I never had a steampunk dream before today. Only know of the scene from reading of events on the theme (mostly in Portland, of course). The iconoclasts among my community of inner voices have created, of their aversion to trends, a sort of pop-culture early warning system. It picks up on certain signals and symbols and sounds the alarm, and that's that. Off the radar. But something about the steampunk trend got my attention. I think it was the perceived wish to tap into a few of the best currents in the river of human culture. To recollect or to rescue a few of the more human details from a world otherwise too often inhuman. Resourcefulness. Inventiveness. Community. Fun, even. Cool costumes. If that's true, then they've got a little of my ambivalent respect, even if they're trendy. And my gratitude, today, for the psychic props that provided a fascinating trip into the dreamtime. A trip that featured something of the genre, on one of its sides at least. And that was, in its own way, was about rescue and recovery.
***
I've travelled far, on foot and alone. I come seeking work and also something more in the great central industrial City of this past-future world. My path follows the shallow river, somehow yet uncontaminated and clear, that marks the boundary between the open lands and the City's smokestacks and blinking light towers. It is night, and no stars are visible through the lowering amber-grey clouds that mingle with factory effluent plumes. But on my side of the water the air feels clean and breathable enough. I seem to be walking a line down the middle of a world half given over to massive industry and technology, and half yet in its natural state.
My goal is the newspaper office, which I understand also serves as the central communications center, and perhaps in fact as a sort of Central Command. I intend to ask for a job as a photographer -- I'm carrying my equipment with me -- which will neatly serve as the cover I need for my real and more essential work. But as I reach the City's outskirts, a fortuitous meeting with the head photographer of the newspaper convinces me to alter my plans somewhat. He is at work in an office and laboratory space that is at once indoor and outdoor, under the smoky dark sky. Shelves and tables stacked with complicated-looking equipment surround him, although he stands with his feet on earth. He wears a white linen shirt, open at its short collar, and a long leather apron like a chemist might have. With his square jaw, longish blonde hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, and wire-rimmed glasses (which sometimes morph into aviator goggles), he would be textbook (or comic book) handsome intellectual, did I find that type attractive. But I approach him with caution and courtesy and (playing only a little on the mutual attraction factor) engage him in a conversation that informs me well of the situation here. This exchange provides the opening that I need to approach the Manager of the facility, a little further down the path. If the post of photographer is already occupied, I can alter my trajectory slightly and still make this work to my advantage.
The Manager also looks like a comic-book character: tall, broadshouldered, dark hair and pale skin, similar glasses but with a hawk's glare behind them. His long-fingered hands are busy laying the heavy type in an ancient manual printing press, but his mind is clearly monitoring larger and more complex intrigues. I know that, despite the simplicity of appearances, he is linked to a vast network of visible and invisible technologies that make him one of those who give and take the power this world. He is intimidating: direct, short with words, suspicious of newcomers. But he listens to the glib speech I spin him, infused as I am with the confidence gained in my previous meeting. Grudgingly, he offers to give me a chance. I will work here, apparently, as a sort of courier. My first assignment on the job arrives in short time: a Re-entry. I'm elated at the news: this is a more auspicious beginning than I had hoped, and a clear opportunity to engage with the real Work for which I came here.
Presently, the object is brought that will be at once sign of my office and tool of my mission. It is an entirely rusty but solid iron pipe of about three inches in diameter, 1/2 inch in thickness, and six to seven feet long. Carved along its length, as I know there will be, are various words, designs and unfamiliar markings that tell the story of its travels and its purpose, from past to present. As I examine these markings, the story of the woman I am about to go in search of fills my mind, immediately and naturally, as if it had always been there: she is one of the outcasts, among the women sentenced (for some unspecified aspect of their background) to live and work in the fields outside the City, growing the food that feeds its citizens. I also know, in this moment, that as part of their ostracizing, the names of these women have been taken from them, and they have been given numbers that identify them instead. A deep sadness descends on me at the infusing of this knowledge. But there also comes a grounded confidence that I can complete my mission, which is to inform just one of the women that the powers-that-be have decided her time on the outside is finished, and she is free to return and reclaim her life. I examine the iron pipe, looking for the digits that represent her on its augural surface. Thinking myself a bit ahead of the game, I venture to the Manager, "I believe I'm going to be looking for a number here, is that right?" I hope he will be impressed with my insight, but he apparently sees me as very belatedly informed, of matters I should perhaps have been tuning in on the nets. "I
thought you rather naive," is his brusque reply. But he's cleared me to go, and I set off, again on foot, for the fields.
As the women sent here must sleep where they work, with no infrastructure provided, a series of tents has been improvised. It looks like a collection of old bedsheets hung from clotheslines which parallel the garden beds. They seem to sleep on more tattered sheets and blankets spread on the earth, among the rows. Here there are no signs of the overriding technology, and only hand tools are used for the work. The women are a varied group - they do not seem to be from one ethnic group or economic class, but rather to have coalesced here out of a kaleidoscope of stories which, sadly, I will never know. They are not yet old, and their drawn faces, ragged clothing and hair caught up in scarves do not hide that several of them were once quite beautiful. They greet me with a wan and weary wariness, but soon recognize that I come in peace. The one I am here for steps forward, tremulous, unbelieving. The news she has waited all this time to hear is yet too good to be true. But when I point out her own number, carved on the side of the metal pipe by an unknown hand or force, there is no denying it. She embraces the other women quickly, and then steps forward as they all watch, bittersweet expressions of happiness for their companion and grief for themselves. I show her how to set the pipe on her shoulder, as I am carrying the other end of it on mine. It must be done in this way: it's the sign that I do have the authority to take her out of this place, for any who might question, and it is also the link that will hold us together when we pass through some sort of dimensional portal to regain the world outside. As we walk, she tells me through her tears that her Re-entry means she will be given her family back again. All her children, who were taken away. And the sweet baby girl, who she has missed the most, and who now she can nurse without fear and sleep near at night. As part of her reinstatement to society, she will be given all the supplies and resources she needs to care for her family and not to live in want anymore.
The woman stays close beside me as we regain the newspaper compound and wait the necessary while for the final approvals to be processed. I will stay with her, as a sort of mediator and perhaps protector, until her permission arrives and she passes through the great wood-and-iron Door that connects this office with the free world. The Manager's glare falls our way now and then, and she all but hides behind me to avoid it. We both laugh at another woman who passes through on her own way to freedom with her young daughter. This woman talks nonstop, nervously, laughing, while her little girl is silent. She's outfitted for the anachronism: floor-length purple velveteen dress with high collar, blonde hair done up nicely, and we even know that she's been given impressive old family connections to see her on her journey. But her glasses appear to be plastic, and her accent (which perhaps should be Victorian London?) sounds like someone from Texas or Louisiana. It almost seems that she is hiding something: at what ploy did she just succeed? Although her manner is irritating, I half hope that whatever it is, she gets away with it. She is still talking as the door swings shut behind her. We sigh in relief. My companion will be the next to go. Any moment now, if nothing else happens. I don't know if she will go into the darkness and noise of the City, or out into the green landscape. Only that where she goes she will be happy because she will be free to live again.
