The Chronologies of Gyre:The Gregorian Part 1: Industrian Revolution

Part 1: Industrian Revolution

Published by Tony Rand Scott

Copyright 2013 Tony Rand Scott

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2013 Tony Rand Scott

All Rights reserved.

The Chronologies of Gyre: The Gregorian,

Part 1: Industrian Revolution is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to real ones is a coincidence. In cases were references are made to real people, places or events, they are used fictitiously.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Steampunk Graphics by Elizabeth Gallagher

Table of Contents:

Title

Dedication

Forward

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Excerpt from The Gregorian Part 2: The Human Recondition

Chapter2

Chapter3

Chapter4

Chapter5

Chapter6

Excerpt from The Worlds of Gyre, Part 1: Lawless Mesa, Luddition and Mirabilibus

About the Author

This book is dedicated to Barbara, James, Jacob, Lillian, Max, Suzy, Raven, Titan, Cookie, Sugar, Little Bit, and Scooter; for being the reasons I write and, sometimes, for being the reasons I do not.

To Nicole, Elinor, Sarah, Elizabeth, Jacob and Lillian-thanks for your critiques, editing and proofreading. They were invaluable.

Finally, to Larry, friend, prolific photographer, and sage- with six words you influenced, for good or ill, all that follows. Thank you.

Forward

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. I have written all my life, but never had the faith in myself ,or perhaps didn’t have the courage to subject myself to other people’s opinions of my writings. Aging has a way of bringing clarity through hindsight, and mortality the urge to leave a legacy, I suppose. Thanks to the burgeoning indie author resources available these days, the result lies before you now. I just want to thank you for taking a chance on my work; it means more than you know.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy it.

T.R.Scott, June 26, 2013

1

The world of Gyre was flat. A vast, automaton populated gear, it was not thin however, having depth and dimension between its pounding steam engine foundations, and the smokestack billowing cloudscapes of its iron skies.

Gyre was the sum of its labyrinthine construction, the Gyrelin automatons that were its citizenry and the program code that bound them together. Beneath the hierarchy and structure of its construction and populace, deep within the maze of mechanization beat the heart of Gyre, the Eternal Machine. It churned like the innards of a celestial clock, turning Gyre to its purpose. Like a meshed gear, the Eternal Machine also turned with the inexorable revolutions of time.

Gyre was a metropolitan machine. Spanning hundreds of thousands of miles in clockwork driven and steam powered construction, it was the cogwheel that turned in the inner mechanisms of the universe.

Programmed into the base code of every Gyrelin was this simple fact; Caught in the wake of the temporal tides of Gyre’s turning, suspended in orbit between its myriad cogs, existed countless worlds. Motes of matter and energy, like specks of sand trapped in the craw of a galactic mollusk, had collected and formed pearls of creation. Gyre was the caretaker of these worlds.

In the role of caretaker, Gyre was an unerring machine. However, like all machines, it also had ghosts.

2

On the worlds that orbited Gyre, the Gyrelins called the human development of innovation and creativity, which evolved closely with their physical development, Techknowlogic. Techknowlogic was the evolutionary process of Techknowledge. The primary purpose of Gyre was the strategic introduction and progression of Techknowledge to the primitive biological species. As the various worlds gestated and spawned from the primordial morass, a bond similar to teacher and student formed, stamped into the subconsciousness of the inhabitants as an innate impression of Gyre.

This manifested itself, primarily in the humanoid inhabitants, as a pervading intuition that their world was flat. It would remain an unproven yet unshakeable superstition, until after a time, they would evolve beyond blind faith and begin to grave fact. They would slowly climb their Techknowledge ladders, sailing their seas and mapping their continents, and finally disprove their flat world myths.

Another facet of the bond was the thirst for knowledge, the pursuit of artifice and innovation. The urge to forge metal skins for armor, or the replacement of lost limbs with mechanical prosthetics stemmed from this link. As they progressed, the bond displayed itself as light bulbs for thoughts, turning gears for productivity and hundreds of other various nuances of mechanical self-representation to express the haunting perceptions of Gyre in their psyches.

Gyre was a shepherd to these fledgling worlds, but the Gyrelins had no real grasp of mortality. They were aware of, but not tethered to, the axioms of mortal logic and life. Ordered by sciences and sorceries far more complex than any human computation or conjuration, Gyre was subject to laws outside the manifestation of a physical mortality or a finite existence.

Over the centuries however, their vigilance had come with a cost. As with the exchange between mother and fetus through the placenta and uterine wall, a residue of mortality began to permeate Gyre. Fascinations with familial grouping, self-expression and individualism began to overtake their logic processors, initiating behavior modification. Some Gyrelins began converting their binary and alphanumeric languages into English slang, and began to give themselves human names. The powers that governed Gyre reacted by imposing rigid counter measures to compensate for this mortal taint. Unfortunately, for the draconian controllers of Gyre, Gyre did what it had always done; it adapted.

3

Since their inception and manufacturing, Gyrelins had always adapted when needed, but always cautiously. They were, at their cores, still machines and existed by command and subroutine. Being machines, they held no significance for dates or events; they were just entries of data in a time line. The beginning of Gyre, or the big creative boom, was The Onset Linear. Ever since the first Gyrelins had begun to rise from the assembly lines in the manufacturing wombs deep within Gyre, they had been divided into two series that were differentiated by their roles and program coding.

The automacrats were the white coded, governing Gyre and overseeing the nurturing of the planetary sheep. They had organized themselves into a group called the Hierarchists.

The utilitarians were blue coded and performed the constant upkeep that Gyre required. They were of varying levels of complexity and construction and divided into many sections. As a group, they called themselves the Industrians.

Though sentient, the Gyrelins were still machines. As machines, they relied on their program code to guide them. The rules or laws that formed their programming code governed every action. The laws of Gyre bound all Gyrelins, whether elitist automacrat Hiearchists or laboring utilitarian Industrians. Of all these system mandates and process regulations, two had necessitated the development of a punitive system.

The first was the unbiased deployment of Techknowledge to the mortal worlds.

The second was the anonymity that was to go hand in hand with that impartiality.

The Gyrelins could not prevent the intangible awareness of their existence in the human psyche, but they could control its affirmation by restricting contact. To ensure the permanence of their seclusion, the C0NS3RVC0UNC1L known as The Concentrest, the ruling body of Gyre, had set a single sovereign as a figurehead. Seeking to minimize the alluring corruption of the mortal realms, they limited the contact with them to these leaders, and their small retinue of advisors. They had also initiated a process of term