Copyright © 2014 by G. Brynelson
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in Canada
First Printing, 2014
ISBN 978-0-9937247-0-1
Deep Sky Stories Inc. ©
www.DeepSkyStories.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Big Ben and the Boy
Chapter 2. A Little Something in the Night
Chapter 3. What Transpired in the Scrapyard
Chapter 4. Late For School and Teaching the Teacher
Chapter 5. Follow the Leader
Chapter 6. Dart the Defender
Chapter 7. Triangle Trap
Chapter 8. Down the Glass Tunnel
Chapter 9. What the Biosphere Revealed
Chapter 10. Unpleasant Discoveries
Chapter 11. Belated Truth and Secret Nobility
Chapter 12. The Fallen Stars and Alex’s Exam
Chapter 13. Converging Paths
Chapter 14. Circle of Death and the Battle Begins
Chapter 15. Luss Power and Big Ben’s Last Rumble
Chapter 16. When Halden Left
A Glossary of Terms, Both Real and Imagined
Bibliography
A few small details –
Definitions of unique symbols in the story:
((…words here…)): Words spoken telepathically.
<< …words here… >>: Words spoken by a Fly.
The years have gone by, it is the 21st C.,
Exactly which year is a mystery to me.
A fantastic scrapyard has slowly collected,
Filled with curious things we forgot and neglected,
Things robotic, things full of wire,
The kinds of things we inventors desire.
Things not perfect which may be made whole again,
As beautifully new and different inventions.
Along comes a lad whose father flew faraway,
But he hopes to find him again, someday.
He works on his own with amazing machines,
So he can finally solve the mystery of his dreams.
But being alone doesn’t make a happy end,
He’ll never fulfill his dreams without finding a friend.
So sit back, dear reader, turn the first paper leaf,
There’s a fantastic scrapyard, with a secret underneath.
Chapter 1 – Big Ben and the Boy
A blue-white light as bright as the sun flashed blindingly in the gloom of the evening. A whistling snap accompanied it, along with the low crackle of high-voltage electricity. Big Ben moved and worked slowly but with great power.
Again and again the glaring star of searing light flashed and crackled, with molten hot drops popping away from it to glance off mighty arms or the heavy pieces of sheet metal that he easily held in each hand. Nothing matched his brawn, his tireless steel muscles as he held the two fifty pound steel plates at the proper angle while his third, welder arm moved delicately along the thin gap between them. Slowly and precisely it moved, fusing the two heavy, shaped pieces together with its super-heated voltage which arced off the long, melting stick of a welding rod. There seemed to be a boy, a child actually, who was hunkered down in Big Ben’s middle and following every move that he made with his mighty steel arms.
This was rather odd for the monster to accept, but he grudgingly allowed the boy to remain there while he carried on with his task at hand. Every so often, Big Ben stopped working, even though he would rather not, and the boy would stop too and get out of his large, -metal belly and walk over to a workbench where he bent over paper plans of some sort. Big Ben waited, patient and still, with the two heavy metal plates clamped firmly in his vice-hands. The boy was rather thin and gangly, perhaps twelve years old, with longish brown hair falling over his eyes as he read over some technical blueprints which lay before him. Big Ben allowed this behavior to continue, with the boy hopping in and out of him at regular intervals to check a measurement or mutter to himself about a wiring connection. At every move he made, Big Ben felt the thin lad manipulate small, flexible hand controls within him, and push foot-pedals as well. This was slightly worrisome for Big Ben; could it be that the small, weakling of a boy was actually causing him to move? Big Ben’s silent question went unanswered though, while his powerful hydraulic arms worked tirelessly on. A noisy, clattering pump kept the black fluid that was his life-blood flowing strongly through high-pressure hydraulic lines. They ran through his massive arms like rubbery veins, with the pressurized “blood” filling each piston cylinder at the proper time in order that an arm could move and bend to pick up another heavy object. Big Ben never grew weary of his work; in fact he could continue indefinitely, being a robot. The boy within him did seem to be tiring though, so Big Ben slowed his movements courteously so the lad could keep up with him. A small pile of short, spent welding rods had collected on the cement floor of the workshop, along with rusty pieces of discarded scrap-iron and welding slag-beads. It seemed that the day had long since ended yet still the young boy and Big Ben labored on. Finally, his mighty arms dropped, limply at his side and the huge robot wondered why he couldn’t lift them, not even as much as a twitch. A soft weeping sound seemed to be coming from inside him and Big Ben sat there listening dumbly, not knowing what to make of this strange sound. The boy stumbled out of Big Ben and shuffled slowly over to the workbench, but this time he slumped down on a wooden little stool and lay with his head in his arms over the musty, wrinkled blueprints. Quietly he rested there, still weeping softly. A single word camefaintly back to Big Ben where he stood stiff and still in the deepening shadows of night-fall.
“Dad”, the boy whispered, “oh dad, why did you have to go away…” Then all was truly silent in the workshop save for the boy’s soft, deep breathing as he fell asleep there. Not too long afterward, the door to the shed creaked open and another person entered. Big Ben stood guard nearby but he felt that nothing needed to be feared from the intruder. The larger person quietly took the boy in her arms and kissed his weary, tired little brow.
“There, there, Alex”, she whispered, “that’s enough work for today, son.” The single, bare light bulb went out as the workshop door clattered shut for the night and Big Ben, the large, powerful construction-bot stood silent and dumb, arms hanging at his sides while outside, crickets filled the still country night with their communal song. The machine that he and the lad were working on was the strangest looking thing Big Ben had yet seen in his many years of duty. A circular shaped vehicle of some sort was slowly taking form in the boy’s workshop, and it had a single pilot’s seat in the very center of the saucer. It was truly a sleek looking craft, built for extreme velocity both in and out of the atmosphere. Puzzling, thought the silently waiting robot. He had sat rusting and abandoned deep in the junk and trash of the scrapyard until being found by the boy who generously repaired Big Ben so he could see duty again in his aged, advanced years. The young human was clearly an inventive sort, with an assortment of various other fascinating devices and machines in his shop. Yet this particular saucer craft which sat half-finished seemed to command a keener concentration from the boy than had his other ingenious projects. The cricket-songs continued through the quiet autumn night in a soft, undisturbed chorus and Big Ben remained where he had been left for the day. He was, in reality, not much more than simple-minded bulldozer yet his dim perceptions and massive machine pride blinded him to the fact that the boy, not he was the actual controller of his actions. The crickets droned on until the witching hour approached, then one-by-one they fell silent till all became quiet outside. A mild night wind restlessly rustled the lazy branches of the surrounding trees and tangled underbrush which hid the boy’s home from the scrapyard beyond the fence. An uneasy silence hung over the countryside which, it seemed, would not allow the night to complete its dark hours toward the dawn until something significant was begun. Or finished…
The silence remained so for another half hour until a new sound interrupted all else and came to the robot on the cool night air. “Ping-ding-ding…ping-ping-ping…”, came the odd sound from not far away; out in the scrapyard, just outside the workshop door actually. It was where Big Ben and his little partner went in search of new parts and pieces to the machine they were building. Zzeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…”, came a faint, distant reply. A furtive scuttle of little legs was heard just outside the workshop door and Big Ben, though he was more brutish than intelligent, tensed slightly in the dark corner. “Legs”, the little scavenger-robot that the boy had built himself, sat beside Big Ben in total sleep-mode, recharging and unaware. All was silent again for a few more moments. Then, quite suddenly, there was a vicious exchange of small, sharp explosions and for a few brief seconds the darkness was replaced by a bright blue welder’s flash which penetrated through the cracks in the walls of the workshop. Something had hunted and something else had died just outside that door, and, from somewhere far away in the scrapyard, a child gave a triumphant cry as a warrior from long ages past would have after defeating a sworn enemy. As midnight approached, something among the stars shining down on the small town of Delta, moved ever so slightly… it was not a star.
Dear reader,
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the world of Alex The Inventor.
Book II (A.T.I. and the Ghosts in the Glass Tunnels with Illustrations)
will be published in early 2017.
Book III (A.T.I. and the End World) is finished save for Illustrations and is
due to be published later in 2017.
If you have enjoyed Alex The Inventor – Book I so far, you can also watch a
Free VidBook Preview here…
Buy Both Ebook & VidBook directly from Deep Sky Stories – (Here…)
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Alex The Inventor in the Fantastic Scrapyard
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Enjoy the Story, there is much more yet to come!
