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jackThe first bicycle-eating railings were installed in front of some Jesus college accommodation. New railings, and a sign saying in bright yellow letters, “if you lock your bicycle to these railings it will be eaten. – Jesus College”
We shared a house opposite, and were fascinated to watch. For the first week or so, no bicycles were left there at all. I don't suppose anyone believed the sign, but no-one wanted to feel stupid enough to have left a bicycle there and had it removed, even in a more normal way.
I imagined their subconscious conversation. “Oh, dear,” they'd imagine a college repairman saying. “Was that your bike? Well, you know, we've got to be consistent or we'd have no policies at all. I'm sorry it happened to you though. Didn't you see the sign?”
There were a couple of things worth noticing, however. Sometimes someone would cycle up and blithely leap off their bike and begin locking it to the railings. But they'd always suddenly glance up at the sign before they'd finished, and then normally think a moment, and then move their bike down the road to one of the crowded bike stands.
The residents of the houses were all new freshers, and we'd often see a gaggle from the house opposite standing in front of the sign and pointing. They probably thought “bicycles will be eaten” signs were a tradition in Cambridge. Given the three year turnover in most of the bicycle-owning population, a fierce enforcement for only a couple of years could actually shift people's habits permanently, with no extra long term effort on enforcement needed.
Most of us thought that was the idea. A new sign to back up a new enforcement of the policy. I thought there was something spooky about the sign, but I thought it a fairly good idea, though not as good as having some actual bicycle parking in the vicinity.
Anyone washing up, or working by a window in our house always kept glancing across to see if anyone was messing with the railings, but none of the freshers opposite owned bikes yet, so no-one had actually attached a bike yet. The freshers sometimes poked the railings with sticks and things to see if anything would happen, and the more astute would use bits of metal or bike pumps, but nothing happened.
One Saturday before dinner, little Sarah had the idea. “There's lots of abandoned bikes at the station”, she said. “We could take a couple and see if the railings do anything.”
Tricia began to justify it to herself immediately. “After all, they’re just removed and auctioned off at the end of the year. But some of them are completely unrideable and are going to be scrapped.”
“I we removed a couple, we’d just be freeing up a bit more space.” I clamped my teeth shut before I could add “We’d practically be doing a public service,” which would just get Trish’s back up. “I know Simon has a hacksaw, we could probably borrow it,” I continued.
But Magog was way ahead of me here. She’d slipped out of the room a moment ago and burst back in waving a pair of bolt-cutters with jaws as thick as her wrists. “My Dad left them. They’re perfect, no?” And with that we were off.
A few hours later we’d liberated a couple of the most rusty and twisted bikes twined into the brambles of abandoned bikes and rusted spokes opposite the station. We must have looked a sight trying to push them back across Cambridge, with Magog hauling hers back up every time the crumpled wheel reached the bottom of the revolution, and Little Sarah and I squeaking every time a stray spoke of ours poked at us. But no-one bothered to notice, let alone ask if a gaggle of well-dressed undergraduate girls were stealing two rusty worthless bikes.
Back at the house, Magog boldly leaned her new death-trap against the railings and stepped back, all of us watching intently, but nothing happened. I went to push mine forward as well, but Sarah stopped me. “Maybe it has to be locked,” she said, and I realised that had to be true if anything was.
I glared as I had the cheapest bike lock among us, and I’d left my bike leaning in our garden, so my lock was free to use. But it was that or walk to Halfords, so I volunteered it, and little Sarah ran to fetch it before I could move.
When she came back, Trish took it out of her hands and boldly stepped forward to loop it round the crossbar and railings. She paused for a moment, then clicked it home and gave a massive leap a meter back across the pavement.
A startled fresher face disappeared from the window, but we saw she was quite right as the railings were instantly in motion. A few months later, the railings would take hours to eat a bicycle, and it would all happen subtly, out of the corner of your eye. You’d glance across and all would be fine, and then again, and the wheels would be twisted and wedged through the railings, and again and it would be rusty, and by the time the owner returned, it would be naught but flinders.
But now, either the railings were hungry or they just hadn’t got bored yet, because they went into action at once. Two of the railings on either side bulged forward in giant fists, and the railings in-between formed a giant maw. The fists began crushing the bicycle into the maw, and there was a horrible grinding sound of iron on steel as the bicycle crossbar and other struts crumpled and bent between grinding iron railings.
The door flew open and a couple of young fresher boys ran down the steps and then skidded to a halt at the bottom of the steps, hesitant at opening the small gate so close to the crunching metal. Magog moved to open it for them, but one of them touched it gently and when nothing ate him, pushed it open.
“Wow,” said one, and we all stood watching. Little bits of lock and bike tumbled out every time it crunched, and we inched away from them. Thirty seconds later the bike was gone and a thin film of rust and shaved metal dusted the pavement. “Wow,” said several people again.
Then the railings twisted into an awkward mouth again, and a creaky voice asked, “excuse me, but do you have another?”
I hesitated, but Alice and Trish wordlessly took the bike from me and pushed it forward, flinging it against the railings. Nothing happened for a moment, and we paused, waiting to see if the voice would speak, but it didn’t. Alice thoughtfully picked up a strand of the lock and knotted it loosely round the bike, and the railings stirred again. She hesitated, and the railings shivered but didn’t move until she backed slowly away, and then we were treated to another performance, slightly more leisurely but much more thorough.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That was the beginning. We befriended those bicycle-eating railings, and some of the freshers opposite, and Tricia started dating one of the boys, and more bicycle eating railings started springing up all over Cambridge.
The university started it, as it owned by far the most and most prominent railings in Cambridge, and the council followed, and private businesses came next, and eventually private houses. But the owners should have realised that only a couple of them would ever be sustainable.
Just like the economy of bike theft relied on a steady supply of students willing to keep buying comparatively cheap new or second hand bikes, the railings relied on students leaning bikes against them sometimes, even as their reason d’être was to prevent it. Both had seemed such a fixed part of Cambridge life that no-one had stopped to think that even undergraduates will learn if presented with sharp and direct enough feedback, and that there might be problems if that changed.
Every new set of railings always made a dramatic debut. Occasionally a student would wail piteously as their bike was snatched from their grasp, but mostly they just shrugged and ask their parents to help with a replacement. After a few months, the railings would grow quiescent again, but bikes left there would still disappear by the time the owner returned, so no-one ever started leaving bikes there again.
The council had continued pedestrianising the city centre, and began to be forced to put up more bike stands in old parking places and even in the middle of roads, or students would just dump their bikes there and hope to be back before an exasperated pedestrian dragged it to the nearest maw and threw it in.
Once their natural supply of bikes dwindled away, the railings began to grow ravenously hungry. Some just fell into quiescent sleep, and cautious experimentation with more free samples from the station showed that bikes could again be left against them so long as you were very very delicate. But invariably, especially if you looked like a bike owner rather than an experimenter, a passer by would shout you a loud greeting, and the railings would stir, and then sleepily chomp its free meal before slowly dozing back to sleep.
Others began to try to lure prey in. They’d try to shrug off their signs, and play dead, hoping people would forget. The cunning ones would ignore the first couple of bikes left, normally discoloured rackety things no-one minded losing, until people were more and more emboldened by the greater and greater number of bikes, and began blithely taking them for granted. Then when the railings were covered in bikes two deep they’d make a sudden grab and devour as many as possible before any public-spirited passers by could drag any free of their shattered locks.
Others begged passers by for a feed of any bicycles they’d seen abandoned, or offer to trade gossip they’d overhead from passers by for food, or offer a free parking space to the first comer, in the hopes that the temptingly uneaten bike would lure others in. Some of these played fair, and got a reputation as good to trade with. Others could not hold back and would gobble any bike they’d lured in, heedless of future mistrust.
The owners of the buildings learned that if they wanted to keep the railings content, they’d need to feed them. Only a little, so long as it came regularly every few weeks or months but enough. At first, this simply created a much-needed market for the abandoned cycles from the station and elsewhere. But soon these were gone, and owners began to want to wash their hands of the problem.
Some just ignored it, and hoped the railings would survive, and no-one would sue. Others tried to prise the railings out again, and discovered most railings could well hold their own against any sort of cutting or digging equipment which could be manoeuvred down Cambridge’s narrow streets.
The capstone came when the station authorities, well past the time it was obviously a bad idea, installed living railings all the way along the side of their vast bicycle park. They probably thought that with the rusted bicycles there they’d be the one building in Cambridge which wouldn’t have a problem feeding the things, and that if they freed up some of their vast parking space, they could ensure that their fences would be as tidy as everyone else’s had become.
But these endless railings didn’t wait to find out. They could reach far enough to chomp up most of the first couple of rows of bikes in the park, and doubled and trebled in size overnight, until they wrenched themselves free of the concrete they’d been set in, and lurched across the park to devour the rest of the unimaginably rich feeding ground.
The few people in the park fled from the massive golem, iron bars twisted into a thirty-foot high human semblage, lurching across strewing bits of wheel and handlebar untidily from its maw, and crunching stands and bikes alike beneath its feet.
For a few days it roamed Cambridge, descending voraciously on the other legitimate parking areas, and chasing hapless cycling students it saw with lurching dashes and grabs. Most were able to outrun it, the shopping crowds for once obligingly parting before them, but occasionally a young fresher or older professor was gingerly tipped from their bike, complaining uselessly, and another cycle was fed into the thing’s maw.
It ended on Thursday when we grouped together with some of the freshers we’d met, now acting like Cambridge old hands, and some of Magog’s engineering friends from Caius. We found plastic and wood poles, thick branches, mop-handles, table legs, and so on, and persuaded the railings the freshers’ house, and their new rival, the ones eventually installed in front of ours, to help with promises of spare wheels and pedals left behind in the carnage at the bike parks.
Sarah went there and grabbed a newish bike which had been mildly damaged but left behind, and led the shambling iron bicycle-eating golem slowly around Cambridge and towards our street. When it reached our house, the obliging railings reached out and managed to hook its feet and it roared in annoyance. It reached down to try to brush them off, and we all rushed forward.
It had never been known to deliberately hurt humans and we hoped it would stick to that. We wielded our plastic and wood and thrust the poles into its joints, through its arms and torso and legs. It writhed, snapping most, but we kept thrusting, and eventually it became so jammed up it didn’t have the leverage to break any more, and as it struggled, our railings released its feet and it managed half a step, and then tumbled suddenly to the ground with a massive splintering and crashing.
Trish ran to phone the police and suggest they find someone to clean it away, while Sarah and I surveyed the carnage, and wonder what was going to happen next.
In fact, the golem’s massive rampage was the necessary wake up call. The university knuckled under and took charge, setting up a small department with attached services to study the problem, and found what the gargoyles actually needed to eat – processed metal, yes, in tubes and circles and wires, but not whole bikes, and could be provided much more cheaply.
Everyone who owned railings was forced to provide a decent diet, and things settled down. Five years later the railings were a traditional sight, and sacrificial bicycles were fed to the solemn pious railings outside Great Saint Mary’s. Ten years later the first railings started to demand admittance to the university, and the first lectures were brought outside to nearby railings who demanded the right to attend, but couldn’t enter buildings. Eventually living railings held positions of responsibility in the university themselves.
We shared a house opposite, and were fascinated to watch. For the first week or so, no bicycles were left there at all. I don't suppose anyone believed the sign, but no-one wanted to feel stupid enough to have left a bicycle there and had it removed, even in a more normal way.
I imagined their subconscious conversation. “Oh, dear,” they'd imagine a college repairman saying. “Was that your bike? Well, you know, we've got to be consistent or we'd have no policies at all. I'm sorry it happened to you though. Didn't you see the sign?”
There were a couple of things worth noticing, however. Sometimes someone would cycle up and blithely leap off their bike and begin locking it to the railings. But they'd always suddenly glance up at the sign before they'd finished, and then normally think a moment, and then move their bike down the road to one of the crowded bike stands.
The residents of the houses were all new freshers, and we'd often see a gaggle from the house opposite standing in front of the sign and pointing. They probably thought “bicycles will be eaten” signs were a tradition in Cambridge. Given the three year turnover in most of the bicycle-owning population, a fierce enforcement for only a couple of years could actually shift people's habits permanently, with no extra long term effort on enforcement needed.
Most of us thought that was the idea. A new sign to back up a new enforcement of the policy. I thought there was something spooky about the sign, but I thought it a fairly good idea, though not as good as having some actual bicycle parking in the vicinity.
Anyone washing up, or working by a window in our house always kept glancing across to see if anyone was messing with the railings, but none of the freshers opposite owned bikes yet, so no-one had actually attached a bike yet. The freshers sometimes poked the railings with sticks and things to see if anything would happen, and the more astute would use bits of metal or bike pumps, but nothing happened.
One Saturday before dinner, little Sarah had the idea. “There's lots of abandoned bikes at the station”, she said. “We could take a couple and see if the railings do anything.”
Tricia began to justify it to herself immediately. “After all, they’re just removed and auctioned off at the end of the year. But some of them are completely unrideable and are going to be scrapped.”
“I we removed a couple, we’d just be freeing up a bit more space.” I clamped my teeth shut before I could add “We’d practically be doing a public service,” which would just get Trish’s back up. “I know Simon has a hacksaw, we could probably borrow it,” I continued.
But Magog was way ahead of me here. She’d slipped out of the room a moment ago and burst back in waving a pair of bolt-cutters with jaws as thick as her wrists. “My Dad left them. They’re perfect, no?” And with that we were off.
A few hours later we’d liberated a couple of the most rusty and twisted bikes twined into the brambles of abandoned bikes and rusted spokes opposite the station. We must have looked a sight trying to push them back across Cambridge, with Magog hauling hers back up every time the crumpled wheel reached the bottom of the revolution, and Little Sarah and I squeaking every time a stray spoke of ours poked at us. But no-one bothered to notice, let alone ask if a gaggle of well-dressed undergraduate girls were stealing two rusty worthless bikes.
Back at the house, Magog boldly leaned her new death-trap against the railings and stepped back, all of us watching intently, but nothing happened. I went to push mine forward as well, but Sarah stopped me. “Maybe it has to be locked,” she said, and I realised that had to be true if anything was.
I glared as I had the cheapest bike lock among us, and I’d left my bike leaning in our garden, so my lock was free to use. But it was that or walk to Halfords, so I volunteered it, and little Sarah ran to fetch it before I could move.
When she came back, Trish took it out of her hands and boldly stepped forward to loop it round the crossbar and railings. She paused for a moment, then clicked it home and gave a massive leap a meter back across the pavement.
A startled fresher face disappeared from the window, but we saw she was quite right as the railings were instantly in motion. A few months later, the railings would take hours to eat a bicycle, and it would all happen subtly, out of the corner of your eye. You’d glance across and all would be fine, and then again, and the wheels would be twisted and wedged through the railings, and again and it would be rusty, and by the time the owner returned, it would be naught but flinders.
But now, either the railings were hungry or they just hadn’t got bored yet, because they went into action at once. Two of the railings on either side bulged forward in giant fists, and the railings in-between formed a giant maw. The fists began crushing the bicycle into the maw, and there was a horrible grinding sound of iron on steel as the bicycle crossbar and other struts crumpled and bent between grinding iron railings.
The door flew open and a couple of young fresher boys ran down the steps and then skidded to a halt at the bottom of the steps, hesitant at opening the small gate so close to the crunching metal. Magog moved to open it for them, but one of them touched it gently and when nothing ate him, pushed it open.
“Wow,” said one, and we all stood watching. Little bits of lock and bike tumbled out every time it crunched, and we inched away from them. Thirty seconds later the bike was gone and a thin film of rust and shaved metal dusted the pavement. “Wow,” said several people again.
Then the railings twisted into an awkward mouth again, and a creaky voice asked, “excuse me, but do you have another?”
I hesitated, but Alice and Trish wordlessly took the bike from me and pushed it forward, flinging it against the railings. Nothing happened for a moment, and we paused, waiting to see if the voice would speak, but it didn’t. Alice thoughtfully picked up a strand of the lock and knotted it loosely round the bike, and the railings stirred again. She hesitated, and the railings shivered but didn’t move until she backed slowly away, and then we were treated to another performance, slightly more leisurely but much more thorough.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That was the beginning. We befriended those bicycle-eating railings, and some of the freshers opposite, and Tricia started dating one of the boys, and more bicycle eating railings started springing up all over Cambridge.
The university started it, as it owned by far the most and most prominent railings in Cambridge, and the council followed, and private businesses came next, and eventually private houses. But the owners should have realised that only a couple of them would ever be sustainable.
Just like the economy of bike theft relied on a steady supply of students willing to keep buying comparatively cheap new or second hand bikes, the railings relied on students leaning bikes against them sometimes, even as their reason d’être was to prevent it. Both had seemed such a fixed part of Cambridge life that no-one had stopped to think that even undergraduates will learn if presented with sharp and direct enough feedback, and that there might be problems if that changed.
Every new set of railings always made a dramatic debut. Occasionally a student would wail piteously as their bike was snatched from their grasp, but mostly they just shrugged and ask their parents to help with a replacement. After a few months, the railings would grow quiescent again, but bikes left there would still disappear by the time the owner returned, so no-one ever started leaving bikes there again.
The council had continued pedestrianising the city centre, and began to be forced to put up more bike stands in old parking places and even in the middle of roads, or students would just dump their bikes there and hope to be back before an exasperated pedestrian dragged it to the nearest maw and threw it in.
Once their natural supply of bikes dwindled away, the railings began to grow ravenously hungry. Some just fell into quiescent sleep, and cautious experimentation with more free samples from the station showed that bikes could again be left against them so long as you were very very delicate. But invariably, especially if you looked like a bike owner rather than an experimenter, a passer by would shout you a loud greeting, and the railings would stir, and then sleepily chomp its free meal before slowly dozing back to sleep.
Others began to try to lure prey in. They’d try to shrug off their signs, and play dead, hoping people would forget. The cunning ones would ignore the first couple of bikes left, normally discoloured rackety things no-one minded losing, until people were more and more emboldened by the greater and greater number of bikes, and began blithely taking them for granted. Then when the railings were covered in bikes two deep they’d make a sudden grab and devour as many as possible before any public-spirited passers by could drag any free of their shattered locks.
Others begged passers by for a feed of any bicycles they’d seen abandoned, or offer to trade gossip they’d overhead from passers by for food, or offer a free parking space to the first comer, in the hopes that the temptingly uneaten bike would lure others in. Some of these played fair, and got a reputation as good to trade with. Others could not hold back and would gobble any bike they’d lured in, heedless of future mistrust.
The owners of the buildings learned that if they wanted to keep the railings content, they’d need to feed them. Only a little, so long as it came regularly every few weeks or months but enough. At first, this simply created a much-needed market for the abandoned cycles from the station and elsewhere. But soon these were gone, and owners began to want to wash their hands of the problem.
Some just ignored it, and hoped the railings would survive, and no-one would sue. Others tried to prise the railings out again, and discovered most railings could well hold their own against any sort of cutting or digging equipment which could be manoeuvred down Cambridge’s narrow streets.
The capstone came when the station authorities, well past the time it was obviously a bad idea, installed living railings all the way along the side of their vast bicycle park. They probably thought that with the rusted bicycles there they’d be the one building in Cambridge which wouldn’t have a problem feeding the things, and that if they freed up some of their vast parking space, they could ensure that their fences would be as tidy as everyone else’s had become.
But these endless railings didn’t wait to find out. They could reach far enough to chomp up most of the first couple of rows of bikes in the park, and doubled and trebled in size overnight, until they wrenched themselves free of the concrete they’d been set in, and lurched across the park to devour the rest of the unimaginably rich feeding ground.
The few people in the park fled from the massive golem, iron bars twisted into a thirty-foot high human semblage, lurching across strewing bits of wheel and handlebar untidily from its maw, and crunching stands and bikes alike beneath its feet.
For a few days it roamed Cambridge, descending voraciously on the other legitimate parking areas, and chasing hapless cycling students it saw with lurching dashes and grabs. Most were able to outrun it, the shopping crowds for once obligingly parting before them, but occasionally a young fresher or older professor was gingerly tipped from their bike, complaining uselessly, and another cycle was fed into the thing’s maw.
It ended on Thursday when we grouped together with some of the freshers we’d met, now acting like Cambridge old hands, and some of Magog’s engineering friends from Caius. We found plastic and wood poles, thick branches, mop-handles, table legs, and so on, and persuaded the railings the freshers’ house, and their new rival, the ones eventually installed in front of ours, to help with promises of spare wheels and pedals left behind in the carnage at the bike parks.
Sarah went there and grabbed a newish bike which had been mildly damaged but left behind, and led the shambling iron bicycle-eating golem slowly around Cambridge and towards our street. When it reached our house, the obliging railings reached out and managed to hook its feet and it roared in annoyance. It reached down to try to brush them off, and we all rushed forward.
It had never been known to deliberately hurt humans and we hoped it would stick to that. We wielded our plastic and wood and thrust the poles into its joints, through its arms and torso and legs. It writhed, snapping most, but we kept thrusting, and eventually it became so jammed up it didn’t have the leverage to break any more, and as it struggled, our railings released its feet and it managed half a step, and then tumbled suddenly to the ground with a massive splintering and crashing.
Trish ran to phone the police and suggest they find someone to clean it away, while Sarah and I surveyed the carnage, and wonder what was going to happen next.
In fact, the golem’s massive rampage was the necessary wake up call. The university knuckled under and took charge, setting up a small department with attached services to study the problem, and found what the gargoyles actually needed to eat – processed metal, yes, in tubes and circles and wires, but not whole bikes, and could be provided much more cheaply.
Everyone who owned railings was forced to provide a decent diet, and things settled down. Five years later the railings were a traditional sight, and sacrificial bicycles were fed to the solemn pious railings outside Great Saint Mary’s. Ten years later the first railings started to demand admittance to the university, and the first lectures were brought outside to nearby railings who demanded the right to attend, but couldn’t enter buildings. Eventually living railings held positions of responsibility in the university themselves.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-27 08:21 pm (UTC)That was good! :)