Annabelle

Something steampunky for this autumn day.

A-742 held out its hand, stuck, attached to an arm powered by clockwork, part of a body that functioned only with the turn of a key. A-742’s fabricator had not been very kind, you see: its wind-up key was in the middle of its back, where the limited motion of its arms could not reach. A-742 was dependent on a human. On reflection, perhaps it was foresight and not unkindness that influenced the fabricator’s design–there could be no mistake who was subject to whom.

In its outstretched hand, A-742 gripped a tattered piece of paper, held fast by frozen fingers. The boy could only make out the exclamation, “A Clockwork Marvel!” The rest of the advertisement was clenched in a skin-covered metal fist. And marvel the boy did, at the fist and at the rest of it. The analog androids had been the great human accomplishment, a blend of engineering, biological manipulation, artwork, and no little bit of whimsy. To the scientists, they were an answer to societal problems and a Holy Grail all mashed up into one vast design. But to the public, they were  simply a new toy, a convenience and perk of modern living like the zeppelin and the steam locomotive.

            If properly taken care of, these analog androids would last long enough to become a family heirloom. Oh, perhaps the clockwork would have to be repaired; there had sprung up a field of specialists for such maintenance. But the skin would stay flawless, the hair would not fall out. With proper maintenance and without any taxing demands placed upon it, an android would last indefinitely, the fabricators claimed. (Loudly. Triumphantly. Mystically.)

            But A-742 had fallen into disrepair. Back to being an “it” and a number, where she had once had a name. She was Annabelle, a fresh new trinket for the house of her fabricator’s patron.

           

Every day in this house, she had been dressed in a new gown, sometimes by a maid, sometimes by the ladies. Of course, Annabelle could have performed this task mostly on her own – as much as any lady of the time who had button after rear-sewn button to fasten – but her girl-owner preferred her dressed by a maid. She preferred to think of Annabelle as a large, ingenious doll – and who was going to argue with a lady as tempestuous as Miss Roberts?

            So each day, Annabelle was dressed in the latest fashions, silks falling over bustles, joints creaking as the clockwork was forced to move. Gloves were pulled over unresponsive fingers, and a hat placed on perfectly-coiffed hair, shading unseeing blue eyes. And once the doll had been fully admired from all sides, declared absolutely marvelous (but not too beautiful), Miss Roberts (always she) turned the key in Annabelle’s back, bringing the android to her semblance of life.

            Nobody except the fabricators themselves quite knew how the brain of an analog worked. Movement was fairly straightforward, but somehow the clockwork allowed the androids to process information and converse. Granted, such a mind was not perfect; Annabelle did not understand jokes, although she knew to laugh along when others did. She did not understand sarcasm or insincerity. But dinner-table conversation, memorization of facts, even the mild, repressed flirting of the Victorian Male were well within her comprehension. The mystery of this brain kept Miss Roberts intrigued with the android long after she would have lost interest in anything else.

            If she was to last through an evening ball, Annabelle would have to be rewound. And although she was brought often to assemblies (who would refuse Miss Roberts?), Annabelle rarely danced. Despite knowing the steps and being able to execute them with precision, potential partners found her unblinking eyes disconcerting, and (to be frank) the quiet clicks and tocks and whirs she emitted entirely too bizarre. They might have been too polite (or too scared) to say anything negative about Miss Roberts’ special companion, but their manners did not extend to treating a machine like a debutante.

            After parties, Annabelle would be left to wind down. Sometimes, she would have to be carried inside, as she had gone still in the carriage. She was inevitably sent home before the party was over, at the behest of Madame Roberts, who insisted that her daughter have time and space to converse with the eligible young men without them being frightened off by Annabelle. And as no one save Miss Roberts alone was allowed to wind her, the android could not be started to walk herself into her room. Several strong young lads would be summoned, and with the butler directing, Annabelle was unbent from her sitting position in the carriage, knee gears scraping in protest, hoisted aloft, and carried to her room where maids were present to prepare her for bed.

            Had Annabelle been sentient, such an existence would have been humiliating. But it is necessary to remember, she was not. Oh, she may have conversed prettily and remembered the minutiae babbled around her by the many society ladies, but for all their terrifying, blasphemous, exhilarating dreams, the fabricators had not managed to evoke life. They could imitate it well enough with their cogs and their gears and their keys, but Annabelle did not feel. She did not think. She could not create. She could decide and learn, but she could not evolve. She could not become something other than she was.

           

Eventually, inevitably, disastrously, Miss Roberts moved on. She became intrigued by young men and their compliments, wanted their eyes and their minds to herself. She did not want them distracted by her strange, exotic contraption – a device that contrived to put on human behaviors, perhaps even contrived to make one of the gentlemen love her! One night, spurred on by mild jealousy and more than a little boredom, Miss Roberts sent Annabelle home from the party without a backward glance.  Where there had normally been a pleading look to her Papa, or an exasperated sigh at her Mama, followed by a joyous embrace and promises to be reunited first thing in the morning, this time there was nothing. Miss Roberts laughed gaily at the amusements of her beaux, full of pride at the power she had over them. Not one thought was spared for her clockwork companion.

            Madame Roberts knew an opportunity when she saw one. Upon her daughter’s indifference, she decided the android must be gotten rid of.  Money was to be made and a bother expelled.  Annabelle was sent to the carriage, still dressed in her party finery.  The coachman was given an address not of la maison Roberts, but Annabelle remained unalarmed. Madame Roberts rode silently across from her, having left her daughter under the chaperonage of a spinster aunt.

            They – society matron and analog android – arrived at the shop of one of the city’s finest purveyors, merchants who specialized in selling the newest inventions of the modern world, those things fabricated in laboratories, things combining the biological and the mechanical, inventions thought up by the brightest minds at the best universities. The world was bursting with new machines, gadgets and gizmos thought up to amuse and intrigue.

            A clockwork humanoid was the most intriguing of them all.  Madam Roberts knew Annabelle would fetch a good price. When Annabelle was presented to the purveyor, the excitement and greed in his eyes was plainly evident. Annabelle regarded the transaction – the sale of herself – with the same unblinking stare with which she watched everything else. She was not hurt by Madame or Miss Roberts’ treatment. She was not sad to be leaving her first home. She did not feel betrayed by the disinterest of her professed friend. She did not regret the loss of companionship. Not, mind you, because of some boundless optimism or a spirit buoyed by joy and love and hope, but simply because her fabricator had not been able to determine how to work emotion into her gears and piping.

            Money was exchanged. Bows were made. Adieus were uttered. With a final, brief nod at the android, Madame Roberts took her leave of the jovial purveyor.

“My name is Mr. Baxter. And yours, dear?”

“I am called Annabelle, sir, but you or my new caretaker may change it. My number is A-742, should you care to look up my records and my house of fabrication so as to inform your customers.” Not alive, but not dim-witted either. She knew where she was, and the purpose of a purveyor. She looked at Mr. Baxter, waiting for the words that would tell her clockwork how to act next. “Ah. Well. Whatever you are called, you shall make me quite a lot of money, and at that we can all be quite happy. …Annabelle? Are you well?”

            Quite well, just no longer running. What the fabricators had called “false breath” – the rise and fall of an android’s chest that allowed oxygen to the tiny combustion engine that sent oil to the clockwork gears – had stopped. No ticks – the analog’s semblance of a heartbeat – were heard. “Oh. Oh my. Very well, where is your key?” Mr. Baxter found it protruding through the layers of clothing, the finely-wrought brass incongruous with the fabrics of a lady’s gown. He turned it, listening to the gears click around, waiting for the tension that told him her mechanism was wound. Annabelle turned to face him. “No one but Miss Roberts is allowed to wind me. You are not Miss Roberts.”

            “No, my dear,” Mr. Baxter said softly, kindly. “It can take a few moments for to remember. You no longer belong to Miss Roberts.”  He felt a little bit sad for the robot, who could feel no sadness for herself.

            “Ah, yes. I remember,” Annabelle said. “Please forgive my lapse. What do you wish me to do? As you rewound me, you must have a request.”

            “Oh, very easy, dear, very simple. Not taxing at all. If you could move just over there, to that uncluttered corner, I’d be ever so grateful.”

            “Yes. Of course.”

            All night she stood, unmoving, eyes seeing nothing in the utter blackness of the shop. Her idling sequence clicked through her head: the words of Miss Judith’s Guide for Young Ladies of Consequence (or Those Who Wish to Become So).  Approximately an hour before sunrise, Annabelle’s clockwork ran down, and nothing clicked or tocked anymore.

           

For month after month, Annabelle remained in Mr. Baxter’s shop. At first this was only because nobody offered enough for the android. You see, Mr. Baxter had looked up the plans to A-742, and she was a fine and sophisticated marvel. Her movements were the most fluid, her skin the most realistic, her ability to recall and imitate human conventions unsurpassed. If one ignored her clicks and unblinking eyes, one could almost forget she was an android.

            As time wore on, Mr. Baxter became attached to his fabricated lady. Oh, he was not in love with her, not in the least. She was a robot after all. But Mr. Baxter, for all his joviality, was lonely. A magnificent purveyor, but not a great socializer. He only knew how to make deals and how to sell products, not how to chat and build friendships.

            He began by making up inane excuses for not selling Annabelle, pretends and pretenses: that buyer had a shifty look, couldn’t be trusted to pay. That one looked like the man who had run over his grandmother’s beloved dog. That one smelled oddly. But eventually the fakes fell away. Annabelle was dressed (by her own hand, of course!) in simpler clothes, and taught to assist in running the purveyor’s store. She was an excellent record-keeper, remembering when shipments of fabrications were due in, hearing the gossip about the newest, most sellable items, recalling who had yet to bay their bill. She smiled prettily at the inventors, who allowed the purchasing prices of their devices to be talked down, amazed at her fabrication and more than a little enthralled at her clockwork charm.  Soon, the brightest fabricators in humanics paid just to converse with her (banalities of weather moving into specifics of her fabrication), to bend her fingers, and to try to decipher the scientific alchemy behind A-742.

            At the end of the day, after the trinkets had been bought and sold, after the record-book had been taken down from Annabelle’s memory, the purveyor and the android would sit (peacefully on his part), and talk about whatever he fancied: food, dreams, literature. As they sat in the parlor, Annabelle’s mechanism would run down, and eventually silence was her only reply to a question posed. Mr. Baxter would sigh and leave the room, wishing the Fates had brought him a different lot. For all that she was companionable, Annabelle was not a person, and could only assuage his loneliness so much. He let her run down in an attempt to remind himself of this.

            As he readied himself for bed, he imagined Annabelle silent and dead in the next room over, wondering why his dearest friend had to be made of metal and gears instead of flesh and bone. But every morning, he would wind her to animation, for though his sadness was great each evening when she stopped, it would have been a greater anguish to never have her move at all.

Mr. Baxter was not a particularly young man, nor a particularly healthy one. Only a few years had passed since Annabelle had arrived, and he took poorly. As he lay in bed, he called her in from the parlor where he had left her sitting the night before. But of course, she could not hear him. So Mr. Baxter hauled himself carefully, slowly out of bed and turned her key. “Ah, sir. You are awake. What are we to do today?” Annabelle inquired.

            “Oh, today’s task is very easy, my dear. Just come and stand by my bedside, stay with me. I am old and dying, you see.” So Annabelle stood calmly beside him, watching him breathe. At one point, he told her to retrieve the paper she would find in the drawer of his occasional table.  She took it out, reading in bold, theatrical lettering, “A Clockwork Marvel!”

            “It is the advertisement I wrote about you, before you became my bookkeeper and I decided you must stay.” He grasped her free hand. “Go on, read it. I hope someday, somehow, you will appreciate that you are a marvel; appreciate it, not just know it.” Annabelle read, as she had been told, the purveyor’s hand remaining in hers. Her clockwork mind processed the words and understood they were kind. Kind meant one thanked the giver. She looked up with a smile, ready to offer her words of gratitude. But Mr. Baxter’s eyes had gone blank, and he no longer breathed.

            Annabelle stood with her hand in his as the shadows changed and the light faded, honoring his request that she stay with him. She did not sit. Eventually, there were no more ticks to be heard, and all was still in the purveyor’s shop.