Free Steel Sky by Andrew C. Murphy

shoulders. Ready struggles to get up. With his respirator broken, he’ll suffocate in here.
    But before he can pull himself free, the broken metal walls of the shaft contort and lean in toward him in a vaguely human shape. He feels sharp claws pressing against his chest, forcing him back down. A death’s-head coalesces out of the gray smoke, dark eyes burning through it.
    The soft, fleshy mouth below the metal mask speaks to him. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” it whispers.
    He ignores the voice and continues to struggle. Sweat is rolling down his face. His eyes sting from the fumes. If he doesn’t get out of the chimney soon he’ll die.
    “I saw what you were doing tonight,” the voice continues. “Those people have nothing, less than nothing. The only things they can hold on to are hope and pride, and you would take even those away from them.”
    “Let me up!” Ready screams. The hands do not move. He feels his anger begin to crumble. Fear wells up in his throat. “If you want a cut, you can have it!”
    “You don’t understand, boy.” The death’s-head mask leans closer. “You think that money is the oil that keeps society’s engine running, but it’s not. Trust is. Trust in each other is what allows us all to work together smoothly. When you remove trust, the engine cannot function. Fear and suspicion make motion impossible. The engine seizes up and destroys itself.”
    Ready tries to struggle free. “You’re crazy!”
    “Not at all.” A single metal hand wraps itself around his collar and effortlessly pushes him halfway over the edge, into the roiling vapors and roaring heat.
    “Justify your existence to me,” the Winnower says, almost invisible behind the thick, greasy smoke.
    “Look,” Ready says, choking on soot, “I don’t know what your problem is, but I never did anything to anybody that somebody else didn’t do to me first.”
    “I’m afraid that’s not good enough. If people acted morally only on the condition that everyone around them behave in perfectly ethical fashion, then there would quickly be no ethics at all.”
    Ready feels broken metal scrape down his back as he is pushed further out. The steel hand gripping his jacket is the only thing keeping him suspended. Bits of ash float lazily around him. “I’ve got kids . . .” he says, looking over his shoulder at the orange light of the furnace far below. “Little Rachel, she’s only three . . .”
    “The Hypogeum was originally designed to hold fifty thousand persons. Today it is crammed to bursting with almost five times that number. Fatherhood does not help the community, or make you a better man. Anything else?”
    “Uh . . . uh . . .” Ready’s mind reels, and then it suddenly hits him: maybe this psychopath is actually the answer to all his problems. Maybe it’s fate.
    “What if I . . .” he says quickly, “What if I . . .”
    And then he falters. He has absolutely no idea what to say next.
    “I thought not.” The steel hand gives a final shove, and Ready falls backward into the smoke. He is completely lost in suffocating grayness. Only the rapidly increasing heat tells him that he is hurtling toward the furnace. He screams until his lungs begin to burn.

 

Timeless and strong,
as stone, as steel.
Talons sharper
than the memory of fear.
Conceived in cupidity,
born of brutality,
suckled upon starvation.
Winnower .
    Surviving fragment from
    The Book of Equity , circa 220
     
    BLUESHIFT
    Orcus presses his hands hard against the window until his nailless fingers turn white and the veins bulge from the backs of his hands. He leans his massive body forward, the tip of his aquiline nose flattening against the glass, and looks out upon the Hypogeum. The shining towers reach upward, straining to touch him, while the jumble of buildings and causeways between them descend into a poisonous blue haze. Somewhere in that impenetrable puzzle of steel and concrete is a man in the guise of a demon, a man