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The door stood impassive in front of him, mirroring his rigidness. Even after the trek back to Zaun, the entranceway seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle blocking his path. The door was too narrow and much too short, but if he waited long enough, perhaps it would open.
He stood, unmoving. Occasionally, he adjusted his arms to prevent them from locking in place. He wondered what else he could be doing instead of standing in front of a door too small for him to enter. He remained rooted in place.
After a while, he began investigating the other sides of the building. There were no windows, as to be expected. However, shuffling down the alleyway to the side, he noticed a large back door exit as soon as he turned the sharp corner. Maybe it was an emergency exit in case the front door was blocked by debris and the fiery remains of his laboratory. Perhaps it was simply for escaping unwanted guests.
He moved one foot after the other, suddenly feeling the weight of each step. He hadn’t been here in many years. The roads were unfamiliar, like he had never walked them before. It had been another lifetime, then, that he was welcome here. An earlier point of his existence where his presence would have brought reassurance and perhaps even joy, not dread and a reminder of what could have been.
Standing in front of the door, he considered. How would his unexpected appearance be received? Would he be welcomed in and offered sweetmilk—and then hear a comment about how he couldn’t even drink it, that it was offered out of habit? Would he be shooed away with inaudible grunts, told to leave and never come back, to not remind him of years long past? Would he be stared at in horror, in disbelief, in sadness—or reverence for his eventual return?
This indecision was new to him, unfamiliar. He was not built to handle emotions; he was built to clean a different type of pollution. Nevertheless, he stood at the entrance and steeled his heart. Or so went fleshling humor.
He knocked on the metal door with his giant fist, the sound resonating through the alleyway. There was no immediate noise coming from inside. He wondered if anyone was even in the building. He retracted his fist and stood still, mismatching eyes staring at the door.
For a long time, he waited. Not once did he consider leaving. He had come to Zaun, to here, for an important reason. The weight of it felt heavier than the biggest tubs of chemical waste he had lifted.
Then, the door creaked open. It was slow, and truly loud with each movement against the hinges. Almost like the door hadn’t been opened in the entire time he was gone. What did that say of them both?
“Blitzcrank.”
He stared at his creator’s metal mask, could almost picture the human face that still lay beneath. He had seen Viktor on the Rift across many matches, but it had been years since he had visited the man at his home. He remembered Viktor calling it his “personal laboratory” while he was studying at the College of Techmaturgy, but it was just his childhood home with slight remodeling. Would the fleshlings find that funny?
“HELLO, VIKTOR,” he said in greeting. It was the correct process to follow for social etiquette, or so he had been taught. “I HAVE COME TO VISIT. WILL YOU ALLOW ME INSIDE?”
His creator seemed affronted. He did not move from his spot at the ajar door; he simply stared at the automaton through his orange-tinted lenses. Blitzcrank remembered the amber—almost golden—color from Viktor’s college days, and distantly wondered if he would ever see it again. He wasn’t sure anyone would see it again, if his creator could help it. It wouldn’t be long before Viktor transcended his humanity, renouncing his flesh for good.
Adamantly, Blitzcrank stood in the same place, refusing to budge. Even if his creator sent him away, he did not plan on moving. He was overcome with the desire to be with his creator, especially in his home and not within the domain of the League. He surmised that human children felt similarly. Was this an innate desire in all living beings, inscribed in both genetic or electric coding?
Eventually, Viktor pulled the door open further. Not fully, but enough for Blitzcrank to fit inside. “You can enter,” he said, tone clipped. Blitzcrank could not read his tone besides the shortness of his words. “But I am busy.”
Blitzcrank stepped through the door, careful to keep his body from hitting the walls or the ceiling. He barely fit inside, but once he was past the entranceway, the ceiling opened up an extra foot, allowing him to comfortably stand at his full height.
He surveyed the room. It was similar to a basement level, especially with the raised ceiling, but it was slightly above ground. He could see Viktor’s workbench covered in parts of different sizes and the beginnings of a prosthetic arm molding itself out of the pile. Its steel fingers were splayed upwards, reaching towards the light Viktor had above the table. There were other pieces of work equipment scattered throughout the room, but it was a fairly standard workshop in Blitzcrank’s knowledge archetype of “laboratory”.
True to his word, Viktor returned to his station and immediately continued his work. He was currently soldering a piece onto the arm he was building with complete disregard to his house guest. Blitzcrank stood in the center of the room, uncertain of what to do. He hadn’t anticipated being accepted into the house and promptly ignored. He did not want to leave, but what was he to do?
In the silence, Blitzcrank continued watching his creator. Viktor dove fully into his work, just like he had as a doctoral student at the College of Techmaturgy. There was a single-minded focus that had never left him, always dedicated to the current object of his obsession. For a long time, it had been the Glorious Evolution. Every prosthetic for new and current acolytes was a tribute to that goal.
Many years ago, that obsession had been Blitzcrank himself. He remembered the exact second that his consciousness had developed and the scene that lay before him: he saw Viktor, standing in front of him. His creator had been roughly 25 years old if the court documents were correct, and his weary amber eyes held exhaustion as a permanent weight. Concentration pulled his lips into a frown and pinched his eyebrows, stress lining his forehead. Even then, his black hair had been streaked with a shock of white hair, right above his left eye.
“CREATOR,” he had said, drawing the word from newly activated memory banks. It felt correct as it moved throughout his core and out his speakers.
In the memory, Viktor’s eyes widened. Surprise, Blitzcrank realized in the present, even if he did not know the word for it back then. And then, excitement.
“I’ve done it,” his creator had muttered, blinking in disbelief. It almost seemed hysteric as he reached his hands forward, cupping the sides of Blitzcrank’s head. In the warmth of Viktor’s fingers, he felt electricity coursing through his systems. Humans might have called the feeling “love”.
“My greatest creation,” Viktor had said, pride bleeding from each word. Blitzcrank might have called it “love” as well.
In the present, Blitzcrank scanned the room once again. His optics noted each piece of technology that decorated the space, but there was one object in the room that stood out in stark contrast as his gaze hovered over it. Down the hallway attached to the room, he noticed what looked like a cluster of pages attached to one of the doors. He began to move towards it, hinges unlocking before his first step.
He could not fit fully down the passageway, but he stopped at the junction between the room and the hall. As he saw earlier, a bundle of paper was thumbtacked to the wooden door. It stuck out horribly against the mostly gray house, even as the blue color of the tack faded closer to white. It struck Blitzcrank as odd that this was even here, but it was in line with Viktor’s single-mindedness. Perhaps he had put it up years ago and never cared to take it down, as it was simply a distraction and a waste of time.
But as Blitzcrank looked closer, he noticed the frayed edges, the large font saying “DECEMBER”, and the red marker adorning the front page. Suddenly, a memory jolted to life in Blitzcrank’s core: he had asked Mihailo, one of the other doctoral students who helped make him, for a calendar. Once the student had retrieved it, Blitzcrank had asked him to mark specific days. Snowdown, New Year…
“MY CREATOR’S DATE OF CREATION,” Blitzcrank indicated, steadfast.
Mihailo laughed shortly, even as he uncapped the marker and poised to write. “Viktor’s birthday, right?”
“IT IS THIS MONTH. YOU AND EMIL HAVE MENTIONED THIS.”
The student marked the holidays, rewriting their names in the boxes associated with them. Then, towards the end of the month, he wrote “Viktor’s birthday” in one of the last few boxes.
“The 29th,” Mihailo said, capping the marker and handing the calendar to Blitzcrank. At Blitzcrank’s silent stare, he retracted his arm. With an amused sigh, he said rather than asked, “You want me to break into his dorm and hang it up, don’t you.”
“AFFIRMATIVE.”
Blitzcrank stared at the calendar he had gifted Viktor. That had been more than a decade ago at this point, even if the years had passed without much of the automaton’s conscious awareness. He wondered how aware his creator was of those years, how heavily his absence weighed on him.
After all, Blitzcrank had been the one to petition for personal autonomy during the legal maelstrom between Viktor and Stanwick Pididly. If he had chosen to publicly elect Viktor as his true creator…
He turned to the side, observing the man-turned-machine again. While they had not talked, Viktor had let him come inside. He hadn’t banished Blitzcrank or cursed his existence, sending him away with a threat to never return. He had welcomed Blitzcrank into his home.
The robot strode towards his creator, planting himself in front of the workbench. He lowered himself to the floor, not intending to move for the rest of the night.
“THANK YOU FOR CREATING ME, VIKTOR,” he said.
His creator looked up from his current project, examining Blitzcrank’s face for an extended moment. A bit softer than he anticipated, Viktor replied, “You are welcome, Blitzcrank.”
“I AM GLAD YOU WERE CREATED, TOO.”
Viktor seemed surprised at this statement, almost hesitant to acknowledge it. After a long stretch of silence, he relented and whispered, “... Thank you.”
Blitzcrank would leave in the morning, off to fulfill his duties to Zaun and her people—but for now, he would enjoy a night with his creator in his true home.