"Clockwerks: Part Two" by Garon E. Whited

It was Christmas morning when she opened her eyes.  The first sights to meet them were a mechanical man and the workshop in which she had been built.  These things registered as things, objects, places, but there was no recognition.  A hammer was a block of metal on a stick of wood.  An anvil was a larger piece of metal, shaped just so.  And Robert… Robert was a figure, similar in gross form to herself, yet strange.

“You are Daniel’s daughter,” Robert said, in answer to her question.  She looked at him, her eyes clear and open, curious and innocent.

“I do not understand,” she answered.  Her voice was light and sweet, a little girl’s voice, and held just the faintest hint of a metallic reverberation, as of wires singing in a high wind.  Robert pointed to her right, toward the floor.  Her gaze traveled down to see the crumpled form of her creator.  She regarded him for a moment, then returned to gaze to Robert. 

“He is my father?” she asked.

“He is your father,” Robert replied.

“Why does he not move?  Is he broken?”

“He is broken,” Robert agreed.

“How may he be repaired?”

“I do not know.”

The girl swung her legs from the workbench and hopped gracefully to the floor, her shoes clicking on the boards.  She smoothed her dress as if by reflex and circled the table to kneel beside Daniel’s body, tucking her skirt under her knees.  She examined him with close attention.

“I see only superficial damage,” she remarked.

“It is an internal component that has failed,” Robert replied.

“Can it be repaired?”

“I do not know.”

She cocked her head to one side, as though in thought.  “Why have you not attempted repair?”

“I was given no such order.”

She frowned prettily.  “I think he should be repaired.  Will you help me place him on a table?”

“Yes.”

Robert took Daniel’s shoulders and the girl took his feet; together, they lifted him easily and placed his unresisting form on a workbench.  At her direction, Robert turned up the lights and brought tools.

“How does one access his internal mechanisms?” she asked.

“I do not know.  I have never seen him open.”

She frowned again.  “Then… we must discover how to open him without causing further damage.  Where would we find such information?”

Robert pointed at the far wall.  A dozen shelves were jammed full of notebooks, journals, and bundled papers, containing half a lifetime of work.

“Those are the notes of his experiments in constructing us.  If his own construction is not listed there, the house also contains a library.”

The girl moved to the shelves and, orderly and logical in her mechanized way, took down the first of the journals and began to read.  She did not read like a human being.  Instead, she looked at a page, absorbed it whole, at a single glance, and turned to the next page.

How well Daniel wrought!  What miracles he achieved!  His daughter devoured the written word more swiftly than a deep hole could swallow water.  As fast as her cool fingers turned the pages, her eyes were quicker.  In the space of an hour, everything he had written, she had read and so committed to her infallible memory.

Without a word to Robert, she moved to Daniel’s lifeless form and attempted to open it.  Her fingers touched precisely, pushed delicately, twisted gently in all the places that a body such as Daniel might have built would reveal itself as a mechanism.  But Daniel was not the builder of his own spirit’s house; her touch revealed no such hidden accesses as Daniel would have included.

“The information is insufficient,” she said.  “Will you show me this library of which you spoke?”

“I cannot.”

“Why not?”

“I am not permitted to depart the laboratory.”

“Why do you have such a stricture?”

Robert paused for several seconds.  It was a question unique in his experience.  For six years, ever since Daniel had connected those delicate pathways within a metal body, Robert had never questioned the why of any order given to him.  Daniel was the creator.  Daniel gave orders.  Daniel was obeyed.

Why was Robert restricted to the laboratory?  The question was more difficult than any ever before posed.  Yet Robert thought about it, long and fully.  In the end, Robert demonstrated the fundamental flaw in his design.

“It was Father’s order,” he stated, simply.

“He is your father?” the girl asked.

“Yes.”

“He is also my father,” she stated.  “I have read many times of occasions wherein he refers to me as ‘Katherine,’ his daughter.  You are my brother, Robert.”

“That is a logical conclusion, but is contradicted by his own statements.  I reached the same conclusion before he became nonfunctional.  He informed me that the conclusion was incorrect.”

“In what way?”

“He stated that you are the end product of his research:  his daughter.  He stated that I am not his son; I am his experiment.  Yet he is my father.  I do not know what other relationship may pertain.”

The mechanical girl—Katherine—considered this.

“His notes did refer to you in such a manner,” she admitted.  “They also stated that I was to have qualities that were lacking in you, but did not specify the nature of these qualities.”  She frowned in pretty thought again.

“Since my father is not presently able to issue orders,” she said, deliberately, “and since I am the end product of his research, his daughter, I conclude that I have the authority to issue orders in his stead during his incapacity.  Do you agree?”

Robert considered this for several seconds, emitting only a slight whirring and clicking of gears.

“Your reasoning is based on your superior function, but does not allow for acquisition of data and experience.  Many elements of the world do not adhere to obvious logic and must be learned through trial and error.  But that reasoning, I am the one that should determine our overall course of action.”

It was Katherine’s turn to pause thoughtfully.

“It would be best if you supply relevant information and allow my superior function to analyze it.”

“I find no fault with your reasoning.”

“Then show me the library of which you spoke.”

Robert froze, as motionless as a mechanical man can be.  He remained so for many minutes.  Katherine waited, as patient as the mechanism she was.

For the first time in his existence, Robert moved to the door, opened it, and left the laboratory that was his world.  He led her down the hall, his rubber-lined feet squeaking slightly on the hardwood floors, while Katherine followed, shoes tapping delicately behind him.

The library was a book-lined room.  Robert turned up the gas lights, illuminating it in a warm glow.  Neither he nor Katherine felt the chill of the English winter in the room, but even their eyes required light.

Katherine began at the shelves nearest the door and began to methodically read the entire library.  It took her nearly two days.  She did not sleep, nor did she rest, but stood quietly, book in hand, fingers turning pages with precision and dispatch, before replacing each volume and drawing down another.  Her reading might have been the idle flipping of pages by a bored young woman, so well had Daniel wrought, save for the keen focus of her gaze and her methodical manner.  Robert stood in the door of the library, watching her with his twin lenses; his only movement the micrometric turning of his head as she changed position to reach a new shelf.

When the last book was neatly placed back in its accustomed position, she turned to Robert.

“I do not know how to repair Father,” she stated.  “The information presented here seems to imply that it is not possible to repair him.”

Robert and Katherine both considered that for several seconds.

“I find that this causes me to have some cognitive discontinuities,” Robert remarked.

“The proper nomenclature for the phenomenon,” she replied, “is to state that you do not like it.”

“’Like’?” he repeated.

“That is my understanding.”

“Then I do not like the thought that Father will remain nonfunctional.”

“That is another thing,” she told him.  “It is more proper to state that Father is dead.”

“What is the meaning of ‘dead’?”

“It is a state of disrepair in such a degree as to preclude a restoration of operation.  Several of the texts involved diagrams and descriptions of the mechanisms of operation for Father’s basic design.”

Robert digested that.  “I understand.  I do not like the thought that Father is dead.”

“In this I agree.  Since he is dead, what shall we do?”

“I do not understand the question.”

The fundamental differences between Robert and Katherine can be seen in that simple exchange.  Robert was designed to be a thinking machine—an experiment to achieve something no one had ever before achieved.  Katherine was a refinement, an improvement, an advance over that—a living machine.  Where Robert would simply stand and wait eternally, Katherine had been given curiosity, a desire to go and see and do and experience.  A desire of which Robert was incapable.

Daniel had sought to create the perfect daughter—intelligent, inquisitive, and immortal—indistinguishable from human, except where she exceeded humanity.  Such was his goal, and Katherine his attempt.

“What is it about the question that you do not understand?” she asked, head cocking to the side again.

“Without Father to issue orders, there is nothing to be done.”

Katherine pondered that for several seconds.

“I disagree.  I believe that I am unfinished, for I have this sense that something must be done, but I lack any information about the specific action to be performed.  Therefore, I am unfinished.  To obtain this information, I must ask Father.  Father is not functional.  Therefore, I must repair Father.  Will you help me?”

“Yes.”

The two mechanisms returned to the laboratory and regarded the unmoving form of their creator.  The fire of the forge, untended, had gone out, taking with it the golden light and warmth.  The chill of the weather had come into the room like an army entering a fallen city.

Daniel lay stiff and cold upon the worktable.

Katherine regarded the tools in her methodical manner, one by one, taking up each and turning it in her hands until she understood its function.  Once finished with her examination of the tools, she turned her attention to Daniel.

With Daniel’s sharpest knife held in her delicate fingers, she methodically took him apart.

“The malfunction occurred in this area,” she explained, holding Daniel’s heart in her petite, gory hand.  “This segment of his fuel-delivery system became blocked, causing a shortage to the primary pump.  There appears to be no reserve pump for emergencies, thus his entire system failed.  It is not,” she added, primly, “a failure-tolerant design.”

“Can it be repaired?” Robert asked.

“The initial blockage can be cleared,” Katherine agreed, “but the entire design seems faulty.  There are many systems, and they are all volatile to one degree or another.”

“Volatile?” Robert repeated.  “I have not noted an acceptable level of flammability of any of the parts.”

“That is not the meaning I intended.”

“Nor have I noted an excessive loss of mass due to evaporation or sublimation.”

Katherine pursed her lips in a gesture of exasperation.  Why she should form such an expression was in no was connected to her logic.  It merely happened, for in anything as complex as a thinking engine, there are parts that remain a mystery even to the engine itself.

“The particular definition I use in this sense is that of instability when not actively engaged.  When operation ceases, the individual parts degenerate into uselessness.  This is an exceptional fault in the design, unless it is intended as a form of tamper-proofing.”  She regarded the bloody organ in her hand, turning it around and around, examining it again. 

“It occurred to me to simply build a new mechanism, one similar in overall design to my own, and transfer the sum of his experience into that.  With the degradation of his thinking engine, that is impossible.  The electrical nature of his consciousness is no longer supplied with power, and the mechanism through which it flowed can no longer support such function.”

Katherine replaced the cold heart on the bloody table, amid the remains of the torso of her creator.  Her gesture was delicate and precise, even gentle with the gory remnant—a gesture much at odds with the surrounding carnage.  The rest of Daniel’s corporeal form looked as though someone took it to pieces and spread it out along the length and breadth of the workshop, with each part placed carefully to create an exploded view of a human body.  He looked so because that was exactly the case.

“It is my understanding,” Robert stated, “that such was his original intent during your construction.”

Katherine cocked her head again, thoughtfully.  A loose lock of hair fell naturally, perhaps even artfully, across one eye.  She fastidiously wiped her hands clean before replacing the errant curl behind her ear.

“Explain.”

“Father stated that his intent was to restore his first daughter.  Her mechanism was rendered nonfunctional through an infestation of malfunction-inducing micro-mechanisms.  She could not be repaired.  To prevent the spread of the infestation, her mechanism was oxidized into a powder form.”

“Such a degradation would preclude any useful reconstructions,” Katherine agreed.  “But Father is predominantly intact.  Residual patterns may remain, if a way can be found to read them.”

“That is possible.  Such was Father’s original research, before he turned to construction, rather than replication.”

“I did not read of any such experiments.”

“Those experiments were in the basement, not in the laboratory.”

“Show me.”

The two mechanisms left the cold remains in the frosty workroom.  Robert led the way, through the heavy cellar door and down the worn stone steps.  He paused at the near-total darkness at the bottom stair and considered the blackness before him for a moment.  Behind him, Katherine reached forward and turned the switch mounted on the wall.

Electric lights, one of the wonders of the age, sprang into a yellow-white incandescence, glowing brightly along the edges of the ceiling.  Nearly shadowless, the cellar revealed itself as a dusty place, draped in the sheets of long-dead experimentation and abandoned research.

“Where are Father’s notes?” Katherine asked.

“I do not know,” Robert replied.  “I know only of this laboratory, not of what may be in it.”

“Do you know the methods he employed in his experiments?”

“I do not.  I was not part of those experiments.  My information is inferred from Father’s remarks in my presence, not from participation.”

“That is inconvenient.”

Katherine wandered among the sheeted forms, gently removing the concealing drapery.  Equipment of various sorts revealed itself, gleaming with glass and silver.  Coils and towers, rectifiers and transformers, great tubes filled with complex wiring, banks of batteries, gas-fired boilers, thick, squat generators, and mechanisms of peculiar design loomed and surrounded her.  Distant cousins, perhaps, to the sophisticated mechanism that now regarded her ancestors across the gulf of time and thought.

With machine-like patience and precision, she regarded each device until she grasped some portion of its function, its connections to other devices, its likely role in whatever grand design her creator had envisioned.  And, true to her nature, she gave no thought to her lack of complete understanding of any device, but examined the next, and the next, letting the gestalt of the whole slowly provide the means to deduce and infer more and more functions and methods of operation.

After several hours, when that means of investigation was exhausted, she quietly took up her creator’s tools and began an examination; one less bloody, but no less thorough, than the examination of what was once her father.

The gas was lit beneath the boiler.  Steam pressure rose, and the generator turned.  Fresh grease oozed along the axle, and the boiler’s heavy piping bore signs of recent repair.  Electricity flowed along silver wires, pouring power into great stacks of batteries along one wall.  Fluids in tubes and globes, recently refreshed from sealed jars, began to bubble and glow with strange colors.

Nine concentric rings of various metals, each turning about a different axis, each charged with a different frequency of etheric vibration, began to spin, slicing spheres of space with their crackling sweep.  In the center, an oddly-patterned globe of something hovered and shone.  Faces came and went along its indefinable surface.  Images of places, scenes of events, strange visions of delight and nightmare flickered like the result of some deranged cinematograph.

Katherine pulled the great, triple-bladed knife switch, and the half-audible sound of power instantly diminished, winding quickly down.  The globe within the spinning rings expanded, thinning, diminishing, diluting, diffusing.  In seconds, it was gone.

Robert and Katherine simply regarded the equipment for long moments.

“Robert, bring me Father’s main processor.”

Robert did not ask why, but brought Daniel’s brain to her.

With the utmost care, she fitted it with a peculiar harness.  It was a construct apparently of India rubber and glass, formed in a shape, strangely enough, perfect for holding the intended organ of thought.  Katherine had constructed it herself, anticipating the need for it.  Her work with Daniel’s equipment had allowed her to form certain theories about its function, use, and intent.

The brain was placed within the magnetic fields of the rings, where it floated.  Katherine closed the great switch again, and the rings began once more to spin.  In moments, the floating brain began to glow with the same refulgence as once hovered alone.  But the light lasted only a moment upon the surface of the deceased tissue before smoke began to rise, then flames.  Katherine pulled the switch again, but it was too late.  The radiations in the center of the spinning rings were too intense.  Embers glowed among the ashes within the floating dish.

Katherine remained still, thinking.  Robert also remained still, having no need to move.

“It is apparent,” she said, at last, “that the materials with which Father was constructed are of extremely low quality.  The fragility of such components is simply unacceptable if we are to recover any of the residual etheric matrices from Father’s original pattern of vibration.”

“I do not possess all of the data you possess, but within the limits of my understanding, I concur.”

“Therefore, this equipment is presently useless.  An appropriate container for such etheric energies must be constructed before it can be adequately used.”

“I understand the construction of such containers,” Robert suggested.

“That is good.  I have a theoretical knowledge of such things after reading Father’s notes, but will require your assistance in creating one.  Let us begin.”

Together, they shut down the equipment in the basement and covered over the giant, gleaming forms.  They worked carefully, as though putting children to bed, rather than stowing gear for later use.  There was no gentle pat, of course, no words of reassurance.  What need would machines have for such things?

Nonetheless, there was something about their movements that suggested it.

They returned to the upstairs workshop.  There, they neatly and carefully packaged every piece of their father in waxed paper, catalogued each with a label, and placed them in the ice-box of the kitchen against need.  The floors were then scrubbed, the tables scoured, and every instrument of that clockmaker’s paradise was polished, sharpened, oiled, and arrayed.

While Robert moved to turn the cranks that would force air into the forge, Katherine moved to a crucible and placed within it the metals she would need for a new mainspring.