic struggle that lasted three days and three moonlit nights, until finally the bullet surrendered. It had realised it was not dealing with a body like the others: the youth’s deep hatred of the automatons had made him cling to life.
And yet his hatred was not a result of the automaton uprising, or the horrific murder of his parents and siblings or the wanton destruction of the planet. It did not even relate to Solomon’s sickening indifference when he had shot him. No, his hatred was rooted even further in the past. His was an old, unresolved hatred dating back centuries, to the time of his paternal great-grandfather, the first Shackleton to lose his life because of an automaton.
You may have heard of the Turk Mephisto, and other automaton chess players who were in fashion decades ago. Like them, Dr Phibes was a mechanical doll who understood the secrets of chess as if he had invented the
