‘It will free us from pain, my dear,’ answered Cleophatia while Zozar still contemplated the answer.

He realised that the truth did not matter. His daughter was only seeking assurance, which their mother was so quick to provide. Zozar wished he had that easy emotion, to feel the situation rather than think about it. But then it was the complexity of his intellect that Cleophatia said she loved, drawn to and celebrating their differences, of course. And her warmth passed to him so that sometimes, just sometimes, his engineer-brain was set free from the shackles of logic and just floated on moments of joy. Moments like this one.

‘Will it hurt though, Father?’ said Azella, the one never quite satisfied by her mother’s answers. She was more like him, though possessed of a far more forgiving disposition. ‘You helped build it, you should know.’

He looked up at the Evermount and the Great Machine that had been erected at its summit. It was true that he had devised some of its angled walls and projecting antennae, stretching like hands towards the rising sun, but of its real workings he knew little.

‘I think it will tickle,’ he said, prodding both daughters to elicit squeals of shock and joy. Cleophatia’s look of happiness intensified and Zozar’s heart throbbed with pride, knowing he had done well in her eyes.

As nobility, albeit of low rank, they would be among the first to enter the biotransference halls. Zozar took his daughters’ hands and led them up the marbled pathway, while other families gathered ahead at the gates. He realised he was trembling with excitement and they could sense it too. So close to the end of the pain. Zozar could scarce believe that he had played a small part in the creation of their salvation.

He was torn from his reverie by a strange sensation, like grit in his hands. He rubbed his fingers together, realising he no longer held onto his children. It felt like sand falling from his palms.

Zozar looked down at the two girls. Each was falling apart, slowly disinte­grating into dull, ruddy crystals. Flesh became dust, slipping away from a shining metal skeleton beneath.

He looked at his own hands, the gnarled, cancer-ridden digits falling on the breeze too. The sensation crept up his arm, freezing for a moment, leaving a chilled numbness in its wake.

Cleophatia gasped in horror.

He turned his eyes upon his beloved but she looked back not with eyes of love and warmth but the cold red stare of optical lenses.

All three had become animated statues, embodiments of death that he had laboured hard to escape. The Great Machine was meant to free them from the burdens of the flesh, but not like this.

His own body melted away, leaving unfeeling living metal.