The Annotations of Al-Rashid: The Copper Cities

Fiction

October 12, 1874 I have finally reached the gates of Orizon. The city rises from the Abyssian Plateau like a jagged crown of burnished amber. Its walls are not merely plated in brass, but seem to be composed of the metal in its entirety, shimmering with a heat that does not burn. The inhabitants possess a curious, rhythmic gait; their skin has a polished, metallic luster that suggests a mastery of clockwork mimicry. I suspect the Al-Rashid guild has developed a method of grafting fine gears beneath the dermis to augment human strength. It is a marvel of engineering that would make the Royal Society weep with envy. [Marginalia: Dr. E. Vance, 1922] Thorne's penchant for the mechanical blinds him here. There are no gears in Orizon. The luster he observes is the Cuprum-Soma effect, a molecular phase shift where the interstitial collagen matrix is replaced by an organic copper alloy. The rhythmic gait is not the result of clockwork, but a byproduct of the increased density of the musculoskeletal system. The inhabitants are not augmented; they are transmuted. November 3, 1874 I spent the afternoon in the Great Foundry, witnessing a procedure that defies all known laws of medicine. A laborer, having lost his forearm to a crushing accident, was treated not with bandages, but with a poultice of powdered malachite and molten brass. As the metal cooled, it did not harden into a prosthetic; instead, it bloomed. I watched in breathless awe as the brass softened, dividing into fibers of muscle and networks of vein, eventually settling into a perfect, if slightly gilded, limb. It is a triumph of the spirit over matter, a literal alchemy of the flesh. [Marginalia: Dr. E. Vance, 1922] Thorne describes this as a bloom, which is poetically accurate but scientifically vacant. The malachite acts as a catalyst for trans-metallic folding. The metal does not "soften" in the thermal sense; it undergoes a rapid reconfiguration of its crystalline lattice to mimic biological cellular structures. It is important to note that this biological tissue is functionally inert. The resulting limb possesses no independent nervous sensation. The laborer did not regain his arm; he acquired a biological sculpture that happened to move. December 19, 1874 I was granted an audience with the Archon today. He is a figure of terrifying beauty, his skin the color of a winter sunset, with veins of pure gold tracing patterns across his temples. He spoke to me of the Great Work, claiming that the fragility of the human husk is a disease to be cured. He believes that by slowly replacing the soft organs with the Ore, one may achieve a state of timelessness. As I looked into his golden eyes, I felt the pull of this philosophy. To shed the rot of age and the frailty of breath for the permanence of the metal; it is the ultimate evolution of man. [Marginalia: Dr. E. Vance, 1922] This is the tragedy of the Abyssian Plateau. Thorne mistakes terminal ossification for evolution. The gold veins in the Archon's temples indicate the final stage of the Al-Rashid process: the total conversion of the cardiovascular system into a static conductor. Once the heart is transmuted to brass, the circulatory system ceases to be fluid. The Archon was not achieving timelessness; he was becoming a statue. The very "permanence" Thorne admired was the process of a living being turning into a mineral deposit. Within months of this entry, the Archon would have been entirely immobile, a gilded monument to a fatal chemical error.