Machines of Flesh - Machines of Steel - Machines All [Steampunky Industrial Revolution Snippets]

[Simpli]

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=} Of Death Things {=​

Her right arm was utterly dead, not even a hint of the power that flowed through it in working hours could give her comfort: it was a dead thing of cold steel and empty wires, a constant foreign body that was unable to warm up even when lying next to her body underneath the thin blanket.

Elena fought to rise from her bed, the thin metal frame groaning at right arm: its weight in steel holding her down as she fumbled along its sling with her hand and pinned it into place. Even with no ray of light falling into the room she was able to make out the others present this morning. To her left was her younger brother, his gangly form pressed against her own, her elbow digging into his back even as he slept dead to the world – the sooth still sticking to his auburn hair and oversized clothes. Further into the room the light crying of her youngest sister was barely audible over the snoring of her co-worker, her mother somewhere between those two sources of noise, softly humming to the crying child, while trying to keep silent herself as best as she could.

There was a rattling noise from the right, the thin walls barely hiding the noise of her neighbours getting ready for work themselves, the faint whirling of an electro-mobile coming from the streets, were its iron wheels dug into the mud and gravel. The Postal Service – ready to bring notice that decided over life and death to the overseers of the blocks.

Somewhere in her pants was a piece of hardtack and Henry who slept in her bed from midday to evening had brought some salted fish of some kind with him a day ago, faintly smelling like alchemist solutions – but perfectly fitting to give a hint of taste to her breakfast. Its taste was still better than the water her older sister had carried up yesterday, but it had at least cleared a little by letting the dust in it sink for a day. There might be soup in the factory later that day – and the hope for a warm bowl was just as much a motivator as the coupons her work would earn her, as she slipped out of the single room they were sharing, fastening her brothers booths around her ankles as she snuck down the darkened staircase, little light falling into it through the thin windows as she moved past neighbours and co-workers, exchanging little greetings as she felt the aching weight of her arm with each step.

How could something of steel and cooper hurt so dully? The leather of the sling was digging into her left shoulder as she took the last few stairs with a swiftness she wasn't truly feeling, tugging down her cap as she moved past the first overseer post, letting none of them watch the pained grimace on her features as she held her shoulder – letting none of them see weakness that would see her discarded or 'improved' further.

In the lines before the gates of the manufactory, she saw friends from her old line – heard broken chatter that reached her ears despite the clattering of the large wheels and the sound of water gushing through the careful laid channels. She saw faces turning her way – saw disgust and pity before they were schooled into indifference or simply turned away from her, offering no greeting as she moved towards the newer and grander side entrance, where others like her were waiting for the next shift to begin, clutching their cards in what hands or digits they had left.

There were few faces she recognized here: she had heard that a whole shift had died when the capacitators overloaded last week and another three had drowned in the channels below, trying to unclog a stuck water wheel. While she recognized none, she could recognize herself in them: tired, some even red from fever, young but with lines that wouldn't look wrong on far older faces. Bodies that were 'improved' for their work, limbs and eyes, hands and feet – taken away to be given steel replacements…

…improvements for the factory, not for her or any of them.

Did a thought grew less biter because it was thought every day? It didn't and neither grew the pain any less painful when she was set on her station. Cool hands and cooler hands handled her with gloves and without care. Opened her sling and set all their attention on the death metal on her arm, ignoring the red inflammation on her stump, ignored her winces as they hooked her up to the power lines on the ceiling, ignored the smell of burning flesh as power returned to the death thing on her arm, rousing it from its slumber.

30–20-10 ​

A terrible thing it was: all blades and thongs, hammer and claw in one: unfeeling, unflinching, its only weakness the flesh connected to it. Temperamental and utterly predictable all at once. She could count in the depths of her head the number of connections it needed, spreading above her like a twisted canopy of copper and rubber, linking her up to the great web of energy that spread out over the whole factory floor: unseen in the darkness, unyielding in its demands upon the body of those that had its power flow through them.

She had to bite down on a piece of leather herself whenever the energy surged: every thirty seconds a new piece, five seconds break between pieces, shift from one piece to another – energy broken not to waste any: five seconds of utter deadweight followed by energy forcing itself through steel, past the flesh that held it and through nerves that controlled it. It was like being set on fire, again and again. Every thirty seconds and five seconds past, for each piece, each day of the week.

Back then the loss of her arm and the sudden dead thing on her shoulder had seemed like the worst thing possible – she had sobbed in the darkest corner of the courtyard between night and dawn, put on a brave face as she shared the one time bonus with her family and bought her mother some salve for her own burns. It had been more money than she had made in a month – and it was still too little. Too little for her, too little for her family – too little for the loss of an arm.

But now she was more 'efficient' the dead arm not only a more powerful tool but a cruel teacher. A teacher in pain, a teacher in time, a teacher in exact precision: there were no second chances, there was no chance to pull a piece back and fix it when it get loose: there were thirty second of power and that was it: the piece had to be made in that time, the piece had to be formed in the way her arm had been designed: the piece had to be made the right way all the time, in all hours, in all days of the week.

10-20-30​

The arm was not hers – it was the factories, it was the overseers – she just had to carry it around. She had to care for it, she had to endure it, she had to live with its pain and its weight, she had to use it and abuse it. And when things broken, when things slowed down, when the energy cooked cables and her flesh it would be her who paid for it. In scars, in burns and in deductions from her pay. For negligence, for breaks, for the staff that had to repair it – those cold fingered, cold eyed man from bigger schools and greater words.

Outside it had no purpose but to torture her, to weight her down – but in here her pain had reason, had results and earned her the coupons she needed to get the food for her family. And in the way there was little use for it on the outside, laid another, painful path, that some had taken.

There were those tasked with giving the products a finishing look, their eyes replaced by electric lenses, sharp and unflinching before every little flaw – their hands mechanical spiders with many feet and holds – their upper bodies near permanently lifted up by the cables, holding them even as other uses disappeared. There was no sight beyond these walls, nor touch for them – the energy to precious, the dam too important for the factories to expand its net beyond these hallowed halls of work. And if there was nothing for you beyond the factory – why not stay in it longer and longer?

Only a few paces away was a worker she had seen months ago: a broad boy from the countryside, Sunkissed by the harvest, but thinned by the loss of his families plot of land. Now she could hardly make him out a level above her, his body encased in steel, his arms and legs having become nothing but extensions of the machine: grand hammers and pistons, with his eyes of glass staring into the heat and glow of the furnace without flinching, while the bellows that had replaced his lungs sucked in the scorching hot heat of the air without pain and only minimal tear.

Was there any other path but death or death by another name?

To be burned out by the power growing faulty or by lines crossing when the rubber grew hard and broke? Or to be 'improved' piece by piece, to grow more and more reliant on the unseen net above them, unable to move, to see, to breath – beyond the walls of the factory?

These were questions that forced their way into her mind not because of idleness, not because of the grand humanities and humanity that the few newspapers she had ever seen were talking about when they spoke of the advances that country was experiencing.

It was because this was Elena's reality, it was her live – or rather what was left of it. She had sacrificed an arm – how much would she need to sacrifice the next? How much greater would the hunger need to be to make her loose her voice, to make her ask them to cut out what made her break, what made her seek rest?

All around herself she saw machines and nothing but them. From the great furnace that glowed in the night and burned her throat with its heat to the ever present ring of the punch card as new shifts came and went. She could hear the hiss of the pneumatic system ranging from one overseers office to another, could see her work beneath the pale yellow light above that gave the work its fallow look.

She could see human machines on each side of her, machines of flesh and steel, of flesh becoming steel, of steel becoming more and more machine. Was it a path in steps? A slow transformation from worker to machine that could be seen on those that worked around her? That asked the question of breath or bellows when the former failed or the later beaconed with the ringing of coins? Could there be – should there be any difference between her brother descending into the dark to pull the carts that brought to the surface the fuel of all the furnace – and the boy that was now clad in steel and could be lowered into the furnace when needed?

It had been no sudden epiphany, no grand revelation, but a sinking realisation that sunk into her bones and burned her through the steel of her dead arm: they were – and they would be machines, those that worked in her part of the factory simply were closed to the ideal of the factory – not even those of the overseers. Just like her they worked – nothing more, noting less. They worked all day and night like she did and she had seen them go just as hungry when the prices rose as she had seen her own family. While her tact was given by the thirty seconds of energy, theirs was given by her activity in turn: their walks, their gazes – all controlled, all efficient – all repeated day by day by day.

There was a force on all of them, a force that went beyond the grand net above her, beyond the pain surging through her arm, beyond the hunger and the cold: it was a force that peered on her from high above, from beyond the walls and still permeated every little bit of the factory. And it forced her to one simple realisation: in its vision, in the vision of the factory there were no workers and machines: there was just one – machines of steel and machines in human shape – and each day: each lost limb and each burning pain the line between them blurred more and more.

How could one do anything else but think? And when one thought there was no other solution, there was no greater cry, no bigger issue on ones mind than the single one that encompassed all of them. That encompassed those too weak to beg, those that died under the earth or between the gears, those who were death in spirit even as their bodies worked and ate. There was just one call in her mind – and she was sure it was in many others: To be human. To be seen, to be allowed, to be given a position worthy of humans…

…but thirty seconds had burned into her mind, five seconds had marked her skin and day upon day had taken its toll that reminded her off a single thing: the factory did not need humans. It needed just one thing, devoured it, broke it, spit it out just like its products: machines – machines of flesh – machines of steel: machines all.

And for the factory she was nothing more than one of them.

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[Simpli]

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=} ...something of a man, something of a titan - something of a worm. {=​

Between the light stone of the church, the wool of the sheep looked like stormy clouds on the horizon: huddling together and growing into something bigger than themselves as they milled around the altar and lay on the wood chips that remained off the church pews.

The view was surprising – shocking one might say even and with the squeal of steel on steel and leather, the great wheels that propelled him forward came to a stop, digging deep into the tracks of his work, crushing the overgrown vestiges of mudbricks and wood as he came to stop in what had once been…

"Home?"

The words were nearly a whisper, more of a croak than anything, his throat stiff from unuse and his lips burning from the sun coming down on him all day. It was barely a whisper, usually not even audible over the sound of the steam engine at his back – but when he had come to a stop, his grand metal form had simply ceased to move forward in the middle of work: how could any of the farmhands to something else but come closer?

He blinked a few times, the endless wheat around him resolving into something other than yellow and gold with the occasional blotch and dot, as he tried to focus – get his tired eyes centred on the splotch right before him, the one reaching up to undo the mask over his face. The effect was instantons – colours shifted a little, the heat became worse and most of the dots around him turned away, moving to the side or simply turning their back to his visage. Only one remained, with dark brown hair and sun kissed features he looked up worried – gently – slightly pained as he said:

"This isn't home – we are living at the estate now. You got your own…", the man before him seemed to wrestle with the words, before finishing "…workshop and all. This Is just another field, and we need to finish it till sundown. You understand friend?"

The last word made him nod, nearly unbidden. There was just something to the dot before him that made him feel more comfortable, made him forget the lack of…the lack…just the lack. He nodded, at least he was sure that had did. Because the splotch before him showed some whiter dots and then reached up, to fix the mask back into place, the googles tinting the world slightly, lessening the glare of the sun as his 'legs' began to march once more, the wheels moving over the field and his arms reaching out in wide sweeps, felling the wheat with large and precise scythes, doing the work of more than a dozen man in each moment: swinging not wildly but ever precise, not with abandon but with mechanic control: each sweep an engineered and unchanging movement that continue day and day and..

Night.

There was a cold when the fire wasn't burning, when the heat of the coal didn't spread through his iron form, didn't give him the power of all other workers combined and instead felt like nothing more of a tomb. His eyes, unburdened by the mask and glasses turned heavenwards, the old roof of Father Dunns church letting the light of the moon and the stars fall down on him between the rafters: disappeared and disappearing like the rest of the village.

The sheep didn't keep their distance at first, but his body was fixed high enough that none of them could reach him or at least nothing of him that still remained able to feel touch. And they didn't stay, they moved together for warmth, for companionship, shrinking back from his cold steel form and unable to move up the ladder that was the only way to look eye to eye with him, fixed upon the prow of his body like a steel masked figurehead, or maybe…

…his eyes moved up, if only by a little, saw the spot on the wall where the stone was lighter, where dust and grim had only begun to gather, where the shrinking contours of a cross were still visible. It reminded him of the pastors damnation of Bobby, who had come home from the city with an iron arm, pride easily hiding the pain he hadn't seen back then.

Even to him it had been a marvellous thing: there was a full coffer of different attachments to it: it could bear a hammer, a screw or a pick – it could be equipped with a blade or even a gun – the later Bobby only talked about; he hadn't seen such a thing outside of the parades. In all things it had seemed like a wonder back them, so different from the bend and only party stump that old Walsh had returned with from the navy.

Bobby had shown off his new clothes, had given his parents part of the pay – talked about the factory needing him, having made such arms just for him and his colleagues – with parts, bits and pieces that fit perfectly to the machinery of their work and none other… he wasn't sure if Bobby ever got just why.

But he remembered Father Dunn's words: the question of where Bobby thought his arm would be on the day of Resurrection. If the sound of coins had been louder than the flesh and blood of his father and mother, the form given to him by Him above. There had been sharp words – and that hadn't been seen before. Bobby had talked about a pastor back at his factory who praised the hard work, the productivity and sacrifice of Bobby and his mates: wasn't suffering and hard work pleasing to His eyes?

It had been one of the rare few times he had seen father Dunn truly angry and when it had been time for Bobby to return to the City the pastor had followed him to talk with the other preacher – but when he came back he never told the others in the village about it. He never went back to the city he stayed here and saw his church turn into a sheep pen and now…now… it was hard to remember. Time was tricky and there was…

Music.

Outside, there was a fire, there was music – there was someone singing, and he was sure that there was food and drink, maybe even a sheep that just got lost in the woods as they were passing. It was like a distant dream, like a memory he wasn't sure he could see or not. There had been dancing, there had been the girl from the other side of the hills, feet had been swift, and her hands had held his and…

"Shall we get you down? There's bread, some meat, you could…", there was Blake again, looking up him, looking up at what remained off him. But his words was already getting lost, disappearing in the lack of things – not even feeding the flame that gave him strength, but just tapering off into nothingness. He felt it keenly when he wasn't on the field: he felt it at nights like and when he was in the workshop, there he felt it most keenly in winter. In Winter they pulled him out, put him down, put one of the youngest girls to feeding him each day, made sure he was resting comfortably and kept him alive if not awake till spring came and the fields needed to be tilled. They took care of him out of pity – but also fear. For if he would die in winter…who would need to be set into the machine in the year to come?

The Winter cold gnawed on him, pulled on him and the only thing that made him move, made him think he was running away from it, made him feel the heat that he needed, wanted – craved; came when he was doing what he had been built to do, maybe born to do: harvest. When he could swing his arms with power and see the wheat fall, when he could trundle over the field and crush the stones and ruins between his wheel as if he could pulverize the past. Then he felt powerful, he felt needed – he felt not like a man – never like a man – but a titan. Seeding and reaping the earth with his powerful swings – but then winter: something less than a man. A worm, huddled in a corner and fed like a babe – a cripp…

"I want to dance.", came out of his lips instead of the thought. His voice stronger this time, echoing in the ruin, making some of the sheep shift even as Blake turned around, running his hands through his dark hair as he looked up to him with puzzlement – and pity.

"I can get two of the boys to get you down, the fire is…"

"I want to dance…", came his tone instead, flat, not pleading, not angry just – a wish. A wish for what couldn't be, a wish for a time when he had legs instead of wheels, when he and Blake had run along paths that were now nothing but fields, he played in houses that were now nothing but wheat and made faces at one another in a church that was now a pen for another kind of animal.

Blake

His eyes, dim and unused as they were glanced down and without the googles, in the pale light and up this close he couldn't help but see what he hadn't wanted to see, what he hadn't wanted to think about – one of so many thinks he didn't want, couldn't even think about. But now in the halls were the virtues had been hammered into him with stick and fist, where right and wrong had been set before him in all their celestial glory and daily perfidy, he couldn't help but voice his thoughts:

"Old Ms. Kara O'Fallon always said you brought bad luck. That they had drowned grandpas uncle at his birth for…", What for – it was on the tip of this tongue, but it felt as leaden, as useless as the rest of him. The words wouldn't come out but he could remember them playing in the fields, the suns rays giving Blake's hair the furnish of copper and then the blazing brightness of fire. He could remember old Ms. O'Fallon speak of devil and witches, while giving them bread. He could remember his friend and he could see the Blake before him with his raven hair, the features that were so different and the accent that wasn't from this side of the hill, but the other. He could feel something rising in him as he brought out haltingly: "You… You are…"

A sharp laugh, not of amusement, not of malady, but of pity and something darker "…a Blake.", the stranger friend – the friendly stranger – replied not unkindly, standing before him and looking up with no hint of smile or amusement. No love of a joke played well on his expense, simply a soft pity as he said slowly: "The other Blake…the first Blake. He lives at the port, he has wed your sister. They sent letters you…sometimes have someone read them for you in…"

Winter. When he was cold, when he was miserable, when he wished to be a titan again, but was a worm, when he couldn't dare to hope to be a man but wished to hear from his family. When gentle voices read him tales of nieces and nephews, of early deaths and new delights. Talks of family, of visits he always denied. Heartfelt gratitude for the money sent – worry for what he would need to live with. Packages with food he shared and clothes he gifted others: never daring to tell his sister why he wouldn't need these sleeves or pants, why her brother was only…

…something of a man.

There had been helpful hands, an understanding secretary even and in beautiful lines stories had been spun: of hard work and golden wheat, of travels to the other side of the channel, off work with new people and new lords. Talks of the glorious machine that made work so very easy, off the lovely weather and the plentiful food. Talks of girls and….maybe in the next there would be dancing. Of a brother that was a man and danced while a machine was resting with the sheep.

But these thoughts were dark and they were cold. They promised the days of what was to come, the end of the fire and the end of work. But right now it was harvest, the wheat was plentiful and the work not yet done. Right now..

…he was a titan…

…not yet a worm.

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[Simpli]

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=} Killing Time {=​

"I hate my hands" And that was the full truth: She hated her hands – both of them. If anything, it was hard to say which disgusted her more more. It was easy to see why she despised her right one – or the lack thereof: sometimes her dead arm ended in a hammer, sometimes in tongs, sometimes it merely was a crude tool with which to push, shove and pull and then she sometimes got the primitive facsimile of a hand attached to it, a brutal thing of broad 'thumbs' and three digits. It was something that belonged onto a crane – not an arm, but it was cheap, durable and easily exchanged with even the gear-greasers of the factories own worship being able to replace any faulty part.

Her left one wasn't much better. While it was still flesh and blood, it disgusted her in a more persistent way: there was a dull aching pain that wrecked it every hour of the day, the phantom feeling of screws and steel passing beneath it. Even if she wanted she couldn't bend half of her fingers without letting out a gasp of pain and her ring finger could barely move at all. Her skin was marked by burns and cuts, years of work from the moment she was small enough to climb in between the machines having cut their tapestry upon her, just as her blood had slicked the parts of the machine.

She tried to close her hand, but she could barely form a claw with it: scarred and bend fingers that had aged before their time, that had made helping her younger sister dress a torture, that had made her even think about getting another dead arm, another thing that might not be hers – but that might actually work at least at work. These were thoughts she tried to bury deep inside of herself, thoughts that lead towards the upper part of the production line, where people functioned – the only place where they did.

But right now she was alone with her thoughts – or nearly. The wood bit into her back, her manacles around her wrists and ankles kept her secured to the chair and it was only the inexperience of the newest cog-cutter that kept the wooden piece out of her mouth, that would otherwise have silenced her screams. But this boy was young, green enough that he had actually turned green when he had taken off the dead arm to expose the stump – a miracle forged by the factories very own surgeon, set against flesh that had gotten far less care than the cogs and metal bits that went into it and were screwed along its bone.

At least he hadn't emptied his breakfast over her and that was something for a boy that had most likely never seen anything else but the tool workshop of his father or the distant figure that had fathered him with an unlucky mother, before paying some money to brush the whole thing off and getting him a good enough paying job in which you cut more into others than you were cut yourself.

That she had ended up on his chair was most likely the overseers petty revenge for the breakdown at her line last week – not that any of them could proof her anything. But 'maintenance' with the youngest cog-cutters and oldest tools usually was a sign that a higher authority had it out for you – but didn't think it could away with putting up a red cube above your work station to warn the rest away.

On a good day nothing had to be changed the tools glistening on the tray to her left remained just where they were right now – on a bad day they were driven into her flesh, shortening what of her arm remained, to expose fresh bones, fresh nerves and insert new cogs and screws into her screaming flesh to make sure that her dead arm moved as they needed it to.

Today could be either – and she gave the shivering boy a grin as he looked at the mangled remnants of her limb, not torn apart by the machine she worked on – but carved away month for month by the loving care of his ilk.

"I would like to make something with it, you know.", Elena started in a light tone again, as if she was merely talking about the weather, as if she wasn't bound and helpless in front of a child that couldn't be older than her sister and was still expected to be able to maintain her arm – steel and flesh both.

The face before he showed some confusion – as well as a trickle of sweat, as clumsy and inexperienced hands did their best to expose the inner workings of her arms 'gently'. But with the inflammation of the burns from the power coursing through it every little jostle felt like a fresh stab and the only comfort she could take was the rapt audience she had – no matter how unwilling it was.

"But you are making things….all day. That's why…", came the reluctant reply, wedged in between two little cuts, her blood dripping faster than the words. Still, she couldn't help but shake her head with some delight – it was easy for them to fix them to the chair, to 'maintain' them like one would any other piece of equipment. But you did not talk to equipment and that was an integral lesson this cog-cutter hadn't yet learned. His elders would of course teach him before too long, that the only humans in the factory were those on the second floor with the elevated platforms of the overseers merely holding the most particularly well trained off all pack animals.

Of course, he didn't need to finish his words, he wasn't inexperienced enough to take his eyes away from her stump and Elena leaned back with another little wince tugging on her cheek as his scalpel brushed against her bone – but talked nonetheless: "Really? What do I make?", was her swift answer, pitting a confidence she cold only play against an uncertainty that was surely unable to belief she would badger someone with knives against her flesh. "What do you think we produced yesterday? Have any idea what the lines we cut last week were used for? Why did we make six-centimetre inches today and will make eight-centimetre ones tomorrow? What did we do any day this week?"

Her questions were rapid, her voice growing lighter, her eyes fluttering lightly as he injected her with something for calm, something that took the edge even of a blade – ohh inexperience: later he would learn that for those on the line even the alcohol was reduced from their pay. But right now she felt light, her aches were there but distant and her lips were moving with an ease that brought her delight, her point lightly poking at the cog-cutter even as he cut into her – laugher pearling off her lips, like the blood that ran down onto the floor, following the sloped tiles towards the drains.

"Ohh none of us make anything. We just do we stand and sit all day, we work with two gestures, two movements, one grip – we do them any one day of the week. No matter how long, no matter how short, just a slightly different grip and the work gets done. We do it, we do it again and again and there's nothing we have made yet. There are boxes, there are crates full of things the factory has made – but I? Did I do a tip? Did I do a butt? Did I make any of it – did I make all of it? It doesn't feel like it…"

The thought alone was making her hand twitch, her ugly bend and scarred hand – and the other that wasn't here right now, but which she could feel in this moment just as dearly – just as tightly and as she moved it she felt the pain lancing through her shoulder again, heard the gasp and could only giggle as she watched a paling face as it dripped, dripped, dripped onto the floor:

"You know what we are doing down there? We kill time. We bash its head in with our great hammers, we drill into it till it leaks like a sieve and disappears into the ground, we cut and forge it into little pieces, pieces of pieces of pieces to come that we will never see – except if they are pointed at our homes and turn them into so many other pieces and pieces and bits.", her eyes felt large – larger than her skull, but she could still stare right ahead, right at the pair of glasses that tried to look anywhere but at her and she could only smile again, wide and wild:

"We kill it – we trample it – we kill our time – we trample over it – we kill our lives and we trample over it and why….why?", her voice was rising in pitch, she could feel her throat hurt and she could see the cog-cutter turn away, as if he could escape her voice by looking away – but instead of shouting, instead of raving, she merely leaned forward, hair falling over her face, darkness dipping into the light and pain accompanied by the dripping filling her head as she whispered softly:

"We sold it."

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