Chapter Ten: Light the Darkness, Curse the Candle

Ace stumbled on the gravel trail, but the uniformed man would not slow down. The trail looped over hills and through valleys. The man held up a pocket watch, a watch with no hands or numbers but the word “GREAT” on the face.

“We’re making great time! Get it?”

Ace didn’t and kept falling behind. He would have called out for the man to slow down, but he was breathing too hard and his throat burned.

“Don’t give up now, kiddo! We’re almost there!”

The man pointed to a distant mountaintop with a castle perched on the very summit, complete with ramparts and knights patrolling the walls. There was something odd about the way the knights moved, though…

Ace was distracted from his analysis of the knights by a babble of moaning much closer. The zombies from the dinner table had made their way to the trail just ahead and formed a picket wall. They lurched towards Ace and the man, who pulled a MASSIVE gun from his pants pocket.

“Plow right through them! We’ll make it through these guys yet. Don’t be afraid! They have no idea what’s going on! They can only hurt you by accident!”

Ace yelled, charged, tripped at the feet of the zombies–

***

–and sat up in bed, kicking back up against the wall, looking around for zombies. There were none.

Gradually, his heavy breathing slowed, and he wiped away an alarming amount of sweat from his forehead.

“Accidental. Yeah. Whatever.”

After a few minutes, he got up, grabbed some clothes from the dresser, and headed to the bathroom. His eyes passed over the clock as he walked out of the room… 3:37 in the morning.

In the shower, Ace closed his eyes and tried to relax as the hot water diluted and washed away the smell of sweat and fear. Zombies didn’t really exist… well, there was that voodoo stuff, with the chemicals brain damaging people. But the living dead, that was out of the question.

‘And into the answer.’ The thought had enterred his mind unbidden. So did the headache; Ace leaned against the wall and tried to grab something to hold onto while his balancing hardware shut down under the force of a thousand hangovers.

***

They were everywhere, which meant they were more or less evenly distributed in the parking lot. HE hauled back on the emergency brake, spun the truck around, and hopped into the bed of the truck as they started banging on the windows. The razor wire was keeping them from getting into the bed but that wouldn’t last forever.

The screams from the jail were getting louder, probably because those screaming were in danger of never screaming again. HE grabbed the grappling hook and chain and stuffed the end of the grappling hook into the barrel of the shotgun. There was a high probability that the barrel would explode, removing HIS arm and possibly the other eye, but that was okay; HE could build replacements if HE made it out of this hellhole alive.

HE aimed at a jail cell window and pulled the trigger. The kickback threw HIM back against the cab, but the hook flew straight and true, right through the bars. The yelling suddenly included many more voices, some of them completely unhuman and all of them very angry. HE grinned, hopped back into the cab, and came face-to-half-of-a-face with one of the creatures.

“Going my way?” The thing said, and lunged with a syringe of something. HE felt the needle sink into HIS arm, and twisted violently. There was a snap and a screaming pain as the needle snapped off, but very little of whatever it was could have gotten into the body. HE undid the parking brake and slammed on the accelerator, hugging the steering wheel for dear life.

When the truck hit the end of the chain, there was a violent crash. The creature flew threw the windshield and tumbled a few hundred feet, probably breaking all the bones in the extremities. HE, on the other hand, had the air crushed from HIS lungs. HE fell on his side, gasping and greying out.

The last thing HIS eyes saw was a reflection in the rearview mirror of a man in a denim jacket jumping out of the ripped open jail cell wall…

***

Cody’s head turned as Ace came out of the bathroom. His eyes were glazed and he had put his shirt on backwards, but he had a slight smile on his face. “Into the answer,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“That I’m a bit woozy from the shower. Did I ever tell you I fought zombies and won? Or at least I survived.”

“Haven’t we all?”

“Good point. I guess I better get ready for today. Batten down the hatches. Raise the roof.”

“Tote that barge, lift that bale, aaaaand swing it!”

“What barge?”

“The one in the other room. John brought it in around midnight.”

“What the…”

Ace headed around the hallway and looked at the main living area. There was no barge in sight.

“Made you look!”

***

After knocking on the door a few times, Ace leaned against the wall and continued leafing through the notebook. Eventually the door opened a crack.

“Youuu raaaang?”

“Whoa. How did you get your voice that low?”

John shrugged through the crack in the door. “Practice. What can I do you for?”

“I was hoping you could get in contact with Drew. I have a modeling job for her. Or him. But by him I still mean her. I’m putting an artificial skin shell over Kimiko and I need a female model. The guy is the closest I can think of.”

“Hmmm. I see. I hear. I don’t taste but that may be a good thing. I will call Mitch, and he should be able to hunt down Drew.”

“Great. Now if I could just re-discover how to make articial clockwork skin, everything will be just peach-tastic.”

“Peach-tastic?”

“Oh yeah. Like a situation being just peachy, but with an excessive lisp and a few people dancing behind you. It’s the difference between a signature and a signature with a flourish.”

“Oh. A John Hancock.”

“Look, I don’t need to know about your personal habits.”

“What?? …oh. Not hand cock. John Hancock was this guy back in revolutionary times. I think that was the time. I was not the best history student. But his signature had such a huge flourish to it that his name became synonymous with it.”

***

Ace tapped a pencil against the notebook. He did it exactly in time with the ticking of the clock. Cody found this very creepy, mostly because he hadn’t missed a single beat in twenty minutes. The wolf hopped into a chair and started staring at Ace.

“Hey Ace. Do androids dream of electric sheep?”

“I would imagine they dream of normal sheep. Why do you ask?”

“You seem to be the expert on androids.”

“Hmmm. Nope. Androids and clockworks are entirely different concepts.”

“What is this difference?”

“Androids are simply artificial, organic humans. Or human-like. The key is that they are alive in the chemical sense. Robots are electrical and are almost never really alive outside of science fiction.”

“And clockworks?”

“A skewering of… Cartesian Dualism, I think it is called. Ultimately there is no seperation between the mind and the body. The gears and ratchets and levers are both. Exactly the way the body works in organic creatures, like men and dogs.”

“Buh?”

“You have a brain and central nervous system. This nervous system has connections to every organ, every system in your entire body. Digestion. Respiration. Circulation. Motor control. Everything. That’s why people’s moods can be augmented greatly by just a hug. Everything is not connected, because a connection first requires seperation. Everything is already the same.”

“So what do clockworks dream of?”

“From what I know? Nothing.”

“Nothing? At all?”

“They don’t sleep, which is the prerequisite of dreaming. They can be made to imitate it, or they can go into a low power mode, but thought is always present as long as the gears spin.”

“And when the gears don’t spin?”

“Well, what would happen to you if your heart stopped beating?”

“…OH. Never mind. I get it.”

“Good. I thought I was going to have to explain everything in detail three times.”

“…wait. Can you start the gears back up and bring the clockwork back online?”

“Sure, if you can figure out how its power train works.”

“Then how is that like a heart stopping?”

“…I think this is what’s called ‘taking an analogy too far.'”

“You’re one to talk, mister put-my-soul-into-what-I-make.”

“That is a metaphor! Not an analogy!”

***

“Hey, Kimiko?”

“I am here Builder.”

“I suspected as much.” Ace hopped up on the dryer and looked at the machine. “I’ve figured it’s time to add a few more features to your system. A more human-like appearance, for starters. Is there anything you might know about your internal systems that would be incompatible with this upgrade?”

“Yes Builder.”

“Please tell me.”

“Yes Builder. My construction used an exo-skeleton model, with the actuators and impellers within a structural frame. This contrasts with the human anatomy, which has an internal scaffold to which actuating muscles are attached, with nerves and other biological systems held in a fluid environment by a thin sheath of skin.”

“Hmmm. Still, shouldn’t be too hard. Let me see your left arm again.”

Kimiko held out her left arm, and Ace began moving it through various planes of motion. Eventually he pulled a wrench from his pocket and began removing the hex nuts around the armor plating. The two plates swung aside to reveal a set of metallic rods inside.

“Okay, what am I supposed to be looking at here?”

“Two of the frame members act as the sides of a parralelogram. The third member is a staged control rod for the wrist joint. Other rods control hand and finger motions.”

“Ah. Of course. Mechanistic centralization. Let me jimmy off the armor for the elbow.”

Two more nuts fell to the floor and the armor came off. The elbow was a complicated set of gears lined up like the tumblers in a car odometer. Ace nodded. “I know enough about the inside of your head to reconstruct a jaw. Your voice machine will need to be altered. I think this will work fine, as long as I can get the right materials.”

***

“…so let me get this straight. You don’t carry uncut buckskin leather.”

“Afraid not sir. There’s just not a demand for that among our clientelle.”

“Despite the fact that your store is called ‘Leather and Stuff’ right out there.”

“Well, leather is just one material associated with the alternative scene. Latex and-”

“Neither of those substances can be used to make a visual approximation of human skin, can they?”

“Well, not that I know- did you say human skin?”

“Yes I did. From a distance it has to appear just like a normal person. In fact, ideally, it would look normal up close and feel normal at extreme ranges, but my experience leads me to beleive that might be asking too much.”

The clerk rubbed his fingers on a set of nose peircings. “So you need something that looks normal, huh?”

“Yes. Something… let me think… publically acceptable. I don’t know the technical term for it in the alternative lifestyle jargon.”

“Oh, now I get you. Well, we have a few things that are completely undetectable under the clothes.”

Ace scratched his head. “It couldn’t hurt to take a look, even though I’m still pretty sure I’ll have to make what I need myself.”

“Fair enough. We can’t cater to everybody.”

“Judging by the weird looks the place gets, you hardly cater to anybody, and everyone you don’t cater to is a psychotic Puritan with a stick up their ass.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go THAT far. I’ll get Janine to watch the register and show you the stuff in the back room.”

***

Cody’s ears twitched when the door opened. The man-wolf-dog yawned, stretched, and headed into the living room area. Ace was putting down some big bags of stuff, and Cody immediately identified the logo.

“You went to a SEX SHOP??”

“Technically, it’s just an adult bookstore and shop for marital aids.”

“Whatever! What the fuck would you need from there?”

“Building materials. A large amount of Kimiko’s mechanics are just that, mechanics. I can rebuild the frame and put on some artificial skin, but she’ll still be… you know… uber-mechanical. Humans have a huge fixation on sex; that’s why places like Leather and Stuff stay in business even if nobody ever admits to going there. The conceptual accretion on this stuff will integrate and humanize her personality.”

“…oh Jebus. Please do not say that you’re going to use vibrators and whips to rebuild her skeleton. I swear if you do, I’m gonna throw up. right here. And you will NEVER, EVER get the stain out.”

“Your imagination is getting ahead of you. I’m just using some of the minor, tamer stuff to tip her personality more towards humanity. No whips are involved.”

“Oh good.”

“Yeah, the vibrator is there because I got this killer idea for a hand weapon-”

“HEURK!”

***

Drew leaned against the wall by the door, holding a duffel bag. “I’d just like to say, for the eighth time, that I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

John looked at her quizically. “Do you have a sound logical arguement that says that, or a gaping hole and vaccuum in your gut that says that?”

“The hole.”

“Then you’re talking out your ass. QED. Besides, if you’re going to be a mage, you gotta listen to that voice. The best ideas are the ones with an involuntary physical reaction.”

“Yeah? What if the reaction is a heart attack?”

“Then the problem is on your end for putting way too much strain on the heart. You must stretch first! And a daily program of aerobics and calisthenics may also serve you well.”

“I take care of my body. I don’t need your blood-splattered help.”

“What if I was splattered in barbecue sauce? Would that make a difference? And more importantly, could you tell the difference between blood and barbecue sauce from a distance?”

Drew stared, bewildered. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It only means what you want it to. Let me rephrase. Do you really want to be the person you could have been, or do you want to be the person you would like to become?”

“…they’re the same thing!”

“That remains to be seen.”

The door to Ace’s apartment opened, and John, who was leaning on the door, fell inside and crashed into Ace.

“…so… what do you know, Ace-of-Space?”

“I know what’s going to happen if you don’t GET OFF OF ME RIGHT NOW.”

***

Cody was impressed with the transformation after Drew had come out of the bathroom. Far more impressed than anyone else, even knowing what to expect. Drew had gone to some extreme lengths, adding a completely different hairstyle, possibly a wig. The clothes accentuated all curves. The makeup was flawless.

“Hey, hound dog. Stop drooling at me. That’s sexual harassment, and I don’t have to take it.”

“First off, I’m a wolf. Second of all, I drool all the time now. Thirdly, you should consider it a compliment. Which leads me to issue number four; shut up bitch! Get in the kitchen and make me a sammich!”

Ace bit off some thread and began stringing it through something that looked like a chimeric cross-breed of a clothes iron and a sewing machine. “This would suddenly explain a great deal of Kimiko’s original animosity. Drew, if you’d just stand over here next to the wall, I can start taking measurements.”

Cody hopped up on the sofa next to John and sat down. “Hey, you know what’s most awesome about this? While Ace is working on the robot girl, she can’t come after me. When the machine’s away, the dog will play.”

“Play what? You have no thumbs. This puts most if not all games and musical instruments out of your reach. Except maybe the kazoo.”

“…you are a depressing man. Hey Ace, please tell John I’m not talking to him anymore.”

“Cody, if I acidentally stab Drew with a needle because you distracted me at an inopportune moment, I’m giving her that psycho-knife I made out of the vibrator.”

“HEURK!”