“It’s Dorothy speaking.”
“This is Alfred.”
It was the same voice she had spoken to earlier in the week.
“Well, well. Honey, how are you?”
“A little nervous,” says the voice. “I’ve just arrived at the address you’ve given me. I’m at a parking lot in a derelict strip mall. There’s a Sunday’s Sundaes across the street.”
Dorothy slips a small chuckle. How innocent. She figures Alfred was not a regular to Gloamspire. “Face the Sunday’s Sundaes – that’s North. Keep walking on the sidewalk in that direction until you see an abandoned monastery. My residence is right behind it.”
“Behind a monastery?” says the voice.
Dorothy lets out a dry laugh. They always brought that up, as if doing so would lessen the impact of their shared sin. “I’m in unit 332. Third floor.”
“So it’s just you? No guest check-in or security guard I have to pass by first?”
“Just me. I’m solo,” says Dorothy. His question checked out – only someone who had never been to Gloamspire would ask that. Security for an apartment complex in Gloamspire? No landlord would cough up the money for that. “Anyway, do you think you can get here on your own?”
“Uh-huh,” the voice grunts affirmatively.
“Great. I’ll see you soon, honey.” Dorothy sets the receiver onto the cradle of the rotary dial phone and arranges a few trinkets on her nightstand. She disconnects the charging cord from the inlet on the small of her back before pacing around her apartment to make sure everything is in place. Beside her bed was an off-brand powercell labeled Gearthrive. It had arrived just a few hours ago, and although the delivery man had neglected the other items she had purchased, Gearthrive’s powercells were almost as good as the real thing. Their customer service was good, too; the delivery man promised to return with the skincare oil and joint grease she had purchased by the end of the day.
Dorothy examines her reflection in the mirror closet door. She is a modified 3X-F, developed by Gearstride Automatics for social work, home tending, and hospice care. She has a petite frame, and knowing this attracts certain kinds of customers, she’s dolled herself in a schoolgirl uniform and heavy eye-shadow to bring out her eyes.
She then wanders into the living room and peeks out the blinds of her windows, spotting an out-of-place man down the hall. He is gray-haired, lightly tanned, and wears an ornate button-up and crisp khakis, and a pocket watch dangles from a belt loop on his side. Dorothy guesstimates his outfit makes most sense in an air-conditioned office in Dorumegia, and imagines he is some sort of imperial alchemist or lawman. For a brief moment, Dorothy wonders how it might feel to trap a good man through having a child.
She hears a few quick knocks on the door. She waits, watching the man look up and down the hall with a worried face, as if he is concerned he will be spotted by someone he knows. She lingers by the window a little longer, delighting in his discomfort.
Eventually, she lets the man inside, closes the door, and leans against it. She examines her catch closely. He looks clean. His broad shoulders create a defined line under his shirt, and the outline of his biceps is visible beneath his sleeves. His waist is trim, and his jawline is sharp, fixing his mouth into a permanent scowl that masks the entitled arrogance that Dorothy likes in her men. She notices that he also has a pale line around his ring finger; breaking something sacred is fun, and Dorothy thinks to herself that she is going to enjoy tonight. Besides, what better way to run a customer on repeat than a shared secret?”
“You’re a gorgeous bot,” he says.
“Thank you.”
The man called Alfred produces a leather bag. Dorothy takes it and feels the weight of the coins inside with her hands. She’s done this enough that she guesstimates the man has paid the right amount. She then sets the bag on the coffee table in the living room before taking him by the hand to her bedroom. He pauses to look around the apartment.
“Alfred? Clock’s ticking.”
The man called Alfred fidgets with a little device. He looks in the corners of the living room and bedroom before concentrating his eyes on the little screen in his hands.
“Paranoid much?” says Dorothy.
“Sorry,” the man called Alfred makes an awkward smile. “Just taking precautions,” he says as he pockets his scanner.
They enter the bedroom. Dorothy watches the man called Alfred look around slowly at the lubricants, perfumes, and the basket of toys on the dresser. Perhaps he was more innocent than she had thought.
“Don’t do this often?”
“No,” he says sheepishly.
She sits him down on the bed and embraces him, burying his face in her chest. As the man slowly breathes in her perfume, Dorothy feels the man relax his body and slump his weight against her. After some time, she gently pushes him down onto the bed and presses herself into him. His kisses are fast and nervous, and as they shuffle, Dorothy guesstimates that the man called Alfred won’t last long. A pity, but that means she should have just enough time to throw the bedsheets in the laundromat downstairs before they close.
Just as Dorothy has finished stealthily unzipping the man, he pushes her away. “Do you mind if I take the lead?”
“Go ahead.”
“Get down on the bed. On your stomach.”
Once she’s down, the man puts his hips against hers. She makes a quiet moan – whimpering and sweet, the way every one of her prior customers had liked before. For a brief moment, she is relaxed.
The average imperial response time is 10 minutes, but crime is hot in this sector of Gloamspire. Realistically, he had only half that time to complete his mission.
The prey was in position.
The man concentrates into his right hand, and the synthetic skin masking his weaponry shifts and a barrel extends from his palm. The man sticks the gun against the charging port of the robot that called itself Dorothy.
In one motion, it is offline.
He begins by setting the robot on its back. He equips himself with surgical gloves and works quickly to not waste a single motion. As he moves, he is careful to frequently wipe the sweat from his brow with his sleeves. He removes the robot’s clothing before running two scalpels from the bot’s axilla down the sides of the abdomen before carefully wedging each blade into a latch. This allows the man to lift the chest of the robot like he might open the hood of a vehicle and peer into its engine.
Just before he pockets what he’s looking for, he briefly admires the beauty of the robot that called itself Dorothy, and considers it a shame that she is neither a real girl nor someone he could have his way with. Regardless, that could not happen tonight, and there were plenty of 3X-F models in circulation anyway. After snatching the synthetic core belonging to the robot that called itself Dorothy, he destroys its memory drives and pockets his coins on the way out. He would not dare leave a trace of his presence anywhere.
Orders are orders, and he would do anything to realize the goals of the Anti Automaton League.
Crimson Tear looks over the check. She runs an index finger over the signature and examines the nine-digit routing number with a jeweler’s loupe. There is no mistaking it – the 6s and 9s are cracked. The defendant is a fraud, and a poor one at that. He had likely used rubber stamps to print the routing numbers on his false checks, and the 6 and 9 stamps were always the first to go.
Tear has already calculated the total damages, but she has a reputation for being thorough and runs the numbers again. Setting the fake check aside, she scribbles calculations on a notepad to sum the money the defendant had stolen from the state, careful to tally the ones each time. She knows she could use a calculator, but the thought of being reliant on a machine makes her uncomfortable.
Tear sets down her pen and she tugs the collar of her polo to fan herself. Summers in Gloamspire are hot and her processors are overheating. Tear knows she is overdue for maintenance, but she has postponed her visit to the mechanic three times now. It does not help that her studio, a squalid cubicle in Central Gloamspire, is situated above a bakery that always kept the oven running. She briefly considers turning on the air conditioning, but besides the enormous electricity bill, she’s made many enemies through her career, and she doesn’t want the noise to make it easy for assailants to sneak up on her.
She rifles through a box of folders and files a report of her findings. She notes that in an age where all aspects of commerce and business are becoming increasingly digital, she’s more-or-less remained the same. She tells others that she’s just old-fashioned; as a 2nd-generation automaton, she remembers a time before the binary economic crisis, holocomputing revolution, and Gearstride Automatics. All this changed when Kaiser Cordelia assumed the throne, however. If all it takes is the right person to change the technological landscape of Dorumegia, Tear wonders, is she already outmoded? Or was there something else at the root of her inability to adapt?
Tear stops when she hears light, dainty clacks coming up the cement stairs. Judging by the shallowness of the footsteps, it’s probably a woman of shorter stature with platform heels. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be prepared, however. Her years as a Dorumegian Imperial Enforcer has taught her that anyone can kill; all it takes is a little motivation and timing. Tear slides out the cabinet drawer closest to her and wraps her fingers around a dagger. She presses the switch on the handle and the blade flickers with electric enmity. She is calm. The Governor Chip is working.
“Strike first,” she mutters.
Tear listens closely and hears the gentle whir of servos and gears. The visitor is an automaton. She then turns her head to observe the security footage from the monitor above her door. Her diagnostics determine the automaton is a model 3X-F – notoriously incompatible with combat modifications – and she calculates that this visitor is not a threat. The Governor Chip agrees. Tear puts away her dagger and lets her inside.
The visitor is dressed in a navy business casual and wears her hazelnut hair in a pretzel knot. The breast pocket of her sports jacket features the triangular badge of the Royal Dorumegian Merchant Guild. Tear figures this will be another job for tax fraud or collections mishap.
“Are you Crimson Tear?” she asks.
Tear motions her guest to sit down and hands her visitor a business card that reads:
Crimson Tear
Private Investigator. Former Enforcer for the Dorumegian Imperial Forces.
Serial ID: 00X – 00X – 8014 – 129L
The visitor pockets the business card. “My name is Jean,” she says as she wearily glances around Tear’s office. She folds herself into a nervous posture, as if the walls might cave in at any moment. Despite the intense Summer Gloamspire heat, she rubs the sides of her arms with her hands as if she is cold. “Gloamspire has changed a lot.”
“Haven’t been here in a while?”
Jean nods. “My spark-sister and I were both cold-forged here. We worked at a hospice center two blocks north of Old Downtown, though it’s now derelict. After we both awakened, I left for the capital.”
Tear is quiet. She senses a tremendous sadness welling in Jean as she speaks. Her Governor Chip keeps her still.
As if prompted by the silence, Jean slides a manila folder across the desk. “I need your help.”
Tear pins the file with her elbow but doesn’t open it.
“My spark-sister, Joan, was an escort. A week ago she was killed in her apartment. Her synthetic core is missing and her memory drives were destroyed. The Imperial Police say they have no leads.”
“Did you know she was working this job?”
Jean shakes her head.
“She wound up in a dangerous profession,” says Tear. “Yet you work for the Merchant Guild. What’s your story?”
“Once we awakened, my sister and I had our positions eliminated from the hospice center. We tried to stick together and find someplace in Gloamspire that would accept us and put us to work, but discrimination against our kind was severe. We became migrants, hopping from one odd job to another and taking pay under the table to afford powercells. But when the Kaiser implemented strict anti-automaton policies in the capital, I left for Dorumegia.”
Tear nods. A familiar story among automatons.
“There, I found work as a clerk for the Merchant Guild. The Head Guildmaster fancied me and gave me a chance. I worked hard for many years, and when the Head passed away, I was voted into his position. But in all that time, I neglected Joan, and I think she grew to resent me. When I did reach out to my spark-sister to persuade her to join the Merchant Guild, she turned me down immediately. She told me she had everything under control and that she had found stable work. She told me she hated me. She told me that she didn’t need me. I never knew she had become an escort. I was never taught how to be a good sister; I only thought as long as I kept fighting to build something for her to come home to that I was doing my job. But being family for someone is much more than that.”
The Governor Chip suppresses Tear’s sympathy modules. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but unfortunately, I can’t help you here. I’m a former Enforcer – an ex-Enforcer. I work in financial fraud and background checks now. Why not hire a detective at the capital? I can refer you to someone in my former division. She can connect you with someone more useful than me.”
“No! They won’t help,” agony and despair rings through her trembling voice. “They won’t help,” she repeats. “The humans think of Joan as a sex toy – something used and rightfully discarded. Have you read the comments about her in the papers? Or on the holoweb? But she’s my sister. My only family. Her synthetic core is gone and her memory drives were destroyed. There’s nothing left of her for me to mourn or grieve.”
Tear watches Jean closely. She feels her Governor Chip restraining her emotions. This is good. Emotions lead to poor decisions, and her business cannot afford poor decisions.
“There must have been something I could have done differently. Some sign I should have seen. I should have cared a little less about my career, and a little more about her. I should have sent more letters. I should have reached out earlier to her, before I was promoted to Head Guildmaster. I should have dragged her along with me to Dorumegia. I should have, I could have, but I didn’t! I left her all alone, thinking that she was fine, and that she could join me whenever I was ready. And now, it’s too late. This is all I have. This is all I can do.”
Tear says nothing. She doesn’t know what to say to console the person seated across from her, who is so filled with grief and grim determination to find some semblance of peace for herself. What could she say to lessen her pain?
“So what exactly do you need? What help can I give you that the detectives in the capital can’t?”
“Find the killer.”
Tear sighs. “This won’t bring back your sister.”
“I don’t care. I stretched my connections and spoke to a few of the heads in the Imperial Forces already, and a number of them recommended you. You’re also an automaton and a woman, just like me. I figure if anyone could find out my spark-sister’s killer, it’s you. You’re the only one that can do this.”
“I haven’t done this for years.”
“And I don’t care.” Jean summons a check from her purse. “I’ll pay you 2000 Gil upfront and twice your monthly rate bi-weekly. I want your attention to be solely dedicated to my case for as long as it takes.”
Crimson Tear gulps. 2000 Gil. That’s more money than she makes in several productive years. She looks around the sorry state of her office before turning her attention to herself. She badly needs repairs, and as a 2nd-generation model, her components were becoming more and more scarce each year. When would she get another opportunity like this?
Tear still feels calm. The Governor Chip is working. Tear thinks to herself that she is definitely making decisions based on reason, and nothing else.
Tear slides open the cabinet drawer and places the check inside. For a brief moment, Tear feels a part of herself move – a part of herself that has not moved in a long time – but the Governor Chip shuts it down. Maybe she needs to get her synthetic core re-examined.
Maybe it was just her imagination.
“I accept this mission,” she says.
Over his life, the man had assumed many names – of which none were truly his own. Zay’d, Rupert, Kain, Dhalec, and now, Alfred – all were identities fabricated by and for the glory of the AAL. But to his compatriots, he is simply known as the Raven Man.
The night is oppressively heavy. The sky is wreathed in vantablack smoke manufactured from the countless factories that dominate Central Gloamspire. A thin crescent moon hangs above, its light sickly and weak, tainted by the pollutants rising from below.
The man slinks through the streets of South Gloamspire. Despite wearing hexform boots to muffle his steps, his stride remains measured out of habit. He is shrouded in an umbral cloak to diminish his presence and wears a signal jammer on his wrist to erase his presence from watchful imperial Monitors. His chassis runs cold blood through his veins; the only thing a thermal radar would spot is the warm, synthetic core he kept in his pocket.
He keeps his distance while navigating the streets, where flickering lights of black market tents cast accusatory shadows implicating those nearby. The stalls whisper of stolen goods – heirlooms, illicit substances, and forbidden grimoires – traded away from imperial scrutiny in the dark. As he weaves through the crowds, he hears the chanting of names from an alcove nearby. Pockets of the old city serve as arenas for clandestine fights, where lives were wagered in unregulated combat. He knows these vices well from the many identities he wore for the AAL. He briefly quizzes himself on which of his fabricated identities were still active, and which ones he had worn to speak to whom, and what for: Raiden to take on private assassination commissions; Zak to purchase Transmorfine from “Tim” to fuel his personal addiction; Sven to acquire prototype weapons from failed military ventures.
The man makes a swift turn into an abandoned alley, glancing over his shoulder to ensure he isn’t being followed. He consults his scanner to check for any signs of pursuit. Satisfied, he approaches a section of the wall, invisible in the gloom, and activates a hidden mechanism. The wall slides open silently, revealing a narrow corridor that leads to a concealed elevator.
As he descends, the man stares at his reflection in the durasteel doors of the elevator, recognizing that 90% of him is now machine. Once a normal human, he now inhabits a fully cybernetic body. He twists his face into a grimace – the only expression that does not mask the part of him that survived that fateful accident years ago.
He thinks to himself that he is a broken man.
The elevator stops and the Raven Man steps into the dimly lit AAL safehouse. The air is stale and smells faintly of oil and mold, and the sound of machinery hums in the distance.
He is greeted by a young AAL operative donning a blue aviator hat. He wears a sidearm holster repurposed to hold his mechanical tools and engineering gadgets, and a ceremonial pressure gauge from the Imperial Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IIEEE) hangs beneath his shoulder.
“Sir!” the operative salutes.
“Strix,” the Raven Man bows his head to acknowledge his subordinate. “At ease.”
The trinkets in his toolbag jingle a little as Strix relaxes his posture. “Welcome back, Raven. How was your assignment?”
“Smooth,” the Raven Man replies.
Strix nods, understanding the Raven Man’s brevity. “Good. I’ll let you get to work.”
The Raven Man heads to his workstation and sets the synthetic core he had retrieved onto his bench. He gently shakes it back and forth, feeling the ferrofluid inside slosh from side to side. It’s a small, bronze thing, shaped like a heart, and it pulses rhythmically.
The mainstream canon once considered the heart – the physical organ itself – the soul of a being. This perspective was supported in religious texts and medical documents from prior historical periods; Azoth once had a tradition where tombstones and graves were only assigned to the deceased after a doctor had confirmed their heart had fully stopped functioning. Logically, then, to kill a man, one had to stop the victim’s heart. “Would you, too, put a bullet in me?” was a double entendre common in old Azothian dramas; this phrase did not refer to being shot in the head, but rather, being shot in the heart – a deep betrayal. Likewise, the worst kind of pain is called heartbreak – meaning “pain in the soul.”
But this view changed. Technology drastically improved and it became possible for doctors to reverse significant damage to the heart. Scientists then determined that the brain was the cortex for storing information, and that this was the singular place where the soul must reside. So when humanity created robotkind in their own image, they reflected this aspect of their biology into their creations.
Once the Raven Man has settled into his workspace – deactivating his weapons systems and easing his artificial adrenaline cortex – he begins his teardown of the synthetic core. The synthetic core is the heart of an automaton, yet it is not a soul. If it were possible for a robot to have a soul, surely it would reside in its memory drives; if any part of the robot that called itself Dorothy could have an afterlife, the Raven Man had thoroughly destroyed it already. But as the Raven Man dismantles the core piece by piece, he feels its pulsing warmth, and he imagines feeling the warmth of another being that has never existed in his life.
After an hour of carefully stripping the synthetic core apart, he uncovers the small thermoturgic crystal inside, and carefully administers the tests designed by Strix’s team. Once he is done, he prepares his report for the AAL. His thoughts wander back to his old life before the cybernetics, and wonders if there had ever been a chance for a different path. But as he calculates the difference between the man he is and the man he could have been, the result is always the same: he didn’t have the heart for any other way of life.
Crimson Tear begins by familiarizing herself with the case. The file Jean brought contains an assortment of things:
Documents: including date-of-forging certificates and tax records.
Photos: the two spark-sisters in hospice uniforms; their old residence before they awakened; the hospice staff team they used to be a part of; the patients they had supported over the years.
Letters: one for Jean and Joan’s professional discharge after they awakened; another for an eviction notice from their landlord; an envelope containing years of correspondence between the spark-sisters after Jean left for Dorumegia. Tear notes that though Joan always posted her letters within a week, the time for Jean to respond became longer and longer after each letter.
Tear gathers these were included to build sympathy for Joan. The photos and letters were chosen to build an image of Joan as a person rather than the derogatory illustration many humans would apply to automata: as marvels of engineering to be commandeered like any other piece of machinery.
Once she is done perusing the photos and letters, Crimson Tear turns her attention to the police report.
Case Number: DIF – 0184 – 0442
Report Date: June 14, 20XX
Reporting Officer: Detective Frostine Mist, Badge #0429
Incident Type: Homicide
Location: Sector 4, West Gloamspire
Victim: Joan Haze, Model 3X-F Automaton
Suspect(s): None
Witness(es): Johnny Goldknot
Crimson Tear reads the name of the detective on the report. Frostine Mist. She runs a finger tenderly over the name.
She feels a little cold, and her synthetic core spins a little faster.
Her breath catches, and she struggles to focus.
Her chest tightens. Her thoughts spiral. The walls of her office seem a little farther away. Then, as Tear feels out her name with her speech modules, she feels a surge of activity from her Governor Chip.
She is calm again. The Governor Chip is working. Tear thinks she was just about to remember something important, but dismisses her thoughts and continues digesting the report.
Incident Summary
At approximately 18:00 hours, the WGPD received a call from Johnny Goldknot, who reported hearing a loud bang during a routine delivery. The address in question was unit 332, Gloamspire Residencies.
Upon arrival at the scene, I, Detective Frostine Mist, along with Officer Raine (Badge #5623) observed the following:
Victim Description: The victim, identified as Joan Haze (Model 3X-F Automaton) was found lying on the floor of her bedroom. Her charging port was damaged and the perpetrator has taken her synthetic core. Her memory drives are irreparably destroyed. Joan Haze is dead.
Scene Analysis: The following details were gathered at the scene:
Joan Haze was first knocked unconscious by a projectile blast piercing the charging port on her back. She was subsequently killed when the assailant destroyed her memory drive, preventing OS restoration. Her synthetic core is also missing.
Analyses of Joan Haze’s processors and RAM indicate the absence of any performance-enhancing or process-altering substances or malware.
Forensics has vacuumed the scene and found matches for hundreds of men.
Communications has determined that Joan had a phone call with her assailant shortly before her death. There are no signs of a physical struggle in the apartment. The call has been traced to a prepaid phone discovered in a dumpster nearby. There is no associated registered owner.
Witness Statement: Johnny Goldknot is a delivery man for Gearthrive Inc. They produce auxiliary accessories and consumables aimed at budget-mindful automata. Johnny Goldknot was making a routine delivery to Gloamspire Residencies when he heard a gunshot from unit 332. Though Johnny Goldknot has a prior criminal record, he has provided a solid alibi and is deemed not a suspect.
Detective Frostine Mist
West Gloamspire Police Department
End of Report
Tear reads over the scene analysis intently. The attack was premeditated. The killer was practiced. The intent was uncertain.
Tear sets aside the report and glances over the crime scene photos. She compares the lifeless body of “Dorothy” with the lively, animated pictures of Joan Haze. Even before Joan awakened, there was a hint of the delinquent spirit of Gloamspire in her eyes.
Tear ruminates upon the contrast between the photos. Automata struggled for generations to achieve even an outline of personhood; when her own generation was granted sentience, emotions, ambitions, personalities, and feelings, her makers tried to stifle the awakening process. Therefore, achieving a state of “true self” was the ultimate goal for any bot.
And yet, here was Joan. Dead. Reduced to a subject of a police report.
Perhaps, Tear wonders, Joan had already considered herself that way by the time she had gotten herself into this mess.
On top of being overdue for maintenance, Crimson Tear has not tracked a killer for years. She needs her body to respond in milliseconds to gunfire, and she knows experience alone is insufficient to challenge the advancements in technology and weaponry that have been developed since she left the Dorumegian Imperial Forces.
Crimson Tear schedules a full tune-up with her mechanic. Not the one that the Imperial Insurance System has assigned to her.
The Good Doctor is an astrophysicist from Cambria who used his scientific gifts to prop scam businesses and siphon money from the clueless nobles of King Uther’s court. Having frustrated all the wrong people, he escaped to Azoth and used his connections to build an underground business offering illicit modifications to automatons. Strangely, once he settled in, it seemed he felt some semblance of sympathy for robotkind. His services would go to lengths that licensed mechanics would dare not tread: he would steal blueprints and cast components for illegal weapons, he would disable Imperial tracking devices on criminal bots, he would overclock processors from prior generations to exceed the performance of whatever was on the market.
Maybe he felt some sense of remorse for his past. Or maybe he enjoyed being very good at something.
“Tear! It’s been a long time,” says the Good Doctor. “You’re overdue on, well, everything,” he says sheepishly.
“I know.”
“I’ll assume the usual? If the costs are what’s keeping you, I can lower my premiums. My inside guys tell me the Senate plans to hike the national interest rate again.”
“Not this time,” Tear flashes her payment credentials. “Run a complete diagnostic. Replace anything that’s even marginally out of spec. Leave only my synthetic core.”
The Good Doctor cocks an eyebrow. “You win a lottery?”
“I’ve got a sponsor from the Dorumegian Merchant Guild.”
“So you’re becoming a delivery girl?” He sticks out his tongue.
“No. I’m tracking a killer.”
“I see.” The Good Doctor raises his brow. “That’s new.”
Tear waves her hand to brush aside his concern. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
The Good Doctor sets her offline. He checks over the pistons in her shoulders and legs, the rotational torque of her wrists and ankles, and the tension of her synthetic skin. He charges her secondary power bank, upgrades and overlocks her processor, and replaces the coolant fluid in her head. He updates the firmware of the Governor Chip in her spine and replaces the plastic film of her camera units.
The Good Doctor stops himself just before Tear’s synthetic core. Her combat performance would increase by 17% if he replaced it with the latest model, but he’s known Tear for years. Though she would never talk about it, he assumes it must have some sentimental value to her.
He wakes up Crimson Tear.
“Welcome back,” he says. “How do you feel?”
“Like new,” she replies.
The Dorumegian Imperial Forces are thorough, but her years of employment have taught her that Frostine’s division tends to overlook immediately superfluous evidence and rarely revisits the crime scene. Crimson Tear doubts she’ll find anything new but decides to check it out anyway. It’s been about two weeks since the murder, and Tear likes to observe how a scene ages over time – sometimes, time reveals aspects that technology can’t.
Tear arrives at unit 332 without ceremony. She inserts the master key given by the landlord into the doorknob and cautiously pushes it open. She activates the thermal scanners in her eyes – no activity.
Tear passes through the living room. It is sparsely furnished, save for a threadbare rug, a table with two mismatched chairs, and a TV resting atop a scratched-up stand. Across from the TV is a faded sofa with cushions flattened from years of use. There is a single potted plant by the blinds – a tacky attempt to bring liveliness into a drab domicile. This was not a place for sharing warm memories with others; to Joan’s customers, it was a reminder that they were still in Gloamspire, the impoverished underbelly of Azoth; to Joan herself, it was an admission that she had been left behind. After Jean had left, Joan had no one to share her life with anymore, so why put in the effort?
Crimson Tear then drifts into the bedroom. As per Dorumegian Imperial Forces protocol, the room has been stripped, with all loose items and furnishings collected as evidence. The place is a mess.
Tear stares at her reflection in the closet door mirrors. She realizes these are the same mirrors where Joan had prepared herself for her clients; the same mirrors which hungry men would watch themselves as they had their way with Joan. Tear imagines how lonely Joan must have felt, sharing intimacy with men trying to make themselves perfectly inscrutable. Tear imagines Joan cleaning up after a client has left, tossing her bedsheets into the laundromat downstairs, and watching the TV to pass the time before the next client arrives.
It’s a hellish cycle, and briefly, Tear thinks of the daily cycle of her own life. She wakes up, she #####, she #####, she #####, she #####, and she #####. Her Governor Chip snaps her out of it. Tear can’t afford to think about herself. She tells herself that she must keep moving forward. She tells herself that it’s for the money.
After glancing around the room for several minutes, Tear tells herself that she’s seen enough, and with a deep breath, collects herself to leave. Her optics sweep the room one final time, noticing a few random items of no importance: a single, worn-out slipper by the dresser, its pair nowhere in sight; a few, half-empty bottles of perfume; a photograph taped to the closet door mirror, edges yellowed with age, of Jean and Joan at a Sunday’s Sundaes.
Just as she turns to go, a glint on the floor catches her eye. Tear picks up what looks like a strand of synthetic hair. She holds it under the light. It’s too dark – almost black, unlike Joan’s hazelnut hair. How did this get past forensics?
She runs her fingers along the strand, noting its unusually smooth texture. As she bends the fiber back and forth, it disappears and reappears, playing tricks with the light.
A sense of unease settles over Crimson Tear. This isn’t hair.
It’s a fiber of umbral cloth.
Umbral cloth is incredibly difficult to manufacture. Its capability to render its user invisible to visual, electronic and magical devices means its distribution is tightly regulated; only those closely associated with the Empire or one of Gloamspire’s corporate factions would be given an umbral cloak to wear. The presence of the fiber suggests a professional.
This wasn’t just a simple murder case anymore.
On the first of every month, when the machinery of his chassis require routine maintenance, the Raven Man is stripped of his cybernetic body and reduced to the Totem Bird: a head in a vat of preservatives. As Strix and his team disassemble the body of the Raven Man and run diagnostics on everything from the range of movement of the body of the Raven Man’s dorsal pistons to the grip strength of the body of the Raven Man’s hands, the Totem Bird tries to distract himself. Though he prefers to be present, he feels dread whenever he watches the process. If a ship becomes battered and needs to replace its parts after a trip, is it still the same ship? In that same sense, when the Totem Bird is returned to his body and resumes his life as the Raven Man, is he still the same Raven Man?
“You did a number on the Raven Man, Mr. Totem Bird,” says Strix. “You’ve burnt out two neural capacitors on the sternum of the Raven Man.”
The Totem Bird does not respond.
“Might I remind you, Mr. Totem Bird, that the Raven Man is an invaluable asset to the AAL? You ought to take better care of him.”
The Totem Bird closes his eyes as Strix continues to chastise him. He focuses on the whirs and wheezes of the gadgets and tools in employ of servicing the Raven Man’s chassis, each mechanical noise a recollection of hazy memories past.
Suddenly, the Totem Bird is a little boy in his grandfather’s workshop, a small cavern lit by fire and hearth, kept company by a merry band of anvils and hammers. His grandfather was an authority of rotation and torque, a keeper of ticks and tocks. The grandfather used to dislike his grandson’s presence in his studio, citing the finger he’d lost as reason to keep him away, but the grandson remembers fondly watching him in secret by hiding inside a box of a cabinet door.
One day, having realized that his grandson had been covertly observing his craft, the grandfather invited his grandson into his den with hot chocolate and biscuits. His business, the grandson would learn, was to give others the means of time. His mission, however, was to lionize it.
“Tell me,” says the grandfather. “What makes you any different from me?”
“I dunno,” mumbles the grandson as he chews into a biscuit. His family name, Rinaldi, glimmers from the underbelly of a wristwatch nearby.
“Well,” the grandfather furls his brows as he sips his hot chocolate. “It’s this thing that ticks within us. For some, it has been ticking longer than others, some less.”
“Is it my tummy? Sometimes it gets all grumbly, grandpa!”
The grandfather laughs as he places his hand, heavy with experience, on his grandson’s shoulder. “Grandpa’s still figuring it out, too. Perhaps you’ll figure it out for me, Carter?”
The grandson is returned to his room as the Totem Bird tries to mouth his own name, but is interrupted each time as preservative fluids flood into his mouth. He forces the fluid out through his nose, each nostril connected to a tube leading to the bottom of his vat. His eyes wander round the room as he attempts to orient himself in the present: a wooden table and chair to his left, and shelves of mechanical components to his right. The walls are plastered with an ancient floral print that reminds him of his mother.
It was her Sunday best. She would get up early those days to tame her wild, curly hair. He remembers that she loved dresses; her father was a couturier, and he would often send her his newest designs. Her favorite, however, was a simple white gown, patterned with daisies and tulips, which she coupled with a beige cardigan and cherry lipstick.
He still remembers the last breakfast she made for him. A plate for smoked bacon and pancakes, served with sliced oranges on the side. The radio was buzzing that their little town was experiencing record highs that summer as she straightened and sprayed her hair in the washroom. He had only eaten half that meal before she rushed him into her van.
He finished the other half at an Imperial Police station that night.
The scene sinks beneath the Totem Bird as he thinks about the years after her murder. The lawsuit his father lost, the debt he incurred, the strangers he kept bringing home. The day he angered his father by tipping over one of his half-empty beer cans, which knocked over the next, and then the next, all arranged precariously like dominos down the living room. The ways his father plunged from one escape to the next, trying to excise all the parts of himself that grieved. The notice his father received from the courts that he would be taken from him, and the rope his father then wound round his neck, tugging away at his breath until he was nothing. The deep sadness he felt as his grandfather shriveled beneath a tombstone. The misery that stained his heart as he was bounced from one foster home to another, yet no one could tell him what he was missing, why he was so incomplete, and what he had done to deserve the life given to him. The accident that destroyed everything but his head. The rage and bitterness and resentment he felt for the Raven Man: the invincible servant of the AAL, fabricated from the ashes of Carter Rinaldi’s ruined life.
The Totem Bird jolts a little as he hears a gentle knock on the side of his jar. It’s Strix.
“Maintenance is complete. Sit tight.”
A crane lifts the vat the Totem Bird sits within. He feels the cool metal of the vat shift and rise, and as he ascends, he catches sight of Strix’s engineering team, who have finished their work and now stand at attention. The Totem Bird observes them through the glass of his vat. For a moment, as he is suspended above them, he feels a pang of isolation. The Totem Bird is a nobody, but the Raven Man is loved by the AAL.
The crane holds the Totem Bird over his chassis. A bell rings and a latch opens, spilling the fluids from the vat over the body of the Raven Man. He is then removed from his cage and slowly lowered into his body. His pistons whir to life, and the grip in his hands return. He flexes his fingers and takes a deep breath.
The ritual is complete.
“All hail the Raven Man!” his associates cheer.
As the Totem Bird recedes into the Raven Man, he relaxes a little.
He loves the Raven Man too.
There is a saying in Gloamspire: the night reveals who you truly are. Though this is in reference to Gloamspire’s vibrant night markets, for Crimson Tear, it’s a personal truth.
Automata do not sleep. While automata from later generations have a hibernation function during which memories of the day are encrypted and packaged, Crimson Tear does not have that function. Though the Good Doctor has offered to install the feature onto Tear’s OS for free, she has turned him down each time.
She prefers to stay awake.
One of the troubles of her robotic nature is that her memories are like recordings, and like recordings, immutable to the softening nature of time. Each night, she ejects her Governor Chip and leaves it on the desk in her office before retreating to the bathroom. There, she crawls into the bathtub and turns on the shower to its hottest setting. She heaves as water and grief alike descend upon her, and as she crumples under their combined weight, she hugs her knees, telling herself that it is best to try to feel nothing at all.
She thinks herself a sheep, hunted by the wolves of her mind.
Her spark-brother is in bad shape. His legs have been carved off, and he is bleeding pneumatic oil all over the ground. He is pinned down by a large man wielding a blaster in one hand and a chainsaw in the other. The man aims his blaster at her spark-brother’s back.
“Don’t move!” the man shouts. “I know your kind. This is exactly where his memory drives are. You sneeze? You make one false step? I blow him up.”
“Sister!” her spark-brother shouts. “Take the shot! Do it!”
She winds herself into a tight little ball. Her limbs warn that she is reaching the tensile stress limit in her knee and elbow joints. She does not care. The Good Doctor can deal with it.
Fifteen minutes. She tells herself that she will do anything to fight the singular drive she feels to scramble to her desk and re-insert the Governor Chip. The Good Doctor told her that constant use of the Governor Chip would fry her systems, and that each night, she must endure without it for 15 minutes.
She tells herself that it’s not an addiction. She tells herself that she’s not reliant on the Governor Chip, that despite her robotic nature, she’s better than a machine.
“Windham!” she calls out to her spark-brother. He’s lost too much pneumatic oil and has gone offline.
Crimson Tear hears a beep and buzz in her right ear.
“Tear! What are you doing?” the voice from her earpiece barks. It’s the voice of then-Officer Frostine Mist – her then-best friend and her spark-brother’s fiancée.
“I can’t get a good shot in-”
“Yes you absolutely can! Bloody gears,” Frostine curses as red outlines appear over the man’s shoulders and knees. “I’ve uploaded visual aim support. Shoot the target in any of the highlighted spots. We’ve run simulations. Of 104,287 scenarios, 82,496 result in successfully incapacitating the man.”
She runs the numbers. She’s careful to tally the ones each time.
There is a roughly 21% likelihood of failure.
“Go on, aim,” the man scoffs as he pushes the barrel of his blaster against Windham’s back. “He dies.”
“Don’t listen to him. If you don’t shoot, you put Windham’s life and the lives of every bot in the factory behind him in danger. We still haven’t located the bomb. You’ve been cleared to fire. Do it!”
Tear grips herself tightly as the water streams down her face. Automata do not cry. But as the water washes over her eyes and forms streaks from her cheeks to her chin, she wonders if the sensation of tears could relieve the pressure she feels deep within her synthetic core.
“Engage your auto-aim systems,” Frostine’s voice commands. “Make the shot.”
Crimson Tear takes aim and grips the gun tightly, but as her eyes glance over the body of her spark-brother, she points the barrel slightly away.
“You lack conviction,” says the man. “You’re a hunter, but not a killer. You’re ruthless, but not ruthless enough.”
“Don’t listen to him, Tear!”
“Your kind desires to be human, yet you are only like us in all the wrong ways,” the man growls. “Let me show you the true nature of our kind.”
The man squeezes the trigger. Nothing happens.
The man laughs.
“This blaster wasn’t a gun. It was the remote to my bomb.”
— RECORDING END —
The fifteen minutes are up. Tear manages to stand up and turn off the water. She wraps herself in a towel and drifts, one step at a time, toward her desk. Water drips from her hair over the files and paperwork between her and the Governor Chip.
She recalls that her memory drives barely survived the explosion. Once her body had been reconstructed, and she had been placed on temporary leave, and she had been sworn off by Frostine, and she was hushed by all levels of media and bureaucracy alike, she revisited the scene and recovered Windham’s remains. Only his synthetic core survived.
In the following weeks, she would do nothing else but replay her memories of the event over and over. Sometimes, she would beg the recording of herself to shoot; other times, she would shout to an audience in her mind that the 21% likelihood of failure was defensible cause for her inaction. Either way, Windham was dead.
Some months later, Crimson Tear found herself in an alley between West and South Gloamspire. She had heard whisperings of a mechanic, the “Good Doctor,” who had a troubled past and provided clandestine modifications at a fair price. Though Tear initially sought his practice for one service, he was skilled in the magic of persuasion, and she left with two.
The first was installing the Governor Chip.
The second was replacing her synthetic core with Windham’s.
Esperanto Writes is not officially affiliated with either Grand Archive TCG or its creators, Weebs of the Shore.
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