A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Proposed Trade-Offs for the Overhaul of the Barricade Read Free Page B

front of him to stop Father, but they simply continued to erect their retaining wall. Maybe they didn’t understand Father’s machine. Maybe they were too focused on building the retaining wall. Or, more likely, they were too loyal to Father.
    The barricade ruptured. Wild gears and belts flew away before they dissipated. The shrieking in Ritter’s head stopped, leaving only a hollow ringing in his ears. Turbulence burst through like a flood of heavy spring rain. Multicolored skeins entangled engineers who’d fled too slowly or too late. Threads flayed the shelves of their minds. Volumes of knowledge split and fell. Engineers slumped to the ground as they forgot they needed to breathe or, for that matter, how.
    Father’s machine unfolded, stretching like wings just behind the failing parts of the barricade. Hinges droned as machinery cantilevered into place. The ground trembled when the machine landed, a solid wall that ran the length of the breach. Father stood in the middle, tiny compared to the oncoming storm.
    Turbulence pelted Father’s machine like random splotches of paint. They unspooled with uncharacteristic order. Threads wormed through Father’s machine from all directions to converge on him. They swirled around him, swallowing him inside a multicolored cocoon. He lifted into the air as his machine funneled the storm into him.
    Imagined machines consumed Turbulence well. A person consumed Turbulence even better. An engineer who might have stepped out of one of the Five Great Classical Novels consumed Turbulence best of all. By the time Father forgot how to breathe, the storm would be no more trouble than a gentle mist.
    Hands grasped Ritter’s shoulders, lifting him off the ground before he could charge over the half-constructed retaining wall. Ritter’s legs kicked uselessly for a few steps before he let them dangle.
    â€œNo.” Deck set him on the ground, but didn’t let go. “Let them finish first.”
    Engineers swarmed over and around Ritter, leaping from girder to girder, securing tubing to pistons. So many minds crashed into his that Ritter could barely nod his head to agree. The designs for the retaining wall lit in his mind like the sun and blinded him.
    Deck was taller and longer-limbed but Ritter had been lifting heavy machinery since he was a child. However, Ritter kept his boots still and his arms by his side. Removing Father now would overwhelm the retaining wall and the engineers still hanging off it.
    They connected isolated pieces of machinery with belts and tubing. The retaining wall lurched into life. Meanwhile, the shelves of Father’s mind dimmed and splintered. The tracks they slid on crumbled into pieces. Books, their bindings cracked and pages torn, fell out of their proper places. Ritter’s eyes hurt and air refused to stay in his lungs.
    Ritter shook off Deck’s grip, or maybe Deck had let go. His boots pounded the dusty ground. He leapt onto the wall, warping its machinery so that he could squeeze through. No one tried to stop him.
    Engineers were still straggling back to the retaining wall from the breach. Father’s machine, clanking and puffing in a steady, complex pattern, loomed before Ritter. Above him, Turbulence knotted Father to the machine. An amorphous cocoon billowed around Father, bright colors swirling through his skin.
    Ritter climbed Father’s machine, pulling himself up girders and dodging flares of Turbulence. Heat scraped his body. The almost subliminal scent of imagined parts about to burn filled his lungs. This machine might have had even less time left than Father. Still, Ritter substituted in new control gears, swapped tubing to form a new set of connections, and shoved what he hadn’t changed into new positions. The pattern of clanks and puffs grew simpler and quieter. Sweat soaked his shirt and stung his eyes.
    Threads of Turbulence shifted course above Father. At first, they fluttered like