OOM: Battle with the Hound.
[ooc: This is purely fancanon, and VERY AU, but it's taken from canonical sources with Whimmer who has stated (time and time again) that yes, he's ripped off several stories to write Equilibrium. Which is okay, because hollywood is all about ripping things off. It just turns out that there's more Bradbury then initally thought.]
Matinence on the hounds was not a task that John Preston relished. They were old and required oiling and hours of careful work on the details that made these creatures so special.
However he enjoyed it, because despite everything he did enjoy working with his hands. And so he sat, screwdriver in one gloved hand, mechanical bones of a dog spread out before him.
The hound was not a dog in the traditional sense. It was a bygone relic that would have made any bibliophile laugh uproariously at the very notion that a country that dispised books, and entertainment of any and all kinds would be using a creature straight out of fiction.
Preston screwed in the last ocular device and tightened another neckbolt, studying the creature intently. Only Clerics were allowed to service the hounds, normally younger clerics still in the monestary. However he had wanted to confront this creature head-on. To see how his preceptions of it had changed since being able to feel.
He flipped open a page in the manual. Printed in the same block text, no words, no images, no pictures.
The Hound was first used in 2004 to quell rioteers at the 2004 elections when the incumbant president announced that he was a leader in "times of crisis". Designed initailly by the United States military for use in combat, while the hound never saw any action in the third or Arabian conflict (Pre-libria 2023) It continued to remain a tool used by police.
Opposible mechanical probiscus used as a trank-gun, the hound's paws are also razor sharp. Difficult to kill with a shot, the only way to destroy the mechanism is to take off it's head, and it's CPU
What was it that ray had said? They have police dogs, more like partners...Every time he thought about how strange it was to partner with an animal preston considered the hound. He could never imagine treating this...thing...as if it were partridge. Something like Ludwig however, something like an actual dog...
He failed to see how anyone could assume this creature was a partner. As time had passed mechanical devices had taken over most of humanity's lesser task, trash, garbage. New York had attempted to place mechanical "police on horses" on the streets. But that was before the Tryst Conglomerate Rebelled and the Robots tried to take over.
Or something along those lines.
Preston highly doubted that was what happened. Pre-Librian history was full of stories like that. Fiction mixed in with truth and truth mixed in with fiction so that those left behind didn't know what to make straight.
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed-if all records told the same tale-then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
Surprised by the Orwellian quote that had suddenly sprang to life in his mind Preston dropped the screwdriver. It clattered around the floor for a moment before twisting beneath the table.
His heart beat.
Once.
Twice.
He wished he could have asked Jurgen's opinion on that, asked him what those things meant but Jurgen had disappeared and The underground was leaderless, lost. Everyone blamed him, shunned him, threatening to report him so often that Preston had two of them arrested in a fit of anger and blind rage...
When a real leader had been there for the people, it was hard to think of them...not being there. Preston had never known how much jurgen meant to others, to him...
What would partridge say?
He hoped he'd have a chance to ask him soon. He was making plans to go to Milliways today, tonight if possible.
He wondered where his friend was, if he had been captured without his knowledge. That was doubtful, but orders from Father had been very secretive as of late and Brandt walking around with that goddamn smile...
There was a third option, but John Preston didn't dare to hope that had happened. His own access to the bar had been blocked for almost a week...
My time..
Time moved differently there.
Absorbed in his work he tightened the last screw and replaced the plastic casing. Flipping the activation switch cautiously, he walked to a shelf and removed a control-collar.
The camera turned it's electronic eye on him and the hound rose.
It's mechanical legs scrabbled on the table, it's back servo, designed in a mockery of an actual dog's tail pushed the creature into a sitting position where it's head lowered, The creature had one great eye, dark now, but a fearful red when alight.
when hunting.
Preston picked up the manual and read it over again.
The hound can be controlled vocally, however once given a central directive the hound cannot be stopped except by methods previously discussed.
Preston read over that section again, just to make sure. It's not alive. He found himself reaching for the beast, still staring at him, it's eye lowered, almost...respectful? He set the collar on the table, wondering if it would be needed.
He had found a more contemporary reference for the Hound in one of Jurgen's books. Part of the series that the underground movement's leader encouraged, almost forced all of free libria to read. The man Bradbury had invisioned something like a great bumblebee, but this was more doglike...more animal then insect, yet insect as well...
-needlelike tongue-
Preston tried to see the creature with an artist's eyes, but even the soldier in him, the do-or-die not question why aspect of his personality could see that the hound was beautiful.
It was a cold mechanical beauty. It was the perfect hunter, the perfect killing machine. Once set to a particular offender's DNA the hound would follow, do or die, while the Clerics behind could only lust after it's immpecable speed and mechanical efficency.
When men in a society do not have something emotional and passionate to be inspired by, to work or to fight for, they aspire to machinery. To function. All that father had given them. How best to serve, how best to work, how best to be the best, the representation of the new ideal for humanity.
Everything that the hound embodied was everything that John Preston had wanted to be, and that made him afraid.
The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in it's gently humming, gently vibriating, softly illuminated kennel in a corner of the firehouse.
That was another book. Bradbury's Farhenheit 451. He had brought that book and it's issues up with Jurgen days before, asking about the dangers of their society becoming something akin to this dystopia yet not, this world where people were just as empty as librians but they had things that libria lacked. It seemed to Preston that there were alot of possible outcomes for revolt and revolution, and most of them were bad.
Jurgen had shrugged him off, "That's human nature."
He thought of human nature and wanted to weep. Human nature wasn't functioning. In all his life, this new stage of it at least, all of the people he had met didn't really seem human.
Or if they were human, they were idealized humans. Human perfection, human folible, human weakness, human horror and shame. But there was laughter too, human joy, human sweetness, human love.
If he slept he would dream of Mary and Partridge, sleeping but not sleeping, living but not living in a different place and a different time. Were they any different? Living yet not living, a strange unexplainable beauty to them, to all life...
Musing on such deep and philosophical matters, Preston failed to notice his charge, The Hound tilted it's head to one side, as if listening, then spasmed.
The creature raised it's head, eye ablaze.
Open. Red. Terrible.
"...Deactivate." Preston said nonchalantly. They did that sometimes. The hounds were old. Many speculated that their servos wouldn't outlast, and who was left to build them? One had run off after a rat, scaring half the mechanics to death.
The Hound remained still. Staring at him.
There was a clock ticking and the clock was death.
He had flipped through Peter pan idly, on the suggestion that his son might like it one day, and found it fascinating. A crocodile who'd swallowed a clock. A Hound with whirling gears. He had become obsessed with creatures who were hunters and predators. Wondering at the metaphor and if it applied to him.
"-the mechanical hound never fails. Never since it's first use in tracking quarry has this incredible device made a mistake-"
"Deactivate."
The hound growled.
It doesn't hate. It doesn't feel
Without life, without love, breath is just a clock ticking.
-veritable Fourth Horseman of the tetragram-
The hound was nothing. A device, a tool, his tool.
So what was this sudden apprehension of it?
I'm not armed that and his colleagues had a queer affection for these beasts. Some remenant of human feelings, some vestige of their ancestors that patted dogs on the nose and said "Good boy". Funny how one thought of arming oneself against a thing that could potentially kill you. It had never had any reason to hate him though...
I'm not armed.
Turning on it's servo tail, the hound extended a long thin needle from a hidden arm beneath it's jaw. The needle was filled with a white-gold liquid. It had other weapons, it's paws were deadly sharp. Wicked fast.
It growled again.
I'mNOTArmed.
"Deactivate!" Preston added a little gravity to his voice, a harsher edge, but the hound did nothing. Malfunctioning, it's last act. What would it do now?
A cleric could take out a hound, but how to do it? He stood slowly, one step backward then another, some unknown instinct compelling Preston to the door.
It was as quick as he was, if not quicker. As fast as he was, if not faster. If Partridge hadn't met his end at Preston's semi-automatic he would have been chased down by one of these creatures, drugged, then incinerated.
"I'm not your enemy." Preston held out a hand, "Cleric John Preston. See?"
The hound's growl deepened.
In that moment Preston saw a kinship with this mechanical creature, twisting it's head around. It was death, death on four legs that chased down those who ran from it, those who did not embrace it. It was death because it killed quickly and efficently.
It was himself.
He was the hound. Red eye gleaming, metallic and silver, a cold beauty to it's deadly movements. Killing as an Art. Killing personified. Control over death that mankind had sought forever.
And the greatest flaw in emotion chose to reveal itself to John Preston in a burst of pain in his gut.
Fear.
Bile rose in the pit of his stomache and Preston twisted around, going for the door.
The hound jumped.
Preston, in a swift motion, slammed the door to the outside behind him and heard a drilling as the hound exchanged it's probiscus. He didn't recognize the liquid it had been so carefully filled with-(how the hell did I miss that when I was screwing the damn thing's head on?)
"Nose so sensitive the hound can remember ten-thousand sense indexes on ten thousand men without re-setting!"
But unlike Guy Montag, a man Preston had found himself identifying with by the end of the story he did not have a River to escape to. No Rivers.
Living trees, mutated things far in the Nether, but here and now just metal and concrete and cold steel. Libria was a veritable maze to those who didn't know it.
Preston moved faster and the hound roared.
"Cleric?"
Preston said nothing. Running past the checkpoint as he heard the supervisor mutter a startled exclaimation when he saw what was chasing him.
Glad it wasn't him.
Oh so glad.
An alarm sounded but the footsteps were too far off, and besides, no one could deactivate the hound without
And all John Preston could do was keep running.
It's legs were beating the ground, one two three four, tapping out a strange music on the concrete and steel as it roared again. He'd open the door ahead-shut it-
Another door.
Keep moving. Movement was staying alive. He paused at a Crossroads in the hallways and ran fifty paces to the left, then dove to the right, running. IF he could make it to the door to the outside, get in his car in the garage, run the goddamn thing over and worry about the consequences later. Then, find out who the hell was trying to kill him.
Heart pounding he flung open another door and pushed past a secretary who rolled out of thet way and let out a soft squeak when the hound leapt over her, landing on a glass desk and shattering it as Preston slammed another door.
Almost there. Fifty paces, Forty, Thirty, Twenty, Ten-
Then There was weight on his back and his knees buckled.
The thing was on his back, it's claws digging into his shoulderblades, snarling, it's snarl a rasp of metal met gears met some living flesh component that could only be it's last victim.
Preston was no victim however.
Reaching back he grabbed at the beast's head and twisted, the plastic neck protecting the hound's servos snapped, gears grinding to a halt. The creature scrabbled again, digging in a foothold as it's pointed tongue darted in and out of his neck and shoulders, too fast to follow, half a hundred times.
Preston, gripping the thing's servo-needle tongue and it's head held the hound in a firm grip, rolling forward, using his own weight to crush the creature-and the door opened into a crowded maze of people, who immeaditely scattered at the appearance of a Cleric doing battle with the hound.
The thing snapped again, it's probiscus out-
Preston, grabbing at it, put all of his strength into snapping the thing-or trying to. The Hound was steel however, so it earned him several more jabs in the hand and arm before retracting, the creature digging a paw at his chest, swipe, miss, swipe, miss-
Goddamnit why the FUCK won't you die?
He grabbed the thing around the neck and squeezed.
Human hands have no affect on steel.
"What is that?"
"Cleric Preston!"
He looked up, and saw Brandt. Standing there.
"John, hold it STILL." Brandt drew his firearm, "Hold it still. I'll shoot it."
Preston complied and the hound lurched upward with it's tongue one last time-
Brandt's shot narrowly missed Preston, hitting the Hound's neck. It's head now completely distached from it's body, it flopped in it's final death throes-red eye blinking on, then off.
Murmurs swept through the crowd as Preston struggled to his feet, pain screaming at him from every inche of his body. He took a few shuddering gasps as Brandt ran over, "What made it do that?"
"You did."
Brandt frowned, "Excuse me?"
"You set the hound on me."
Brandt's face darkened, "I did not. Cleric, whatever this was is surely getting to you." He examined the needle, "This was filled with morphine. what could I hope to accomplish?"
Preston swooned, "-I'll find out..."
"Let me help you." Brandt said, "I can get you down to medical-"
Preston pushed the younger man off, blinking, "You stay-away-FROM ME." He picked up the hound, slinging the creature's body over his shoulder. His free hand grabbed for what was left of the thing's head, neck and body still twitching.
He pushed through a door. and away.