In the bowels of this underground factory town were yet more levels of tunnels and caves, opening up into an enormous cavern, lit with strings of lonely incandescent bulbs and filled with ranks of undermen, underwomen, and undertwists, and no small number of their mechanical counterparts. Pamela Pants popped us out near the front of the crowd, just beneath a large stage.

"You'll want to see this," Pamela winked.

After some screeching from the sound system, the crowd erupted in hurrahs as a tiny old man shuffled to the lectern at the front of the stage.

"Good lord!" I cried. "It's Professor Penniwinkle! But, he's been dead for years!"

"Not dead," Pamela replied. "Exiled."

Professor Penniwinkle had been leading a new kind of science he called Societal Engineering, and been one of the group of scientists responsible for the creation of the Cornucopia Lots, central in creating the standard of life all of us now shared. Well, all of us on the surface at least.

After some amount of oration, largely in the field of Societal Engineering (which had frankly always been incomprehensible to me), Pamela elbowed me in the ribs.

"Pay attention to this part," she stage whispered.

"And it is today, my friends," said Professor Penniwinkle over the crackling speakers, "that the final piece of our necessarily long and intricately designed plan comes to fruition, for it is now that we have the key!"

The professor then reached under his notch collar knee length frock coat, and produced a convertible fanny pack utility belt.

Pamela nudged me in the ribs with her elbow again and winked.

It was a standard convertible fanny pack utility belt, though of the highest quality. Brown corduroy, showing a bit of wear but I needn't be replacing it this year... wait a minute! It was MY convertible fanny pack utility belt... containing the plans for the many unfinished projects sustained by a man in my position!

What on earth could Professor Penniwinkle want with those?

"Pamela, dear god. I was worried we'd lost one another in this tediously grubby underworld."

The filthy street urchin had led me through the crowd and down a maze of alleys, where we found my nemesis and rival Pamela Pants smoking from a theater-length cigarette holder and a gas mask pulled up over her curly blond locks.

"Lose you? Small chance of that. You stand out like a neon ponce. Oh wait, you are a--"

"This is reckless and unreasonable, Pamela. I insist that we allow my undependable clockwork dog and traitorous mechanical butler to fend for themselves in this hideously malodorous kakatopia and return to the surface immediately!"

"You're lucky you weren't already spotted and nabbed the special branch rozzers. They'd have been happy to send you right back up, tied in a neat little package and beaten like an old rug."

Pamela always had fantastically paranoid opinions about our bobbies.

"And stop thinking about my bobbies," Pamela said. "Come on. It's time to meet the Mayor of Underworld."

"Mashy tentacles! Get yer mashy tentacles!"

"Rats heads, mouse heads, two-for-one!"

"Greasy handshakes! Get yours before they slip away!"

The crowd had spilled out into a vast plaza within this subterranean dystopia. There were grimy vendors of all types, looking horrific in the yellow sodium vapor light.

"S'cuse me, govnah!" said a little voice, tugging on my sleeve.

"Not so fast, you little rascal!" I'd had enough of this pickpocketing thievery! I grabbed him by the wrist...

... and soon found the entirety of the tiny ruffian's arm in my hand. I held it up in the yellow light to look at it. Mechanical, indeed, but of a level of craftsmanship I'd never seen.

The filthy street urchin foraged under his tiny ragged coat, and suddenly a new arm popped out from the sleeve.

"Begging your pardon, govnah," the little child continued. "But Ms. Pants has sent me to find you. C'mon along, wot? Don't be shy!"

He grabbed my sleeve with his shiny new arm, and pulled me through the crowd.

I was indeed soon lost in the crowd. Shoulder to shoulder with the most downtrodden ranks of humanity I'd ever seen, smeared with grease and smelling of smoke, trudging through the tunnels.

Surely, this couldn't be one of the fabled Cornucopia Lots that produced the never-ending flow of energy and materials that were the hallmark of our wondrous and shining cities of the surface? But those sites were fully automated! A robot workforce, to be sure, but custom built for mindless drudgery. And while these automatons reeked of oil, they had the unmistakable stink of humanity and sweat as well.

Pamela Pants had lost herself in the crowd ahead of me. "Best we split up," she said. "Less attention that way," she said. "Just follow the crowd," she said.

"S'cuse me, govnah!"

"Quite all right, dear chap."

It was ten minutes before I discovered my wallet was missing. And my purse. And my convertible fanny pack utility belt, which contained the plans for the many unfinished projects sustained by a man in my position.

"Drat," I said.

The rusty old mining car rattled its way down a endless warren of tunnels and trestles, lit by a string of lonely electric bulbs.

Pamela Pants, my arch enemy in love, science, and business, sat in the front, and I was by no means a prisoner, except of my own conflicted feelings.

The clickety clack of the car on the tracks soon became unbearable.

"Pamela," I said. "There's something I must tell you. You see, for all these--"

Pamela's hand whipped back and closed itself over my mouth.

"Hush!" she whispered. "Listen!"

Her hand remained gripped around my lips, but I perked up my ears.

"Wooooohoooooo!" The faint howl of a steam whistle in the distance?

"It's shift change at the factory," she whispered. "We'll lose ourselves in the crowd."

An underground factory? Some antediluvian relic from the age of wage slavery and back-breaking drudgery? Deep beneath our fair utopia above? What madness was this? More likely some of Pamela's bohemian techno artist friends and one of their dreadful "openings." And what of my curious clockwork dog Rufus? And somewhat trustworthy robot manservant Cicero? Were they all in on some elaborate ploy to humiliate me? How long was this going to take? I had appointments!

"Keep your mouth closed, your head down, and follow me," Pamela said.

"Watch your head," Pamela said.

I'd be boiled before taking tips from that evil Science Witch!

THUNK

"And beware the puddles!"

SQUISH

"Just why are we headed through this nefarious pit of darkness?" I enquired, now keeping my head low and torch on the ground before me. "And to what great curse do I owe the pleasure of you becoming involved in my daily jog?"

"A man who can't control his mechanical dog is no man at all," Pamela replied. "But I'd say Rufus has more of a nose for discovery than you. Not to mention treasure."

Another low blow.

"And perhaps your mechanical manservant Cicero was in on it as well. Doesn't he still plan your exercise time? And chose this route?"

Cicero was quite insistent on us jogging past the decrepit old mansion today.

"Perhaps it was the scent of aetheric oil. The purest!"

I took a small whiff. Nothing but mold and earth.

"And you still haven't given up the snuff yet I see."

Curse that woman!

"And now," she continued, "into this rusty old mining car. Mind the gap!"

"Wot?"

Instead of finding my rambunctious robotic hound and steadfast mechanical manservant entwined in a pile of copper crockery, I found myself face to face with my nemesis and peer from the Cogwheel Club.

"Pamela Pants! Good lord! What are you doing here?"

She stood in the kitchen of this abandoned manor at the very pile of pots and pans I'd heard crashing. But my clockwork dog and butler where nowhere to be seen.

"Looking for your servants, Siriso?" she asked. "Perhaps they just needed some time away."

That was a low blow.

"See here," I said. "If this is another of your elaborate revenge scenarios I'll have you know that if you've endangered my techno-mechanical compatriots then you've taken it too far this time, Pamela!"

"My dear Siriso, I assure you it's nothing of the sort. Unlike you, I have a human heart."

Another low blow.

"But it does appear our quests have intertwined," she continued. "After making a mess of things in the kitchen, your wind-up friends headed directly through that open cellar door, which happens to be just where I'm headed too."

There was a darkened stairwell past that door, and a waft of fetid earthy air.

"I'm happy to go first. Look, I brought torches!"

"Rufus! Here boy!"

Where was that confounded mechanical mutt? My calls echoed through the entryway of the dilapidated mansion. The grounds were unkempt and weedy, but the front door was invitingly open.

"Cicero! Are you in here? Bang on something if you can hear me!"

My robot butler Cicero was mute, but could communicate through rapping his metal fingertips on tables and chairs using an ingenious telegraphic code of my own design. He only used this method of communication when extremely frustrated, however. He felt my code was crude.

I heard a terrific crash within the cavernous expanse of the empty manor, as if a shelf of tin pans had been overturned.

Which sounded exactly like the shenanigans Rufus and Cicero were bound to get into.

Sigh. Sometimes mechanical servants and pets seemed more trouble than they were worth!

I was out for a jog with my mechanical dog Rufus when he returned from one of his romps with a curiously large piece of clockwork in his pneumatic jaw.

"Drop it here boy! Drop it!"

Rufus looked at me sideways then turned and ran.

"Drat that canine contraption! Cicero, would you be so good to as, sigh. Retrieve the dog?"

After an exaggerated glass eye roll, my faithful mechanical manservant Cicero jogged off in the direction of the decrepit old mansion that had captured the imagination of my horological hound.

For instance, I miss jogging with my mechanical butler Cicero and my mechanical dog Rufus. Oh their jolly jingle jangle!