Watching her uncle tune the clockworks had always been a fascinating experience for Sherry. She would sit at the side of his workbench as he examined their many gears and relays, checking over their bundles of wires and cables and pulleys with intricate care. He would explain what was wrong with one, or where the owner had misused it in the past as he went along. He often prompted her for tools, as he seemingly required an endless flow of clamps, vices, and grips to hold their innards at bay as he searched for the root of the problem.
Today she watched him as he worked on a blonde model. Her shell was designed to look like a little serving girl, but she had the same workings as any of the others that her uncle had serviced over the years.
“Tell me little one, why did your master send you to us?” he inquired of the clockwork as he peered into her chest cavity, searching for the root of its problems.
“Master informs me that I am underproductive and slow to respond,” the clockworks voice was feminine, but hollow, lifeless. Like someone stored the words in a can and opened it up to hear them again and again until there was no spirit or passion left in them. Their voices were always slightly unnerving to Sherry, but she had grown used to their dull, flat tones, and the lifeless gazes their eyes cast about as they examined their surroundings.
“See here Sherry? Two gears on her inner core are misaligned, one spins but it only catches every third or fourth tooth. It must have been a poor fit when she was made, and over time it has grown worse and worse,” her uncle pointed out the trouble point to her, his white brows knitting as he squinted down the length of his nose, through his glasses at the worrisome gear.
“I’ll grab a replacement for it, what size?” she asked.
“A37,” he responded, without looking up, “She’s got a malfunctioning power-supply as well, could you bring me a nexus as well?”
“Won’t that damage her memories and behaviors if we swap it out?” she called over as she searched through the gear bins for the appropriate part.
“Only if we take too long replacing it. The one she has is ramping up too quickly, causing excessive wear on her joints, she’ll be completely bust in another year if this continues,” her uncle called over to her.
“Master informs me that I am next to useless, and he wishes he had his old model back. I am unable to appease him on this,” the clockwork informed them. It was the one thing that always took Sherry by surprise: when the clockworks decided to talk, they usually did so without rhyme or reason, they simply conveyed whatever happened to be bouncing around their heads. They made interesting conversational partners, but due to their very nature, they were prone to many logic traps and easily confused by a simple turn of phrase.
“Your master will get many years out of you yet. He just should have had you looked at immediately instead of waiting so long. Now tell me if this hurts you,” her uncle requested as he tinkered with a setting on the clockwork’s back. With its front splayed open, and parts strewn about, he had one hand elbow deep up its front, struggling to release a clasp under its tiny throat, while he teased one of the small dials on its back.
“I am incapable of feeling pain, sir,” it responded.
“You know that isn’t correct. You feel discomfort and pain, so that you know you are being damaged. You do not feel the need or desire to vocalize it however. What I want to know is if this makes you feel better or worse, little one?” he inquired.
“I am unsure,” it replied.
“We’ll have you walking around once we replace that damaged power-supply, you can tell us then how you feel,” he gave it a reassuring pat.
Sherry brought over the gear and the power-supply. The gear was about the size of the tip of her pinky, but the power-supply was quite heavy. Composed of two intertwining crystals with ports for wires and cables pre-drilled into it, the power-supply weighed about fifteen pounds and glowed faintly.
“Now, we will swap this out in a moment, but when we do you fill experience a distinct sensation. Do your best to not thrash about when it happens, but it is only natural for your body to react unpleasantly,” he looked the clockwork in the eye, it stared back through him, beyond him, at some distant point far away from the workshop.
“Is this what it is like to die?” it asked.
“In essence, you will be dead for about five minutes, but then you will return. You should experience no further ill-effects beyond a mild start-up jolt which may cause you to cycle through a few imbedded memories and commands. Your motors will be disabled until we confirm you’re operational again however,” her uncle explained. Like all clockwork creations, when faced with their own death, they were surprisingly calm. Then again, they were never truly alive to begin with.
“Proceed, master would like me back by dinner, or he fears he will starve if no one is around to cook for him,” the clockwork instructed, as if it had a say in the matter.
“Have a good sleep,” he whispered as he pulled the central power-cable free. The clockwork’s arms and legs struggled, trying to thrash away his hand from inside its body, but unable to move more than a few inches due to the pre-emptive disabling of its motors. Latent power vanished from it, as it uttered a string of nonsensical phrases, its artificial life vanishing from it a few heartbeats later.
“Okay, remove that tainted supply and place it over on the bench for examination. I’ll install the new one and power her up again,” he instructed as he set about prepping the new power-supply for installation.
“When you power it up again,” she corrected him.
“Hmm?” he grunted as he bolted on fasteners onto the crystalline power-supply.
“You referred to it as a her, it is an it,” she explained.
“It looks like a small girl, it is only natural to occasionally refer to them as what they appear to be,” he shook his head. Sherry sighed as she pulled the cables and parts off the old supply.
“There isn’t anything apparently wrong with this supply, uncle,” she frowned as she looked at it.
“It’s overheating. If you observe it long enough you’ll see it discharging slightly, so something is rather wrong with it. Set it down over there, and help me attach all cables to this new one,” he requested as he hauled the new power-supply over to the clockwork. Sherry glared at the defective supply before setting it down on an empty examination table.
“We have two minutes and forty seconds before memory death occurs,” she reminded as she joined her uncle in the assembly process.
“Plenty of time, make sure to attach the rear cables, my old hands have trouble getting those on tight these days,” he grunted as their arms knit around each other. It was difficult work having two sets of arms struggling to snap and screw and bolt on all the appropriate connections in such a short period of time.
“Done and done,” she informed as she withdrew her hands.
“Restoring power,” he motioned for her to keep away incase something malfunctioned.
“Master, over the windows, rainbows, dozens for tea, always problems these days, more paper sir?” the clockwork cycled through a handful of garbled phrases as its memory cache cleared out.
“How are you feeling little one?” her uncle smiled down at it. Its eyes snapped up to him momentarily before drifting away and focusing on nothing in particular.
“Several core systems are disabled or non-functional,” it informed him.
“Yes, we turned those off prior to removing your old power-supply,” he reminded it.
“Apologies, all operational systems are functional,” it informed.
“I’m restoring power to your motors, could you please give a diagnostic of what remains to be worked on?” he requested.
“Certainly, printing report,” it chirped as a long string of paper spooled out of its mouth. The paper was dotted with numbers, letters and other symbols, all of them referring to parts, locations, operational percentages, strains and usages.
“Your master must have you doing a lot of work cleaning,” he commented.
“Most of my time is spent performing housework, correct,” it responded.
“I can tell from the joint wear. You will require a servicing in three months for a few of these, but there is nothing pressing at this point. We can replace a few of your coils and gearings for general performance improvements,” her uncle stated.
“Master wants any and all service work done as soon as possible,” it replied.
“Then we’ll get to work on that,” he smiled, handing Sherry the print out list. Her job had just turned into an elaborate game of guess the part. She was familiar with all of the parts in their spoken terms, but the clockwork data reports were full of symbols and abbreviations that made her head spin. Since it was a stream of seven characters stacked end on end, it was easy to get lost in it. The location was determined with a double letter, the part with a combination of a letter and two digits, and then the wear percentage as a flat three-digit percentile. Making the wear more complicated was that it tracked up to three decimal places, with the printing of a tiny dot marking whether the remaining wear was at ninety-nine point nine percent and near perfect, or nine point ninety-nine percent, which was vastly near failure. Since that point could be placed before any of the three numbers, if the wear was critical and part failure eminent, it often required double or triple checking.
There was a sharp knock at the door to the workshop.
