- Excerpt
The Troika
by Stepan Chapman
INTRODUCTION
The excerpt, below, is taken from Part One of THE TROIKA,
a
highly acclaimed novel by Stepan Chapman. In April, THE
TROIKA won the Philip K. Dick Award for best original science
fiction paperback published in the United States. Stepan
Chapman is the only author ever to receive a Philip K. Dick
Award for a novel published by a small, independent press --
The Ministry of Whimsy out of Tallahassee, Florida.
THE TROIKA follows three characters in their journey across
an inhospitable planet. One of those characters -- Alex --
relates in this excerpt the event that started his
transformation into a machine.
The Philip K. Dick Award is one of science fiction's highest
honors. THE TROIKA has also received praise from many of the
publications that review science fiction. Yet it is still
difficult to find this breakthrough novel in conventional
bookstores. Information about how to order the book follows
the excerpt. I hope you'll take this opportunity to become
acquainted with the work of a brilliant new writer on his way
to sci-fi stardom.
excerpt
by Stepan Chapman
I was living in Chicago and working at a factory that
made model kits out of styrene plastic. I worked the graveyard shift
at the Production Department, in an old part of the factory with grimy
brick floors and cranking skylights. My job was mixing up barrels of
polystyrene granules and feeding them into the hoppers of the injection
molders.
Rubber conveyor belts carried endless processions of delicate plastic
twigs. Leafing out from the twigs were model parts. There were aircraft
fuselage sections and exhaust manifolds. There were landing gear and
observation bubbles and halves of pistons with tiny pins to fit in tiny
sockets. The other wage slaves sat on stools, packing twigs and instruction
sheets into cartons.
But the machine that did in my hand wasn't one of those big injection
molders. *That* particular machine stood in a dim gallery of the factory
with windows on Wrightwood Avenue. The whole press was maybe two yards
on a side, but tall. Each molding cycle took over a minute, and it shook
and hissed when it ejected a part down its chute. My job was scooping
flaky yellow Bakelite into its hopper.
So it was two in the morning, and I was topping up the hopper on this
particular machine. I glanced at the collection bin to see whether the
parts looked okay. The parts were heads for the pilots of toy Mega-Manbot
Water Striders. Crash helmet, goggles, resolute chin. Hundreds of goggles
looked back at me from the bin. Hundreds of resolute, cleft chins.
I checked the molder's gauge panel. The needle for the mold thermometer
was in the green. Too low.
I looked closely at the mold. The upper and lower halves weren't locking.
Those compression molders were a real nuisance.
Rattling loudly, servos whirling, the press lifted the mold's top half.
Then I could see the problem. Three pilot heads pancaked one on top of
another, mashed flat. The ejection hoses hissed at them in vain. But
for a half a minute or so, until the mold closed again, I had access.
I pulled my jackknife from my back pocket and poked at the jammed pilot
heads. I got the near side of the pancake pried up easily. But to loosen
the far side, I had to reverse my grip on the knife, brace my left hand
on the molder's casing, and lean a little further forward.
I should have noticed the mold closing. I must not have been getting
enough sleep.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Like frying sausages. Then
I saw the closed mold on the end of my arm, where my hand was supposed
to be.
I thought to myself, "When
did that happen?"
Only then did I hear the sound of the mold's closing. A dull thud, a
cracking of small bones, and a rush of escaping steam. I heard all that
after it had happened.
The worst part was that before I could pass out, I had to wait for the
mold to open again. To pass out with the mold still closed, I would've
had to fall off my wrist, that is, rip my arm off the edge of my hand,
a thing I wished to prevent, and did not wish to see. To avoid seeing
it, I would have had to close my eyes, a thing which I greatly feared
to do, because of my certainty that if I did close my eyes, my hand would
start to hurt, a thing I did not wish to feel. So I stood, and waited.
My throat tasted of burnt plastic. In the collection bin, hundreds of
miniature, yellow faces looked through hundreds of goggles in hundreds
of directions. I wondered who would keep the hoppers filled while I was
riding off in an ambulance.
When the mold opened, I lay on my back on the red bricks and stared
at the roof. I did *not* want to look at my arm. Eventually someone noticed
me and set off the fire alarm. A mangling isn't exactly a fire, but I
could understand the thinking. All the sprinkler heads under the roof
began to spray out a cold mist, which settled on the bricks like a fine
rain. The clamor of the factory blurred into a single sound, like the
fading of some gigantic gong. I passed out.
Sometimes I wonder what became of that hand. The foreman must have scraped
it out of the molder. I wonder whether he bothered to wrap it in a napkin
and send it along to the emergency ward. I wonder whether a nurse dropped
it discretely into a trash bin. I wonder whether a garbage truck hauled
it off to some landfill with the tongue depressors, snotty tissues, and
foil trays of meat loaf and peas. I'll never know.
Copyright ©1997 by Stepan Chapman. All Rights Reserved.
Please do not duplicate or distribute this file without
permission from the author. Thank you.
