“Phenomenal!”

“Outstanding!”

“Grant supported!”

This last phrase echoed continually throughout the great hall, repeated by a legion of upper-class gentleman. Genevive Dugan beamed at the praise. All around her, through the stage lights, she could see suit-coat-clad arms raised, each clasping a light blue slip. The Grant Committee loved her.

The lights finally dimmed, and she stepped off the stage and into a mob of excited men. This close, they all seemed just as similar as they had when she was looking out over them from the stage; Overweight, impeccably dressed, and spilling over with gold pocket-watch chains or sheaves of papers. She kept a serene face, holding her invention patent before her. It parted the crowd like the Red Sea. Though, due to the stage lights, Genevive was the one who most closely resembled salt water.

She left the myriad of gentlemen on the Committee to turn in their Grant slips without her. She would know how much money they were willing to pledge soon enough, and judging from their response, she didn't need to worry if it’d be enough.

Kelvin caught her as soon as she stepped into the prep room, pulling her jacket off. She didn't object, even though they couldn't stay.

“Excellent presentation, mam,” he said. “If I could afford a grant, I’d have given it.”

“Of course you would have,” Genevive chuckled, tossing the patent into her briefcase. The thick cream-colored paper clashed with the rest of the flimsy ink-stained papers that detailed my past failed inventions. The contrast was reminiscent of the Grant Committee itself: they kept themselves far apart from the blue collar, working class. For them, a good day’s work was deciding which invention they wanted to sneer upon the least. She snapped my briefcase together.

“Get my hat,” she called to Kelvin. “We’re leaving as soon as we pick up the Grant slips.”

Kelvin started, as if breaking out of a haze. The concept of leaving hadn't occurred to him in his excitement over Genevive's presentation. Hopefully the same would be true of the Grant Committee.

Genevive barely paused to catch her top hat before ducking out the door, jacket over her briefcase and Kelvin in tow.

They crossed the main hall in great strides, swooping past decades of philanthropists’ portraits on either wall. Not a single inventor could be seen decorating the auditorium. Ironic that an institute designed to process good ideas operated around the empirically terrible idea that fat rich men were the best means to do so.

“Professor Dugan and assistant,” Genevive told the secretary at the front desk. “I was hoping my Grant slips were ready.”

“They are indeed,” she said, pushing the stack of signed and notated slips towards Gen. There were over a hundred there, and none of them were for less than several thousand pounds. Gen would have to pick up a few extra bags on the way to the bank if she hoped to cash them all. She fully expected the Grants to be cancelled at any moment. Even the investors couldn't help but see the flaw hidden in her presentation once their ardor had cooled.

Kelvin and Gen left the auditorium, leaving behind the deceptively quiet front desk and the plaque proudly displaying today’s agenda:

“1 PM -- Professor Dugan presents a Concept of Her Own Invention, a carefully researched Treatise detailing How to Unerringly Convince Investors to Support One’s Invention.”

The dome of the Pollodorum rose several stories above the rest of London, and could even be seen poking out of the city's smog by passing airships. The current owner, Alphonso Turk, had made good use of this fact, coating the dome in electric lights, gas-lamp fireworks, or colorful moving billboards, depending on which had been most recently invented. 

On one occasion, he had even covered it in living synthetic flesh, ostensibly to celebrate the famed speaker and expert on reanimation, Herbert West. The resulting public outrage had spurred so much free publicity that the theater's coffers had quadrupled for the month.

Now, however, the dome sat stark and gloomy, lit only by a sign at street level. "See the phenomenal Talking Sphinx! Challenge her to a riddle! Marvel in her endless knowledge! Tonight only, three pence!" the wireless teslactricity-powered bulbs shimmered. They had said the same thing for over a month now. Every night was the only night to be there.

Inside, a row of chorus girls was disappearing off the stage, revealing the contraption that had been wheeled in behind them. The Sphinx.

It sat in two front paws, it's carved wooden lion head glaring majestically, if a tad shabbily. In the darkness of the theater, a faint reddish glow could be seen inside it's eye sockets, lending an air of authenticity that Turk milked with every fiber of his being.

"Behold!" he bellowed. Powered by a substantial gut, his words echoed to the back of the five-thousand-seat auditorium. "The mysterious Sphinx! She has stunning nations, stumped scientists, beguiled kings! Our very own Board of Science has visited, and could never find a scientific question, a philosophic question, or even, yes, a mystic question the Sphinx could not answer within a single minute!

A hush had fallen in the Pollodorum. For all his questionable practices, Turk had the stage presence of a Bengal tiger. His deep-set black eyes, his heavy walrus mustache, and his thickset six-foot frame all combined to make his Dr. Hypnotix act one of the evening's best, second only to the show-stopping Sphinx.

Six assistants spun the Sphinx around on its platform, showing off the sleek wooden body. The assistants were clad in the scantiest breeches available, for an added appeal to the audience, and alternated between male and female. Turk was nothing if not equal opportunity in his money-making practices.

"Too small for a human impostor within!" Turk shouted.

An electromagnetic ring, salvaged from a flying act long since forgotten, lowered from the ceiling. It was two yards wide, and could circle the Sphinx entirely.

"Impervious to electrical interference!" Turk crowed again.

Suddenly, the Sphinx rolled forwards by itself. It stopped an inch from the stage's edge, towering over the front row. A row of sparklers erupted on either side, spraying the audience in sparks. 

"And too majestic to be fakery of any kind! Ladies, gentlemen, children of all ages, I give you the world's most advanced automatron, from the unparalleled mind of Henri Maillardet himself!" 

Alfonso Turk was lucky that his own brand of melodrama was exuberant. In a perfectly quiet theater, someone sitting directly in front of the Sphinx might have heard something at that very moment that would have exposed the sham of the Sphinx, ruined the entire show, and inevitably landed Alphonso Turk in debtor's prison for the rest of his miserable life.

The Sphinx had given a light scoff.

Inside the wooden chamber of the Sphinx, Charlie Dugan wiped a sheet of sweat off of his forehead and dried his forearm on the cotton pads lining one wall.

The Sphinx was too small for most human impostors, as Turk had proudly stated. At five feet and 95 pounds, Charlie was not most human impostors. He was a very good one.

One foot in front of his face, seven books were laid out: an encyclopedia of modern science; a history of the known world; a compendium of useless trivia; a biology book detailing the innards of every known creature (and even a few known fakes, like the jackalope and the platypus); a riddle encyclopedia; a dictionary of arcane language; and a jokebook that drew heavily on Sicilian philosophy. 

"Come forth, state your question, and in sixty seconds, yes, sixty short ticks on the mighty clock face of time, the Sphinx will open her prescient jaws and answer you in perfect wisdom!" Turk sucked in a breath of air, his mind racing to compose another line of calculated balderdash. "One thousand nights she has stood in these halls, and ten thousand questioners have turned away awe-struck at her immediate, indefatigable insight!"

The first questioner was led up to stage. Charlie examined the mirror to his left, which led to a periscope in one Sphinx ear. His heart pounded. It had begun.

The portly newcomer stuck her clutch purse before her as she approached, arms rigid. Her eyes were clenched around the edges, Charlie noted. It wasn't fear. She was a Meddler.

In his extended time as the Sphinx, Charlie had constructed a system. The Academics came to the Sphinx to solve a particularly difficult question in their field. Charlie stayed up each night with the latest copy of several differing peer reviewed publications, hoping to construct a theory that would at least satisfy them when the time came. The Riddlers came with elaborate puzzles, giving Charlie only a minute to work out the answer. He always came up with one, but once in a while the Pollodorum attendants would have to escort an unsatisfied Riddler away as subtly as they could. The Meddlers, however, had one goal: pose a legitimate question that the Sphinx would fail to answer, thereby making a mockery of the entire event.

"Why," the woman started, "is a raven like a writing desk?"

Charlie could have laughed into the receiver before him. An Alice in Wonderland reference! It was no wonder he hadn't seen this woman before. She was terrible at this.

Above Charlie, the Sphinx's eyes began to shine brighter. It was part of Turk's stalling practice: In most cases, it was all Charlie could do to compose an answer within a minute, and so the Sphinx was designed to make the best possible show. In the wings, a set of organ music began to roll out, accompanied with a lyre. Turk loved lyres: they sounded exotic enough to convince Londoners that the experience was worth their three pence, and their name added a layer of irony.

Charlie leaned forwards. He would enjoy this one.

"You must be referring to the work of Lewis Carroll," the Sphinx boomed once the minute had passed. "To be candid, he did not have an answer when he wrote it. Nevertheless, I do."

The Sphinx's voice, wired into the stagefront, was the only voice more powerful than Turk's. It came from the walls of the vast auditorium, too, and was slightly offset, to create the illusion that a heady echo was returning.

"In fact, I have too many answers. I could tell you that Poe has written on both." The Sphinx paused to allow the pun to sink in. It was a shame Poe wasn't here today, but 80-year-olds didn't get out very often, and he hadn't visited England in decades. "Or I could go with the obvious and explain that they have inky quills and flat notes. I could even give you Carroll's answer, which he composed in recent years: because it is nevar put back to front." Here the Sphinx paused, letting the "A" in the pun roll off her feline tongue, to accentuate the joke. 

The response was muted. Charlie winced within his cocoon. Stupid. No one would realize "nevar" was "raven" backwards if they heard it spoken out loud. Time to wrap this up.

"But the most accurate answer," the Sphinx stated in its measured, mechanical voice, "is one that bears with the tone of Wonderland itself. And so I am pleased to answer you: Neither of them can be ridden like a bicycle."

The theater erupted in cheers and shouts, from those who loved the answers and those who were asking their neighbors what they meant. Turk could barely contain his glee at receiving four answers in place of one.

"The Sphinx, ladies and gents! Give her a hand!"

The second questioner took his position, a man in a cheap suit and a shock of gray hair among the black. His knees could barely keep him up. The crowd hushed as instantly as it had roused. No one wanted to miss the next event.

"What, eh," the man paused, surprised to hear his own voice so quiet in the vast hall. "W-Where can I find the next unknown dinosaur species?"

Ah, a member of the Great Fossil Rush, aka, the "Bone Wars." Over the past couple decades, over a hundred dinosaur species had been pulled out of the woodwork, dusted off, and sent to collectors. Whoever uncovered the newest species would rocket to stardom until another one was discovered the following month. Perhaps this was a promising young politician, hoping to advance his standing with the Board.

The organ music swelled ominously. Charlie flipped to the paleontology section of the 1889 Scientific Annual. As he ran a finger down the timeline of discoveries, eyes flicking from keyword to keyword, he slide the 1888 issue up a leg. The cramped quarters meant that he couldn't bend down, but his toes were quite flexible. He flipped through this issue with his free hand. He had long since mastered the art of ambidextrous page flipping, and he was well on the way to learning how to read two books at the same time.

The music slowed to silence just as Charlie located his first clue. He stabbed a finger at a glossy black and white photo, picking it up with his sweat to inspect it better.

"You shall find your new species three streets to the west," the Sphinx boomed.

The crowd stared wide-eyed. The young scientist only stammered incoherently.

"In the west wing of the Natural and Unnatural History Museum houses a new exhibit by Dr. Othniel Coop. He claims it's a complete Tsintaosaurin skeleton, but the femurs seem too large. I think you'll find on closer examination that it is a composition of early Pleistocene Uintatherium and a previously unknown species, with a large chunk of petrified wood in place of the left toe, for good measure."

The crowd was in an uproar instantly. Not only a new species, but a chance to discredit a fellow scientist! They were watching tomorrow's headlines tonight.

The Sphinx interrogation drew on. Charlie tackled three riddlers, a few meddlers, and an obese dietician hoping to reclaim glory. They all left satisfied, to the crowds' infectious cheer. His cocoon functioned more and more as an external skeleton as the night wore on, his tensed limbs and feverish brain focused entirely on fulfilling the next request.

The second-to-last questioner took the stand. He was a slim gentleman in a light evening suit, just as nervous as most people who came face-to-face with a giant wooden red-eyed lion-woman. A light blue carnation adored his suit. It looked as wilted as he did.

"What do you wish to know?" came the Sphinx's imperious roar.

The man summon a breath and asked: "Does she love me?"

Charlie let out a breath. He stared straight ahead as the clock ticked around him. The man before was scared: his lips trembled, his pupils shimmered. Yet he stood firm, held there by the same force that had drawn him forward.

Charlie ran a finger idly down the cover of Enquire Within about Everything. He had no book to inquire about this.

The organs slowed and Charlie leaned forward. Of the two answers available, there was only one that would satisfy the crowd. "Yes," he whispered.

He barely noticed the final questioner step up to the stage, and it wasn't until the man spoke that Charlie began to scan him for clues.

"Is red snapper ever in season with blood oranges?"

It was a simple question, presented simply. The man, short and trim, spoke in a tone as measured as his suit. He held a bowler in his hand, but not defensively. He was in control of himself. Something was out of place, Charlie felt as he flipped pages in search of the red snapper's migratory habits. This man didn't need to be here.

But it wasn't until he found his encyclopedia's entry for red snapper that he felt his heart skip.

A small, smooth scrawl had been penned across the page.

"Charlie," it read, "I have an urgent matter to discuss. Meet me after the show."

Charlie looked up. The man winked.

"That's correct," Gen told the cashier. "I'm withdrawing three hundred thousand pounds. Small notes, please."

She waited, tapping a high-laced boot and glancing around the lobby as she did so. It was empty except for a very cranky dwarf sitting on the far side, and Kelvin, directly beside her.

Kelvin was staring straight ahead, contemplating the floral wallpaper. The Bank of West London was the second most wealthy, existing as it did on the science district. However, their decorative habits were not frivolous. Anxious to keep an accountable air, the bank manager had lined the lobby with plain wooden benches, installed a single wooden railing to keep an orderly queue in front of the cashiers, and wallpapered the room with a discounted invention of one Peabody Parrish. The wallpaper was scratch-and-sniff. A hundred different flowers and fruits wafted muskily from it.

"You... where am I?" Kelvin finally spoke.

"The Bank of West London," Gen answered. "We're making a withdrawal, and then I'm catching the next airship out of England."

"Wait, wait... you hypnotized me?"

"Well, technically, I hypnotized a crowd of people and you happened to be among them. I certainly wouldn't aim to hypnotize you."

"But you did! I'm only here because I've been blindly obeying whatever you tell me to do!"

"Let's be fair here. You're my personal assistant. You're supposed to blindly obey me."

"You can't do that! I have rights! I'm speaking to the Union about this!"

The casher could be seen making her way to the front, carrying a large bank bag with her. An elderly man with a shock of feathery white hair atop a surprisingly long-necked head strutted by her side. Gen turned back to her assistant.

"Kelvin, we need to have this talk another time. Right now, act as if we're doing something legal."

"What?"

"Dr Genevive Dugan, I presume," the old man said. "Quite the pleasure to see a Dugan step through these doors once more."

"I'll be happy to step back out of them, too. I just need to make a withdrawal."

"I had hoped to discuss that with you, in point of fact." The man adjusted his pince-nez. "As the manager of this branch, I must oversee the transaction of, eh, three hundred thousand pounds."

"Three hundred thousand pounds!" Kelvin yelled.

"Ignore him. He has bad ears. Yells a lot." Gen followed up. "So what's the next step?"

"You'll need to verify your identity, and there's a holding period of three days."

"What? I can't afford to wait three days."

"Mam, you can't afford to withdraw a hundred pounds, let along five king's ransoms."

"Ignore him," Gen repeated. "He also has a bad brain."

"Look here, I am merely trying to follow protocol regarding these large sums of money," the manager said, speaking as if he had long since memorized every line his job required him to explain. "If I let anyone cash in this amount every day, the banking system of the greater London area would collapse. We wouldn't want that, would we?"

"If it let me walk out of her with my own money in the next ten minutes, I wouldn't object."

"I beg your pardon?" The manager allowed his pince-nez to slip entirely off his face. They were on a chain, after all, and he no longer trusted his leathery facial muscles to convey an adequate amount of surprise without the benefit of stage props.

Gen inhaled once and exhaled once, keeping a sharp grip on Kelvin's arm under the bank teller's countertop. Peaceful thoughts. The authorities wouldn't be able to track her hansom cab to the bank without a search warrant issued by the Board. She had perhaps a day.

Kelvin spoke up once more. "I won't be a party to grand larceny, mam!"

"Exactly," Gen spoke over him, "Not giving an honest citizen her own money amounts to grand larceny. Well put, assistant!"

"I would never deprive an honest citizen," the manager replied darkly. He regretted dropping the nez now, as he could have mustered up a great deal more darkness by looking just over the tops of them.

"Just what are you implying?" Gen snapped.

But before the manager could open his mouth, a sharp tak tak tak of shuttling typekeys rose in the room. They all turned. Suddenly, the manager gave a gasp of shock, Gen gave one of horror, and Kelvin, who was currently exhibiting all the shock and horror he was capable of, didn't change his expression a bit.

High above the bank entrance, the tickertape alert was in motion.

The tickertape alert had been instituted by a government alert expert voted in by the Board to provide a means of easily alerting the entire country whenever a state of emergency was in affect. Whatever message was decreed to be given to the people was electronically transferred to a typewritten message that was typed, back to front, on a foot-wide roll of paper designed for the purpose. They had been installed in any public buildings and in plenty of private ones.

It was one of few innovations that had been accepted in general as a good idea. The only issue: the original displays scrolled from left to right, and so the entire message couldn't be fully understood until the entire message had been completed, and the beginning of the sentence could be seen. This led to complications whenever a message was longer than a mid-sized sentence, and in once case, had led to an entire neighborhood assuming that were "under attack from a demonic force" without waiting to read the beginning of the sentence, which explained that "A local insane asylum has misplaced an elderly woman laboring under the delusion that she is under attack from a demonic force."

The massive type slid and clicked into the bank wall, producing a message: "... and is at large in West London."

"The criminal element!" the manager shouted. "They have come for us at last. Come, Josephine, we must guard the valuables!"

He broke into a spirited shuffle, tugging the reluctant cashier along with him. Their backing hadn't disappeared before the tickertape finished the beginning of the sentence: "Dr Genevieve Dugan and accomplice have robbed the Grant Committee."

"I knew I should have stopped at one hundred thousand," Gen muttered. Her skin was crawling, but she ignored it. "We're going to have to leave now," she told Kelvin as much for her benefit as for his. "They can't be more than a few minutes away."

A Tibetan philosopher had spoken at University three years ago, and Gen had taken his words to heart. In times of trial, she focused only on that which brought her peace. In her case, cold logic. There was just one path that didn't leave to incarceration, and it was out the door.

Luckily, Kelvin didn't subscribe to any such principle.

"Mam. Perhaps we should pick this up."

Kelvin leaned over the countertop, levering his legs off the floor, and lifted himself back again. He held the bag. In their haste, the bank attendants had left behind the money that they had brought out: the largest amount that they could withdraw before requiring identification.

"Kelvin! I'm surprised. You know you can claim hypnotism? It's a strong defense, given the entire Grant Committee has it."

"Oh, I will, mam. But you do owe me two months' backpay, and I figure I should collect it before your arrest."

The two strode from the bank, Gen raising her trenchcoated hand to hail a hansom. "We're not going to the airship yet."

Kelvin's face paled once more. "Mam? We're being hunted."

"And the Pollodorum's on the way. I need to see Charlie one final time."