The Monster Machine

The Notes

"How much were you able to fit in your bag?" Madeline asked as she and Tova began to make the long journey back home. Tova pulled the bag up to her side, showing Madeline how stuffed it was. It was a bit heavy too.

"A lot. Not everything, but I grabbed whatever looked important. I took all the blueprints too. I can't read most of the stuff though. It's written out all... weird."

"Don't worry about it, Azu might be able to help translate it. We'll figure it out when we get back."

They avoided all the busy streets, as usual, remembering the path they took before and backtracking all the way back down to the Depths. It took a little less time getting back, but they were just relieved to make it back in one piece. Azu greeted them happily when they made it to the safe house and they all gathered around the kitchen.

"So, how did it go? Did you get the info you needed?" Azu asked excitedly. Tova heaved her heavy bag up on the table and pulled out all the notes, blueprints and the shoebox. Azu didn't hesitate to take everything, but the shoebox, into his workshop to look over everything himself. Madeline yawned and stretched her arms, exhausted from the journey.

"Alright... I'm gonna go relax a bit. I'm tired."

"What about Azu?"

"He'll be fine. He'll probably let us know when he's found something. You should rest too if you want, it might take a while for Azu to look at everything." said Madeline as she slipped her coat off and began to trudge upstairs. Tova was quite exhausted herself, but she wasn't ready to call it a day just yet. She took the old shoebox up to her room and set it down on her desk, sitting in her chair and taking a deep breath. She was happy to know it had been untouched this entire time, but just looking at it made her nervous. She glanced back and forth towards the door until she finally decided to open it, reminding herself that she wouldn't be in trouble for looking at it. She didn't have to live in fear anymore. When she opened the lid, she recognized the first few items inside.

The little book, the poem, and the happy photograph.

Tova looked at each of them for a moment before laying them down neatly on the desk beside the box. Now she could look at the rest of the items within. She reached in and pulled out a small, rusty key. Tova was puzzled by this object, as no one uses physical keys anymore. Most locks are either electric or all mechanical. But something about it stirred Tova's curiosity. Perhaps there was something hidden that waited to be unlocked? Or maybe it didn't go to anything and was completely usless. Who knows?

She set it aside and picked up another item. It was a crumpled piece of paper. Tova almost thought about throwing it out, until she decided to unfold it. The entire page was covered in... ones and zeros. This made absolutely no sense to Tova and she set it aside on the corner of her desk. She pulled out another item, which seemed to be a green string with six beads tied onto it. Tova recognized it as some sort of bracelet and she slipped it on her left wrist. It was nothing special, but it was pretty neat at the same time.

The next item was... another bracelet? Except this one was orange with the same six beads tied to it. Tova slipped it onto her other wrist. She wondered who had made these. Tova picked up another item, revealing it to be a thick piece of paper folded tightly. After unfolding it, Tova discovered it was actually four pages folded together and each page had writing on it. The paper itself was very old and it held a distinct smell that Tova recognized. Old book smell. Reading a couple lines, Tova gathered that someone must've ripped out some pages of a book to save them. She decided to read the rest later and set it aside for now.

The last item was a small pouch. When Tova picked it up, she heard a light clinking coming from inside. She opened the top and spilled the contents onto the desk. A couple of white, fragile-looking objects and a bit of sand scattered on the table. Tova picked up one of the objects, noticing their odd shape, but she couldn't figure out what they were. She put them all back in the pouch and set it aside. As Tova sat back and stared at all the objects before her. She wondered if they all had some sort of significance. They all seemed pretty random, and Tova remembered Maria saying it was just stuff she collected over the years, so they probably meant nothing at all. Maybe other than nostalgic memories of a past long forgotten.

Tova stared at everything a while longer before gathering everything up and putting them all back in the box. She tucked the box somewhere safe and decided to go do something else. She went downstairs and opened the trapdoor to Azu's workshop, climbing down and seeing Azu hunched over at his desk at the far end of the room. He turned around to see who was approaching him.

"Oh, hey Tova. You need anything?

"No, I just wanted to look at the stuff I brought back. I hope it's enough."

"I think you brought back more than enough. I haven't even looked at half of this stuff. Hmm.... maybe you can help me with this." Tova pulled up and old chair and sat down next to Azu as he pulled some of the notes over for Tova to see.

"I tried looking at some of these first, but either this guy has terrible handwriting, or it's... something else. It's really hard to tell."

"What about all those weird numbers?"

"What? Oh, that's just math. That I can read easily, I just need to figure out what it's all for. There's just a lot to go through. All I know right now is that whatever this guy was working with your father for, it looks pretty serious. Really complicated stuff..."

Tova looked over to the other side of the desk where some of the blueprints were spread out. Some had little notes in the corner, written in white ink while everything in the center were sketches of some sort for various components. Tova noticed one of them looked like a large tank while another had sketches of levers, switches and what looked to be a tunnel system. But most didn't explain what most of the components were for. Tova pulled over one of the blueprints that depicted little spire shapes that were described to be placed on top of something. She recognized some of the handwriting on the side saying something along the lines of... power surge... re-directing energy to...

Azu was right, Argo really needed to work on his handwriting skills.

"Hey Azu, do you know what the rest of this says?" Tova asked as she handed over the blueprint to him.

"Hold on, let me see..." said Azu as he took the paper and narrowed his eyes at the drawings.

"Wait a second..."

"What is it?"

"I... I recognize these. Those spires there, those are energy converters."

"Uh... what does that mean?"

"These things are everywhere in the Underground. Usually one or two in every town or city. They take in different types of energy and convert it into electricty and supply it to the rest of the Underground. A lot of these things are barely functioning nowadays because they're so old and it takes a lot of materials to keep it running." Azu explained.

"Huh... I recognized this thing too." Tova added as she pointed to the blueprint with the large tank and tunnel sketches. Azu pulled it over ontop of the one he was looking at.

"The machine I was helping my father work on... Sometimes he made me crawl inside it and fix things because he was too big to fit inside himself. I don't know what it was for though."

"Always making someone else do the work for them.." Azu muttered quietly to himself. He looked back and forth between the pages.

"Okay... so if he's trying to make miniature energy converters..... why would he be adding... wait a minute."

Azu set the blueprints down and got up from his stool, moving over to a different desk and rifling through the stack of pages that were placed on top of it.

"What are you looking for?"

"Umm..... oh, here it is!" Azu pulled out an old composition notebook and began to thumb through the pages as he carried it back to the table.

"I think I've seen these before. Those tunnels, they look almost the same as the ones down in the Main Generator."

"The... what generator?"

"Oh, right. Way back when the Underground was first built, all the scientists built one massive generator near the core of the world. It's practically a limitless source of energy, but that was when the Underground was really small. When everyone started to expand, this generator couldn't supply energy to most of the far corners of the Underground, that's why they built the energy converters. All that energy and electricity supplied by the Main Generator gets carried to the converters so they can supply the entire Underground with electricity. It's basically what keeps this whole place alive." Azu then pointed to the sketched tunnels, "They have these inside the Main Generator so people can fix and repair stuff inside without getting hurt. It's super old, so it needs to be repaired a lot." Azu then pointed to the tank on the other page. "This this here, it's a collection tank. When the Main Generator needs massive repairs or needs parts replaced, they store a lot of the extra energy in these tanks. They shut the Generator down for a while until they're done fixing it and whatever's in the tank gets moved to the converters, that way it still supplies energy even when it's down. And it's a lot safer to work when it's not on. A lot of people can get hurt while they're inside, especially since it's so far down..."

"Hmm..... How often does it need to be shut down and fixed?"

"Well..." Azu scratched the back of his head. "I've heard rumors that it's been acting up over the years, even with all the maintenence work. No one really knows why, but like I said, it's super, super old, so that might have something to do with it. I'm guessing that's where your father got the idea to work on a new power source."

"Would it... would it be easier to make a new one instead of fixing it?" Tova wondered.

"I'm not sure, it... really depends on a lot of things. Not all machines are made to last forever. Those energy converters aren't supposed to last forever either. They just distribute the power. And what that means is... if the Main Generator goes down for good, those converters wouldn't be able to sustain the entire Underground for a long time. Everything would go dark..."

"So..... why do you think all this stuff is weird?"

"What?"

"You said that something didn't look right?"

"Did I say that? Sorry, I tend to talk to myself a lot. Not everyone understands machines like I do." Azu looked back down at the blueprints in his hands.

"I'm... I'm just a little confused as to why this machine needs a collection tank and energy converters. These designs don't even match the ones used in the Main Generator. I... I need to look at these more. Thanks for helping me Tova, I think I'll take it over from here."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. You should go relax. I'll let you know when I've figured everything out."

"Okay, but don't overdo it."

"No promises."

Tova left Azu to his work and headed back upstairs. When she made it up to her room, she flopped onto her comfy bed and kicked off her boots. She took a deep breath and sighed, thinking about everything she had just learned. Some of it began to weigh heavy in her mind.

Without enough power... everything would go dark...