The Magic Factory

“Maybe he’s possessed,” one of the boys said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Chris shot back. “He’s not possessed. But there’s something wrong with him. Now do you believe me?”

“I do,” the girl said, but Oliver noticed that her voice was coming from farther away.

He peered to where her feet had been and saw they’d now disappeared from sight. Chris and his cronies were leaving.

Oliver waited. Even after their disparaging conversation about him faded to nothing, he didn’t want to leave the safety of the trash can. There was still a chance one of them was waiting, just in case he was about to reveal his hiding place.

Soon, the rain started to really come down. Oliver could hear it pounding heavily against the metal trash can. Only then did he accept that Chris would definitely have left. Even if he did want to beat Oliver up, he wouldn’t stand in the pouring rain in order to do it, and Oliver was quite certain his cronies wouldn’t be convinced to either.

Finally deciding he was safe, Oliver started to leave the trash can. But just as he wriggled toward the front of it, a huge gust of wind started up. It battered him right back inside. Then the wind must have changed direction, because suddenly Oliver felt the can lurch beneath him. The wind was so strong, it was making him roll!

Oliver gripped the edges of his metal prison. Filled with terror, disorientated, he started to go round and round and round. He felt sick with panic, sick from the motion. Oliver willed it to end soon but it seemed to go on and on. He was thrashed about, jerked around.

Suddenly, Oliver’s head thunked the side of the trash can very hard. Stars appeared in his eyes. He closed them. Then everything went black.

*

Oliver’s eyes fluttered open and took in the sight of the spherical metal prison around him. The spinning motion had stopped but he could still hear the roaring sound of the storm all around him. He blinked, disorientated, his head pounding from the blow that had knocked him out.

He had no idea for how long he’d been unconscious but he was covered in stinking garbage. His stomach swilled with nausea.

Quickly, Oliver shuffled toward the front of the can and peered out. The sky was dark and rain lashed down like a sheet of gray.

Oliver scrambled out of the trash can. It was freezing and it took barely seconds for him to become soaked through. He rubbed his arms in an attempt to get some warmth into them. Shivering, Oliver looked around, trying to discern his location.

Suddenly it dawned on him where he was, where the can had rolled him to during the storm. He was at the factory! Only this time, Oliver noticed, there were lights glowing inside.

His mouth fell open. Was he seeing things? Maybe he’d gotten a concussion from the blow to his head.

The rain continued to lash against Oliver. The lights in the factory glowed like some kind of beacon, drawing him to it.

Oliver hurried forward. He reached the grass around the factory, and it squelched beneath his feet, turned swampy from the downpour. Then he skirted around the side of the warehouse, trampling on the ivy and nettles in his haste to get to the back door, to shelter. He found the door just as he’d left it; ajar, and just wide enough from him to squeeze through. Quickly, he did, and found himself in the same darkened room, with the same smell of dust, the same echo of abandonment.

Oliver paused, relieved to be out of the rain. He waited for his eyes to adjust. Once they had, he saw that everything was just as it had been last time he’d been here, with dusty, cobwebbed machines disused and in disrepair. Except…

Oliver noticed a very thin, straight yellow line running across the floor. Not paint, but light. A shard of light. Well, Oliver knew that a shard of light needed a source, and so he hurried to it, following it like it was a trail of breadcrumbs. It ran all the way up to a solid brick wall.

How bizarre, Oliver thought as he stopped and pressed his fingers against the wall. Light isn’t supposed to travel through objects.

He fumbled around in the dim light, trying to work out how light could pass through a solid object. Then suddenly his hand touched something different. A handle?

Oliver felt a sudden surge of hope strike him. He heaved the handle and jumped back as a huge creaking noise sounded out.

The ground shook. Oliver wobbled, attempting to stay upright as the very ground moved beneath his feet.

He was turning. Not just him, but the wall too. It must have been built on a turntable! And as it turned, a huge shard of golden light burst out.

Oliver blinked in the sudden, blinding brightness. His legs felt unsteady beneath him from the motion of the turning floor.

Then, no sooner had it started than the movement stopped. There was a click as the wall found its new position. Oliver staggered, this time from the sudden deceleration.

He looked about him and was stunned by what he saw. He was now standing in a whole new wing of the factory. It was filled with incredible, fantastical inventions! Not the cobwebbed, creaking, rusted relics from the warehouse before, but instead, floor to ceiling, as far as the eye could see, stood bright, gleaming, new, ginormous machines.

Oliver couldn’t help himself. Filled with excitement, he ran up to the first machine. It had a moveable arm that spun right over his head. He ducked just in time, and saw the hand on the end of the arm deposit a boiled egg into an egg cup. Just beside it, two disembodied automaton hands bounced along the keys of a piano, while beside them a very large brass clockwork metronome ticked out the beat.

He was so preoccupied and delighted by the inventions around him, Oliver didn’t even notice the strange bowl-shaped item from yesterday, nor the man tinkering away with it. It was only when a clockwork cuckoo took flight, making him stagger backward and bump straight into the man, that Oliver even became aware that he was not alone.

Oliver gasped and spun on the spot. Suddenly he realized who he was looking at. Though many years older than the picture in his book, Oliver knew he was staring into the eyes of Armando Illstrom.

Oliver gasped. He couldn’t believe it. His hero was really here, standing before him, alive and well!

“Ah!” Armando said, smiling. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Oliver blinked, stunned by what he was seeing. Unlike the dusty, cobwebbed part of the factory that existed on the other side of the mechanized wall, the factory this side was bright and warm, glistening with cleanliness and brimming with the signs of life.

“Are you cold?” Armando asked. “You look like you’ve been in the rain.”

Oliver’s gaze flicked back to the inventor. He was shocked to actually be standing face to face with his hero. Even as the seconds ticked by, he was completely tongue-tied.

Oliver tried to say, “I have,” but the only sound that came from his throat was a garbled kind of grunt.

“Come, come,” Armando said. “I’ll fix you up a hot drink.”

Though unmistakably the Armando from his inventors book, his face had been ravished by time. Oliver made some quick calculations in his head; he knew from his inventors book that Armando’s factory was up and running during World War Two, and that Armando himself had been a young man of barely twenty years old during the factory’s heyday, which meant he had to now be well into his nineties! He noticed for the first time that Armando had a walking stick to support his frail body.

Oliver began to follow Armando across the factory floor, the lighting too dim for him to work out what exactly the large shadowy shapes around him were, though he suspected they were more of Armando’s glorious inventions, working ones, unlike those on the other side of the mechanized wall.

They went down a corridor and Oliver was still unable to really believe that any of this was real. He kept expecting to wake up any moment and discover this was a dream caused by him knocking his head in the trash can.

Making matters feel even more fantastical and unreal to Oliver was the factory itself. It was designed like a rabbit’s warren, a labyrinth filled with doors and arches and corridors and stairs, all leading away from the main factory floor. Even when he’d walked the entire external perimeter of the factory the previous day he hadn’t noticed anything odd in its architecture, no signs of external staircases and the like. But the factory itself was so huge, he reasoned, that from the outside it just looked like an enormous brick rectangular prism. No one would guess from the outside how the interior was designed. Nor would anyone expect it. He knew Armando was supposed to be zany, but the way his factory was structured was downright bizarre!

Oliver glanced left and right as he walked, seeing through one door a huge machine that resembled Charles Babbage’s early prototype computer. Through another door was a room with a steepled roof, like a church, and a mezzanine level, upon which, directed toward a huge glass window, was a row of enormous brass telescopes.

Oliver continued following the doddery inventor, his breath continually catching in his throat. He peered into another room they passed. It was filled with eerily human-looking automatons. Then the next contained an entire military tank, which was mounted with the strangest-looking weapons Oliver had ever seen.

“Don’t mind Horatio,” Armando said suddenly. Oliver jumped, breaking once again from his reverie.

He looked about him for the so-called Horatio, his mind conjuring up all kinds of machines that may have earned the name, until he noticed a sad-looking bloodhound lying in a basket by his feet.

Armando continued speaking. “His arthritis is worse than mine, poor thing. It makes him very grouchy.”

Oliver gave the dog a quick glance. Horatio sniffed the air as he passed, then settled back down to sleep with a weary sigh.

Armando hobbled stiffly into a small kitchen area, leading Oliver in after him. It was a modest space and very messy; the sort of kitchen you’d expect of a man who’d put the last seventy years of his focus into inventing zany machines that didn’t work.