White and Other Tales of Ruin

The inner door opened and Tom walked through. The laboratory was just as he remembered. It looked more like the room of a dark-ages alchemist, with arcane machinery arrayed around the walls, sheafs of yellowed paper piled high and haphazard on the huge oaken desk at the far end, dusty skylights letting in a faded, filtered light from somewhere outside. The whole end wall was taken up with a huge pinboard and there were drawings, sketches, formulae, potions, text-book extracts and personal memo’s pinned there by the hundred, a collage of idea and potential that stunned Tom now as much as it had fifteen years before.

The place even smelled the same — spilled chemicals, old experiments, stale thought. It was as if the Baker were still here, ruminating in the comfortable back room instead of being dead. Tom shook his head. An artificial’s thoughts were supposed to be his own, but memory was powerful. Here was the Baker bashing a clay pot with a hammer, determined to get at whatever was inside before it was spoiled. He looked up and swore at Tom … and then he was relaxing in an easy-chair, recounting tales of his earlier years as Honorary Professor of Sentience at the university … and then here, pouring a sticky, clear gunge over the back of a dead frog and screaming in delight as its legs spasmed. Memories everywhere. It had been the most amazing time of Tom’s life.

“You’re as good as human,” the Baker had told him, “and better than most.”

Among the mess of apparatus were pieces of equipment that Tom recognised from many of the Baker’s experiments. He didn’t necessarily understand them — not back then, and still not now — but they provided him with a strange sense of peace. To know that the Baker had been busy in this world was a comforting thought. And to know for sure that his influence was still felt — through Tom, and probably elsewhere as well — went so far as to give hope.

There was a noise at the edge of the room, a rattle of cogs and the lazy squeal of something long-dormant coming to life. Tom stepped back and prepared to utter the exit phrase. He wouldn’t put it past the old scientist to have left some sort of guard in this place, a booby trap to bring the roof down should anyone enter after his death. After all, as he’d once told Tom, there were things in here best forgotten. But then Tom felt himself being spied upon, scanned, a horribly invasive sensation that raised his hackles and drew his balls up into his body. A sheen of light passed over him from head to foot and it seemed to reach inside as well, lighting his internal make-up and delving into his head. He felt a brief flush of abandonment as the scan ended — for a moment he’d sensed the Baker’s attention upon him — but then the discordant rattle and hum of machinery took on an orchestrated rhythm. Some lights flickered on, a coffin-shaped upright cabinet to his left began to shiver slightly as something inside turned over, and several of the Baker’s gophers darted out from beneath the workbench along the wall.

Tom smiled in sheer delight as the little robotic transports hurried about the floor. The scientist had made these things one day when the effort of walking back and forth across the laboratory, searching through cupboards and sifting files had become too tiresome. His casual genius was apparent in their perfection. He could speak his requirements and the next gopher in line would search the lab until it found exactly what the Baker was after. They were remarkable, but their uses were too simple, too convenient for the Baker to be over-excited by them. His efforts had always been directed more left of centre.

No instructions were spoken now, yet still these little wheeled creations busied themselves with some secretive business. And as Tom watched for a couple of minutes the pattern became obvious — everything they searched for and found was taken to the cabinet. They’d disappear beneath the desk beside the cabinet and come out again empty-clawed. There were clicks and clunks and soft sighs from in there. The sounds of construction, and creation.

But Tom felt safe. The Baker, though long dead, would never do anything to bring him harm. Tom had been the nearest thing he’d ever had to a child.