The Clockwork Man

Jasper never wanted to live a life of greatness. He had been working alone in his father's shop for as long as he could remember. It was all he had ever wanted - the art of clockmaking: the gears and wires and precision fascinated him. He never cared that the people he passed on the street thought he was odd. They whispered to each other as he passed, whispered about the "clockwork man".

He wondered if they knew how right they were. If they knew that the man who loved cogs and gears and little knobs was also made of them. Jasper wondered if he had a heart - one of blood and tissue instead of wires and tin. He needed to know that this consciousness was real. Not some manufactured mind with only gears and metal and maybe a little magic.

Thoughts like this always made him walk faster. They made him worry that those around him could hear his joints clinking. That they could hear his gears buzzing in place of organs.

Livers do not hum.

Oh, how he longed to open his skin and see the prickling of blood.

His father always seemed to know when Jasper was feeling this way. Which is to say: he was sitting in a chair facing the door when Jasper got home.

"Are you alright, son?" He asked, looking over some new sketch or blueprint.

"Don't call me that." Jasper said, veering toward the hallway to escape his father and his questions. In this moment they felt more like a survey for data than out of concern. The clockmaker stood up, reaching for Jasper as Hephaestus would to his creation.

"What am I?" Jasper placed his hand on his chest. He could feel the vibrations so clearly that way.

"You are my son." The clockmaker said carefully. He set down his sketch but the machine glanced what was inscribed upon it. A heart with wires and pumps protruding grotesquely.

"You don't get to hide behind that right now!" Jasper tugged frantically at the buttons on his shirt, exposing a patchwork chest made of countless others.

"What am I?" The clockwork man slammed his fist onto his chest as one would a spoon on the bottom of a pot. "What is inside me?"

"You are life!" He started, moving toward the clockwork.

"Oh please!" The voice was not made to have emotion. Inflection. He was not made that way. But when he spoke this time it echoed throughout him, bouncing off the metal inside in a way that vaguely resembled someone yelling from within a cave. "Why would you do this! I don't want this buzzing and shifting I want to feel something I want - what is it like to breathe?"

The maker stopped advancing. He spoke slowly now. "You are life. Machinery which was not meant to exist. I took organs and skin which had previously lost what was left of their own. I gave it to gears and wires and metal which previously had none to begin with. Life. I made life out of things without purpose."

He grabbed his sketch and held it out, the bonding of tissue and machine, as Prometheus would give fire.

"Let me give you a heart." The machine took a step back. "It would not be machine imitating life. It would only be life, real life. Life which has meaning."

"But why?" Fist was still on chest, he imagined what it feel like, beating instead of vibration.

"Because I can." The maker advanced on his creation, his eyes shining.

"What a terrible power to have." The creation whispered.