The Builder stood back and appraised his great work, the labor of all his years at last complete. It was a beautiful, elegant monstrosity that rose to twice and again the height of a full-grown man, its skin all of burnished metal and buttressed arches. From outside all that could be seen was a hill-like mound, perfectly spherical in shape, plain to the eye but for the way it shone in the sun. On one side was a recessed cavity that served as an entryway. But inside, ah! Inside was the true marvel, his joy and secret pride.
It took only the press of a few buttons for the Builder to open the door. It was less a door meant for human passage than it was a great metal throat, the airways of his beautiful inhuman offspring. And in he stepped, listening to the tremendous silence of the machine waiting to draw breath, draw life. It was a reassuring thing, that steady quiet. It was a reminder, a promise perhaps, that the pain in his back, the unsteadiness in his legs, the incense of years clouding his vision had not been for nothing. It meant something. It meant something to him.
All along the walls and floor of the passage wound silk-fine filaments of wire in inexplicable complexity. Inexplicable complexity to an outsider perhaps; he knew the role of each and every one. To the untrained eye, nothing of this place would make sense. It would seem the rambling folly of a madman; “inexplicable” would be the kindest way to describe it. But he recognized these delicate wires as the circulatory system of his great work, channeling energy from without to the inmost chambers where hung the beautiful and terrible cogged heart at its center.
It was with relish the Builder shambled through the worming passages, knowing each and every intersection that would baffle and maze anyone else. A left turn here, then a right, and on through a slowly ascending rise; another right, and so on… Until finally, godlike in its immensity, quiet with the apprehension of a machine not yet put to its function, bloomed the central metal bower. It was the breast of this sleeping titan, no beat yet to be heard from its heart.
Its lattice was not of bone and cartilage, no, but of precious ores collected long over the course of years. Its inner flesh was not soft nor pliable to the touch of time like that of a human, but impervious and impermeable. The life-giving arteries that spilled serpentine from shadowed crevices were not tender tissue to be easily torn or ruptured, and there they converged in their multitudes upon the principal structure, spherical as was the exterior shell. It was a thing all of cogs and gears, meeting and diverging with a peculiarity that would make any learned architect laugh at their absurdity, circled all round with metallic struts like the limbs of a terrible god. It would be only upon the Builder’s touch that the whole of this place would come to life, ready to begin its interminable work. It would be only upon his touch that it would fulfill its function: not to produce some rude manufacture for the consumption of men, no. Nor to supply energy for their endeavors, their livelihood.
For the function of this place was merely to exist; self-contained and complete, needing nothing, intended for nothing beyond the triumph of a perfect mathematical precision. And it was perfect, the Builder saw. His creation, his child, would outlast mountains. It would witness the dimming of scarlet stars. It would certainly outlast him. His work was at last fulfilled, all that remained for him was to turn it on, to bring to life this the purest expression of his will. And then, well… then he would be free to leave.
The Builder looked upon the heart of his work, the secret heart of him, and was pleased. But it was with no small amount of trepidation that he reached his hand, his all-too-human hand, out to the central controls that rose pedestal-like on the central dais before the heart, so very like an altar, to complete the task.
His hand lingered. Was he ready? He had checked thrice over the placement of each and every aspect of his work. He had consulted the diagrams that would seem arcane to any eye but his. He knew it, he felt, as surely as he knew his own tired body. Yes, this place was only waiting to be born. But was he finally, after all these endless years, ready to die? His hand lingered. His fingers shook.
And then like a lightning bolt his hand fell upon the final proportion of his work, the button which was the command to live, live at least! It was the only soft thing comprising the whole of this titanic body. And in an instant he committed this place–whatever it signified, madness, brilliance, beauty, sorrow, he did not know–to wake. It was too late now for secondary considerations, for doubt.
The Builder heard the telltale electric sizzle of a newborn artificial life, noted the first groaning rotations of its innumerable cogs and gears. Beneath his feet the very earth moaned, even as the walls shook off the dust of ages. Tears began to well in his rheumy eyes, his breath came haltingly; as the heart of his beauty began its first pulsing, so his own began to lose strength. He could feel it within his chest, a subtle tightening. And it was good; all was as it should be. All acts of creation should require sacrifice. The tightening became an ache, became a pain, became an agony.
The Builder fell to his knees, gripping at his chest and the immensity nestled there that could not be reached. But his eyes never left the heart–his own secret heart–winding up with an inhuman fury before him. It was as he smiled that the Builder heard something else, a quiet sound, a sound that should not be. It did not come from before him, nor behind him; it came from all around.
Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. Gasping and grasping at the meaning of this, the Builder crumbled to his stomach. He pressed his wrinkled face against the cool floor, as if in supplication before the heart. And then, just as his eyes dimmed and his breath faltered a final time, he heard it: somewhere a single cog in the machine had slipped its placement. One single cog. One small miscalculation in the mind of a madman. The whole structure shuddered in anger or pain, he did not know which. Perhaps it was both. Perhaps it was only senseless sound, laid bare of all metaphor and sentiment.
“It’s ruined,” said the Builder, and it was the barest whisper. “It’s all ruined now.”
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