Herr Rafale and Fraulein Kerstin have come to the town of Davos Platz where, in an old military facility is a device perfected, in theory, by Herr Wildgrube to provide unlimited electrical power. Rafale is a respected witness of the odd and unusual, and, it turns out, he has been looking for this very machine but not for its promise of endless energy.
Here it was, in front of Rafale, a hulking mechanism, no, a conglomeration of mechanisms, seemingly different, yet fouled together around a pair of massive in-line green dynamos encased in red scaffolding. In detail, the thing was a-tangle with links and belts and a profusion of wires, neatly bundled, yet still alarmingly snake-like, twisting amongst the lumps and gearboxes, tripods of confusing rocking beams, and vats of turgid liquids, until the individual strands connected in odd ways to odd pieces.
The machine in its totality was unbalanced.
“You found it,” said Rafale. Wildgrube, looking at the indicator panel set near his waist, nodded and turned something. There was hiss of compressed air.
“Ja,” he said, looking up, knowing what Rafale meant. “I found it. And improved it. This time it will work.”
“What makes you think that?” demanded Rafale taking a step toward the console.
“I have succeeded where its previous owners failed.”
“Yes,” said Rafale. “Its previous owners. Do you recall them all? There, painted on that generator, is the originating power behind this thing: the fasces, an axe in a bundle of sticks. But that is not the ancient Roman symbol, it is from fascist Italy.”
“They are both ancient regimes. I had nothing to do with them. I bought this from the Russians when they were selling everything.”
“How did they get their hands on it? I’ll tell you. When the Italians climbed into political bed with the Nazi Germans, they sent the machine to the Führer and he had Goering haul it to the eastern Baltic for further refinement. At the end of the war, the Soviets overran the facility before the Germans could destroy it. Then they, too, tried to make it work.
“This is the Mussolini Machine, and it carries his mark and those of Hitler and Stalin and uncounted others in those appalling regimes. They all sought the power it might create. But, I am telling you, each one left a bit of his mind or what passes for his soul, in this very piece.”
“That is superstition, Herr Rafale, such as I would not expect from you.”
“Call it what you wish, this machine has its own history of death and misery. That includes experiments in the Nazi death camps and slave labor in the Gulags.”
“Herr Rafale, this device is benign. No machine can ever be evil, only its users. And its users are long gone. When I close this final switch, you shall see the start of a new era of unlimited power which means universal prosperity.”
Pieces of the device were already in motion, some whirling with puffs of compressed air, other rocking and sliding, the motion hypnotic. There were deep basso groans as some belts began to strain as they moved. Rafale took note of a large yellow electric motor whose shaft entered into a transmission behind the two ancient Italian dynamo generators. That had to be the start-up motor, the primary initiator. Eckhardt left Rafale’s side and walked down to the floor beside the machine’s platform where two levers protruded from a console at the base of the device. He took one in each had and stood at ready, dwarfed by the contraption that now had large mechanical members lifting and falling along with spirals of rolling balls the size of melons. Rafale now also stepped down to the floor, and stood near Eckhardt at the waist-high face of the pentagonal base, looking up at the impossible device. His eyes followed not just the motion, but took in all the surfaces and lines. His closest inspection showed tiny faint crosses scratched in unobtrusive places on the beetling mass of machinery. He stepped back and looked over to where Eckhardt stood, his eyes lowered, his lips slightly moving, as if he were saying something other than “Ready.”
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