Chapter 3: Ayden
Ayden Lorrike masssaged his temples. This was the third time in a week that he'd woken with a searing headache, and gods dammit, he just did NOT have time for that today.
Staring down at the jumbled pile of gears, springs and other intricate bits of clockwork in front of him, he wondered just how much money he'd give up if he just locked up shop and packed a bowl of opium. These days, that was about the only thing that could make the things stop.
It wasn't just the pain behind the eyes, but also the light sensitivity, and the nausea. Puking into a pile of cogs was appreciably worse than the feeling of an angry child jabbing your retina with a pointy stick. If every single bit of half-digested potato wasn't painstakingly fished out of every single tooth of every single gear the whole mechanism the parts belonged to could fail if it ran once the vomit dried. Four times he'd replaced table clocks or pocket watches he'd inadequately scrubbed. Four times was more than enough. This morning he'd at least had the wherewithal to puke on his own shoes instead.
Using some dense blankets, he'd managed to make curtains that shut out most of the outside light for days like today. Candlelight was still unpleasant, but significantly less so than the eye-watering punch of midday sunbeams. The only real relief were very rainy days, where the sky was a dull grey blanket of clouds. On those days, for whatever reason, leaving the windows unblocked didn't make his discomfort worse, so he'd grown to appreciate and even hope for torrential downpours.
He flinched as the bell on the door mantle tinkled and someone walked into the shop. Glowering up from his work table, he saw Hamut Zarga appraising him pensively.
"Bad morning, clocksmith?" He asked, before turning to leave. "I can always come back another time."
Ayden waved the notion away.
"It's fine, Hamut. Just a headache. What do you need?" He asked.
The flabby man walked across the room, before taking a small pack off his back and removing a fabric-covered parcel from it.
"The clock I bought for the missus is acting up again. Won't keep time right for nothin'. Can't says I know why neither." He said, setting the parcel on the worktable in front of Ayden.
Ayden closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, before taking a deep breath and opening them. He unfolded the fabric reveal a wooden table clock that he desperately wished wasn't so familiar.
"Alright, so what seems to be the issue?" He asked as he picked up the clock.
Hamut shuffled over, looming a bit too close for Ayden's comfort, and leaned forward to poke at the clock face with a sausagey finger.
"See? Them hands isn't moving like they supposed to. I think somethin's wrong with it."
Ayden looked at the clock before shaking it gently to see if anything rattled or clicked. He turned it around to examine the back, before gingerly sliding a thin shim of metal between the wooden back panel of the clock and the sides, and gently prying the panel loose so he could look inside.
Peering inside for a moment, he sighed and motioned towards the front window of the shop.
"Will you open the front curtains of the shop, please? I can't see the mechanisms adequately in this candlelight."
Hamut's head bobbed fleshily, and he moved over towards the window in a way that Ayden could only describe as lumbering. The portly fellow grabbed onto the makeshift blanket curtains and snapped them open with a jerk. Ayden groaned as the sudden blast of sunlight made his eyes water. It was as if the child poking his eyes with a pointy stick had given up and decided to try a tent stake and mallet instead. After several long moments of adapting to the brightness, he opened his eyes and looked inside the clock body to examine the contents.
Every piece of clockwork had several components- a spiral mainspring or other means of storing the physical energy used to power the object, a mechanism or mechanisms that produced a desired behavior or result from this stored energy, the wheeltrain of gears and cogs that served to transfer and convert the energy from the mainspring to the mechanism, and a key or other device used to restore power to the power storage unit, usually by tightening the mainspring with a metal key. More complex devices may have multiple power sources, or many complicated mechanisms, but the general structure was always the same. That made fixing most problems, despite their apparent complexity, relatively easy to fix.
Starting at the back, he disconnected the mainspring and tested that it was still in one piece and still tightened properly. Satisfied that it was not the problem, he worked his way from the mainspring through the gear sequence, inspecting and checking each one in turn to ensure it still had all of its teeth and wasn't crusted with dried vomit. Satisfied that everything was in working order in the wheel train, he inspected the clock mechanism itself. One by one he inspected each piece of the time-keeping assembly, using a set of magnifiers to check for bends or breaks in the tiny cogwheels and flanges.
After several long minutes of checking each piece, he found nothing amiss. Unsure if he missed something, he went back through the inspection sequence again. After a couple more minutes of double-checking everything, he felt satisfied that all of the pieces were in working order.
Which meant....
Looking at the key in the back of the device he asked "When's the last time you wound it up?"
Hamut looked at him blankly.
"What do you mean?"
Ayden looked at the man, the corner of his left eye suddenly being taken hold of by a twitch.
"Do you see the little metal key in the back of the clock right here?" Ayden said, pointing at the back of the clock where the metal turner protruded.
"Yes, I see it." Hamut said, nodding enthusiastically.
"Okay, now think, Hamut... when is the last time you wound this key?" Ayden asked. He already knew the answer to this question, but professional courtesy required he not treat Hamut like a dumb motherfucker.
Hamut's brow furrowed. If it was possible for a facial expression to look under more mental strain, Ayden couldn't picture it. After a long moment of hemming and hawing, the fat man shook his head hard enough to shake his jowls.
"I hasn't. I was afraid I might ruin somethin' if I did." He said, proud of himself.
Ayden sighed and rubbed his eyes.
"Hamut, there's nothing wrong with your clock. It's not working because it hasn't been wound." He said.
Hamut looked at him blankly in a way that made Ayden want to take the clock in front of him and force-feed it to the man, wind-up key first. When the man continued to say nothing, Ayden held the clock up so the internal mechanisms faced him.
"See that thing you haven't touched? This is what happens when you turn it."
Ayden turned the key a half dozen times. The internals of the device spun to life, and within moments, the characteristic click-clock of the timekeeper filled the otherwise quiet room. The fat man's face brightened.
"You got it working again!" He said. He took the clock out of Ayden's hands and turned it around so the clock face was facing him. He frowned.
"I thought you fixed it. The time's still wrong."
Ayden took a deep breath.
"The time can be changed by turning the two knobs on top of the clock, like this." He said, demonstrating how they worked. He checked the time on his wristwatch, and set the time accordingly. Hamut inspected the time, and seemed satisfied.
"A clock needs to be wound regularly to work. If it isn't wound, it won't work. Do you understand?" Ayden asked.
"So, I'm supposed to turn that silver thing until it starts working again?" The man asked.
"You are supposed to turn it every morning to make sure it doesn't stop working. You don't want it to stop working, or else the time will be wrong. Do you understand?"
The man nodded enthusiastically again. Ayden took the clock out of the man's hands, and with a few taps fitted the wooden backplate back onto the clock before handing it back to the simpleton.
"There you are. Do you need anything else?" Ayden asked.
The man shook his head but said nothing. He stood there, intently watching the clock face like he expected it at any moment to burst into flames. After several long moments, he seemed satisfied no disaster was imminent, and stowed the clock away into the bag again. He fished around in his pocket for a moment, before he pulled out a pair of gilders and set the golden coins on the table.
"Thank you, clocksmith. My wife will be much pleased." He said, scooping the pack back up onto his broad shoulders. He walked to the door, and with a second merciful, pain-inducing tinkle, he stepped out of the shop.
Before a single second more could pass, Ayden dashed to the door, bolted it closed, and flipped the sign on the door. He then walked to the window, drew the thick curtains, and flopped back into his seat before sweeping the clockwork in front of him to the side and unceremoniously plonking his head down on the tabletop.
That was enough work for today, thank you.
He lay there for several moments, counting his pulse by the throbs in his head. One of these days he was going to have to find a more permanent solution to these headaches. Thing was, whatever arcane magic was left in the world, and there wasn't much, spent all of its time being spent on keeping the Legion out of the more civilized parts of the world. That ruled out spellcraft and alchemy. Most of the Gods were either long-dead or long-missing, and the few that weren't generally had more important prayers to answer, so religion was useless, though that didn't stop him from asking.
Medicae had thus far been the only thing to work, but generally put him in the unfortunate position of choosing between suffering and productivity, or relief and starvation.
I mean, he could always just throw himself headfirst off the roof of his shop. THAT would certainly make them stop. Though, it'd be his luck he wouldn't die and would just end up being afllicted AND crippled. He could just see Pater Gilman standing over him now, tut-tutting about trying to defy the will of the Gods, all while Hamut stood behind the priest, nodding along in fervent idiocy.
After laying there for several more moments, Ayden finally gave up, got up, and walked to one of the cabinets in the bedchamber adjoining the workshop. He emerged with a slender ivory pipe in his hand, its bowl packed with sticky brown gum. Walking over to the work table, he picked up one of the candles and used it for a light. As the opium took to burning, it filled the air around him with the familiar scent of relief. If he had to describe it, it was something like a mix between an undercooked sweet bun and something fishy. It was not unpleasant, but it was definitely strange. Taking a deep lungful of smoke, he held it for several long moments before slowly letting it out.
He sat back at the worktable, and examined the disparate parts in front of him as the fuzziness took hold. After appraising what he had there for a moment, he got up again, walked to the corner of the room, and took one of his personal projects out of the chest below one of the component shelves.
He dropped it onto the work table with a loud thunk, causing several small gears to bounce off the tabletop and tinkle softly on the stone floor of the workshop.
There, sitting in the middle of the table, was the skeleton of a mechanical arm.
He picked it up, inspecting it closely for a moment, before setting it back down and delicately fishing up a tiny cogwheel with a set of felt-tipped tweezers. Holding his breath, he guided the gear into place, nestling it in the hand of the device, just below the ring finger. After ensuring it was properly fastened into place, he reached into the forearm and pulled on one of the free-hanging leather strips that connected from the hand mechanisms to the elbow joint where the arm terminated. The ring finger contracted down now, curling down organically as he pulled the leather tighter and tighter, until it finally stopped with a faint click as the fingertip reached where the palm would have been.
He inspected the movement several more times to ensure everything worked predictably, before proceeding to test the rest of the fingers. Now that he had all of the fingers working, he noticed for the first time that the middle finger didn't draw as tight as the rest, which meant the gauge of one of the cogs in the wheeltrain was a little off. It took him only a moment to identify the one that needed replacing, only to discover that he'd have to disassemble the entire finger mechanism to replace the mismatched part. How frustrating.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the mechanical limb as he took another deep drag from the pipe as the euphoria began to set in. The fingers were solved, barring the minor issue of replacing the one incorrect cog. The elbow joint was finished and articulated correctly, albeit not terribly smoothly. All that remained was to get the rotation and flexion of the wrist right. He'd been dragging his heels on that part, largely because he had no idea how he was going to make that work correctly without making the limb too bulky to be practical.
At one point, he'd tried to see if he could draw some ideas directly from internal human anatomy, but he learned quickly that asking to dissect and experiment on dead bodies was a very good way to find himself on the wrong end of a lot of unwanted attention. So, that idea was on hold until such a time as social progress overtook backwards ideas about the sanctity of the body. Or he somehow came upon an unwanted corpse that no one knew or cared about. He wasn't holding his breath for either. Unfortunately, innovation progressed much faster than superstition.
As the heady daze of the opium took hold, he stood up from the table and walked back to the bedchamber. The down and straw of the mattress seemed to swallow him whole as he laid back onto the bed, until it felt like he was sinking further and further into the ground itself. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling. He'd almost grown attached to it in the intervening months between the initial onset of the headaches and now. It felt familiar, almost comforting, like the dirt was swallowing him up for a hug. He also liked the dreams it gave him. She was there. In all of them, her red hair braided and tied up with bows like the last day he'd seen her.
He took a final drag from the pipe, before setting it on the nightstand and closing his eyes.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone