Chapter 1: The Missing Harmony Gear
Theo awoke to the sound of chaos, a discordant jumble instead of the harmonious din expected from the city’s morning. Normally, Steampunk City was a living orchestra—clockwork carriages clattered in rhythm, pneumatic horns tooted in sequence, and the great towers’ bells tolled a symphonic wake-up call. But today, all was wrong. The bells clanged out of step, overlapping and jarring; the sky-tram cables groaned alarmingly as entire trains jerked to a halt, suspending queues of startled passengers high above; a flock of clockwork doves scattered at random, their gears catching the dawn, heading nowhere fast.
Theo sat upright on his charging cot and broadened his audio receivers. His blue optics flickered anxiously. As a robot barely the height of a grown human’s chest, Theo looked strange even among Steampunk City’s population of eccentric automata and eccentric humans: his mismatched copper panels gleamed from years of repair, and his chest cavity still bore a mint-green heart-gear, resilient but patched with wire. He prided himself on keeping his inner workings as tidy as possible—he found that neat mechanisms matched neat thoughts.
But nothing about this morning was tidy. With uncertain movements, he clicked open the window and gazed down. Below, the wide boulevards were choked with residents. Human children, still in nightclothes, shouted for their parents; pneumatic postmen buzzed like bee-drones, colliding clumsily above the street. Rivers of flowers poured out from an automaton gardener spinning wildly in front of the bakery, petals carpeting tram rails and slowing electric trolleys to a crawl. The city hum was gone, replaced by the unhappy rumble of confusion and worry.
He waited for instructions—he liked protocols, and chaos meant they must exist somewhere—but no voice came through his transmitter. His best friend didn’t answer their usual morning chime. For the first time since he’d been assembled, the city’s core logic—that invisible, steadfast bond tying every mechanism, every tick and hum—was silent.
He closed his optics tightly and steadied his voice modulator. "Theo," he whispered to himself, "You are an invention of ingenuity and you are not broken. You are only... challenged."
The city needed order, and ordinance, and hope. And the only way to get those back was to know why they had left to begin with.
He hurried out and zigzagged through the growing tangle of machinery and worried people. On Juniper Lane, he nearly tripped over a toppled clock-repair drone, its mechanical arms pinwheeling helplessly. "Careful, love," called a tall figure from the opposite curb. Girl was already there; she looked entirely out of place amid the confusion—unfazed, nimble, with a patchwork scarf wound around her throat and copper goggles set above one eyebrow.
"Saw you from a mile off, Theo. Still sparkling, I see," she teased, giving his shoulder a friendly tap. Girl was about Theo’s age, though entirely human, with a reputation for slipping through locked doors and silver-tongued haggling. "What do you reckon, the mayor finally tried to run the city on spinach steam?"
Theo’s anxiety faded a degree in the light of her candor. "The Harmony Engine isn’t humming, and everything is—well, all tangled up!"
She blew a strand of soot-dark hair from her eyes. "Then let’s find what’s snapped. Bet you five clockcoins it’ll be somewhere dangerous."
He almost smiled. "I don’t gamble. But I will accompany you."
As they wound through the mechanical maelstrom, the two navigated sudden hazards—a rain of cogwheels from an overturned toy wagon, a baker’s robot careening through the square with a smoldering loaf, and warnings whispered by citizens who gestured nervously at strange marks etched into ornamental brass pipes—spirals and dashes not found in any city code.
They finally reached the square at the city’s center: Harmony Plaza. There, the city’s heart machinery sat—the Harmony Engine—its normally golden, softly thumping gears stilled and split. Brass panels gaped open like a wounded bird, and the Engine’s main drive-shaft was missing entirely, torn from its housing. Blacksmith was already there, his heavy overalls marked from an all-nighter, thick arms crossed over his chest in quiet worry. He carried the aura of one who had seen all manner of disasters and persisted through them, never loud, but always the last to give up on anyone or anything.
"You two," he rumbled in greeting, voice deep as a well-oiled furnace. "Glad to see someone’s got sense enough to come. The city’s beating heart’s been ripped apart. Been patching up little breakdowns, but—" He shook his head. "This is bigger."
Theo approached the Engine, scanning it carefully. "The drive-shaft? And look—here, and here—score marks. Somebody stole the gears. They left behind symbols."
Girl leaned in, her quick hands tracing the edge of an etched spiral. She glanced over her shoulder, knowing eyes wide. "Those aren’t just scratches. Someone wants us to see these. Or to frighten us."
Blacksmith cleared his throat. "It’d take tools, and time, and guts to get this close to the Engine without being spotted. Whoever did this, they planned ahead. If we don’t restore the Harmony Engine, we’ll have riot and ruin before noon."
Theo’s mind whirred as he studied the city’s blueprints, layered with Girl’s memory of shortcuts and Blacksmith’s whispered cautions. The scattered shards of the Engine—called Harmony Gears—were the threads that held the whole city together, orchestrating the smallest windup mouse to the grandest sky-port. Someone must have broken them up and hidden each piece in a place hard—and dangerous—to reach.
He looked up at the Raven’s Spire, which loomed at the city’s north edge. Its crooked peak, spun from blackened iron, was infamous: decades of rumors told of malfunctioning automatons haunting its upper levels, repairs gone awry, rotten with neglect and old secrets. A perfect first hiding spot—if you wanted to scare folks away.
"We start there," Theo said, more determined than he felt. "We find the first Harmony Gear. Girl, you know the back ways. Blacksmith, you have the strength for the security locks. I’ll read the systems and guide us at the vault."
Girl grinned. "Lead the way, circuit boy. I’m not scared of a few mumbling bots."
Blacksmith only nodded his agreement, a glint of pride—or perhaps worry—in his steady eyes.
The three threaded through alleyways, pausing only to help a child disentangle herself from a jumble of seized umbrellas. At the base of the Spire, greasy fog curled around rusted copper hands marking the lower clock-face. The main lift was jammed between floors, gears shrieking periodically. Below, a maintenance bot had wedged itself under a bench, muttering, "Routine. Routine. Routine terminated..."
Theo crouched beside it. "Easy, friend. Let me help."
With a sequence of code taps, he reset the bot’s error loop. It blinked in bashful confusion before scuttling away with a grateful beep.
Girl arched an eyebrow. "That’s three times today you’ve sweet-talked a machine out of a headache."
"I just listen. Machines don’t want to be broken," Theo replied. "Neither do people."
Blacksmith had already levered open the emergency hatch, exposing a winding maintenance stair laced with ancient, dust-choked gears. At the second landing, Girl slipped ahead, deftly evading a pair of erratic cleaning drones that squirted oil in wild arcs. "Quick, now!"
Midway to the top, walls began to pulse softly with a golden glow—runes illuminated, like the ones scratched in the city below. Here, the markings lined a thick steel panel barring the final ascent. Theo pressed his fingers to the surface. "It’s a lock, but not mechanical—a riddle for the Engine’s children."
A speaker crackled overhead:
What ticks but never tocks,
What binds but never breaks?
Solve me, or forever be lost to the city’s aches.
Girl barely hesitated. "Wind! No, wait—memory!"
Blacksmith frowned, rubbing his jaw. "Harmony. Rhythm. Time?"
Theo’s processors buzzed. Each answer made sense. But as he reached for the panel, his fingers tingled—a faint resonance echoed from his chest-gear. "Imagination. A city’s rhythm only exists because its people believe in it."
He said this aloud, and with a satisfying click, the lock spun open, gears rearranging themselves with neat precision.
The vault was cooler and darker than he’d expected, but on a pedestal rested the first Harmony Gear: a golden, intricate wheel, etched with scenes from the city’s founding—a parade, fireworks, a child repairing a toy. It hummed with a faint internal glow.
Girl slipped it into a velvet sack with a flourish. "One down. Two to go."
Behind them, a flicker of movement: in the fractured shadows, a figure watched—bandage-wrapped, eyes agleam with envy and something older, stranger. The newcomer’s presence sent a chill through Theo’s circuitry.
But when Theo spun, nothing was there; only the gas-lamp’s sputter and the echo of receding footsteps. For now, the Harmony Gear was theirs—but a game had begun, and somewhere in the steam-soaked city, an ancient foe was already making their next move.
As the team descended the Spire’s shadowy stairs—Gear in hand, hope rekindled—it was clear that even the bravest-hearted machine could only face chaos with help. The city’s future would be built, not by cogs or blueprints, but by courage, resourcefulness, and the spark of shared imagination.