Steampunk Fairy Tales (2 page)

“Now, I have lost everything,” he
wept.

The next morning, dawn poked a
cold finger through the apartment’s single, small window. A
scratching sound came from the box.

“Not a rat!” he howled. “This is
the absolute worst!” He picked up the box with the intent to fling
the filthy animal against the wall.

A breezy bit of magic swirled past
his face and blew open the top of the lid.

Pieter’s shiny brown eyes stared
up from the box.

The old man stared in wonder at a
perfectly formed clockwork child with golden curls, Gerta’s dimpled
cheeks, and a jumper of green and blue.

 
The child waved a tin hand.
“Hello!” 

Perfection

Chris Champe

T
he gala was in full swing, with the players on stage the
center of the entire production. Not only for their music, but the
act of playing itself was something to behold. They moved in
perfect harmony, each and every motion, no matter how small,
matched flawlessly across the entire stage. Fingers brushed across
strings with a smooth surety that could never be found in nature.
The pianist’s hands flew over the keys with absolute
efficiency.

Of course, there were murmurings among the
crowd.

Those who felt the motions were unnatural.
Those who felt it lacked the human element.

Of course it did.

It was simple fact that humans were flawed.
Why else would they build machines to act in their place if not
because machines were better suited to the task? Why reject the
unnatural, as though nature were the final authority on how things
ought to be done? Wasn’t the rejection of and improvement upon
nature the entire course of human progress?

If one were so eager to embrace nature over
ingenuity, perhaps one should abandon medicine, clothing, and
shelter; avoid all those conveniences of the modern world, and take
up life in a cave somewhere deep in a forest. Arguments about the
superiority of nature would not stand so strong against a winter in
the elements, or sleep disturbed by the all-too-near howling of
wolves.

Mary blinked and steered her thoughts away
from the morbid turn they had taken, and turned her focus back to
the performance. It was hardly unusual for her to become lost in
thought since her accident, but her mind rarely took such dark
paths. Instead, her daydreams were typically focused upon more
immediate concerns, such as how she might occupy herself for the
day, or what great work her dear husband was currently
perfecting.

Perfection in all things was her husband’s
eternal drive, and these were merely his most recent attempt at
achieving it. The entire band was composed of automata, something
that had long been considered impossible, for no machine could
properly imitate the smooth, controlled motions of human talent.
Their mobility had always been a rough, jerky, haphazard affair. It
was a brave man who allowed an automaton to serve the tea, or, at
least, one very forgiving of stains. Giving it an instrument was
merely an exercise in recreating the confused cacophony that a
small child would produce, given the same opportunity.

This new design, though ….
It was not enough that they move as humans could. That would have
never satisfied her husband, and he had confessed to her that he
had mastered
that
challenge months before. But no, he strove further. His work
was not complete until his creations combined the precision of the
machine with the grace of the flesh, into a final product greater
than either of its parts.

And not only were their motions stunning,
but their appearance as well: the polished metal of the limbs,
highlighted by the faint glow of the luminiferous relays beneath,
carrying energy from the zevatron core to the brilliantly complex
mechanisms which drove their motion. The new cores, designed to
last a lifetime in typical applications, were one of the few
aspects of the automata that were not her husband’s design.
Aetheric energy was one of the handful of fields he conducted no
work in, and that her husband considered this new model from his
friend Mr. Lorentz satisfactory for his work spoke volumes of its
capability. Even with her limited understanding of the technology,
Mary was aware that Lorentz’s design improved upon the older Mosley
model by an order of magnitude.

But it was not the glistening of metal or
the shine of aetheric energy that drew her eyes most of all. What
she had been focused upon for near the entirety of her little
daydream had been the hands of the pianist automaton. She had been
a keen student of the instrument herself, once, though she had not
been able to play since her accident. She watched those brass and
steel fingers dance across the keys for a few minutes longer, then
closed her eyes and placed her hands upon an imaginary keyboard,
picturing, in her mind, the feel of the ivory as she found her
place and began to play.

Or as she attempted to play.

However she pictured the
keys in her mind, however well she recalled old scores, however
certain she was of where her fingers ought to next land, her limbs
simply refused to cooperate. The motions she made felt…
awkward
. Restrained,
somehow, as though she did not have quite the control of her body
that she was accustomed to. She let a scowl mar her face as she
redoubled her efforts at focusing upon her imaginary performance,
but the more she tried to force her body’s cooperation, the more
awkward and exaggerated her motions became, furthering her
frustrations ever more.

Suddenly, strong hands grasped her own,
holding them in place. Her eyes flew open to meet the steely grey
of her husband’s. In the corners of her vision, she could see
several guests watching her, expressions ranging from interest, to
concern, to the blend of scorn and embarrassment usually reserved
for the mentally ill when they failed to compose themselves in
public.

“
Darling, you’re drawing
stares,” her husband said quietly to her. “Are you
alright?”

Why? She had merely been …. She shook her
head. Her thoughts were growing muddled, a frequent result of
overstressing herself. She hadn’t been playing, had she? No, she
was attending the party. The automaton was the one playing.

“
I … I’m fine, dear,” she
said, pulling back slightly from his hands, though he didn’t relax
his grip. “I was merely … recalling playing on my own
piano.”

He nodded. “I thought as much. I’ve told you
before, you have yet to fully recover from your accident, and
you’re in no shape to be playing now.”

Mary’s eyes drifted back towards the
artificial player on the stage, who, along with its bandmates, kept
up the music, unconcerned with the scene playing out before them.
“I was so good, then …. How could I lose all of it?”

“
You were perfect.” He
took one of her hands to his lips and kissed it, then released her
other hand to put his upon her back. “And we’ll have you perfect
again soon enough. But you mustn’t concern yourself with your
piano. Attempting it could strain your body, and the stress would
strain the mind. For now, it’s best that you have a rest. You’ve
worked yourself up.”

“
I’m fine, though, dear,”
she objected, though she couldn’t muster the will for more than a
token resistance when her husband began guiding her towards the
door. “I could stay and watch the musicians a bit
longer.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s what set you
into this spell to begin with. Come along, you need to lie down and
have a rest.”

She gave in and allowed her husband to walk
her from the floor, the eyes of several partygoers following them
as they left, though only one said anything as they passed.

“
Is something the matter,
Blaubart?” asked a man who she did not recognize, though something
made her feel she should have.

“
Just a bit of
overstimulation, Lorentz, despite an ongoing weakness.” Doctor
Blaubart gave a resigned chuckle. “You know how they can
be.”

“
One of the many fields
where your experience outweighs mine. But take care of her. We’ll
talk when you’re back.”

Her husband pulled her away again, out of
the ballroom and into a small lounge just down the hall—near enough
that she could hear the festivities, but far enough that she
wouldn’t be part of them.

“
Here you are, darling,”
he said, laying her down on a chaise lounge under the window, from
which she could see the moon above.

She didn’t resist. In fact, she felt quite
exhausted. Hadn’t she been so excited for the party just a few
minutes ago? Why was she so tired?

“
Rest now,” her husband
said. “You’re nearly back to perfect condition, but until that day
comes, we must be wary of these little hiccups. You
understand?”

She was merely able to nod.

“
Good,” he said, and
smoothed her hair before standing. “I’ll come back to tend to you,
but for now, I must still play the host. You’ll be safe
here.”

He turned and left the room, closing and
locking the door behind him. It was indicative of just how near
this room was to the party that she could hear the conversation
pick up back in the ballroom.

“
The things you burden
yourself with, Blaubart, I will never understand.”

“
We all have our
fixations, though, don’t we? By the way, the amount of light
released by your zevatron core and relays must terribly hamper the
efficiency.”

“
It does, but when the
work is so brilliant, some excess should be permitted in making a
spectacle of it.”

“
You’re proving my point.
Though more importantly, I may find cause to modify the design, and
would appreciate your input. I find myself needing much smoother
output modulation for restricting energy flow.”

She lost the flow of their conversation in
its ever-increasing technicality, and soon was unconscious of
anything at all.

###

Mary found herself idly wandering the halls
of the manor. She did her best not to become upset. That was bad
for her condition, as her forced departure from the party … two?
No, three days prior had so aptly demonstrated. She paused there,
tapping a finger against the frame of a painting as she composed
herself. Her husband had been right to remove her. She had been
growing over-excited and lightheaded. She might have collapsed or
had a fit, had he not done it.

Knowing that, though, did nothing to dull
the sting of being taken from the music, and from watching a
pianist, however artificial, display the same mastery over that
instrument she once had.

It was worsened by being unable to play her
own.

She had spent uncountable hours whiling away
the time in these halls as she recovered, a process that now seemed
interminable, and in that time, she was certain she had read and
read again every book, examined in detail every piece of art, and
explored every crevice of their home. She had grown bored with it
all ages ago, but still managed to find some way or another to
distract herself enough from her situation.

However, in the wake of the incident at the
party, and her inability to recall how to play the piano, she knew
of only one thing that would satisfy her, and that was to play on
her own instrument once again.

She had gone to the drawing room where her
prized piano had stood for so long opposite the ancient stone
fireplace, but found that a simple desk now occupied the space that
once belonged to the instrument. She eventually cornered one of the
few serving-girls who hadn’t irritated her husband and been
dismissed in favor of an automaton, yet.

“
Girl, what has been done
with the piano?” she asked the servant, a pretty young thing who’d
been with them for some time, but whose name entirely slipped
Mary’s mind.

“
The piano, madam?” The
girl paused and stared at her, a look of confusion, but which also
held a bit of what she’d seen in the party guests who witnessed her
episode.

“
Yes, the piano.
My
piano. It was here
not long ago. Has it been moved?”

The girl’s confusion visibly deepened, and
she shook her head. “Madam, this room has been the same since I
started here. There’s never been a piano.”

Mary took a breath and swallowed her
irritation with the serving-girl. Though having a fit within her
home with only the house staff to witness it would be far less
embarrassing than what had overcome her at the party, she would
still prefer to avoid any such loss of composure, if possible.

She dismissed the serving-girl and set out
to solve the mystery on her own, re-examining all those corners and
hidden places around their labyrinth home where the instrument may
have been taken. But it was not in the entrance hall, nor the
bedrooms, nor the dining room, nor the gallery, library, or even
atrium—and so she had found herself stalking the back halls in a
foul mood, puzzling over what may have become of it.

He wouldn’t have had it destroyed or thrown
out, even for her sake. He’d chosen it for her himself, and was
very fond of its appearance. She didn’t believe for a moment that
he would have marred that perfect finish.

That left one room; the one place she had
never explored in all of her idle wanderings: her husband’s
laboratory.

She was not allowed in there. No one was,
beyond Doctor Blaubart himself. She understood why, of course. She
was hardly a scientist, nor even particularly clever. It was likely
that her mere presence would upset some delicate work and set him
back months in his latest project. He had already given up so much
of his work in his care for her that she would not usually trouble
him further, but in this matter she could not deny herself.