Oliver paused, relieved to be out of the rain. He waited for his eyes to adjust. Once they had, he saw that everything was just as it had been last time hed been here, with dusty, cobwebbed machines disused and in disrepair. Except…

Oliver noticed a very thin, straight yellow line running across the floor. Not paint, but light. A shard of light. Well, Oliver knew that a shard of light needed a source, and so he hurried to it, following it like it was a trail of breadcrumbs. It ran all the way up to a solid brick wall.

How bizarre, Oliver thought as he stopped and pressed his fingers against the wall. Light isnt supposed to travel through objects.

He fumbled around in the dim light, trying to work out how light could pass through a solid object. Then suddenly his hand touched something different. A handle?

Oliver felt a sudden surge of hope strike him. He heaved the handle and jumped back as a huge creaking noise sounded out.

The ground shook. Oliver wobbled, attempting to stay upright as the very ground moved beneath his feet.

He was turning. Not just him, but the wall too. It must have been built on a turntable! And as it turned, a huge shard of golden light burst out.

Oliver blinked in the sudden, blinding brightness. His legs felt unsteady beneath him from the motion of the turning floor.

Then, no sooner had it started than the movement stopped. There was a click as the wall found its new position. Oliver staggered, this time from the sudden deceleration.

He looked about him and was stunned by what he saw. He was now standing in a whole new wing of the factory. It was filled with incredible, fantastical inventions! Not the cobwebbed, creaking, rusted relics from the warehouse before, but instead, floor to ceiling, as far as the eye could see, stood bright, gleaming, new, ginormous machines.

Oliver couldnt help himself. Filled with excitement, he ran up to the first machine. It had a moveable arm that spun right over his head. He ducked just in time, and saw the hand on the end of the arm deposit a boiled egg into an egg cup. Just beside it, two disembodied automaton hands bounced along the keys of a piano, while beside them a very large brass clockwork metronome ticked out the beat.

He was so preoccupied and delighted by the inventions around him, Oliver didnt even notice the strange bowl-shaped item from yesterday, nor the man tinkering away with it. It was only when a clockwork cuckoo took flight, making him stagger backward and bump straight into the man, that Oliver even became aware that he was not alone.

Oliver gasped and spun on the spot. Suddenly he realized who he was looking at. Though many years older than the picture in his book, Oliver knew he was staring into the eyes of Armando Illstrom.