The Clock People: Clockwork Chronicles

By Mark Roland Langdale

A highly imaginative fantasy book for children and young adults. Written in the authors’ unmistakable style, the book transports readers to a different world. The narrative surrounds the theme of time and follows people who live inside a clock.
The Clock People is a wondrous work of mechanical engineering and imagineering that runs both like clockwork and anti-clockwork! The story follows the lives of people who live and work inside an antique golden fob watch to the sound of clicking, ticking, tocking, whirling and whirring.
The Clock People lost their home, downsizing to another property in Clock Town. But this is just half of the story, the other half is lost in time, waiting to be discovered...
The Clock People is Mark Roland Langdale’s fifth Matador children’s book, and will appeal to science fiction and fantasy lovers along with fans of his former books.
“What is time? Scientists who believe in quantum wonder tales would have you believe it does not exist, that it is simply an illusion a clever conjuring trick and nothing more...”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789012064

Mark Roland Langdale

Mark Roland Langdale has had a varied life and career. He has worked with children and teenagers, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in an effort to fundraise and he has also travelled down the Amazon. Mark likes to write modern day fairytales with an undercurrent of real life issues such as mental health, environment, dyslexia which he suffers from himself, and autism.

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Copyright © 2018 Mark Roland Langdale

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1789012 064

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Dedicated to Esther Harvey, Salvie and Nick

Thanks to Rosie Lowe and Emily Castledine

Contents

Prologue

1Illusions

2Timeslip

3Nightdreaming

4Like Clockwork

5The Moonstone Planetarium

6Clockwork Guardian Angels

7A Horological Misadventure

8An Escapement of Sorts

9A Clockwork Nightmare

10The Mechanical Mountain

11A Most Illuminating Experience

12Complications

13Perfect Timing, Like Clockwork In Fact

14The Time Thief Loses Track of Time

15The Return of the Time Warper

16Jack the Flash!

17Time

18Oh Brother, You’re Potty!

19The Miniature Palace

20The Time Thief Gets Up a Head of Steam

21The Miniature Magician

22The Greatest Thief of all Time!

23The Chronicles of a Chronometer

24The Plan’s Running Like Clockwork

25The Shadow Time

26In Hot Water!

27The Museum of Miniatures

28Time to Rewind the Clock

29The Further Misadventures of the Time Wasters

30Whatever Happened to Greenwich Mean Time?!

31Father Time, the Greatest Showman of All Time

32Merlin’s Mechanical Museum

33The Time Wasters’ Society

34It’s Time!

35I’m No Harry Houdini!

36A Most Untimely Meeting!

37Rewind… It’s the Return of the Time Warper!

38Time… Magic or Illusion?

39The Battle of the Clock Gods

40Courting Disaster!

41The Return of the Clockwork Magician

42Time Street

43Two Merlins for a Princely Sum!

44A Circle of Magic

45The Art of Tasseography

46A Real Humdinger of a Tale!

47The Clock Courtyard Theatre

48The Merlin Effect

49A Real Piece of Living Victoriana!

50The Mechanical Monster

Horological Time-Log

Prologue

Once upon a time long since passed into the Chronicles of Time, there were people who lived in a clock. In all honesty, as a humble abode the clock wasn’t much better than living in a shoe. In fact it was probably worse, as the constant clicking, ticking, tocking, whirling and whirring of the inner workings of the clock were enough to drive anyone kicking and screaming into the kingdom known as Cloud Cuckoo Land. However, over time the Clock People got used to the sound of the mechanism, as it ran like clockwork, but if for any reason it ceased to run like clockwork, the sound of the clock’s mechanism was replaced by the sound of the wheels turning inside the minds of the Clock Elders whose job it was to keep things ticking over.

But that was only half of the story. The other half of the story was lost in time. Some said (storytellers mostly, who in truth cannot always be believed) that the Clock People lost their home (very careless) as they did not pay the peppercorn rent on the property. Either way the people of the clock, now homeless, had no other choice than to downsize. So the Clock People moved into a nice little property in another part of Clock Town. The estate agent selling the property said being an antique it did require some repair work doing to it, which may take some time, but being an antique the property had been built to last so was a sound investment.

Just for the chronological record for all you horologists out there, the property in question was an antique fob watch hanging on a chain from a wooden post. The post was driven into the earth many moons ago by a gentle giant simple of mind but warm of heart, who soon became the protector of the Clock People, even though they were not aware of this little fact. BIG FACT!

Do not be fooled into thinking this is a fairytale simply from the opening line, but if any story deserves to begin with the words ‘once upon a time’ then a story entitled ‘The Clock People’ involving time and the passage of time surely does.

What is time? Scientists who believe in quantum wonder tales would have you believe it does not exist, that it is simply an illusion, a clever conjuring trick and nothing more. Now perhaps that is true and perhaps not only time will tell, as Old Father Time has neither the time nor the inclination to tell. The Time Thieves, on the other hand, had all the time in the world to steal your precious time from right under your very nose. These stolen moments were times when you were daydreaming, wishing your life away, or moments you had stolen from others. The Time Alchemists who create ‘new time’ were far too busy making up for ‘lost time’, creating ‘new time’ in their cauldrons, all watched over by the master of time himself. Now, that master was not Father Time as you may have expected but Merlin, a man who could himself travel through time. But which Merlin were the travelling storytellers speaking of? Merlin the Magician from the Court of King Arthur or John Joseph Merlin, the clockmaker and maker of automatons?

Well, without further ado let us find out which Merlin the storytellers were speaking of, as the clock is ticking – tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tick, tick, TOCK!

‘That’s better, I find machinery responds best to a damn good old-fashioned kick up the pants!’ snapped Father Time, who had no time for anything mechanical or non-mechanical that held time up.

1

Illusions

‘I see you’re admiring that timepiece, sir. Isn’t she a beauty? And she’s got a great story to tell,’ chuckled a wizened gentleman as he stood behind a dusty-looking counter in an antique emporium conversing with a customer. If one had been peering through the dusty window of the emporium one may have imagined the two men were in a marketplace in Constantinople bartering and haggling over a watch rather than in the backstreets of London Town. The proprietor of the emporium was referring to the fob watch he held delicately in his hand as a ‘she’, as if it were a ship or an old steam engine, or so the customer thought. What a silver tongue this salesman had, it must be made of pure quicksilver! But one must never be too quick to judge a book by its cover or a clock by its face, so thought the customer as he raised a rye smile.

‘A talking timepiece? What will these watchmakers think of next?’ replied the customer poking fun at the antiquarian man. ‘It must be worth a small fortune, and in truth I hope it is a small fortune and not a large one,’ added the gentleman customer under his breath. This was a gentleman of some considerable wealth and a man like Scrooge who knew full well the meaning of the word thrifty. Expensive gifts and unnecessary sparkling trinkets were, by and large, best observed and admired by standing outside the jewellers and goldsmiths’ windows, beyond temptation, although naturally this was not a maxim the jewel thieves of this world adhered to. ‘There is no need to sell me the watch, man, I’ve already made up my mind to buy it!’ grunted the gentleman under his breath.

In truth the gentleman had heard the silver-tongued patter of the salesman a hundred times before and had no time for it. What he wanted was facts not fiction – the steady reliable tick followed closely by the tock, a clock that kept reliable time and not imaginary time. That was what the gentleman expected from a timepiece, nothing more, nothing less. The gentleman certainly did not want a talking fob watch or clock, that was a fiction best left in the storybook. The man imagined if the proprietor stuck out his tongue it would be silver. He had a mind to pay the man in quicksilver and then run for the door as if he were a jewel thief or a time thief. But the man had little imagination so this curious thought did not enter or cross the threshold of his mind, not even for a split second. If it had done so the man would no doubt have thought the clock in his mind needed repairing.

The fob watch was undoubtedly an antique, not a beautifully crafted fake, which at first had crossed the buyer’s mind. It was magnificent, unique, a watchmaker’s dream made of gold, silver and platinum, which swung upon a silver chain like a pendulum of a grandfather clock. The glass face of the watch sparkled in the golden sunlight that shone through the window of the emporium with such brightness one would have thought this was a church and the windows made of stained glass. The watch had a gold cover upon which a coat of arms was engraved.

The fob watch was flipped open by means of a tiny button on the side of the watch, which one may have imagined was turned by a tiny fairy or sprite. The white enamel face of the clock was covered with a low glass dome made of clear moonstone. Black Roman numerals replaced the traditional numbers and the hands were encrusted with tiny diamonds and opals. The back of the watch was decorated in elaborate swirling patterns, flourishes and curlicues, gold entwined with silver which one might have imagined was some ancient writing or code.

‘The watch is worth a princely sum, it is true,’ purred the proprietor as his eyes ran quickly over the shining curves of the clock. The proprietor donned a pair of scopical watchmaker’s glasses so as to see the finer details of the complication with greater clarity, as his eyes were not what they once were. Old age had dimmed the man’s vision but not his senses which, when he was at work, were always working overtime.

‘Now, you may have heard many a story of ancient timepieces which seem to possess the ability to alter time in some way, nevertheless I think the story is worth telling, as for all the wonders of this timepiece it cannot speak for itself. Although I should imagine it will not be long before the great clockmakers of this century come up with a timepiece that can. You see, sir, this watch never has to be repaired, or, to phrase it slightly differently, it will repair itself. So as you can imagine, the owner of such a fine timepiece is indeed a man of the utmost good fortune, and in time it will save them a small fortune in both repair bills and in replacing the watch with a new one,’ said the old man peering at the gentleman on the other side of the counter over both his half-moon spectacles and his scopical watchmaker’s glass, which sat one upon the other.

‘No, I cannot see through time as I am not Merlin the Magician but you obviously see elves living inside this watch and no doubt more besides,’ scoffed the gentleman trying hard not to smile as he tried to imagine elves busying themselves inside the clock as the sands of time slipped through a giant golden hourglass. The customer was surprised the old rascal hadn’t tried to sell him some unlikely tale about the watch being made of moonstone, as it clearly had the ability of a crystal ball!

‘I see you have heard the story before,’ replied the proprietor of the emporium coolly.

‘Many a time and I’m sure you have many other wonder tales involving chronometers and horology to hold me spellbound, wasting my time in the process. You are aware of the old saying, Procrastination is the thief of time, are you not, sir? So let’s not waste any more of each other’s precious time,’ replied the gentleman equally as coolly as the temperature inside the emporium dropped to that outside of the emporium. (A chronometer was another name for a timepiece, as was a complication, and horology was the name given to historians of clocks and antique timepieces.)

‘It’s funny you should say that, for as it happens I have,’ the proprietor smiled knowingly.

Here time seemed to stand still as the proprietor told the gentleman a quite unbelievable tale that was taller than any grandfather clock. As the proprietor spun his tale, as if spun upon a magic spinning wheel, even the clocks in the emporium seemed to inch a little closer so that the ticking of their own mechanism did not drown out what the old man was saying. The clocks may have wanted to hear the man’s wonder tale but clearly the customer was trying to inch away. However, try as he might he could not. It was as if something was holding him back, an unseen force. Perhaps the invisible rays of the moon were holding him spellbound?

In the blinking of a dragonfly’s magical eye, known in nature as a time warper, daylight had turned to moonlight. Outside the emporium the man could no longer hear the incessant clickety-clack of the wheels of the horses and carriages over the cobblestones, which to some folks’ ears sounded like the ticking of a giant clock, for all he could hear was the beating of his heart as his body clock continued to keep perfect time.

The gentleman yawned, wondering if the proprietor kept a hammock in the shop so he could lay down his weary head. He was sure he heard several of the clocks yawn as they had obviously heard this tall tale many times before.

However, the proprietor of the emporium seemingly had not even noticed the man was tired of his story, so continued to tell it as if he were asleep on his feet and in fact he was now talking in his sleep. People who talk in their sleep mostly talk nonsense, so this made perfect sense to the customer who yawned several times in a theatrical manner just in case the man was still awake.

‘Perhaps I have told you some part of the story before but not the whole story,’ said the proprietor with a hint of mystery in his voice. It seemed, come hell or high water, neither time nor tide was going to stop the proprietor of the emporium telling his tale no matter how much time it took. ‘You see, the watch was made in Austria by the finest clockmaker who ever lived, Horace H. Humdinger. Mr Humdinger was a reclusive figure who lived in a giant cuckoo clock in the clouds that stood upon giant stilts. The whole place was full to the brim and overflowing with clocks of all shapes and sizes. People who visited the shop said you couldn’t hear yourself think. Others of a more poetical disposition said you could hear the chimes of the clocks making their sweet music as they wafted upon the summer breeze as far as the next village. Mr Ludwig van Beethoven, a frequent visitor to the shop, was quoted as saying, ‘It is as if the clocks were all part of a clock orchestra conducted by the clockmaker Horace H. Humdinger, who was also the composer of the many merry and melodious melodies that were like candy to the ear.’ Alas, poor old Beethoven was as deaf as a post by this time so one had to wonder if he simply imagined these melodies in his head, something he often did before he put pen to paper.

‘The story goes that the clockmaker Horace H. Humdinger had the hands of a master magician, a man who dabbled in the art of alchemy, the alchemy of time. The watch you are holding in your hand was originally made for a prince. The glass face of the watch is made out of moonstone, something the Romans believed was magical and had the power to alter time.

‘There was a companion piece made at the same time as the piece you now have in your possession, sir, although some say nobody can possess this timepiece as it possesses the owner. In fact, some say the watch chooses the owner. The companion piece was a timepiece set in the body of an emerald dragonfly, which also possessed a clear moonstone face. The wings of the dragonfly were also made of moonstone. The prince so pleased with the watch he had asked the watchmaker to make a piece for his princess. The princess was said to love dragonflies so the watchmaker made the timepiece in the form of a dragonfly brooch. It was also told that the great magician Merlin had been asked to put a spell upon these magical pieces so they could be used to travel through time. The story went that Merlin was the great-great-great-grandfather of the magical clockmaker and maker of automatons, John Joseph Merlin.’

Then a grandfather clock that obviously imagined it was Big Ben struck the midnight hour (a clock which, as yet, had not even been dreamt up by the imaginative engineers of a later time).

Here the gentleman on the other side of the counter rolled his eyes and once again yawned theatrically as if to say, ‘Isn’t it time you were clocking off for the day?!’

‘Of course, rival watch and clockmakers wanted to know the watchmaker’s secret but they never found out, the watchmaker had made sure of that. You see, unlike all other watches which could be opened so they could be repaired, the watchmaker’s watches could not be opened. Even if you took a giant sledgehammer to them, or a stick of dynamite, they could not be opened. Some ingenious clockmakers rested the fob watches on the line of a railway track in the hope a steam train may reveal their secrets by running over the watch. Others employed smithies to take a hammer to the watch. Not even the great safe-crackers, jewel thieves and cryptologists around the world were able to crack the code. It was like the watches were ancient clams buried on the seabed covered in barnacles protecting the treasure from pirates and sea vagabonds.

‘There was an alternative story circling chronometer and horology circles that a magician put a spell on a goldsmith and watchmaker’s shop because he had entrusted a priceless gold antique fob watch with them which was stolen by one of the employees. As nobody in the shop would admit to stealing it, he put a spell on everybody in the shop – a shrinking spell – and imprisoned them in an old mantelpiece clock for all time. Some said the caster of the spell was Merlin the Magician, some said it was John Joseph Merlin, the watchmaker, who had the magic touch with all timepieces and mechanical complications.’

‘Yes, very nice story – sorry – stories. You can come round any time you like to my home address and tell it to my children when they cannot get off to sleep,’ scoffed the gentleman.

The candles in the shop flickered for a moment as if a wind shadow had crept into the shop through a cracked window or underneath the door. Then all the lights went out in the emporium as if this was part of a magic show act – now you see it, now you don’t!

Now, whether the proprietor had blown out all the candles himself so he could conduct this transaction in secret, being a humble storyteller I cannot possibly say. Perhaps the clocks needing to wind down for the day used their doors swinging on their hinges to blow the candles out so as to remind both gentlemen that procrastination really is the thief of time. Another scenario just as unlikely was in that exact moment time had stood still, freezing the two men in time and enabling a thief to sneak in and steal the watch, replacing it with a fake. An even more unlikely tale was that during that moment a Time Thief snuck into the emporium and robbed both men of a precious moment of their time, said by the Chinese to be more valuable than gold.

Both men had imagined they had briefly fallen into a bad dream. In the dream they were trapped in the slide of a magic lantern owned by a giant. Everything was dark and neither of the men could move a muscle. Both men feared being at the mercy of the giant, their days were numbered. The giant picked a slide out of a battered red and black box containing many colourful litho lantern slides and slipped it into the lantern. The slide the giant picked at random was the slide which contained both the men trapped in a glass prison. Everything in the bad dream then became as clear as a crystal Mediterranean Sea as they appeared on a giant screen as two shadows. The giant did not seem to like the image on the screen so removed the lantern slide featuring two shadowy figures standing in a shop bartering with one another. The giant roared with a laugh so loud it broke the glass and shattered it into a thousand pieces, cutting the men to ribbons.

Both men fell out of the bad dream, not as men but as red ribbons – the sort a woman uses on a bonnet or a child uses to tie up a present. The two ribbons twisted and twirled around and around in the air in ever-decreasing spirals as they gently fell to the ground. The ribbons then magically transformed from red to black, coiling themselves as if snakes or dragons about to strike. Then, in a split second, the ribbons once more turned back into men as if in a clever conjuring trick. And once again all this took place in the blink of an eye.

Suddenly the emporium was flooded with light. It must have appeared to anybody looking through the window of the emporium at this moment in time that the candles, by some act of dark magic or alchemy, had produced a spark and thus lit themselves. Both men rubbed their eyes as if just awakening from a dream and, like a phantasmagorical dream, illusionary by its very nature, quickly forgot what the dream was all about.

The proprietor and the gentleman shook hands mechanically like clockwork automatons and parted company, for that is where the transaction ended, with both men thinking they had got the best of the deal. A few minutes later the well-to-do gentleman left the emporium. The proprietor, still half asleep, was led willingly up the stairs by the Sandman to the land of dreams. Here he was to take part in another transaction with a shady fellow, known in the circles where dreams are bought and sold for a pittance as the Dream Merchant.

‘A watch that will repair itself, that’s some fairytale, very much in the style of Grand Fairy Teller Hans Christian Andersen, and not even the Grand Clockmaker John Joseph Merlin could perform such a clever conjuring trick I fear!’ the gentleman and new owner of the watch muttered, shaking his head as he took the watch out of his pocket to see the hands glide serenely across the face of the dial as smooth as silk. One thing was true: every time the gentleman entered this emporium of the fantastique with its many weird and wonderful delights time flew by. The only time it did not fly by was when bartering with the old man who clearly, in the eyes of the gentleman, was one cog short of a cuckoo clock.

A strange thought occurred to the well-to-do gentleman as he left the emporium, which was that perhaps the proprietor was a Time Thief who collected other people’s wasted time and added it to his own. He was probably five hundred years old! What sort of curious thought was this? It was best he put this thought in the draw of the cabinet of curiosity in his head, lock it and never open it again, or better still throw away that key so it could never be found. The gentleman hadn’t the time for such wild imaginings. He wasn’t a storyteller, he was a businessman, a man who liked life to work like clockwork at all times!

2

Timeslip

‘Hold on to your hats, we’re on the move again,’ an old woman muttered as the tables and chairs in the room slid back and forth as if they were aboard a ship.

‘Time is always on the go,’ a younger man piped up as he slid across the floor straight into a broom cupboard.

‘The mechanism isn’t working properly, it should have righted us by now!’ bellowed a man, his face covered in grease.

‘I can’t get this screw out, pass me the bigger screwdriver then things will be ticketyboo in no time at all,’ replied the clockmaker to his young apprentice as the mechanism appeared to vibrate like the body of a bee in a hive.

‘Yes sir, right, right away sir,’ replied his apprentice as his teeth chattered as the clock continued to shake, rattle but thankfully not roll like a penny in an arcade. The apprentice then passed the clockmaker a larger screwdriver from the black apron tied around his waist. The two clockmakers busied themselves like bees in a hive all working towards one common goal to keep the clock running on time.

Now from this short conversation one might have thought this was all taking place on top of a bench in the back of a jeweller’s shop somewhere in the world where earth tremors occurred. But surely clock repairers would use tiny instruments to repair the inner workings of the mechanism like entomologists dissecting the body of a dragonfly, not tools one would imagine were made for a giant watchmaker? However, this world wasn’t quite the world one may have imagined. No, this world was a world inside a world, a world where the Clock People lived. You see, the two clockmakers were repairing a fob watch from the inside.

How was this remotely possible? I hear you enquire. Had they taken a shrinking spell like Alice, or was this a giant’s fob watch, in which case to the Clock People the watch was their earth? Once upon a time Diderot, the Enlightenment philosopher, wrote, ‘The whole world is like a machine with wheels, ropes, pulleys, springs and weights.’ Perhaps the story the proprietor in the antiques emporium had sold the gentleman wasn’t a fairy story after all. Could it possibly be this impossibly highly unlikely story had been written by John Joseph Merlin’s famous storytelling automaton?

Well, to answer those two questions as precisely as an atomic clock all I can say is that you see people of all shapes and sizes upon this jewel-like earth of ours. Then there are the fairy folk at the end of your back garden, the ones you cannot see or, in this curious case, the Clock People who lived in an antique fob watch. The Clock People did not like to be called fairies, elves, pixies or sprites for they were not any of these good folk. They also did not take kindly to being referred to as the little people, as in their world they were the perfect size – not too big, not too small, just right – and you can forget the Goldilocks story, for glue-like porridge eaten inside the workings of a precision timepiece would only gum up the workings!

Now, I know this all sounds a little complicated, like the complication or mechanism of a fantastical timepiece belonging to a royal patron, but that was not the curious case, not a bit of it, and this is simply a bit of the story, a tiny fragment of time taken and examined through a microscope.

The story takes place in seventeenth-century England at the very height of the greatest clockmakers on earth, or at least one part of it does. Back then royalty and the well-to-do even had their own clockmakers who were called guardians. However, they were not Old Father Time, the Guardian of Time who lived in a giant glass-domed clock, the whereabouts of which were a well-kept secret.

Now, as time is getting on I think that is enough information to be getting on with so let us get on with the story, as I know the speed of life has quickened considerably since the times in which this tale is set. (Here the Clockwork Storyteller drops a slide into a magic lantern, a tiny click is heard and as if by magic the slide appears upon a screen.)

3

Nightdreaming

‘Watch out down below,’ hollered a worker as he accidentally dropped a hammer from a great height. Then he took the weight off his feet by sitting down upon a weight inside the mechanism. But not the weight of the world, you understand, that was Atlas’s job! One may have imagined the man to be recreating Galileo’s famous experiment of dropping two weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa – one heavy and one light. However, this was not the case. Clearly one can have too much imagination for one’s own and everybody else’s good!

‘Be careful, man, that hammer nearly split my head open and I’ve already got a splitting headache from the hammering chimes of the clock!’ cried the foreman shaking his fist furiously at the man on the ladder as he ticked one of his workers off.

‘Sorry guv, won’t be a tick,’ shouted the man, banging his fist against a follet. ‘There we go, the good old-fashioned hit-it-and-hope technique works every time!’ And with that the mechanism of the fob watch kicked into life and all was well with the clock and the people who lived inside the clock.

‘Our lives are hanging by a thread. One slip and we’re clocking off for the last time,’ the old man muttered scratching his whiskers as he climbed into one of the many lifts going up and down inside the mechanism housed within the timepiece. The lifts were based upon the escapement system of a cuckoo clock – a series of chains pulled the lifts up and down which, for the most part, ran like clockwork.

‘That is true but then as our world hangs on the end of a chain I suppose that is only to be expected,’ laughed another worker inside the mechanism, trying hard to keep a smile off his dial as he clocked off from the nightshift.

‘Living in a clock I prefer the story of the old woman who lived in a shoe,’ chimed an old woman, her face well worn by time, although not tides. Tides inside a clock would only rust the mechanism. However, the mechanism was not airtight which meant the invisible River of Time still washed over the inhabitants of this small world, whether they knew it or not.

‘Wouldn’t you like to see the light, see what it’s like in the world above?’ a young man sighed, his eyes shining like a magic lantern.

‘Adventure is for the young, a waste of time for an old duffer like me, I’m afraid, and I prefer the relative safety of the mechanism. Step outside and you could be stepped on by one of the giants, gentle or otherwise. Or eaten by any number of beastly things, from spiders to giant man-eating ants!’ the old man replied as a frown appeared upon his