The Thinking Box - 1 - Humsbreth
January 4, 2008 by Basil Munroe Godevenos
Humsbreth
Near the edge of the In-Between, in the foothills of Cutter’s Crag, lay the idyllic small town of Humsbreth. It was a prosperous town, and every aspect of the place was precise and measured. If it were in our world, we might find that it seemed to belong in Switzerland - the watch-making part, not the chocolatier part. The buildings were framed with wood and clad with a sort of stucco. The roofs were tiled in even rows and the paving stones (nearly all the roads were paved, even those in the outskirts of Humsbreth in the farmland) were cut to equal sizes. Though it lacked the character most small towns possess that comes of a little shoddy workmanship or delayed repair, it was a pretty enough town, and charming in its own way.
Pretty and charming, that is, except for the mass of tubes that descended upon the town like the tentacles of an insane god. They spewed, fountain-like from high upon the face of Cutter’s Crag where there was perched, like some some evil, black bird, a dark castle. It was a grotesque thing, twisted up from the very rock of the mountain like a jagged carbuncle, all spires, peaked vaults and darkened, unglazed windows.
The people of Humsbreth largely ignored the castle, a task which the tubes made difficult. But they managed. Children who were curious about it or who were found so much as gazing up at it for more than a few moments would be beaten soundly, with no explanation given, until they learned to ignore the castle like the adults did.
Only one person in Humsbreth was old enough and sane enough to remember a time when thinking about the castle was not verboten. If Nona Silva was given enough liquor she would tell a tale from her childhood of a flashy man in a clean white coat coming down the mountain in a coach. He had a box that answered questions. He let the townsfolk write questions down on slips of paper and feed them into a tube in the box. In moments, after the sound of much clockwork, another slip of paper would shoot out of a different tube, with the right answer every time. He called it a Thinking Box, and told the town council that he was building a bigger one up at the castle. Then he disappeared into the town hall with the box, and nobody ever saw him again.
The town council behaved oddly after that, and forbid anyone to concern themselves with the castle. All the while strange men, pale men, wearing dark clothes and dark goggles began arriving in town and installing the tubes. First at the town hall, then at the bank, and soon enough, everyone had access to the Thinking Box. From time to time, the strange men would return and do repairs on the tubes, keeping completely silent, refusing to answer any questions. Soon enough people simply stopped asking.
The Thinking Box transformed the fledgling town of Humsbreth into a thriving nest of precise prosperity. Within a year the town became like a massive clockwork itself as people came to rely on the Thinking Box to make all their decisions for them. The Thinking Box balanced bank accounts, advised better policy, and even told farmers when to plant and when to harvest. Humsbreth quickly became a paradise of efficiency.
But one day, something odd happened.
