Thank you for reading volume 10 of The Combat Baker and Automaton Waitress!
The inspiration to write this story came from asking myself a question: If tools could think, what kind of person would they like?
Tools are made for a purpose. They’re made because there’s a use for them. I figured the person they would like most would be the one who used them to the fullest. That person would fulfill the reason for their existence.
So what if a tool could think and it was a young woman? She would love even someone feared and alienated for many years, like Lud Langart, because he fulfilled her. I think that was Sven at the beginning of the story.
However, even though she was created as a weapon, she abandoned that role in order to follow Lud. Then she began to wonder, worry and hesitate. She wanted him to fulfill the reason she was born, but she had abandoned that reason.
She wondered why she wanted to be with Lud. She wondered what she wanted from the future. She kept thinking as hard as she could and finally arrived at a simple conclusion.
“I want to be with him because I want to be with him.”
It’s a simple conclusion. She had frantically run, fought, shouted, screamed and writhed in pain only to discover that.
People suffer for only that reason. People risk their lives for only that reason. People live for only that reason. It was a great delight to write about her path toward that conclusion.
This volume completes The Combat Baker and Automaton Waitress. I struggled every day to give the men and women of this series a happy ending. I think I’ve finally done that thanks to everyone’s support.
Thanks to my editor, designer, printer, distributor and sales personnel. And thanks to the illustrator Zaza who was with me the whole way.
Above all, I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart to you, the readers, for sticking with me. Thank you very much. I truly hope we meet again somewhere.
SOW