Felix Gilman - The Rise of Ransom City

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, in Parts, written on The Road between Here and The Western Rim, and mostly On The Run, I expect containing an explanation of sorts and An Apology of a Kind for Some Recent Events In The Great War and some advertisements for Ransom City, soon to rise In The West, THE CITY OF THE FUTURE and some interesting facts regarding The Ransom Light-Bringing Apparatus and the MIRACLE AT WHITE ROCK and a sketch of a dinner with Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson, formerly of the Jasper City Evening Post and A mammoth and a full and fair accounting of the Crimes of The Northern Lighting Corporation and of The Inner Secrets of Money and Power in this world and a lamentation for the DAMARIS and for Mr. Carver and for all of JASPER and for Adela and for Everybody Else I have Forgotten with some maxims for Success In Business and Some Useful PRINCIPLES of Exercise and Diet and Some Invaluable ADVICE for What To Do Should You Run Foul of WOLVES.

My name is Harry Ransom. Friends call me Hal or Harry, or by one of a half-dozen aliases, of which I have had more than any honest man should. Dont let that shake your confidence in me. I was a victim of circumstance. Often I went by Professor Harry Ransom, and though I never had anything you might call a formal Education I believe I earned that title. For the last few years its been Excuse me, Mr. Ransom, sir, from those beneath me and just plain Ransom from those above. I never cared for any of that and now I am free and on the road again and nothing but my name and my wits and my words.

If you know my name maybe its as the inventor of the Ransom Light-Bringing Process, or maybe you believe in all that secret-weapon stuff they wrote in the newspapers, in which case I intend to set you straight. Or you may know me as the man who lost the Battle of Jasper City, or won it, depending on where you stand in matters of politics. If youre an Officer of the Line who has intercepted this in the mails, then you know me as a Wanted Person but maybe you know to think twice before coming after me.

If youre reading this in the future maybe you know me as the man who founded Ransom City. It lies out in the unmade lands, or it will, one day. Maybe as you read this its a bright new century and Ransom City is a great and glittering metropolis and theres a big bronze statue of me in a park somewhere if I have any say in the matter there will be parks well, who knows? I am an optimist. Maybe one day these pages will be read by every boy and girl in the West. Your grandfather will look over your shoulder and say, I remember old Harry Ransom, I saw him back in Nowheresville one time, that was a hell of a show but the bastard still owes me money.

I am writing from no place in particular. All Ill say is that it is a big red barn not so different in architectural grandeur from one of those old-world cathedrals you see in picture-books sometimes, although I guess more full of straw and dung. I have never been in a cathedral but I have been in a whole lot of barns. There are thousands like it in the Territory. The fields all around and the mountains in the distance are brown like an old coat. The man who owns the barn and the cows and the horses and all the straw and the dung is a good fellow, not educated but one of natures Free-Thinkers, and when we strike out West again he will come with us.

I am writing on a typewriter that I salvaged from the old mans office after Jasper City fell. Naturally its the very latest state-of-the-art machine. Nothing but the best was good enough for the old man. Theres a bullet-hole in its casing and some water-damage to its innards. Nobody thought I could get it working again but I did not get where I am today by being a fool, at least not in matters mechanical. In spite of my efforts the letter R still sticks one time out of four, and that is no small inconvenience for a man who likes to talk about himself as much as I do. On the other hand the machine types in triplicate, through an arrangement of carbon papers and clever little levers, so that when I type ransom it echoes across one-two-three sheets of white paper. The old man used this device to convey orders with the greatest possible efficiency. I want to talk to a lot of people as I go so this is a great time-saver.

Well, we moved on from the big red barn. One of the Lines Heavier-Than-Air Vessels was spotted overhead. It circled, writing a kind of black-smoke question mark in the sky. Most likely it had nothing to do with us theres fighting not far south of us, or so I hear but were taking no chances. We left by night and took the road west. I am sitting and typing under the shadow of a big old cottonwood tree in a valley of rank grass and blackberry bushes and old tin-plated junk and fat dragonflies. Our numbers have been swelled by the barn-owners younger son and two of his friends, and I have just eaten one of his first-rate apricots, but the man himself stayed behind to sell off his furniture and settle his affairs. If all goes well we shall all meet up at a certain location on the Western Rim.

I left a triplicate of letters in his care all about who we are and where we are going and what we are going to do when we get there, by which I mean the founding of Ransom City. We are going West. I waxed eloquent about the glories of the free city of the future and true democracy and the Ransom Process and the parks and the tall buildings I have planned in my minds eye and all the rest of it, and how every person who wants should follow us. One of the letters is to go to my onetime friend the famous Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson, formerly of the Jasper City Evening Post, * one is to go to the editor of the Melville City Gazette, and because I do not know any other journalists, the third is to go to an editor of Mr. Barn-Owners choosing.

I thought everything would be easy to explain but it is not. I mean to set the story straight, because a lot of things have been said about me or by me that are not exactly true. It is not easy to tell a true story. Most of my practice with words has been selling things, which is not the same at all, it turns out.

I am not yet thirty but I have had an odd kind of life and I have a lot to say before I go. Anyhow this is my AUTOBIOGRAPHY I guess, and so I will call this CHAPTER ONE, and below that introductions, just like a real honest-to-goodness book.

*Of course, there never was a Jasper City Evening Post . I was an Evening News man. Mr. Ransoms memory fails him here, not for the first or last time. EMC

When I was a boy I read the Autobiography of Mr. Alfred Baxter, the late great business magnate of Jasper City. We knew him even in the backwater town of my boyhood, and I read his Autobiography half a dozen times if I read it once. The book told of how he came up from nothing to triumph over adversity and become the richest and grandest and free-est man in the world. I read it by candlelight and I learned it like it was sacred Scripture. I can still quote some of it today.

There is a moment in the life of every man of greatness when he sees History clearly;

when the Spirit of the Age stands like a woman before him;