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The houses on Seville Road once belonged to the rich, large sprawling mansions with meticulously kept gardens behind spike-tipped fences and ostentatious trim on each available surface. Once beautiful, they now stand derelict and abandoned, gates bent, windows smashed, walls tagged with messages condemning the rich.
They’re easy to break into now, with looters having done most of the work days previously, that doesn’t mean it sits any better with you. These big houses once belonged to people, and despite the fact no one’s living in them currently, it feels wrong to be picking them clean like a common thief. You’re meant to be better than that.
The worst thing about going through these houses has to be the bodies.
Sometimes there’s clumps of them outside the front gate, pulpy rotting things from desperate people trying to escape a wayward puppet. Sometimes they’re inside the buildings, neat rows of bodies wrapped in shrouds from groups who’ve made a room their safe haven but have been unable to bring their dead when they’ve had to leave. The worst of all is the rooms with Astralgazers in them, and the discarded bodies of the survivors who’d been attacked in their safe havens. The responsible puppet is often stalking the halls mindlessly, and it is remarkably cathartic to deal with those.
This house is like any other really, perhaps slightly bigger, and it’s easy to walk through crumpled front gates to confront the few puppets staggering about the front step.
“So do you think if you put a straw in an oil can you’d be able to drink it?” Gemini asks as you rush forward with sweeping strikes at the first puppet, dodging low and to the left when the next one slams its baton at the place your shoulder would have been moments earlier.
“Why do I have to have a straw?” You ask, lunging forward and skewering the puppet through the neck and sending the head spinning.
“Do you want to drink it straight from the can?” Gemini responds. “Would be a bit like drinking from a teapot I reckon.”
This particular conversation has been an on and off affair speculating whether or not you can eat. Gemini thinks you can, although he’s not sure if it would be human food or some kind of puppet equivalent. You firmly believe that you’re not meant for ingesting anything and are not willing to try it out.
You side step around a thrown thermite and point your mechanical arm at the offending puppet to launch the rope attachment at its chest, pulling sharply when it connects. The puppet flies forward and you slash across its open chest, bisecting it.
“Why can’t I have a cup Gemini?” You ask, flicking the oil from your sword.
“You want a cup for your machine oil?”
“At least give me the decency of a cup,” you say. You look about but you appear to have dealt with all the nearby puppets. You start towards the front entrance, stepping gingerly over puppet parts as you go.
“So if I get you machine oil in a tea cup you’ll drink it for me?” Gemini asks with a delighted chirp.
“Absolutely not.”
Gemini let out a dissatisfied whine as you climbed the front steps and jiggled the front handle. When it didn’t open you looked around until you spot a shattered window, clearly the ingress of previous looters. You jog over and hoist yourself through, activating Monad’s Lamp once you alight in the dark, dusty house.
Like many of the other houses, the front door opens to a grand foyer with an elegant staircase leading to an upper floor and several doors tucked away for the left and right sides of the house. The entry is littered with debris- broken glass and ceramic, shattered wooden furniture and piles of trash where papers have been strewn or ripped sheets have been tossed. The walls have been graffitied with a thick dark paint.
YOU DID THIS
DOWN WITH PUPPETS
PUPPET MAKER
You scuff a shoe at the broken glass you’re currently standing in and let out an audible sigh.
“So what are we looking for again?” Gemini asks with a chirp.
“An Astralgazer preferably,” you say as you slide your foot through the glass to sweep it out of the way. “Medical supplies if not.”
Treating your injuries is a little weird. Some of your injuries are like broken machine parts, just a repaired or replaced part and you’re ready to go, a Pulse Cell as an energy pick-me-up. But some of them are much more human in nature; cuts, scrapes and bruises that need proper, human, medicine to be properly tended to. Right now you’re looking for a basic medical kit to stitch up the hole in your side that’s been sluggishly bleeding through its rough bandaging ever since you applied it.
“Maybe upstairs?” Gemini suggests.
You nod and begin making your way over to the stairs, your footsteps loud on the cold marble tiles. At the top is a small cabinet that has been smashed open and a walkway that surrounds the open lower foyer, with doors leading off to the left and right. You pick left and approach the first door, poking your head through the open doorway.
It’s a bedroom from the looks of it, possibly for one of the household’s children based on some of the furnishing. There’s a bed tucked into one corner, a writing desk and a small wardrobe. Everything is in a state of disrepair, mattress hanging half of the bed frame, wardrobe open with clothes tossed about, a stuffed elephant with an eye missing and with a leg hanging half loose. There’s a small bookshelf that’s mostly empty, textbooks books strewn about the room, most with their pages ripped out. You wrinkle your nose at some of the more suspicious stains on the floor and shut the door behind you.
“That room seemed familiar,” Gemini says quietly. Like with most houses you’ve been through, there’s an eerie hush that you’re both reluctant to break the silence of.
“How so?” You ask as you approach the next door, revealing a small bathroom with cracked tiles and a dripping faucet. Gemini clicks and chirps as he thinks so you take advantage of the taps, washing some of the grime off your flesh hand and out from under your nails. The mirror above the sink is cracked but still good enough that you can scrub at some of the dirt on your face.
You have thumbprint bruises under your eyes.
“I don’t know,” Gemini eventually says. He seems bothered by not knowing.
You give the room a cursory rummage through, poking your head into the single cupboard, but don’t find anything of any use.
“You’ll get there Gemini,” you tell him. “I’m sure there’s a reason this place is familiar.”
Gemini gives a frustrated chirp as you leave the room but there’s not much more help you can give him. Gemini’s lost memory is something you can only hope will resolve itself and Sophia, the only one who might know anything about it, has been unable to help.
The rest of the upstairs is similarly trashed and looted, but you’re able to find a few bits and pieces that might prove useful later. A small tool set that has a few extra tools to complement the one you’ve been using, a chunk of quartz you’ll show your father later. There’s a tiny key in the master bedroom that you pocket, just in case, before you head back out to the upper landing and stare at the graffiti that sits prominently over the stairs.
YOU DID THIS
“You ok there pal?” Gemini asks.
The foyer is filled with the dull scraping of metal on metal as you flick the fingers of your mechanical hand over and over but you clench your fist when Gemini gets your attention.
Tell the truth
“I’m ok,” you lie, but the flutter of your chest doesn’t make you feel any better.
“Hopefully we’ll find something better downstairs,” Gemini says. He knows you’re lying, but it’s easier to pretend you’re ok than go into it. You’ve had enough mental crises for one day.
You head back down the stairs and once again veer left, poking your head through open doorways for the kitchen, dining room and some kind of lounge. There’s no food in the kitchen, as to be expected, and the piano in the lounge has had a vase smashed through the top, leaving ceramic shards in the inner workings. You plunk a few of the broken keys just to hear the dull thump the ivory makes as you depress each one.
There is only one room left and from across the foyer and the door- the only one that has been closed so far- feels like a bad sign. You unsheathe your sword and approach carefully. Gemini makes a clicking noise and the sound echoes throughout the empty room as you reach the door. You try the handle and when it opens you carefully poke your head through and-
-close the door immediately.
“What’s wrong?” Gemini chirps. “I didn’t see, what was in there?”
You let out the breath you didn’t realise you could hold, grip the sword a little tighter. Open the door slowly and step inside.
The room is dark, with heavy curtains covering the windows, preventing anything but the thinnest slithers of light through. There’s a desk and several shelves on the far wall, both of which look as though they’ve been picked through, with drawers ajar and papers and books torn and scattered about.
Then there are the bodies.
They lie haphazardly on the floor, bent broken things with limbs at awkward angles, faces blank and pale. You see a discarded arm, a body with its torso ripped half open, a perfectly blue eye gazing at the ceiling.
There is no blood.
Puppets do not bleed after all.
That could be you.
You ignore the bodies.
You move carefully through the room, step gingerly over a limb here, the inner gears there. The desk is the best place to look for supplies but it feels a million miles away.
“We don’t have to be in here,” Gemini says softly but you clench your jaw and try to pretend that this room isn’t full of corpses.
THIS WILL BE YOU.
You reach the desk.
“We need the supplies Gemini,” you say just as quietly as you keep your gaze fixed on the desk’s surface. Someone has carved bitter profanities into it with a knife and only one of the four drawers is still shut, the others having been left open and gaping like mouths. The ones hanging open are mostly empty, only a pencil stub left in one, but the closed drawer is of interest. It has a tiny keyhole in the front and when you gently tug it, it remains stubbornly closed.
“Maybe that key?” Gemini prompts and it takes you a moment to reach stiff fingers into your pocket and pull out the key you’d picked up only moments ago. The drawer unlocks with a faint click revealing only a leather bound journal tied with a ribbon.
Curious, you untie the ribbon and flip through the book, pausing when a small scrap of folded paper fell out and onto the desk. Setting the journal aside, you pick the paper up and unfold it.
It’s a photograph, well worn with soft corners and deep creases in the folds. In it, a boy and a man stand side by side, the man with a proud hand resting on the boy’s shoulder. He smiles at the camera despite the fact he would have had to stand there for a long time, cheeks aching in his joy. The boy is more serious, his long hair framing his face and making him appear older, more severe. But there is a slight quirk to his lips, as he stands proudly with his father. It takes you a moment to see the freckles splattered across the boy’s cheeks, the small round glasses that your father wears and the same trimmed mustache on his upper lip.
This is you.
IT'S NOT YOU
It isn’t you.
You flip the photograph over.
“ Happy 17th Birthday,” you read aloud and Gemini lets out a low whistle.
“Happy birthday buddy,” he says and you grimace.
“It’s not me,” you tell him. “I think this is Geppetto’s son.”
“Oh.”
Gemini is silent as his light flushes orange.
“Antonia keeps mentioning you look like someone,” he says carefully. “Do you think…?”
You nod.
You’re not really sure what to make of this. You knew that you had to have been made to look like someone due to the familiarity with which many people spoke to you, but seeing the actual person? Knowing that this other boy was probably out there, somewhere, living his own life?
It sat heavy in your gut.
“Are you going to ask your father about it?”
You gnaw at your lip as you carefully rub your thumb over the other boy’s face. Gemini doesn’t press any further and you silently thank him for that.
“We should go,” you finally say. You haven’t found any medical supplies so you should probably get patched up at the hotel.
“Right.”
You slip the photo and the journal into your pocket and head for the door, picking your way through the room with your eyes firmly downwards. Once in the foyer, you close the door behind you and return to the window you entered by, hoisting yourself through and out into the garden, walking slowly back to the street.
You feel exhausted.
You keep going.
—
You avoid going to see your father.
When you return to the Hotel you head straight to your room, the small first aid kit that Antonia gave you being your first stop. The wound, left for as long as it has, has bled onto your undershirt and it peels away from the cut with a cold, clammy feeling. You grimace as you face the bathroom mirror, each jagged stitch a sharp pinch as you haphazardly sew it shut.
“Maybe you should ask Geppetto to do that?” Gemini says, unhelpful, from the sink but you give him a flat look and he goes quiet as you tie a sloppy knot and cut the thread with more force than necessary.
Wounds attended to, you go to see Sophia, needing company that doesn’t require you to talk. You sit with her while she tells you a story- a children’s story, but the tale intrigues you anyway. Next is Eugénie, who you have been avoiding just as much as your father, but for entirely different reasons. She babbles about the newest Legion arm she’s built and allow her to excitedly install it before promptly returning to your room and removing it when you find it sits heavy and uncomfortable on your shoulder.
By this stage the only person you haven’t visited is Antonia but you find her napping in her chair which basically gives you zero excuses to not see your father. You give Gemini to Sophia, and with the journal and photograph burning a hole in your pocket, you climb the stairs to your father’s study.
You knock on the door and when a quiet “come in” rings out, you carefully open the door and slip inside, closing it behind you with a small click. Your father is standing behind his desk, perusing sheets of paper, but he looks up when you enter, his face lighting up with a big smile.
“My son,” he says, stepping forward with his arms slightly raised for an embrace.
You quickly begin the process of removing your top layers, turning and hanging your coat on the hook by the door and fumbling with the buttons of your vest. Behind you, Geppetto makes a small noise, disappointed.
This is not the first time you’ve refused an embrace.
How could he love a puppet?
“What can I do for you?” He asks as you finish with your vest and fold it neatly onto the small side table. You reach into your hip pouch and remove the chunk of quartz you found earlier, handing it to him wordlessly. While he inspects it, you begin unbuttoning your shirt, sliding into the Chair as you do.
his hands are inside you, running cold hands over your innermost workings. They stroke, caress over delicate gears and along piping before settling onto your heart, holding, then pulling, pulling, PULLING-
You don’t think about it.
“It’s a big enough piece,” Geppetto says as he sets the quartz next to you and begins arranging trays of equipment to begin work. “And the quality is good too. We might be able to get two from this.”
He smiles at you and you try to return it but it’s small, barely a quirk of your lips. Your chest and stomach are exposed and the air is chill against your skin, making you feel horribly naked. His eyes glance downwards and his brow puckers when he catches sight of the bandages.
“May I?” He asks, gesturing at your side and you nod.
You can’t refuse him.
He begins carefully unwrapping them, sucking in a breath when he catches sight of your sloppy stitching. He prods at the skin around the stitches, now mottled purple and blue with bruising, a dissatisfied look on his face.
“Does this hurt?” Geppetto asks.
“A little.” It hurts a lot.
“I’m not going to pull these out,” he says with a sigh. “I wish you hadn’t had to do this yourself.”
He thinks you had to do this outside the Hotel, rather than the comfort and safety of an upstairs bathroom. You don’t correct him.
“I will check for any internal damage,” he says. “Just in case something got nicked.”
You nod as he reaches for the divots just under your collarbone, pressing them in to disengage the locks on your chest plate. There’s a tiny click and the panel opens on invisible hinges revealing the marvel that is your internal mechanisms.
When Geppetto had first opened your chest cavity, to explain the marvels of what he called a “P-Organ”, you had almost fainted in shock. It’s an unsettling sensation, being able to see and feel your internal organs on display, and repeated procedures have not made the experience any more pleasant. The majority of your central mechanisms are housed within a rib cage-like structure that swings open on its own hinges to reveal your Heart and the trailing tubing that acts as an Ergo delivery system. You have a basic understanding of human anatomy ingrained within your mind and you know that despite the complexity of the machinery powering your body, it is far simpler than the human body, lacking many of the “squishier” structures that humans have within their own torsos. To an untrained eye, it’s a glorified water pump. You try not to let this bother you.
Geppetto ran his hand along a bundle of piping that ran near the wound, grimacing when his skin came back stained blue. As he prodded more thoroughly, searching for the leak, you try not to squirm. While not a painful sensation, your organs are sensitive and delicate, feeling liable to break at any moment despite their sturdy composition. When Geppetto runs his fingers along a section you can’t help the physical shudder it elicits, his fingers slick with fluid Ergo.
“There it is,” he mutters, rolling the section back and forth to see the damage.
You want to throw up and pass out.
You’re glad you can’t eat.
“We’ll have to replace this part,” Geppetto says, louder, as he reaches for a rag to wipe his hands. “I should have some spares…”
He kicked his chair away from you, rolling part way across the study before standing to walk the rest of the way to a set of drawers to begin rifling. Geppetto mumbles to himself as he searches for the part while you sit in the Chair, gripping the handles so hard they creak.
Maybe you should ask your father if you can be unconscious for this.
his finger stroking over your inner walls, he holds your Heart so reverently but the feeling is wrong, wrong, WRONG-
You should probably stay conscious for this.
Geppetto makes a small noise of delight when he finds the piece that he’s looking for, rolling the stool back and sitting down as he begins reaching for tools.
“We’ll cut the Ergo flow to this part here and here-“ he taps a section close to your Heart and then further down in your stomach cavity “-and remove the damaged section. We’ll have to add a join near the bottom, which always creates a weak spot, but it’s the least invasive option.”
Geppetto studies your face as he talks you through his process and you try to keep your expression as blank as possible.
“The other option is find where this tube ends and replace the whole thing. But…” He tilted his head to get a better look into the darkened cavity that is your torso. “It could require a certain amount of deconstruction.”
“The first option,” you say quickly.
Geppetto nods as if he was expecting that answer and reaches back into your chest, fiddling with the connection between the damaged tubing and your Heart. He fumbles for a moment, unable to find what he’s looking for by sight-
touching, touching, TOUCHING-
-before he finds what he’s looking for, clicking something into place. There is an immediate, unfamiliar sensation that makes you gasp.
“I’ve just cut the Ergo through this pipe,” Geppetto says, leaning back and reaching for a set of wire cutters. “We’ll let this drain and then I’ll remove the damaged part. Let me know if you feel anything.”
Geppetto leans back as he begins preparing the new section of pipe, cutting it to size and affixing a connector to one end, while you sit in silence. It takes only a moment before you start feeling a slow but tangible, draining feeling as the Ergo in the pipe is siphoned off and not replaced. Your right leg goes cold and by the time you know that pipe is completely cleared, you also feel slightly tired. Not prohibitively so, but enough that a human might take a moment to rest. You wiggle your toes within their shoe but fortunately they move just fine.
“My leg is cold,” you tell Geppetto. “And I feel tired.”
He places a hand on your closest knee, your left, but you shake your head and he rolls the chair to place it instead on the affected leg. He cranes his head to look within your chest cavity again and nods, but does not elaborate on whatever thoughts he seems to be having.
“Is it…” you trail off, uncertainly. He would have told you if it was bad?
Why would he explain something to a puppet?
“It’s fine,” he says, now beginning to reach in to begin removing the part. “The amount of Ergo flowing through your body was calibrated very finely, removing just one part would throw off the careful balance and adversely affect you. I’ll do this quickly.”
There is a sudden sharp pain and your vision goes blurry for a moment as Geppetto suddenly cuts the pipe before he begins unscrewing the connector at your Heart. There’s is a thumping in your ears, your sudden laboured breathing impossibly loud-
-ripping, tearing, TAKING YOU APART, NOTHING BUT SCRAP PIECES, UNMAKING YOU WHILE YOU STILL LIVE
-not alive-
-YOU ARE ALIVE AND HE IS KILLING YOU-
“Done,” Geppetto says with a self satisfied smile and your awareness rushes back to you. His fingers are stained blue.
“The pump must have been trying to make up for the lost connection, it was pumping quite hard to compensate.”
You nod numbly as Geppetto wipes his hands again and reaches for the quartz chunk. You can only watch distantly as he fiddles with the catch on your rib cage to expose you Heart properly.
You’re too tired to really have a problem with it.
You still haven’t asked about the photo.
Geppetto compares the quartz’ size to the little divots in your Heart, humming as he holds the chunk up to the light. You already have two pieces embedded in it.
He rolls over to the side table he’s been using to hold his tools and picks up a jeweler’s saw to begin cutting the piece down to size, continuing his humming as he goes. Once he has the two pieces in hand, he holds them up again, the little geodes twinkling slightly in the light.
“Where do you want them?” He asked, and you point to the spots just below the ones already embedded, continuing the ring around the edge.
He holds one of the pieces to the spot you pointed to and moves back to the table to begin resizing it.
Geppetto is relatively quiet as he works, shaping and filing the pieces into the correct shape and size while you try not to fidget in the Chair. Now that you’ve calmed down, the burning curiosity surrounding the journal and photograph is at the forefront of your mind.
“We were on Seville Road,” you start, and Geppetto hums in acknowledgement. “And, um, we found something?”
“Lots of engineer’s houses on Seville,” he says, peering at you over the top of his glasses. “What did you find?”
“Um,” you stall, suddenly feeling like you shouldn’t be asking. “There was a journal and a photograph… and I wanted to ask about the people in it?”
Geppetto tilts his head just slightly but doesn’t say no, so you pull the journal out of your pocket and hand it to him. His face is carefully blank as he turns the book over a few times before he flips it open, almost automatically stopping at the page where you had placed the folded photograph. He removes it and unfolds it, staring at it for a very long time in silence.
“I-“ you’re cut off when Geppetto suddenly inhales loudly through his nose, shaking himself slightly. His cheeks are wet.
He’s crying.
Geppetto places the photo on the table,picks up the quartz he was resizing and rolls back over, carefully insetting the piece. His head is bent over your chest, hiding his expression.
“Who is he?” you ask quietly, and his purposefully steady hands hitch with your question.
“My real son,” he says and he must see something in your face when he looks at you that he reels backwards slightly.
JUST A REPLACEMENT
A CHEAP IMITATION
A PUPPET
“No, I-” Geppetto takes a deep shuddering breath as he tries to compose himself. You feel like you’ve stopped breathing, a sensation that up to this point has been unconscious and unintentional.
“I’m not real?”
Your voice is barely above a whisper but Geppetto hears you and grabs your hand with such intensity that you flinch away.
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, but his firm tone is undercut by the pleading you can hear in his voice. “You’re just as real as he was.”
You shrink back as far as you can in the Chair but Geppetto holds your hand tightly, almost pulling you forward with his grip.
“Please,” he pleads.
—
Pinocchio had been 17 when he gotten sick, three weeks after his birthday. It had been summer, and while he had meant to return to school with the end of the holidays, the sudden onset of a fever had delayed his departure.
At first it was only that, a slight fever and cough that kept him bed-ridden, but the illness quickly grew worse, leaving him coughing up blood and unable to eat. Geppetto called in doctors to treat the illness but nothing seemed to help and Pinocchio only got weaker, eventually dying in the house on Seville Road a month later.
Geppetto had no one left.
—
Of course.
Just a copy of a dead son
Just the imitation of a memory
You sit numbly as Geppetto cries into your open chest, trying to process your own thoughts.
You knew that you were a pale imitation of someone else, but a direct replacement?
If the real one hadn’t died, you wouldn’t be here.
This is true.
You are not your own person.
You are only what Geppetto wants.
YOU ARE A PUPPET.
You can be what Geppetto wants.
“It’s… ok,” you say haltingly, patting your father on the back with your free hand.
Your father looks up with tear stained cheeks and holds your hand close to his chest.
“I love you my son,” he says. “Please understand, I thought I could replace him but you aren’t him. You’ll never be him, you are your own person, I’ve seen that.”
He kisses your hand but you only feel dim and numb.
You can be what he wants.
“It’s ok,” you repeat.
–
It takes some time before Geppetto is able to stand and return to his seat, so you don’t bother reminding him of the unfinished procedure. You should not have interrupted your mission anyway.
You close your chest panels-
-it feels-
It feels like nothing
-and dress quickly, standing stiffly and bowing your head at the door. Your father watches you from his seat, his expression difficult to read.
You don’t need to know what he’s thinking.
“Be safe out there,” he says and you nod once.
You’ll be what Geppetto wants.