Sarah noticed Athena DeVries walking out as she entered the mall. She looked like she was heading off somewhere rather purposefully. Sarah didn't normally care much about the doings of the junior-high students, but you didn't get to be in her position in the school's social structure by not paying attention to the little things. Still, it was probably nothing important. Shrugging, she turned and went inside.
She suppressed a sigh as she walked in through the food court. If she was honest with herself, it did get tiring trying to keep on top of all of this. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy being at the top, but it was so much work. And all of it just to end up right back in limbo in a year or two when she went off to college and there was a whole new social hierarchy to be sorted out...
Honestly, sometimes she wondered why she bothered. Of course, she remembered right away when she thought about trying to do it any other way: the people under her would happily take over her place, and then probably try to make her life hell as a way of cementing the new pecking order. Once you actually made it to the top, there was no going back, even if deep down you kind of wondered if you might not want to. At least she might be able to settle into a lower-pressure existence at college, she mused...but then the part of her that had pushed her to climb this far in the first place reared its head, objecting that she couldn't very well just settle for being some nobody! And so it went...
Preoccupied by her internal debate and trying not to let it show on the exterior, Sarah wound up mostly just meandering aimlessly around the halls until she found herself back in the food court, standing outside the entrance to the arcade. Looking up at the sign, and then looking into the arcade, she felt a sudden urge to go inside. She couldn't explain why. This wasn't normally the sort of place she hung out or found all that interesting, and she almost turned and walked away. But her image-conscious side started telling her that she didn't belong here, that people would see her; and with the things she'd just been pondering, the rest of her just decided: the hell with it. Even though she didn't have any particular interest in the arcade, Sarah turned and went inside.
She didn't even know what she was looking for; she just...felt drawn here. Curious, she wandered somewhat aimlessly through the rows of games flashing their attract displays at her, paying only enough attention to her surroundings to avoid bumping into the handful of players huddled up to one machine or another. Gradually, she wound her way toward the back of the arcade, where there was an older machine standing by itself.
It would be overstating it to say that she was curious; it was more that she was in a funk and her brain was looking for distractions. But for some reason this machine caught her eye. It was some fantasy-looking thing, but she wasn't in the mood for details right now; she just wanted to be doing something other than letting her free time be ruled by the position she'd created for herself. Stepping up to the game, she dropped a quarter in the slot and clicked the start button. It popped up a menu, which she wasn't interesting in looking at. She hit the button a few more times until the menu went away.
And so did the world.
Karyn sat in the tent, looking around curiously while her hostess watched. It was much larger than the kind of tents she was used to, though still only the size of a modest bedroom. The interior was simple, but not spartan; the walls had cloth hangings with intricate little designs on them sewn in, and a curtain had been used to partition the tent into two separate rooms - one large living area and a smaller room that she assumed was a bedroom and/or whatever passed for a boudoir if you were a desert-dwelling scorpion-woman. The living area had a few effects neatly tucked away along the walls: a little stash of cooking implements, a pile of dried foodstuffs, some kind of stringed instrument that looked like a neckless, box-shaped guitar, and a little affair that looked like some kind of shrine, but had nothing she could see as any kind of central figure or idol in it.
She looked back to the woman, who was observing her quietly. Karyn felt a little lost for words; what was the accepted conversation-starter in a situation like this? "Thanks for inviting me in, I'm just a little confused because I've had my species changed and I'm not sure what planet I'm on?" Surely the woman would think she was crazy. And, honestly, Karyn herself wasn't too certain that she wasn't at this point. She'd entered the game to find Jon, but Jon had been nowhere in sight when she arrived; surely a game like this would normally start the players together? Instead, she'd arrived all by herself in this strange place...
"You are not from here. You used to be human, I think?"
Karyn started a little; she'd been so lost in her own thoughts that she'd almost forgotten about the woman. She looked up at her. "Um, y-" She frowned. "Uh, how...how did you know?"
The woman smiled gently at her. "All this is clearly new to you. You look at my tent as if you've never been in one before, and you move as if you were unused to having all your legs. If you had always been one of us, you wouldn't find these things so unusual. And if you had lived here, I doubt you would've been out by yourself in the middle of the desert. Tell me, how did you come to be in this situation?"
Karyn shrugged. "I...it's a long story. A friend of mine wound up undergoing something similar, and I went after him to try and help. But somehow we wound up separated, and I wound up in the middle of the desert, and now I don't even know where he is..."
The woman nodded. "You got mixed up in sorcery, I imagine. This sort of thing isn't uncommon with that."
Karyn nodded. "I guess you could say that, yeah." She frowned. "I...I don't suppose you'd have any idea where I should start looking?" She sighed. "I...I guess that's a silly question, though. I mean, I don't even have any idea where I am, let alone where Jon is...I just hate to think of him off somewhere fending for himself..."
The scorpion-woman smiled. "You're a good friend to him. And no, I don't know where you should look. But the Lady might."
Karyn looked at her quizzically. "The Lady?"
"The oldest and wisest of us," her hostess replied. "She lives in the great temple at the heart of the desert. Back in the direction you came from, in fact. It's already nearly time for our pilgrimage; you can travel with me and seek her guidance."
Karyn frowned. Go back into the desert? And...and look for directions from some old hermit priestess or whatever? It seemed ridiculous - but then, it wasn't like she had any better ideas. For all she knew, Jon might be anywhere in the world. And...well, if she couldn't get answers there, maybe she could at least meet someone who could give her something more to go on...
Sarah regained consciousness to the sound of a gentle, persistent ticking. She opened her eyes to find that the room around her was so dimly lit that she might as well not have. It felt like a small space; maybe not quite a coat closet, but something along those lines. She felt weird; not overly so, not in any painful kind of way, but something about her body felt...almost kind of jittery and a little stiff at the same time. She couldn't put her finger on it.
Really, she couldn't put her finger on much of anything, in this light - at least not if she wanted to see what it was first. But then, she couldn't just stand around in this little closet or whatever it was all day, either. Cautiously, she reached out both hands, hoping that a space this small couldn't have anything dangerous in it. Her hands touched wood - a bit on the rough side, but it certainly felt door-like to her. She fumbled around until she found a handle, then pushed it open, breathing a sigh of relief as she stepped out of the little room.
She frowned. Her sigh sounded funny; it had been less like the kind of sound she was used to hearing from herself, and more like...she didn't even know. There was this delicate, almost metallic tinge to it, like...like some kind of machine giving off a gentle hiss of steam, rushing over a wire grill brush, or something...? She shrugged it off. It must be something about the closet. Things always sounded off in small, confined spaces. Now wasn't the time to get sidetracked over that; she needed to focus on taking stock of her situation.
The room she'd stepped into was dimly lit, but nowhere near as dark as the closet. Soft, dampened light filtered in through cracks between the boards that had been fastened over the windows, painting everything in shades of dusty gray. It was clearly a workroom of some kind; there was a large, rough-hewn table in the center with assortments of tools scattered across it. In contrast to the chaos of the tools, there were also a variety of intricate little machine parts: cogs and levers and springs and other things in sizes from the nearly microscopic to a few that stood on the floor and came nearly up to her waist. It didn't seem like much of a stretch to guess that this was the workshop of some old-timey clockmaker - or, at least, that it had used to be. It certainly seemed to have been abandoned or neglected for quite some time, judging by the amount of dust in the place. In fact, as she shuffled gently into the room, a rather large cloud kicked up in her face, and she instinctively sneezed; she'd more or less been expecting that.
What she wasn't expecting was the sudden Zzzzz! as the gentle ticking she'd been hearing this whole time briefly accelerated, or the sensation of something spinning faster behind her. Or, most unnervingly, to realize that while she'd just sneezed, up until that point she hadn't actually been breathing at all, and wasn't now. Sarah started to get...deeply unsettled...? She felt like she should be panicking, the kind of raw panic that sets in when you're not breathing, but as much as it was all unnerving to contemplate, that visceral, animal terror just wasn't there.
What was going on? What was that ticking sound? It was strange; no matter which way she turned, it always seemed to be coming from the same place. She could even just feel it, slightly, like it was...inside her, somehow. But how was that possible? And what was it that she had felt spinning behind her? She could almost feel that, too, a kind of gentle torque on some point in her middle back. But she couldn't crane her neck far enough around to get a good look - she thought she glanced something in the far corner of her peripheral vision, but she really couldn't tell.
She needed to know what was happening, what all this meant. Nervously, she glanced around the room until her eyes settled on a drop-cloth covering what looked like the general shape of a full-length mirror. Putting aside the question of what one was doing in a clock shop, she rushed over to it and swept the cloth away...and gasped in shock.
What was reflected in the mirror was not a human being. It was remarkably close to looking human, to be sure, but it was still visibly not one. The thing in the mirror was, to all appearances, a kind of life-sized doll in the likeness of a young woman. The shapes and proportions were all correct; even the "skin" was surprisingly lifelike, displaying much of the texture and malleability of the real thing, though there was just enough difference in the color and the sheen to give it away as being something else. The hair was clearly artificial, though; it was too light and glossy and just a little too thin and wiry, though it still hung and moved enough like the real thing that it could probably pass for it at a distance. And the eyes...the eyes were clearly glass. Or, at least, a glass surface enclosing some kind of intricate mechanical structure; the "white" of the orb looked like mother-of-pearl, while the iris under the glass lens appeared to be a mechanical shutter made out of delicate little blades of purple onyx.
Sarah just stared for a long moment. It was almost impossible to connect the thing in the mirror with herself, to really believe that she was looking at her own reflection...but there was no mistaking that it had her own face. The body was different, a little more petite and a good deal less buxom, but it was still definitely a Sarah in the mirror. For now, she didn't even try to process that; she merely turned slowly to one side, watching in quiet bafflement as the thing behind her revealed itself. It was a large, roughly triangular blade of polished brass, about the height of her torso, with two great curved loops at either end. It was joined to a brass pole that went through her clothes and disappeared into her back. Unmistakeably, a winding key. As it slowly turned counter-clockwise, she could feel the gentle torque on whatever it connected to inside her, feel the soft, persistent ticking of whatever mechanism it was powering. Feel the gentle clicks and switches and tumbles of countless intricate little parts and subassemblies as they functioned in the larger mechanism that was...that was her. It was impossible, unbelievable, but there was no denying the evidence. Somehow, Sarah had become this...this clockwork automaton.
Jon sighed heavily as she eased herself down at the lunch table. Her guess had not been far off the mark; this was indeed a farm (and one which had to be pretty well close to fully self-sufficient at that; unlike her cousins' family, they couldn't exactly just drive into town any time they needed something,) and her hosts had an expectation that everybody would be pitching in. And while they'd made a pretty gracious allowance for the fact that she didn't have any hands to work with, there had been a surprising number of things they'd found for her to do with just wings and talons. She hadn't had a workout like this in a long time.
What was surprising was that, while she was certainly feeling it, she wasn't as sore or exhausted as she'd expected to be. While Jon the human male hadn't been in particularly good shape, as a harpy her body was surprisingly strong, considering her size and the lightness of her build. She didn't know whether that was due to being in a video game (again, if she was indeed literally inside the game and not just in a world that happened to strongly resemble it) or whether it was just because, as a creature living what she assumed must be an almost feral existence alone in the mountains, she'd have to be, but she was at least happy to not be completely wiped halfway through the day.
(However, the unexpected manageability of the work had been more than balanced out by her not only having to use the bathroom as a girl, without hands, but also discovering that the centaurs didn't even have a dedicated bathroom. She hoped to God that if she wound up in a human city things would be at least a little less primitive.)
She felt a lot more comfortable sitting down at the table opposite the two young farmhands now that she didn't have her bare breasts out there for everyone to see. Not that they'd given her any trouble, but they could hardly help but stare at her yesterday, and she couldn't say she would've been reacting any differently in their place. Things were just a lot less awkward now that they weren't being distracted...and now that she wasn't being distracted either...distracted by their distraction, that was. And not by anything else.
Breakfast had been pretty hearty; they hadn't had coffee, but there was an ample supply of steaming porridge with brown sugar to mix in - which had surprised her, as this didn't seem like the kind of climate for sugarcane; did they import it from somewhere? Was there much of an economy around here? - and milk, plus a small assortment of fruit. Lunch was on the lighter side, though there was still plenty to eat; more fruit, copious quantities of bread and cheese, and a humongous supply of salad fresh from the garden. (She'd helped to bring in some of it herself, picking some of the less delicate vegetables like the lettuce and folding her wings to use as a makeshift basket.) It was all quite good (though she had to admit, she was more than ready to have a little meat about now,) and by this point, she'd more or less gotten the hang of eating with her talons without making too much of a fool or mess of herself. The fact that they accompanied their lunch with wine didn't hurt either; Jon was no expert, but it seemed kinda nice, and it didn't hit her too hard.
As the family was finishing off the last of their meal, the conversation turned towards Jon's predicament. "Have you given any thought to where you'll go once you're a little more comfortable in this shape, dear?" Chloe and Athena's mother asked her. Jon shrugged. "I...I dunno. I'd like to find someone who can help me get back to normal, and I know Athena had that suggestion about the excavation site, but I'm not sure if I'm ready for a trip up into the mountains all by myself..."
The girls' father nodded. "That's probably wise. It can get pretty dangerous up there. If you do want to go that way, you might consider going north to the port city and seeing if you can travel with a group that's already heading that way. I'm certain the people doing the digging must get supplies in now and again. And in the meantime, there's probably a thing or two you can do to earn your keep there; I know some good people who run a store there, and I'm sure if they can't find a place for you they'll know someone who can."
Jon smiled in spite of the fact that she wasn't at all keen on the prospect of spending any significant amount of time in this form, let alone working a job as a harpy-girl. "Thanks," she said. "That's very kind of you." She wondered, though - how long would it really be before she could get someone to help her out with this problem?
It was difficult for Sarah to categorize her reaction to the discovery that she'd somehow stopped being a creature of flesh and blood and become an intricate, human-shaped machine-thing. Mostly it boiled down to different flavors of confusion. She couldn't really say she didn't feel any different, but...well, shouldn't she feel more different? Admittedly, there was a certain indefinable "fleshiness" that she only realized was a part of the human experience now that it was gone, now that she was no longer made out of meat and organs and blood, and it was odd in itself that she was so...not really calm, but un-freaked-out by it...it was a shock, certainly, but she'd have thought this sort of thing would be more traumatizing. Maybe that was part of the "fleshiness," that kind of visceral animal intensity. It wasn't that she didn't still have feelings, they were just...tempered. Like whatever it was that kept the spring inside her from unwinding all at once; some kind of mental escapement, smoothly metering out changes in her emotional state.
Ready to think about something else for a change, she turned her attention back to the workshop, filled with a new curiosity. What was this place, and why was she here? For that matter, where was "here" in the first place? She'd been so taken up in the discovery of her transformation that she'd hardly given a thought to just how she'd gotten to this point in the first place. Was she inside the game world, somehow? That seemed far-fetched, but given everything else that had happened, she was feeling more credulous than usual. She supposed if you thought about it in that light, it kind of made sense for a clockwork-girl character to start out in a clockmaker's shop, but why was it evidently so long-abandoned? Did this place have an actual history, or was it just kind of a backdrop for the game?
As she looked around the room, her eyes lit on a small table off in one corner, not too far from the main worktable. On top of it were some aged papers and a little leather-bound book. Curious, she made her way over for a better look.
The papers were blueprints. More specifically, they were very clearly blueprints of her. It was an eerie thing for Sarah to look down at the page and see not just a neat, precise engineering drawing of herself, complete with her own face, but a full cutaway view and elaborate technical diagrams depicting all the things she had only just realized she now had inside her body. It was like looking into a medical textbook from an alternate universe. Shuddering a little at the strangeness of it, she picked up the book. It was bound with a locked clasp, but the leather was so old that it practically fell off the moment she tugged at it.
It was a diary. Whoever had owned this shop had kept it. She felt momentarily guilty about opening it, but she supposed they were probably long dead already. She flipped over to the last entry and read:
*Failure, at the last. Even with everything machined to the highest possible precision, even with every part crafted with the utmost care, nothing. I don't understand. For fifty years I've studied every scrap of the ancients' technology I could beg or borrow, trying to incorporate their principles into the kind of mechanisms I have at my disposal. I'm certain they accomplished what I've tried to replicate; I've seen the depictions in the frescoes that have been unearthed, I've found scraps of machinery that can only be for these purposes, I've even heard stories of such things washing up on the seashore only to be snatched up by pirates or treasure hunters. I've followed the logic of my own designs time and time again, looking for the slightest error. I've even gotten the primary mechanisms to run in perfect synchronization. ...but still she lies silent and dead.
The mind boggles at the thought of the time I've spent on this project. When I was a young man it was a mere whim, a flight of fancy when I first learned that such creatures may at one time have existed. But with every success and every setback, fancy developed into obsession, and* she *took shape in my mind. Now, cruelly, she has become so real to me that it's as if I've lost her without ever having really met her. I don't even remember what I first thought she might be to me, but I feel as though my child has died.
Maybe there is some other thing I've overlooked. Maybe there's a missing step somewhere. Perhaps it's not just machinery. Perhaps you can't imbue a mere machine with life; not without a* soul*. If I were a necromancer, perhaps I could steal one and give it to her...but I do not want her to be born out of evil and death. And so she must remain as she is: an empty vessel that has never known the spark of life.
I wish I could give that to her. I wish I could meet my child face-to-face. But I am old and tired, and I don't think that I have anything left to give.*
Sarah stared at the last paragraph for a long time. She didn't need to look back any further; the whole story was laid out right there. Whoever the man was, she felt sorry for him; to have spent a whole lifetime trying to create this...whatever it was she was, and to have never lived to see the moment where it - she? - actually came to life. She wondered what he would've thought; would he be disappointed that she wasn't a new person, just someone from somewhere else who'd somehow wound up inhabiting this body? Or would he just be happy to see his creation brought to life? She didn't know.
