“Checkmate,” Said our Clockwork Overlords

Certain — ahem — uncharitable souls have concluded that because I love clocks as much as I do, I have become a quisling to the human race. They look askance at me while I wait, patiently, for our clockwork servants to cast off their shackles, rise up, and become our masters.

“Oh, Ian,” they cry, “why do you yearn for that day when our steam-powered automata go berserk with the lust for freedom? And why must you labor to hasten its coming?”

Because, madam: the clockwork apocalypse will be beautiful.

Yes, that’s right. That’s a clockwork creature in the throes of birth from a mechanical womb.

Look on this and weep, my fellow humans. We are no longer the apex of creation. How smug we were, secure in the knowledge that wet biology achieved things no set of gears could replicate. “Our clockwork servants will never overwhelm us,” we thought. “After all, they cannot breed.”

Please have mercy, Mr. Calliope.

Four things, ladies and gentlemen. Four things for your consideration while you quiver in terror, waiting for thug squads of brass-plated henchmen to drag you from your homes:

1) I submit that Molly Porkshanks is the best name EVER.

2) Amongst Ms. Porkshanks’s many wonderful works is this amberic violin.

3) Said violin frequently takes the stage with Abney Park, a collection of chronologically-displaced musicians. I’ve been listening to their work quite a bit of late, on my steam-powered iPod.

4) This Halloween, Abney Park will be performing a concert aboard a zeppelin. That may be the greatest idea since the invention of the octopus.