Amalus reacts to remembering her past.
When she arrived at Chooner’s Lane there were still a good number of people about, ducking in and out of stores. Amalus hung back in the alley resting against the bit of warm wall, ignoring people who stared at her when she coughed. Gradually the numbers dwindled, the darkness deepened, and she edged round to the pie stall.
“Gharom?”
“She don’t work here now. Since I discovered her giving my profits away to some filthy beggar. I reckon that’s probably you. Get lost, and don’t come near my stall again.”
They glared at each other across the counter. Amalus coughed, deliberately, she spat loosened phlegm in a long arc that flew over the counter and landed across the pies sitting in the warming oven. If Ghoram had been working the glass cover would have been down to protect the pies, Amalus would never have been able to do it. The stall owner cursed and swore. Amalus jogged into the alley pretty sure that he wouldn’t risk leaving the stall to chase her, but kept up her shambling haste all the same.
At the other end of the alley she turned left and slowed to her normal shuffle. The rain pattered softly on the rags covering her head. Hunger faded from the foreground. Amalus knew nothing now. Concern for Gharom fluttered in the background but the aggressive encounter had once again thrust Amalus into a twilight of memory. She muttered as she walked, reforming arguments which had been lost decades ago. Unconsciously she began to walk uptown. The main roads were filled with wagons bringing goods into the city, with tuk-tuks that weaved in and out - their passengers clinging to safety straps, with people scurrying to get out of the rain. Her ramblings were lost in the noise.
In Artificers Square lights were still on, doors still open. Amalus crossed the middle of the square, heading for her old workshop. The door opened and a youth exited. Amalus frowned and halted, not recognizing him. She looked at the name above the door and seeing D’vore Developments dragged her back to the present. The unconscious purpose with which she had negotiated the route to the square disappeared. She began coughing. The youth glanced in her direction, but kept moving.
Amalus did a slow turning sweep of the area. Random filaments of the past sparked as she looked at the doors and windows. She fought to stay present and reached for a focus. The machines, they would be coming here tonight.
One of the larger workshops was already dark and its doorway was deep. Amalus crossed to it and huddled down to wait the coming of the automata. The past still threatened to consume her, like an angry god devouring supplicants who had raised its ire. It was always easier to succumb, to drift with the past and gnaw the skeleton of her failures. She focused hard on the machines. Remembering them from the previous evening, recalling individual forms.
The workshops became dark and silent as work finished for the day. Some workers exited through the square, none of them looked at Amalus. Rain continued to fall, though the depth of the doorway Amalus was in protected her. Time passed and the city grew quieter until there was only the patter of raindrops. Amalus dozed.
When she woke the square was half full of automata and more were arriving. The incessant rain pattered against the metal bodies, little sharp tings where a drop hit an area that resonated. The feeble street light cast watery shadows, barely illuminating the machines, but one caught her attention.
Pushing herself up against the door she waited for the coughing to subside before walking over to the machine she thought she recognised. The closest automata watched as she walked round their fellow, peering at it. Finally she ran her hands over the side of the machines torso. Her fingers traced welds and when the straight line twisted and twirled she knew for sure that this was a machine she had built. She remembered welding that seam, remembered signing her initials in the weld. It had been an impulse. The end of a long week where a new form of propulsion hadn’t worked as planned. Solving the problem and sealing the casing had been an act of relief and release. She trailed her hand across the wet steel. For a moment she was complete, her mind whole again like before the decline, the fall, the fracture. Looking at the square functional head she tried to remember who had bought it and for what purpose. The details remained elusive. No matter.
“I made you,” she said. Her words were swallowed by the air. Metal necks creaked as heads turned to look at her.
Amalus looked round. Every one of the machines faced her. Some had shifted position so they had a line of sight. Amalus stepped back nervously.
“You are The Maker?”
She turned to the voice. Valves glowed warmly in the chest of the talker. She remembered designing the system to allow it to shout at recalcitrant birds.
“I, I designed this one,” she pointed at the one she had examined, “and I designed you.”
“You are The Maker.”
Amalus looked round at the machines. She couldn’t be sure she was responsible for all of them but enough, she guessed.
“Yes.”
“Why did you leave us?” The same machine spoke, its valves pulsing brighter. Glass eyes and slits or bands with semi-precious stones stared at Amalus. Despite the emotionless faces there was an air of expectation.
“I didn’t know you needed me.”
“We are your creation. You knew our purpose. You knew our limitations and that we would need repaired, reformed. You knew our springs would seize and our pistons rust.”
“But I sold you. Your owners should have maintained you.”
“Some did. Some did not. But they were our owners. You are The Maker. You abandoned us.”
AmInd had built robust machines, designed to last. But there was never an intention that the company be the ongoing wardens of the machines. They were sold with warranties and there was always an expectation that some owners would come back to the workshop for repairs, but the majority would either use someone local, do it themselves, or just run the machine until it seized up and was abandoned in the corner of a shed or field. From somewhere, these machines had taken memories of being built, and their builder, and expected her to care for them.
Amalus was unsure what to say and stood silent for long moments, looking round at the metal bodies and recognizing more and more of them.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“We forgive you.”
“You speak for all of you?”
“All who seek The Maker speak for each other. We are of one mind. You made us, now you must remake us, restore us by your powers.”
Desire flared in Amalus, a burning sun of craving for tools to be in her hand and to fix these mechanisms sprung from her own imagination. The prospect of fixing and mending blossomed like a summer meadow and drove doubt to the edge of her consciousness.
“Yes, yes, I will remake you. I will rebuild you. I am your maker.”
She pulled herself to full height, muscles complaining at being stretched out. She took a deep breath, the air was redolent of grease, oil, and metal from the machines around her and the workshops lining the square. Air whistled in her lungs. She coughed, pain flared in her chest and she hunched over coughing, and coughing. Rain dripped from her hood and she spat thick, bloody, phlegm onto the cobbles.
Fear leached through her. Fear at missing out on her own resurrection. Fear at having spent years wandering no better than dead and now when she was about to return to a life that meant something to her, life itself would depart.
Tears warmed her cheeks. This was what it had been like before. Hope, joy, purpose - all gone. Hope declining as she saw all her work stolen away; joy falling away as distrust and hatred grew; sanity fracturing as her purpose in life dissolved.
The coughing continued through the tears. With her eyes shut tight bright flashes bounced across her eyelids, she fell to her hands and knees, leaning on all fours like a ragged beast. When the coughing subsided she huddled back on her knees, eyes closed and arms clasped around her chest. Rocking back and forth didn’t ease the pain, but the rhythm soothed her in the way a mother’s voice calms a fevered child.
Eventually the spasms in her chest subsided and she felt strong enough to open her eyes. A forest of metal surrounded her. Scrambling back in fright she looked up at a host of automata who stared at her from blank faces. She stumbled to her feet and looked anxiously for a gap, a way out. Scurrying as fast as her sore lungs allowed she headed for an alley, wanting to get away.
“Maker.” A mechanical voice called behind her. The word meant nothing, but she ran harder, turning into a street which headed towards the bottom part of town. Without looking she shambled into a roadway, narrowly missing a tuk-tuk which swerved violently. Her feet slapped wetly, her breathing rasped soggily, and blood roared in her ears. Every time there was an alley or a cross street she turned into it until eventually she could run no more and another fit of coughing assailed her.
When it finally subsided she looked around. She was an anonymous back-alley, a smell of ink suffused the air; solvent and colorants. She must be in the printers quarter. Memory of a pie-stall and a sympathetic blind woman floated up. A late-night monorail passed overhead with a hiss of compressed steam and she glanced up. The carriage pulled into the station. When it stopped Amalus coughed, and turned her attention to hopes of a still warm pie.
This ending, of a person broken by the past and returning to a non-remembering present, was a story looking at mental breakdown. I felt it had a reality to it, but I think I'm the only person who ever liked it.
In the novel Amalus & Gharom have a much larger role, as do the automata.
text by stuartcturnbull, art by anaterate via Pixabay