Monotopia

The church bells heralded the start of a new day. The church towers reached for the rising sun like spears. It took less than an hour for the streets to fill with people: merchants hawking their wares of silks and spices and goodies from the other cities, carriage drivers jostling with kinetobiles for space, gawking tourists out of both time and place, staring up at a smogless sky.

In the royal university, a small band of young men worked on what would be their masterpiece: a mechanical man made up of millions of delicate clockworks, powered by the wind-up crank in his back. They had been working on this man, this automaton, for near a decade now, since they were still students. Many of them had already graduated, but their work continued.

At precisely ten-fifteen, the sharp tinkling of glass bells rose from the center of the city: the Duke was holding court. A kinetobile ran headfirst into a carriage in a bid to reach the court in a timely manner, crushing the carriage under its grinding, clattering wheels. The horses bolted down the street. Citizens rushed to help as the kinetobile limped on its way.

Within the grand palace, the Duke and Duchess sat side-by-side on the enormous golden throne. Power-hungry nobles gathered on the arched promenades, watching the ongoing events with little interest. Goblets of wine and half-eaten platters sat on the railings. They thought this was where the sausage was made: in their decadent little courtyards, amidst a tangled mess of political scheming and backstabbing. But no. The Duke and Duchess decided who would truly have power in their court, and as of yet, that was only them.

The glass bell over the door tinkled. One of the guards flipped a lever, and the door opened with a grinding of gears. Before anyone could come through, the other guard slipped out; although his words were inaudible, his tone was clear and sharp as a knife. When he stepped back, the outer-city nobles, the ones in charge of Granlock's colonies and suburbs, trickled inside, bearing their own grievances. Some came only to present the monthly tribute: the Vasilyevich family with their fine cheese and wine, the DiAulares with their elegant warhorses, the Fabergés with their fine jewels. Others came with true, actual grievances: the Rossis complained about blighted crops, the roofs of the Vanguards' township dissolved in every westward storm. The eldest daughter of the Navarres, as fiery a woman as there ever has been, dumped a sack full of dead, featherless chickens before the Duke and Duchess and snarled that their water had been contaminated by the recent acid rain, killing their livestock and withering their crops in the fields. The Duke and Duchess accepted their words and adjourned the court once the last noble trickled out the door, retreating to their chambers to discuss solutions they had no intentions of implementing.

The city of Granlock reigned another day.