Chapter 7 – A Craving Without Hunger...
Children did not crowd before the replicant maker's apartment door when he introduced his newest creation upon the dreamers populating the new world.
The mechanical beast awed its creator. Its length stretched three meters. Its weight passed three hundred kilograms. Such size had taxed the replicant maker's efforts. He had strayed many miles beyond the new city to scavenge components both strong and light to preserve the balance of power and grace the replicant maker realized defined the beast. The creature before Nigel thus represented a strange mixture of alloys and composites. The replicant maker had found only marginal success in the pigment he blended to provide a smooth skin of paint over the animal. As result, the animal Nigel pushed into the hall was a colored patchwork of dark grays that betrayed the positioning of servo-motors, or the unnatural curve of a processor placed below the spine. The replicant maker was a master of his craft, and he hated each part of his creature that failed to emulate nature's hand. But the replicant maker remained proud of the black stripes his hands had brush-stroked across the creature.
The replicant maker paused before he powered the creature with a click of the small remote control he had assembled from left-over batteries and parts. He took time to admire the mechanical creature's face. He had never before crafted a face so majestic. Even the wonder of the graceful, flying crane paled in comparison. Thousands of fine, hair-like sensors draped from the creature's sensitive nostrils. Powerless, the creature looked more beautiful than any lost world animal the replicant maker had previously imagined. Without power coursing through its systems, the replicant maker yearned to touch the beast, no matter that he knew the awful purpose for which the creature had been designed, that awful purpose around which all that splendor and elegance had been crafted.
The replicant maker's hands shook as they pointed the small remote control at the animal. He wished he had more courage for what he knew would be his final introduction of a mechanical creature to the new world's dull, clean and white plastic walls.
The replicant maker knew what features would extend from the creature once his thumb descended upon the remote control. He had forged the claws currently hidden in the paws. He had shaped the long, sharp fangs that lined the creature's closed maw. He had installed the red, fiery eyes that would open, alive and hungry, once the replicant maker gave it life with a click of a simple button.
The new world's traffic flowed around him as the replicant maker stood back and drifted into the hall's center. No one noticed as the replicant maker bumped into them. No one paused for a moment in their transit to and from the machine to regard the oddity of a lonely, old man and a synthetic, old world animal. No one wanted to keep their dreams waiting. No one cared to ask the replicant maker questions concerning batteries and magic, motors and instinct, the old world and wilderness.
Nigel had not expected anyone to notice at all. He realized how completely the machine stole from him.
He had dreamed an awful, but beautiful, beast. With it, the replicant maker would shatter the inattention the new world paid him. The machine's dazed crowds would not be able to ignore the replicant maker and his animal once the remote control was clicked.
With a click of a button, the replicant maker, so long beloved by the children, would give nightmare to the new world.
The replicant maker closed his eyes as lines of old world verse burned in his memory. Strings of crafted words he had found so long ago in a pile of the old world's debris tumbled through his imagination. Though no audience cared to hear them, the replicant maker spoke those words to the crowded hall.
“Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
The replicant maker's remote control clicked.
Life surged through the creation seated before the replicant maker's front door. It stood upon its legs, and its back arched as hydraulics pumped power into its form. The nostrils flared as the mechanical tiger sensed its surroundings for the first time. Its head twisted, and in a flash, the eyes opened and revealed the glowing, red orbs that burned in the soul the replicant maker had given to his deadly, last creation.
A roar warned the replicant maker, but the creator had no desire to run. The replicant maker knew of no sanctuary towards which he might flee.
The mechanical tiger jumped upon the replicant maker in the next hearbeat. The replicant maker raised no hand in defense. He did not flinch as his greatest creation targeted his throat. Claws raked. Fangs tore.
The mechanical tiger which tore into the replicant maker possessed no hunger. Yet a craving still burned in its fiery, red eyes. Crimson splashed upon the clean, white and plastic walls. The replicant maker had once assembled paper butterflies and cotton-filled koalas. In the end, his greatest work awarded his effort by tearing him asunder.
And still, none of the new world's dreamers who floated to and from their appointments with their machine's dreams took notice of the violence that befell the replicant maker. The red eyes stared upon them. The beast's nostrils sniffed the air. Still, none of those dreams hurried a step. None paused to regard the foreign element of danger so suddenly introduced to their world.
The beast hunched and bellowed another roaring warning more before pouncing in a wink upon the crowd drifting through the new city's halls.
The new world would notice the replicant maker's last creation. The replicant maker's final beast painted the walls red.
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Butcher, Baker and Replicant Maker Page 10