Unpopular Science

“There is more than that. More than even you know. More than I knew until I was a grown man.” He stopped and glared from under his lowered brows at his one and only son. “The Fastbinder patriarchy has its secrets.”

The younger Fastbinder was interested now, but tried not to show it. “Such as?”

His father resumed pacing. “I have been weighing this decision, whether it is time to tell you about all this. You are not yet ready for this knowledge. You have an immature disposition, a recklessness, a disregard for propriety. But I am forced into this by certain unforeseen events.”

“What unforeseen events?” This, intrigued the younger man; the defamation of his character by his father was nothing new.

“I will get to that in due course. First I will tell you the true history of Jacob Fastbinder I, if you will hear it. Will you?”

The younger man forgot to be flippant. “Certainly.”

The older man nodded, then surprisingly, took a seat in the matching leather chair, looking fatigued. “My father invented nothing.”

The younger man cocked his head. “What do you mean? He has more than a hundred major patents.”

“All stolen. He was a good engineer, a skilled and talented technical analyst, but with no creativity. All the achievements he claimed for himself were the works of others.”

Before his son could utter the scoffing remarks that were on his lips, the elder Fastbinder held up a hand and continued. “It was in October of 1918. Jacob Fastbinder, my father, was in France as an equipment officer. He was helping to erect another of the fine big German cannons, with which to bombard Paris. As the gun was being erected under my father’s supervision, the Germans were attacked by a small scout team of American soldiers, who killed most my father’s soldiers and crew and destroyed the gun before it could fire a shot. This is recorded history.”

His son nodded. He knew all this.

“But the record is distorted. In truth, the Americans did attack, but Fastbinder was responsible for the death of all those Germans.”

The younger man frowned, but stayed silent.

“It was at night, when the gun was not yet reinforced. The barrel was in place, but the steel outer casing had been brought to the field in pieces. It was an experimental way of making these large weapons more portable, you see! The gun could not yet be fired, and it was still vulnerable, and that was the night the mechanical man came to tear it down.”

His father waited, silently daring the younger Fastbinder to make a joke. His son said, “Mechanical man?”

“Yes. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there were all sorts of electric and steam-powered mechanical robots in the carnivals of Europe and North America, but they were frauds. Mostly they were cheap tin suits with a small dwarf or child inside, moving the arms. One or two truly functional mechanical men had actually been built, but they were failures. They would try to walk but fall onto their face. One of them crushed his own head when he saluted the American flag. But that night, in France, my father saw a mechanical man and knew at once that it was different, a genuine work of mechanical genius.”

“How did he know?” Fastbinder III demanded.

“Because it was in the battlefield, side by side with U.S. soldiers. No one would send such a thing on a secret military mission if it didn’t function. He watched it for minutes, as it crept with the Americans closer to the gun position. He saw the mechanical man traverse uneven terrain, and crawl on all fours with amazing speed, stand itself upright again, all extraordinary feats for an automaton.”

“It was a man in a suit,” the younger Fastbinder protested.

“This my father considered, but he saw the thing turn a full circle at the hip, then extend its head on telescopic neck supports, and he deemed it impossible for there to be any human being inside the metal skin. My father sounded the alert as the Americans closed in, and the battle was commenced. The mechanical man killed many Germans. He took the point, the bullets unable to penetrate his metal plating, and walked up to the Germans who would not leave their protective post around the precious cannon. The mechanical man crashed their skulls with his hands.

“My father decided then and there that must possess the mechanical man, which meant he must subdue it without destroying it. He thought of a way to accomplish this. He ordered the cannon to be fired.”

“What?” the younger Fastbinder asked, astonished.