All at once the rickety old shack clicked into focus. I observed the dirt floor, the piles of scrap metal everywhere, the abused tools and dog eared books. Mostly I noticed the teenage girl cranking at the handle in my chest and folding it back into place.
Her denim overalls were covered in splashes of oil and grime, with knees and elbows heavily patched and nearly black. Her red, wispy hair fought testily against her pigtails. Something inside me told me her name was Esmeralda.
“Hello?” She tapped me on the eye and clicked her fingers, “You there?”
An incessant background whir began between my ears as I moved for the first time. I gently reached out with a golden hand and Esmeralda lurched away from me, spilling tools in all directions. My first... instinct? My first reaction was to lunge forward to catch her, but instead my numbed legs tangled on one another and sent me for a spill against the floor. I made a sound like a clumsy cupboard of pots and pans.
I pressed my hands against the ground and pushed upright. Esmeralda scuttled to the corner of the shack and snatched a large hammer from a slightly rusty pile and cocked it back for a swing. I reached up to the surface of the table, but my hands gave me no sense of texture or warmth. I could feel the resistance against my arms, but nothing more. As I levered myself to my feet I could sense something loosen inside my head. A dizzying sensation hit me for a moment, but when it passed my feet were directed dependably downward, my head upward. With a desperate grunt Esmeralda swung the hammer at my eyes.
My body unleashed a strange shriek. I felt strange as the world lurched for a moment. Without effort I plucked the blunt instrument from her hands before she even finished the swing. The metal on metal scream ended and she squeaked loudly as her face paled and she dodged out of my reach.
Her reactions connected in my head in some mysterious way. I knew they meant something but I could not make the words fit in my mind. I shook my skull in case something had gotten stuck, but without context many of the words carved into my mind were like runes of a long dead god.
I set the hammer safely down on the table, feeling her trembling body dive for the door long before she moved. It took until she yanked the portal open before I could find the bridge between my inner and outer self and say, “Esmeralda?”
She froze, sunlight streaming in from the world beyond and turning her golden red hair into a flaming halo. Freckles faded into the embarrassed flush of her face as she turned to me with a mouth that formed a perfect little ‘o’. It took another moment before she gathered her courage again, “Did you say something?”
“Yes,” I replied, “Esmeralda.”
“You clockwork jerk!” She half shouted, half laughed as she hurled an oily rag at my face. I intercepted it, but Esmeralda was already all over me, adjusting, pulling, tweaking, and twisting. “I thought I had put a spoke in the wheel and you’d gone all funny.”
Her phrases caught hooks in my head, pulled to little grooves in tiny copper tubes, whispering their meaning as she exclaimed, “Lordy! Looks like the Edison tubes are scratching away like mad. You remember what the first thing I said to you is?”
That sentence took a moment to deconstruct, “Hello? You there?”
She paused in her work, “Really? Is that what I said?”
“Yes, Esmeralda.”
“Esme.” And though she said her name like an accusation, when she sat down in front of me, her eyes held only wonder, “You work. You really work. I’m a real gearsmith, Leo.”
Leo. That meant me. I could see it written inside of my head. I looked down at my hands with unblinking eyes. They were nothing so much as a collection of steel rods, brass pinions, miniature gears and clockworks. Feather-delicate webbing wrapped around complex pulleys, attached to brass plates and iron rods. Gears whirled behind my eyes, crunching together as every second was captured on Edison drums of copper with needles of iron.
“I’m not real.” I said.
Esmeralda laughed as she stood and grabbed another rag, wiping her oily hands across its grimy surface and redistributing the dirt, “You’re real all right. At least I hope you are. I’m going to need you.”
“Need me?”
“I’m going on an adventure.” She reached behind the table, which I now recognized as a work bench, and pulled out a bronze blade as long as her forearm and just as wide, “You are coming with me.”
She attacked me with an intensity that made me want to shy away, but in the end I saw her methods and remained still as she began to attach what she joyfully referred to as ‘my equipment’. While she worked I focused on the books strewn about the workbench.
There was a long flat case that took up most of the table. It looked like nothing so much as a child’s coffin, but only half as thick. A seal on the side, broken, said:
South- -ning Company, Ironton Ohio. Next to it a handwritten label said, 1907. A metal plate set into the scored and chipped wood said: LEO.
With brass fingers I gently flipped page after page of complex diagrams and tightly packed print. An urge built inside me, and it took a moment before the plates connected the word curiosity to the compulsion.
“What is this?” I asked.
She paused from connecting the sword to my arm and looked over my shoulder. “That’s your voice box.”
I turned page after page backwards through the book, now seeing the common theme. Edison drums scratched like mad as I found plans for fingers, toes, arms, and legs, exploded views showing every part attached to every other. There was more, more things like me and others not at all like me. I passed the table of contents, but the next page contained a dedication:
‘To my darling wife. Though without children, the world can now build a bright future forged from our love. Our true legacy shall be discovered in the furnace of our dreams.’
I closed the book, revealing ‘Artificial Theology by Løve VanMeek ‘ in gold lettering barely visible on the stained and battered cover. In tiny print on the bottom it said ‘Third edition, 1887.’
Esmeralda moved to my left arm, where she attached a small shield. She did not talk while she concentrated on the gears, pulleys and screws, and I became convinced that she was used to working without an audience. I picked up another book, and another: Metallurgy of the Nonferrous by D.B. Smith, Gearworks Obscura by HG Wenns.
“Are these your books, Esmeralda?”
“Esme.” She said, “They are my dad’s. He was a gearsmith before the iron ran out in the mines.”
“The iron ran out?”
Esmeralda affixed me with an intensity that struck me to the core, “Years ago. But we’re going to fix that.”
I shook my head, hoping the Edison tubes had missed recording for a second, “How are we going to get iron into the mines?”
She grunted as she finished putting the final bits of torque on the central bolt to the buckler. “Well, not iron, but we’re going to fix Ironton.”
“What’s wrong with Ironton?” She picked up a complex gear and crank arrangement, shouldered a backpack, and pushed open the door to the rickety shack. I took my first steps into the larger world.
“I told you, there’s no iron in the mines.” The sun stared downward upon a city where glory had fled. Tall houses stood proudly in working class rows, but the reason for their vanity was long forgotten. Most had been boarded up, weeds encroaching closer to the house like an army of leafy green barbarians. Even the house closest to the shack, not boarded up and so presumably the one in which she lived, had a distinctively disheveled look.
Apparently inured or untouched, Esmeralda hitched up her pack and started off calling over her shoulder, “Come on, we need to make the Bone Orchard before noon.”
Without even questioning why, I followed. The houses were awash with soot spat from the sky, and the trees looked sickly and brown. Even the dirt was silty, wasted, with rusty overtones. I saw no sign of life anywhere. Every once in a while we would pass a home even worse than the others, with a roof caved in or damage from s
ome long gone storm. A strange, lonely, crushing sensation pressed in upon me from all sides. I glanced down at the tools with which I had been outfitted: an extendable sword and buckler.
“Where are we going?”
“Wilson’s.”
That name, either as a place or person, did not exist in my head, “And that’s going to save Ironton?”
“We need supplies.” she said brusquely, giving me a strange look, and I decided not to press the issue. I did not have long to wander as the houses grew closer together and taller, becoming far more urban but no less deserted.
Wilson’s Goods and Provisions was less distressed than the buildings on either side, but one could spend weeks cleaning and only barely take the scab off of the grime. A bell hung over the door rang cheerfully as we entered the largely denuded store. Mostly empty shelves created deserted isles where a crude iron gearworker like me limped, clanked, whistled, and ground his way as he straightened and cleaned.
“Hello.” I said to it. It stopped for a brief moment and then went back to its work, shifting dust from one spot to another. I waited only another second before repeating myself. Again he paused, then unsteadily grabbed a box of corn flakes and held it out to me. When I didn’t take it, the poor thing put the box back on the shelf. I felt a connection to this, my progenitor, but I didn’t think that he could speak, or really understand what I was saying.
Suddenly Esmeralda was there, next to me, her arms full of various bric-a-brac. “You found Stony. You two getting along?”
I looked back and forth between the teenager and the metal man, “I don’t know. I think it’s broken.”
Esmeralda peered at my face, looking for some kind of clue, for what I could not say, “You sound... upset?”
I shrugged in response, but springs and pulleys throughout my body had gone taut and uncomfortable, “I don’t think it’s right.”
She blinked and frowned, but dismissed whatever odd thoughts she had in her head as she dumped her armload of stuff into my hands. Without fleshy arms, everything wanted to go everywhere, so I didn’t get to watch her pop open his rear service panel. As I desperately tried to keep a pair of apples from bruising on the floor she produced a bound leather wrap filled with tools and spread them on the deserted shelf next to the metal worker. She took out a metal cap from her pocket and put it over the end of a turning axel. The little device gently slowed Stony’s inner workings to a stop, and he sat there, completely and totally inert.
The whole experience of seeing someone so fundamentally like myself reduced to an object so easily caused my own gears to grind and certain springs to over-tension and whine. Esmeralda made quick work of it, though. Stiff brushes cleared out accumulated dust and grease that had become a paste. One hip was barely in the joint, and a quick tap from a mallet and tightening of the socket fixed the limp. She worked quietly, as if she were alone with her task, until she removed the cap, attached the wrap to her belt and brought out a new tool from her pack. The end was similar to the cap, but it was attached to a forearm-long pole that terminated in a gear attached to two pedals, like those on a bicycle. She pumped it for a few minutes, shut its panel, and then let the old servant go. It definitely went about his business with appreciably more speed.
She glowed with pride, but when she turned to me she affected the air of someone talking to a spoiled child, “Is that better?”
I nodded mutely, but our moment together was interrupted by a call from behind, “Esme Kuhn! You can’t tell me your father finished off that bottle already?”
The gearsmith blushed furiously as she turned and demurely walked to the man who had appeared behind the counter. Her voice dripped with honey as she batted her eyes innocently, “Good morning, Mr. Goins.”
But dark clouds had collected around Mr. Goins’ bushy brows. His dark skin was shiny around a black beard that jutted pugnaciously from his chin. Even half hidden by his moustaches, the frown was evident, “Never mind that, young lady. No more rum on account for your father!”
“Oh, no, Mr. Goins. I’m here to...” she motioned me forward so that I sat the armload of stuff on the counter. She popped six quarters next to the pile, “I just needed to pick up some things for myself.”
Goins slapped his big, brown hand over the quarters, “Esme, your father owes me for his rum. That is money I need to eat. Now I find out you have money—”
Esmeralda was blushing furiously now, staring hard at the floor as her hands made angry fists, “That is my father’s bill. This is my personal money.”
“I understand, dear. But you don’t think that you should make good your father’s debt?”
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she blinked them away and nodded with as much angry grace she could muster. Goins pressed buttons on a dinging box marked ‘Incorruptible Cashier — National Manufacturing Company’ until a drawer opened and he dumped the coins inside. They clunked hollowly, the only occupants of the coin tray. But even though he was taking her money, he was moving slowly, eyes averted. One of the words written on my mind came forward and whispered: shame.
“Thank you, dear. Now run along, I’ll put this stuff back for you. I have to find out what whoever sent this clanker wants.”
But as he reached for the pile of miscellaneous goods, I stopped him with one, bronze hand. “She repaired your servant.”
My touch startled him, but my voice shocked him. He drew back from me, eyeing my shiny bronze surface suspiciously. “What did it say?”
I would have frowned, but I found I did not have the ability, “I said: she repaired your servant.”
Goins pointed at me, but addressed Esmeralda, “Is this yours.”
“No—” She began.
“My name is Leo.” I interrupted.
Goins set his jaw even more stiffly, hands on his hips, “He can’t pay me for his food or drink, but he can send his daughter in with twelve bits and a new clanker?”
“No, I swear, Mr. Goins he doesn’t even know—”
I moved in front of her, a golden wall between her and the huge adult form of Goins. The blade on my forearm was begging for release, trembling in the forearm sheath, “She did not buy me, she built me.”
His eyes were wide now, he again looked from Esmeralda to my unmoving face. Then he called out, “Stony? Stony, come here you dirty clanker.”
And the mechanical servant, feet clanging against the wooden floor responded immediately. He double timed it to the counter, obviously in far better health than anyone there could remember seeing him, and saluted smartly.
“You did this, Esme?” She nodded. “And this one?” he asked, jerking a thumb at me.
“My name is Leo.” I insisted again.
“My father made the parts years ago. I just put him together.”
“Kind of mouthy isn’t he?”
She shrugged, unsure of the direction of the conversation, “Dad redesigned his Edison tubes. They’re huge. They’ve got lots of needles, lots of layers. He’s got more memory capacity than I’ve ever seen and half of it was already full of instructions. There’s room for a whole mess more Edison tubes, but I installed all that was in his box.”
This caused Goins to hold up a hand to pause her for several seconds, “How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“I remember your father was one of the best gearsmiths, springsmiths, or steamsmiths that could be found for a hundred miles in any direction. Of course that was before your mother passed, before the iron ran out...” Goins rubbed his fingers through his kinky beard, fluffing it into even more expansive grandeur as he remembered, “Impressive lineage or no, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a woman, let alone a girl, ever becoming a gearsmith.”
Something inside her went off like a firecracker and she pounded the counter with her little fist, “But I—”
She was interrupted by Goins slapping a quarter from the Incorruptible Cashier in front of her, “I seem to remember people telling me I was a fool because no Negro cou
ld run a shop profitably in a white town. Nobody would buy anything from him, they said. Yet here, I am, nearly the last man standing in this sooty little town. Well, I guess if you are a gearsmith, then you deserve to be paid.” He smiled graciously as he pushed the quarter toward the girl and began collecting her pile into bags for her. “Is there anything else you need?”
She blinked furiously at the change for a moment, then pointed to a black cape hung high up on the wall. He looked at her askance, but smiled and nodded when she slid the quarter back to him. She put the bags of candles, rope, apples, bottles of Coca-Cola, and other miscellany into her pack with trembling hands. She spun and with great flourish put the cape across my shoulders and affixed the clasp. She was breathing short and quickly, feeling the weight of this moment of validation with her entire soul.
She had shouldered her bag when Goins spoke again, his voice again somewhat abashed by the words, “Esme, you know that now don’t have to stay in this town.”
She looked at him with open eyes, clear eyes acting as windows to a soul that could only see in absolutes, “But what happens to Ironton?”
“Ironton is dying, Esme.”
“It’s not dead yet—”
“You have skills. You could go anywhere: Detroit, New York, Porkopolis, and support yourself. Maybe even your father, too.”
“—and they say there’s treasure in LøveSlottet.”
Goins looked left and right, expecting someone to jump out and announce the gag at any moment, “LøveSlottet? Those stories go back for years. He was even more talented than your father. He built the entire mansion as a giant gearwork, meant to act as his personal servant until the day of his death. Nobody has ever gotten into the place and then gotten out...” I felt the world alive hang in the air, “Trust me when I say there is no reason VanMeek would leave anything for anyone in Ironton in that building, young lady.”
She cinched down the straps to her pack and lifted her chin, “Someone has to try.”
Clockwork Chaos Page 26