“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.
“Your grandfather told one of his men to aim the cannon at a small dirigible hovering a mile from the battlefield. Whoever was controlling the mechanical man was in the cockpit of that aircraft. If the controller was knocked out of the sky, then the mechanical man would no longer be a danger and the Germans could gain the upper hand in the battle. The gunner protested, but my father assured him the gun was strong enough to fire a few rounds, even without its structural reinforcement. My father, however, threw himself into a deep gully at the moment his gunner obeyed the order and fired the cannon.”
The elder Fastbinder smiled sardonically.
“The gun burst apart,” his son stated.
“Yes, of course, but amazingly enough it managed to lob its shell with enough accuracy to punch a hole in the dirigible. Father saw it spiral to the ground when he emerged from the gully. He was surrounded by dead men, American and German. The mechanical man was flat on its back and not moving, but it was still functional! The creature knew it had toppled and was trying to right itself, even without remotely issued commands! But it was damaged, and it could not stand, and my father spent the rest of the night digging a hole for it.”
“Why?” the younger Fastbinder asked.
His father held up a hand. “He put in oilcloth to line the grave, then used a strong metal bar to lever the mechanical man down into it He covered it with oilcloth and only just had it buried again when German reinforcements arrived. My father threw himself to the ground, pretending to be unconscious until he was found and revived and hailed as the only surviving hero of the Americans’ savage attack.”
His father chuckled. Jacob Fastbinder III frowned. “What happened then?” he demanded.
“The handler of the mechanical man came in search of him. It was one night later, and my father had expected it. He had done enough of a quick study of the mechanical man’s batteries to know that a rescue attempt must come very soon, and it did. As he stood watch on the burial site, he saw it move. A hand came up from the soil. The mechanical man was being ordered to disinter itself.”
The elder Fastbinder was amused, imitating the gesture with one bent arm clutching at the empty air above his head.
“It was another dirigible he saw in the night sky, only a mile away. My father alerted the German army and they went gunning for the aircraft. The dirigible descended and my father buried again the hand of the mechanical man, then left France. After the war, in secret, with just a few hired Frenchmen whose labor and silence could be bought, he came again to the battlefield and unearthed the mechanical man. They loaded the rusted thing into a hired truck and then my father shot the Frenchmen in the back for their trouble, burying them in the hole.
“The mechanical man had not corroded too badly, due to the oilcloth Jacob Fastbinder wrapped him in, but repairing it was a long and tedious process. My father learned more about advanced engineering in the next thirty months than in all his years of school and internship and military field work. The mechanical man was more advanced than anything he had ever seen or heard of, and my father saw his future. He began to patent and produce the new technology, and that is how Fastbinder Machine Werks was founded. Do you believe me, Jacob?”
The younger man was stunned, but he nodded. “I suppose I do. You’re not much of a practical joker. Father.”
“True enough. Soon, my father learned the identity of the mechanical man.” With that, his father went to his office desk and took out a small, faded book, putting it on top of the Fastbinder history book.
It was a ratty old paperback novel from America, with a prominent “100” displayed in the upper right corner. The ridiculous illustration showed a flamboyant robot standing head and shoulders above cowering German soldiers in the uniforms of World War I.