Casimir and Charles-Henri approached the boulevard that separated Le Jardin from the Constantinople Museum of Natural History. Emblem and Ravilious were both unconscious on their stretchers, carried by the revenants.

“Hah!” Charles-Henri said, pointing to a street sign. “I don’t believe it. ‘Charles-Henri Boulevard!’ Then again, I didn’t believe the things that I’ve seen in the past several hours. When I was put into the ground this place was a small fortress afloat on a bit of swamp. The young one, Ravioli, he told me that millions live in and around Constantinople.”

Charles-Henri stamped on the ground with his peg leg. “And how the swamp has been drained. My leg doesn’t go all soggy!”

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Kevin refused to go near, through or have anything to do with the cellar door in his house. In fact, he hated the principle of cellars. They were dark, dank, buried places. The sort of place that a potato might enjoy, and Kevin hated potatoes.

When he’d been house hunting, he told his agent that he would not consider a house with a cellar. His agent respected those wishes, until one day Kevin received a phone call.

“Kevin, I found a great place. It is at the lower end of your price range, it has loads of room, and a fantastic yard.”

“Terrific!” Kevin had said.

“Only one downside,” the agent said, “it has a basement.”

“Nope,” Kevin had replied.

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Bernice heard the chug of an angry diesel outside of her office. She dropped the pencil that she was holding.

“Oh no…” she said. She spun in her chair and flung herself towards the window like a vial in a dangerously broken centrifuge. Between the slats of the venetian blinds she saw a bus squeal to a stop. It’s owners had covered it in a particularly gaudy shade of pink paint that had been inoculated with more glitter than a raver’s lungs.

Mr. Tremacle rushed into the room. He was the head cook at the soup kitchen and he hadn’t even dropped his ladle in his haste, and big, thick globs of the stuff spattered against the tile as he powered to a halt. “I thought that you told them not to come back!”

“I tried, I really did. They’re just so earnest about their…er, passion to help the less privileged,” Bernice said, diving for her coat. Maybe if she hurried she could think of a good excuse why they could leave for the day. Reasons flitted through her mind while she slipped and slid out of the front doors of the soup kitchen.

Despite her haste to prevent a scene out in front of the soup kitchen, the owners of the bus were professionals and had manufactured in a scene within seconds. Their soundman had deployed large, bloated speakers that jiggled and jostled from their positions on the icy asphalt. A retinue of equally jiggly women poured out of the back of the bus with a squad of men who were paid to jostle the women. Their breath sent plumes of steam into the air and what clothes they wore shone with sequins like the snow on the sidewalks.

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“Présentez arme!” Charles-Henri shouted.

Casimir stood behind a line of revenants and watched as they formed three firing lines, their clothes in decaying tatters and their flesh not in much better shape. They held their guns at the ready. A crowd of zombies stood between the revenants and the Constantinople Museum of Natural History. Beyond the Museum was the Lac, sparkling in that afternoon’s October sun.

“En joue!”

The first row of revenants kneeled. Several fell over as their femurs fell out of their pelvises, but the majority remained upright and in firing position.

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“So you can see that my realistic robots will finally free mankind from the drudgery of work!” Professor Cookshill said into the megaphone that he held. The crowd applauded and cheered. “These machines have a depth of feeling that is rivaled by a shallow puddle on the pavement, so why not employ them to give us the freedom to philosophize and to lead lives of leisure?”

His robots worked beside the podium that he commanded. Two shoveled coal into an enormous furnace whose black tentacles ran around the outdoor amphitheater and sent waves of rippling heat into the frigid air. Another mixed and folded dough into elaborate shapes. Still another took that dough and threw it into an oven attached to the furnace. The finished loaves were taken out by another team, and distributed by robotic waiters.

Professor Cookshill grinned and listened to applause and audulation. This is where he belonged, not slaving away in an obscure lab in some backwoods town. He should be out in the world. Bringing his inventions to the masses – for the right price, of course.

Above the din of the audience came another voice on a megaphone.

“But what of the drudgery that these robots face?” said the voice.

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Walter and Melisande strolled through the Blue City, a metropolis wrought from sapphire bricks of ice. Melisande had her arm through Walter’s as they went.

“Let’s stop for an iced cream,” Walter said, pulling her through an arched doorway of packed snow.

Customers packed the shop. Walter dragged her through the crowd to the counter.

“I would like two chocolate sundaes, please,” Walter said, pulling out his wallet.

The clerk grinned. “Put that away.”

“Oh, why, thank you!” Walter said to the clerk.

“Don’t thank me – I ain’t giving it away. You can thank Professor Cookshill over there. He’s been buying ‘em for everybody in the shop! Business has been great! All I had to do was buy one of his robotic men!” the clerk said. Walter and Melisande noticed the clerk’s assistant, only a boy, mechanically assembling two chocolate sundaes with engineered precision. Walter also noticed Professor Cookshill in the corner, holding court and passing out handbills.

“Arthur-” Melisande said, starting towards the robotic boy.

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