Chapter 16: 6:40. The Influencing Machine

Compared to some of my classes, Calculus I was refreshing, in that most of the students were there for a reason. With generals, half of your classmates wouldn't be there if they had a choice, and a lot of them just screw around and behave distractingly; not so much with higher-level math. Here, I just showed up, sat down, and waited for the professor to start. Sure, there were still hushed whispers and stares, but we all had more demanding problems to think about.

As it turned out, thinking was the biggest issue. Not that I couldn't keep up with the lecture; in fact, I felt clearer on the concepts than I ever had before.^* But the process of working things out was distracting. I could feel things in my head grinding away as pieces of equations took shape on the board: gears whirring, relays clicking, some kind of counter ratcheting another increment every so often, a spring-loaded slide compressing each time like the plate dispenser at a buffet. As we got deeper in, something opened up inside me, lifting as it turned faster and faster, the rest of the system accelerating with it.

^* (Whether that was due to becoming some kind of machine intelligence, I didn't know; robots tended to show a natural aptitude for mathematics, but I had no idea about whatever I was.)

I remembered, when I was a kid, seeing a very antique tractor at the county fair that used a...right, a "governor," a spinning thing with weighted metal arms that raised up the faster it spun, to limit the flow of...gas? Steam? I couldn't remember. This must be the something like that, although I didn't know how it worked in a spring-powered system. Some sort of variable braking mechanism...?

...And there I went. Dammit, I had coursework to focus on, and here I was getting sidetracked by my newfound existential crisis...! I turned back to the problem, trying to ignore these sensations, but it quickly became obvious that everyone else could hear all this activity. Even the professor finally trailed off and turned to the class with a look of confusion and concern. Mortified, I got up and made my way to the back of the classroom.

I sat next to a mousy, boyishly-figured girl whose eyes were almost entirely hidden under a mop of shaggy strawberry-blonde hair. She was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her; and oddly, she was watching me with rapt attention. The stares and whispers were one thing, but I really didn't know what to make of this; I tried to ignore it and focus on the class. She seemed to get the hint, and turned her attention back to the board, but I felt her keep sneaking glances at me. It was weird enough having the guys act this way...

The lecture went on, and to my relief this...mental governor...let my brain relax when the problem was finished - but then it was right onto the next one. It wasn't hard to figure out: the deeper and more complex we got, the more effort and energy it took to power the whole works through it. My mental pace might slacken a bit each time another chunk was sorted out, but it was only once we crested the metaphorical hill and the little solutions started cascading into larger ones that the mechanisms in my head really eased up.

Which led to a bigger problem: it was unexpectedly draining. Not like how I'd gotten physically or mentally fatigued as a human, but I felt my mainspring running down faster than anticipated. And I wasn't due to see my roommates until lunchtime...I could ask them to come help, but Tammy was off at one of her med classes, and Emma had some kind of board-game club that met over in the library...

By the time class was over, I was dragging. I could still move, and I wasn't experiencing that bizarre time dilation, but my limbs were already lagging behind my brain by a split-second, and everything felt weirdly off because of it. I started to worry - would I make it to lunch like this? I had another class to go, plus all that walking...what if I ran down? Someone might stop and help me, maybe; but if not, then...?

"Uh, e-excuse me," said a voice by my shoulder. "Do you need help?"

I turned to find the mousy girl facing me. She was a bit taller than I was, but she was withdrawn enough that it almost felt like I was the physically imposing one. It threw me off enough that it took me a moment to process her question. "Uh, yes...?" I said. "Could you, uh...?"

For some reason, I felt hesitant about letting people touch this strange new part of me. Tammy and Emma were one thing; we were in the same boat. But would it feel weird for some stranger to do that to me? Would it be weird to ask them? I didn't know; I couldn't tell whether I really felt this way or whether I was just overthinking things. And she wasn't quite a stranger, I thought... "Um, er...Anne, right?" That was it, Anne...Bitterman! Gil's friend. What had he been saying the other day...?

She brightened at being recognized and made a little grunt of affirmation. Her voice was a bit huskier than I expected. "Uh, yeah. You, uh, need me to...?"

I nodded and turned around, and Anne took hold of my key and set to work. Yeah, I was overthinking it, surely. Still, it was strange how it felt with different people doing this. Emma attacked the job like she was on the clock, with sharp, quick strokes that nearly lifted me off my feet from the torque. Anne moved like she was afraid of breaking me; I had to signal for her to pick up the pace or we'd never finish before my next class. And Tammy's touch was gentle but firm, which felt the most comfortable, I thought. I wondered if this went for any arbitrary set of people - say, if Gil-

I cut that mental image off in a hurry. Maybe I wasn't overthinking it.

...maybe...?

Thankfully, I was distracted from this line of thought when Anne finished, stepped back, and stared at me. "You're so elegant..." she said, in an awed tone of voice.

"Uh, what...?" I said, frowning. I hadn't spent a lot of time in self-contemplation since this happened, but that was about the last word I'd use to describe myself right now. Not that I'd have won any best-of-show awards before, but I'd turned from an ordinary human into a clacking, whirring, juddering mechanical simulacrum. I ran down inconvenient junctures; I moved strangely; I made noise just doing nothing, and more when I did anything else. How was any of that "elegant!?"

"You are," she said, looking me up and down with an expression I couldn't read. "You're...just so perfectly like a doll..." She stopped, hearing the sudden Rzzzzz! as something inside me lurched into gear, and looked embarrassed at herself; what I could see of her eyes went wide. "I...thatprobablysoundsweirdomigodi'msorry..."

It did - but it helped that she recognized it. "It's...okay," I said, trying to make myself move past it. "I'm just, uh...I'm still getting used to this..." I frowned, wishing I'd phrased it differently. I didn't want to get used to this, dammit!

"How did it happen? You weren't like this last week..."

I grimaced. "You, uh, you recognize me...?" It wasn't a shock by this point, but it was still a weird and awkward feeling.

"Freeman, right?" she said, trying to affect a more casual attitude. "You sat in the same place he always sits, and you kinda look like him too. What happened to you?"

"A...a lab accident," I sighed. How many more times was I going to have this conversation? "We tried out the probability exciter on Friday night, and there was...a containment failure. Fortunately, nobody else was in the building."

There was a brief flicker of uncertainty in her face, but she shook it off. "Oh...oh! So that was you guys! I heard the faculty was pretty freaked out over it..."

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"They weren't as mad as we were afraid of, but they weren't happy," I said. "It's gonna be ages before they let us try and fix this..."

"'Fix...?'" she said, as if she couldn't understand the word. "Oh, but you ca-uh, are you sure you...um, no, sorry. I, uh..." She stopped, putting a hand to her forehead, apparently realizing she was being weird again. "Um. Well...look, if you do decide to...you have to let me dress you, you just have to... U-um, n-n-not like a doll thing!" she stammered. "J-just, you know, cosplay..."

I stared at her, wondering how to respond; something in the back of my head zizzed away as my brain tried to process this. I thought she intended this to be taken as a compliment, thinking that I'd appreciate the offer, and it was obvious that she didn't mean any harm from how worried she was about any possible offense; I could practically see the cartoon sweat-drops flying off her at this point.

But Lord was it awkward; she was trying to reassure, but it was a clear case of "doth protest too much." I tried not to think about what her dorm room looked like; I imagined shelf after shelf of creepy, glassy-eyed porcelain dolls, and I almost had to shake myself by the shoulders to keep from picturing myself among them. I felt another bloodless, mechanical full-body-shudder-equivalent. "Uh, th-thanks," I said, "but I'm not into...that kind of thing."

"But...you're just too perfect..." she said wistfully, the awe creeping back into her voice. "You're so lucky; I wish..." She trailed off.

"I'm...really not," I said. "And, um, I'm a guy, anyway." I wasn't sure whether or not to qualify that with on the inside, so I let it hang.

"Oh, uh, that's alright," she said, brightening. "I've helped lots of people with crossplay..." Her face fell again as my expression made it clear that that didn't help matters any.

"...Look, thanks," I said, not really thankful at all. "And, um, thanks for the help. Really. But...it's really not my thing." I turned to go, before she could tell me that it would be a waste not to; I felt a little bad about it, but not enough to stop.

"O-okay...!" she called after me. "Um, do you want to at least come to our gaming nights...?"

---

That night was the first time I experienced anything besides uneventful, dreamless "sleep" in this form. There was no tossing or turning; I simply willed myself to sleep as I'd done ever since that fateful Friday. But whatever it is in the human mind that causes dreams, it was present and accounted for in this clockwork brain of mine.

I saw a figure sitting alone at a writing desk: a little girl with silver hair, in a dress that didn't seem to fit quite right. She was frantically scribbling away at an assignment set in front of her; I could hear her heart racing, and anxiety was clear in her expression. At some point, I became aware that the figure was an antique automaton; the dress looked funny because the cloth was too stiff to hang right at doll-size, and the pounding heartbeat was revealed as the persistent ticking of an unseen mechanism.

The scene changed, and the figure was there again; this time, she was a dancer, twirling to the strains of a little music box. The anxiety in her face was diminished, but not gone, and the tune seemed soothing at first but never resolved properly, so that every time it looped there was a fresh jolt of uneasy tension, while the incessant ticking drove it forward unrelentingly.

Things changed again, and she was being dressed and undressed by a pair of hands that descended from the darkness somewhere outside the "frame." She was upset, and kept appearing as if she was about to say something to the unseen "assistant," but before she could get the words out, another dress would come down over her head and the cycle would repeat.

And again; she was pouring tea at a tea party for two other figures. They were faceless, yet somehow beautiful - intimidatingly so, in a way that made them seem as if they belonged at this party and she didn't. She was continually looking up as if she wanted to reach out to them, but every time she did, they seemed impossibly far away. The ticking was growing gradually louder and more forceful.

The scene changed yet again; this time, all these little dioramas were set next to each other, running simultaneously, like a display at a children's museum. It was like a puppet show...like a factory process. Writing, dancing, dressing, serving, writing, dancing, dressing, serving; over and over, the metronome beat of the unseen machinery driving this activity running faster and harder as the dream-viewpoint pulled away to reveal another set of figures on either side, all lined up on a shelf, and other shelves below and above, and further back still, set after set and shelf after shelf, the "wall" seeming to stretch off to infinity in every direction...

And further and faster and harder still. The viewpoint was so far back that the whole thing should've blurred into visual noise, but the thousands of figures in this unending cycle were perfectly clear. Harder and faster the master clock ran, harder and faster and harder and faster and it was clear that the helpless little figures were bound to it even as they began to break apart under the strain. Joints disarticulated, limbs fell off; heads rolled, porcelain faces and glass eyes shattered. All that was left were the inner control rods, spastically jerking around without bodies to constrain their movement any longer.

Then the scene changed one final time. It was a dark chamber full of machinery that seemed to be both impossibly vast and intensely claustrophobic. Clacking and whirring, clanging and hissing, pulsing with almost-life and cold malevolence. It was the kind of thing that a schizophrenic of the 19th century might envision; ominous, inscrutable, inhuman. A "rational" explanation for the irrational cruelty of the prior scenes: the Master Machine. (Or a piece of it; it felt like this was only one tentacle of the octopus, with some even greater and more terrible behemoth lurking beyond the shadows.)

At the foot of the Machine there was a medical chair. A cluster of metal arms on either side of it bristled with all manner of terrifying surgical implements; some of them familiar, some alien. Seated in the chair, bound to it at the wrists and ankles, was a human figure. Their head hung down and their face was hidden from view; their whole body sagged with exhaustion and defeat as the Machine loomed over them. Slowly, deliberately, a mechanical arm extended down towards the prisoner from far above. Clutched in its claw was a mask: a smooth porcelain face, but not like the ones on the figures. There was no anxiety in it, but there was no tranquility either; it was an empty, hollow expression, the face of a living corpse.

As the arm came to rest at the prisoner's level, they began to struggle, throwing themselves forward, trying to lurch out of the chair - but the straps refused to give, and they could only thrash helplessly as it approached them, gliding silently towards their still-obscured face. As the clamor of the Machine grew intolerably loud, a bevy of fine little metallic chains wriggled out from the back of the mask like so many leeches, searching out something to attach themselves to; the master clock pounding, the feelers crawling, slithering, grasping, closer and closer and CLOSER and-

I didn't catapult out of bed like they do in the movies, but I returned to consciousness with all the abrupt shock of a car accident - to find Lucky perched on my face, curiously attempting to dig her...roots...? into the fabric of my cheek in search of any spare nutrients. With an inarticulate yelp, I batted her away and lurched into a sitting position. The great, heaving gasps of relief upon waking up from a nightmare were apparently not one of the human respiratory tics this body mimicked; instead, I got up, picked her up off the floor, patted her gently on her cap, and placed her back in her terrarium.

"Sorry," I said. "Maybe we should get you a rotting log or something..." I wondered if you could get such a thing without a bunch of other mold on it. I glanced at the clock; it was about quarter to seven. No point in trying to go back to sleep now. I felt mentally exhausted, but the terror of the dream was already fading without that organic-lifeform hormonal charge to sustain it. It was all just a dream, after all...

I got dressed, went into the bathroom and straightened out my hair, then headed back to my desk to try and get some work done on assignments before I had to get to class. Before I left the bathroom, I glanced back at the mirror and mentally shuddered.

Just a dream...

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