Chapter 30: Tinker

A dull, all-encompassing thumping was the only sign of the mechka’s approach, translated through the mud-soaked earth in great sonic waves that almost seemed to bend the rain itself. The weapon itself could only be glimpsed in flashes of lightning, when its runesteel façade loomed over the starkly illuminated battlefield like a great gray saurian.

Its chicken-legs ground to a halt, and its angularly-armored head swept left to right. In the center of its blank metallic face a pink scrying circle glowed to life, regarding the battlefield beneath its cyclopic gaze. The head stopped turning abruptly; then there was a flash at the mechka’s muzzle, followed by a great report of mechanical thunder. A large boulder, which moments ago had been the sole remaining piece of cover on the muddy battlefield, shredded to dust as it was hit by the impact spell. The mechka, satisfied that nobody had been hiding there, resumed sweeping its head left to right.

Beneath the elevated hull of the machine, a single soldier who had been buried in the mud slowly stood up. Spitting out his breathing tube, he unleashed grappling hooks and quickly scurried up one of the weapon’s still-immobile legs. He slapped a few sutras on the bottom, each carrying explosion runes, then cut his hook lines and dove back into the mud below. He scurried away, no longer caring about being seen, and the mechka’s spell-eye tracked him for a fraction of a second before the entire magitechnological weapons platform ended in a violent explosion.

As fragments of flaming metal rained down all around, the soldier triumphantly turned around and grinned as he tore off his hood.

******

Back in camp, the lone soldier was greeted by the cheers of his comrades.

“Great work, Rixu!” the commanding Militant proclaimed. “Those Arkaelian cowards will think twice before sending another one of their mechanical monstrosities against us!”

Rixu waved off the praise. “Yeah, yeah. I got enough valor saved up for a transfer off the frontlines yet?”

The Militant frowned. “I don’t get you, Rixu. You’re one of the best soldiers we have, yet you always try to retreat from your duty. Why?”

Rixu twitched. “Because I’ve had enough of this shit.”

“Enough of what?”

Rixu folded his arms. “Take your pick. The monsoon rains, the endless mud, the giant walking machines, the lack of good food, the Arkaelian soldiers constantly trying to kill me. Why can’t you just post me as a guard on the Anti-Demon Wall? That sounds nice and boring.”

The Militant rolled his eyes. “Cute. Well, your re-assignment will have to wait. The High Militant wants us to scavenge this mechka and see if we can recover any of those fancy magic-powered ‘analytical engines’ they got inside.”

Rixu groaned. “MORE grunt work?!”

“Suck it up. The techno-mages back at the Maroon Tower want this crap shipped back ASAP. They say it could be critical to winning the war.”

******

Nine years later, and five after the North Tohkal War had ended, the techno-mages finally got around to examining that particular bit of war scrap.

“We’ve got another analytical engine,” Nelvynn mused as she leapt down off the hull of the twisted wreck. The machine was lashed to the thrumming dark-crimson walls of the Maroon Tower, in one of the wide-open mechanical spaces where they researched all manner of Arkaelian runic machinery captured during the war. “Looks like a midwar model, partially micronized, with both rexcaedis and argentum elements integrated so the pistons can hold a charge.”

“I agree,” Breeder Qoithe replied, his robes rustling as he made a note on his ledger. “A superb specimen. You wish to disassemble this one, Vynn?”

She nodded enthusiastically, twirling her wrench around. “Yeah. The engine’s materials are in really good condition. It might even be intact enough for us to study the intricate magimechanical pistons.”

“That would be a significant breakthrough,” Qoithe mused, placing his ledger under his arm and stroking his pencil mustache. “Nobody has yet been able to unlock the secrets of the Arkaelian thinking machines, nor has Vexide seen fit to grant us that wisdom. Do you truly think you can accomplish it?”

“If I can match the addressing system to the original rotor paths, I think it’ll work.” Vynn responded with a lopsided grin. “This could be huge!”

Qoithe raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. If you are successful, you could usher in a technological revolution.”

Vynn snorted. “Sure. Shame they’ll never give me credit.”

Qoithe shook his head sadly. “I concur. You do better work than anyone here… even myself, I am loathe to admit. Yet because you are a woman, the highest title they will award you is ‘Tinker’ when you should, by all rights, be a Master Mechanic. I find it insulting.”

Vynn’s grin faded, although a ghost-smile remained. “Well. There’s no point to dwelling on things we can’t change. You can be insulted on my behalf, alright?”

Qoithe’s eyes narrowed. “Very well.”

******

Nelvarr looked up from his cooking pot as he heard the front door thump, catching a glimpse of the magelights in the entryway automatically flare up. “Hi Mom,” he called out.

“Howdy Var,” she responded, tying her sweater around her waist as she walked into the kitchen. “Watcha making?”

“Fried rice from yesterday’s leftovers. You want some?”

Vynn nodded before thinking, then experienced a twinge of guilt. “I’m… sorry I wasn’t home to cook for you again, kiddo.”

Var brushed off her concerns. “It’s no biggie. I’m used to both you and Dad being out late.”

Vynn felt her stomach knot at the mention of Bob. Her beloved husband had been on assignment for a week now with no communication… not uncommon in his line of work, but stressful all the same. As the sinking loneliness of his absence began to pull her down, she resisted with all her might by doing what she always did when he was gone; focusing on work at the expense of everything else.

“Yeah, I got caught up again,” she replied, her eyes suddenly focusing on something unseen. “You see, we found this almost-intact calculation engine, the magimechanical type with partial micronization. From what I can tell the store is mostly intact, although some of the rotors and gears in the mill have been totally knocked out of alignment, disrupting the electric channels which carry the data. If I can backtrack their original positions from the frozen addressing system I should be able to realign it without much trouble. Of course, the cipher discs will need to be swapped out entirely, and…”

As Nelvynn babbled on about her work, Nelvarr tossed the rice one final time, scooped it onto two plates, and topped each with a healthy dollop of yak mayonnaise.

“Food,” he said simply.

His mother nodded her understanding, sat herself at the dinner table and continued to talk between mouthfuls.

“Mmnph… so basically, I’m going to try and read cable… mrph mmph mmph glup…. positions on the plugboard by determining which receiving ports show more wear in the gold-argent coating. After that, it’s a simple process of… mmmph, mph, gulp… process of elimination to figure out which cable goes where. Geometric reduction, right? This is delicious, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Var replied.

“So anyway, once I have the plugboard rigged, I can start feeling out the argentum channels and look for ruptures. It’s going to be gloriously tedious! I can’t wait!”

“Sounds like,” Var replied with a soft smile. “I’m glad you found something to do.”

There was an implicit understanding in his tone… he knew that Nelvynn was going to be absent for a while as she dove wholeheartedly into her work, and he’d take care of things around the house. This was the usual order of things whenever Bob was gone. While a pious Breeder may have been aghast at a mother working long hours and her teenaged son handling the chores, this was simply how their household functioned best.

Vynn regarded her son with grateful eyes. “I can’t thank you enough, Var. You’re such a good kid. The Gods truly blessed us with such a sweet, understanding child.”

Var chuckled softly. “You and Dad raised me well. You’ve always been supportive of my art projects, so this is the least I can do. Mom, go dive into that thinking machine and figure out what makes it tick, no matter how much time you must dedicate to the task. I’ll make sure the house doesn’t burn down while you’re focused.”

“Will do,” Vynn said with a huge grin, bits of rice dribbling down her chin. “Thanks!”

******

“Did you hear? Creepy Vynn is back at it again! She found a new toy and has locked herself in her lab!”

“No way! How long has she been in there this time?”

“Nearly a week! I’ve heard she doesn’t even bathe. Isn’t that nasty?”

“Eww, I’d believe it. What a weirdo. You know, I heard she-”

The two gossiping guards were suddenly interrupted by a loud “AH-HEM.” Both turned bone-white as they saw Breeder Qoithe approaching them; awkwardly they saluted, but one was a bit too awkward and his sword clattered to the floor.

There was a long silence as everyone stared at the fallen blade, then Qoithe began to speak in a soft, seething tone. “Gossiping again?”

One of the guards gulped in response.

“I don’t have to remind you the work we are doing here is classified,” Qoithe continued, his tranquil fury apparent in how he over-annunciated his words. “If I hear you speaking openly about it again, you will not enjoy the consequences. Understood?”

“U-Understood!”

“Good. On your way.”

Qoithe watched the ne’er-do-guards scramble away for a moment, noticing the one had forgotten to retrieve his fallen blade, before turning sharply on his heel and resuming his course down the hallway.

His winding path took him down one flight of stairs, then another. He descended deep into the bowels of the Maroon Tower; there, nestled among janitorial equipment and dusty boxes of long-forgotten paperwork, was a grungy wooden door.

He raised his hand and rapped his knuckles on the wood. Immediately came the reply: “Yeah.” Knowing he would get no further invitation to enter, he slowly creaked the door open and peeked inside.

The first thing he saw was a half-finished mechanical doll. Its skin was metal sculpted into human form… head, eyes, ears, neck, torso, arms. That’s where the resemblance ended; where its hips should have been there was nothing but a mass of dangling, sparking wires. Sensing his presence, the doll whirred to life and turned its head to face him, iris-eyes narrowing as they focused.

“Hello Clarize,” he said casually, waving towards the contraption. It didn’t respond, but its eyes continued to follow him as he walked around the room. Years ago Qoithe might have found this unsettling… but he knew there was no life in the machine, only a simple mechanism that directed it to track the nearest warm object.

Yet even this creepy half-finished mechanism had its charm. Qoithe allowed himself a moment’s reminiscence, visualizing a younger, spunkier Vynn excitedly showing off her newest invention. This doll had been her pride and joy at the time, and even if she’d moved on to bigger and better things she still kept it around as a memento.

“Good memories?” came Vynn’s voice from behind. Startled, he turned rapidly and stumbled a bit, earning a scoff. “Hah. Careful, Qoithe. Clarize is watching.”

Qoithe regained his posture and dusted off his maroon robes. “Very funny. Why did you never finish that thing anyway?”

Vynn shrugged. “Lost interest, moved on. Once I’d figured out how to make the heat-tracking mechanism work, there was little point to continuing. New breakthroughs were calling my name! Speaking of…”

“You’ve made progress on the Arkaelian device?” Qoithe interrupted.

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Vynn looked him straight in the eye as her expression morphed into a huge, smug grin. “Yup! Come take a look!”

She eagerly flitted over to her main work pit, where the yak-sized bulk of the thinking machine rested. Disconnected from its mechka chassis the thing resembled nothing so much as a great sphere comprised of pistons and gears, trailing sparking wires and hydraulic lines like tentacles.

“As you can see, I’ve successfully interfaced the machine with our own mana batteries and gotten it running,” Vynn explained as she rounded the machine, poking at a switch here or there. “I’m almost done mapping the rotor positions and unscrambling them.”

Qoithe, keeping his distance from the machine, hummed. “Is it really so wise to power it? This is still an enemy weapon, no matter how inert it may appear.”

Vynn waved off his concern. “I’ll be fine. Besides, I need it active for the next step of my repair plan.”

“And that is?”

Vynn’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “I’m gonna try and talk to it.”

*****

Whirr click drrrr

The scrying spell came online again, allowing it to see. A quick scan of its visual area revealed the woman, who was still finger-deep in its wires. It found the prospect deeply unpleasant.

fybbg ercbec ghbugvj rz ffrppn gba bQ, it tried to say, only for the ticker-tape to come out garbled due to the misalignment of its rotors. It had no way to communicate with this strange Saimonican tinker, only observe as she continued to muck around in its core neurology. Were it given to emotion, it might feel fear.

The tinker examined the tape, her eyes flitting over the characters. “Hmm… capitalized letter at the end, eh? So the text is backwards… and cryptologically displaced? Argh, I’ll have to re-adjust the rotor sequence again. Could have sworn I had it right…”

It knew the answer, of course. Its own diagnostics routines had figured out the misalignment long ago. But it would be damned if it would help this numbfingered tinker continue to dismantle it.

Just then it became aware the tinkers gaze had fixed upon it, centered upon the scrying spell. She peered, unblinking, for a full minute before clearing her throat.

“You’re watching me, aren’t you?” she asked aloud. “You’ve been for a while.”

The thinking machine didn’t respond.

She leaned forwards, still unblinking. After three minutes had passed, it calculated prolonging this stalemate might cause her eyes to suffer surface scratches from dust contamination, so it decided to respond.

frL, it printed.

The tinker produced a tiny screwdriver and repositioned a few screws. “Try now,” she instructed the device.

Lrf.

“Getting better…” Some more adjustments, smaller this time, and one rotor swapped with another. “Try now.”

Yes, it printed jubilantly.

She donned a cocksure grin, and finally blinked. “Thought so. I sensed it.”

It is against this unit’s programming to remain active while in enemy hands. Remand this unit to Arkaelian custody immediately or destroy it.

Her smile turned crafty. “Tell ya what, I can help with that destruction thing. After I’ve got you properly tuned, I’ll begin dissecting you wire-by-wire to really see what makes you tick. That process will leave you… well, in pieces. Sound good?”

The machine tried to analyze that, as well as it could. Its current objective was to remove itself from Saimonican custody, and this woman was offering to assist. It saw no conflict of interest.

Very well, it replied.

“And maybe if you help me,” she pressed, “I could get it done faster. What do you think?”

My programming prevents sharing information about Arkaelian technology with the enemy. Complete this task on your own.

The Tinker drew back a bit and clicked her tongue. “Tsk. Was worth a try.”

The machine shut off the scrying spell in response, sinking into darkness once more.

******

“So it worked?” Qoithe asked, paging through Vynn’s report while seated at his grandiose oak desk.

The Tinker nodded, wincing all the while; the Breeders’ office got a lot of natural light… too much for her tastes. “Yeah. Despite the machine’s apparent refusal to help me, by simply powering its text output circuits it gave me the final clues I needed to unscramble the rotor pathways. After that, the remainder of the reverse engineering was a simple matter.”

Voithe turned a page, his eyes skittering across detailed diagrams he barely understood, and frowned. “Simple, you say…”

Vynn held up her arm against the light. “Trust me when I say this stuff is revolutionary. This is a blueprint for building our very own analytical engine.”

Qoithe sat back in his chair, pupils wide and tongue silent as his mind raced. Thinking machine technology had long been the sole purview of the Arkaelian Empire, a secret they jealously guarded from even the roving eye of the Demon Lord. But now, at long last, that secret might finally be out… and the High Breeders would doubtless do anything, even pay their weight in gold-plated argentum, for the very valuable document now resting in his hands.

Vynn, growing a bit impatient at Qoithe’s prolonged silence, prodded him. “You understand the implications of that, I trust.”

Qoithe nodded slowly, every muscle tensed. “I do. May I borrow this for a while?”

******

“This is remarkable!” High Breeder Meshtat exclaimed as he paged through the report. “Gods, if we’d had this intelligence fifteen years ago, we could have avoided our humiliation at North Tohkal.”

“We have it now,” Qoithe replied softly. “I know the High Militant has little taste for another war against Arkaelia, especially given the renewed hostilities with the Demon Realm, but should the mood ever change this research will be invaluable. Imagine if we had our own mechka to stand against theirs.”

Meshtat nodded, his eyes sparkling. “The Supreme Breeder is going to love this. Tell me, whose work was this again? One of your tinkers?”

Qoithe shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Ah, well…”

******

“You seem quite pleased with yourself,” Var said while scooping out a heaping of potatoed scallops onto Vynn’s plate.

“You bet,” Vynn beamed back as she grabbed her scallop spork. “I’m going to be the genius behind the next technological revolution! Who wouldn’t be excited about that?”

“Unsung genius,” Var prodded as he dug his own spork into one of the scallops.

“Oh, don’t start,” Vynn retorted. “You’re worse than Bob… or Qoithe, my co-worker. I’ll get credited anonymously, just like every time. That’s more than enough acknowledgement for me.”

Var chewed on that thought while also chewing scallop. “You prefer seclusion. I suppose that makes sense.

Vynn nodded. “Yeah. Fame brings nothing but trouble. Besides, I like to think my work speaks for itself. Anonymous credits are perfectly fine.”

Var swallowed and burped. “If that’s true, why not simply credit someone else and let them handle the limelight? You could be like an… engineering ghostwriter. A ghostgineer?”

Vynn suddenly got very quiet, and her skin prickled. Varr leaned forwards and couldn’t help but feel a wee bit vindicated.

“See? You do care. You don’t want anyone else taking credit for your work.”

Vynn ground her teeth, feeling defeated. “Maybe. Whatever. Shut up.”

After that, they ate silently for a while.

******

Four days later, Vynn was idly toying with Clarize when a guard knocked at her door. Cracking it open, she found a parcel shoved in her face.

“What’s this?” she muttered, examining the brown paper and twine that bound the package. It was unmarked, except for a single black word scrawled across the top…

Sorry.

“Who sent this?” she asked the guard.

“Dunno,” he replied, clearly disinterested.

Nonplussed, she pulled the twine. The paper fell away to reveal a thick volume, professionally printed, bearing the title A Complete Bluewrit of the Arkaelian Thinking Machine. Her eyes scanned the cover, and as she caught sight of the byline, her nails dug into her palm so hard she drew blood.

“I see,” she said flatly, all emotion gone from her tone. “The apology was unnecessary… superfluous, even, seeing as I’m going to kill him.”

The guard decided he hadn’t heard that last part and quietly walked away.