The Cast

Three souls drift into the salon, each by a different door, each for reasons they have not entirely admitted to themselves. They blow bubbles. They pursue. The clockwork goons attend to their patrol.

Plate I

Widow Eloise

— in mourning, on the prowl —

Bereaved seven times before her thirty-fourth birthday, the Widow Eloise has acquired the brisk efficiency of a woman who has rehearsed the funeral rites until they bore her.

She wears black because it is convenient. She wears the veil because she is not finished looking.

The clockwork goons mistake her for a customer. This is the last mistake several of them will ever make. Her bubbles drift longer than anyone else's — a habit, perhaps, of patience cultivated at gravesides.

Foot

Spring

Reach

Plate II

Mr. Augustus Brine

— gentleman of leisure —

Mr. Brine has not held employment of any sort in eleven years and considers this his most distinguished accomplishment.

His monocle is purely decorative. He sees perfectly well — in fact, he sees rather more than is comfortable for the rest of the room.

He blows the fastest bubbles in the salon. Some say it is the lung capacity of a man who has spent his life expressing strong opinions; others say it is the cigarettes. Mr. Brine declines to comment.

Foot

Spring

Reach

Plate III

III

Little Ink

— orphan, indeterminate —

No one is quite certain where Little Ink came from, including Little Ink, who has been asked and offers only a shrug of unsettling composure.

The child says nothing. The child watches everything. The child's bubbles are smaller, but somehow they reach farther.

In an early draft of the programme, Little Ink was identified as Master Ink; this was struck from the record after objections from a party who has not been named. The shrug was, by all accounts, identical.

Foot

Spring

Reach

— A Note Regarding the Antagonists —

✦

The clockwork goons number among them several distinct varieties — the cog-crawler, the tin-jumper, the brass drunkard — but they are all manufactured at the same factory and they are all, in the final analysis, against you.

They patrol. They do not negotiate. They are wound by a mechanism nobody has been able to locate.

— A Selection Awaits —

Choose Your Pursuer

All three are waiting in the salon. Which one's foot lands first is up to you.

Step Inside