“Madame Carredura heard what our firm is doing and has offered us her support,” Raul said, pointing to the doll’s back and adding that the spring was something he’d bought at her shop. It must have just run out of power, because a big winding key was turning by itself in the automaton’s back, creak, creak, creak.
Carredura gazed at it, bobbing her head. When the spring had wound and began to pump again, though, she turned to Sophie, perplexed.
Because the doll didn’t move at all.
“Whatever is going on?” she asked, pointing. “Is it broken?” She knitted her brow in a somewhat exaggerated expression of disappointment.
Sophie shook her head. After a moment, she said, “My mechanical dolls are designed to help people in their daily lives. You can make it move by giving it simple instructions with a remote control.”
She wasn’t a great explainer, at least not in public. She picked up a controller connected to the doll by a wire and showed how it worked.
Cleaning, laundry, cooking: Ordinary tasks such as these could be initiated simply by sending instructions to the machine. When Sophie saw the doll move in response to her inputs, she was deeply touched. It was like watching her child take its first steps.
“This is not what we discussed, Raul,” Carredura said, shaking her head and looking distinctly unimpressed. “What happened to the weapons? Were they not supposed to activate autonomously? I didn’t pour all that money into your company to produce toys that can do a few household chores.”
Carredura looked at Raul, already having lost most of her interest in what was going on. She almost looked disappointed.
“I’m sorry! I can’t apologize enough!” Raul snatched the remote from Sophie and began working it himself. “We have, of course, equipped the device with every manner of weapon, just as you asked. In both hands, in the chest! Observe!”
Behind Raul, the doll began deploying all of its hidden weapons. The smile instantly returned to Carredura’s face.
“Now, that’s what I wanted to see. Excellent work.” She applauded lightly. “As promised, then, allow me to guide you to the completion of this clockwork doll.”
Guide them to completion?
The words sounded so strange to Sophie. The doll standing there was complete; she’d finished it that morning. There was nothing more that needed to be done to it.
Yet of the three people standing there, only Sophie seemed to be at a loss for what Carredura meant. Raul said, “Thank you so much!” and shook the woman’s hand vigorously. Clearly, they had made some sort of agreement without Sophie’s knowledge.
“Take these,” Carredura said, still smiling, and handed Raul two slips of paper. Again, only Sophie seemed to fail to understand what they were. Raul stuck one on his chest as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then stuck the other on Sophie’s doll.
“What are you…”
…doing?
She didn’t even get the question out of her mouth before the wire connecting the remote control to the doll snapped—severed by the automaton’s own hand.
Almost as if by its own volition.
“Wha…?” Sophie stared dumbfounded at the wire.
This wasn’t possible. A clockwork doll couldn’t gain consciousness. Not without a sancta of some kind…
“Yes! What a wonderful power! I knew I could trust you, Lady Carredura. This sancta is exactly what I hoped for!” Raul applauded as, in front of him, the doll brandished its weapons.
It almost looked like a living person.
“When one of those seals is stuck to a person and the other to a doll, it begins to behave precisely as the owner wishes.” Carredura looked indulgent, like a parent watching an excited child. “In other words,” she said to Sophie, “this clockwork thing that you created can be controlled by his will.”
Wonderful, is it not?
Sophie only glowered at Carredura. “I built my mechanical doll to help people lead better lives,” she said. Not for this.
“Oh, you and I share the same ideals, my dear Sophie,” Carredura said with a chuckle. Her smile, though, looked somehow contemptuous. “I use sancta to create a society with no inequalities.”
Even as they conversed, the automaton began walking around the show floor as Raul willed. Carredura looked over at it right when it had the weapons in both hands raised. The muzzles of its guns were pointed directly at another exhibitor’s doll.
“Let me ask you a question, my dear Sophie. What’s the quickest way to eliminate war from the world?” Without waiting for an answer, she went on, “It’s to get rid of every single person with a weapon.”
She almost sounded like she had been waiting for this exact moment.
Sophie heard a sound like a thunderclap and felt a shock. She realized before anyone else that it was a gunshot—she knew the sound well, because they had done so many tests while developing the doll. That was why she was also the first to look up, and despair.
The bullet, fired from the very doll she had created, had pierced the neck of the other exhibitor’s doll.
As confused people murmured to each other, Sophie heard an astonished Raul say, “Wha—? What… What happened?”
Sophie’s machine was already setting its sights on another doll.
“A-ahem, Lady Carredura, how do I get it to…to stop doing that?” Raul asked, touching the slip of paper. He pulled at it, but it wouldn’t come off. He tried the one on the doll, but it was stuck fast, too.
“Stop?” Carredura asked with a puzzled look. “What need is there to stop what you yourself willed?”
Was this not the power he had wished for? Carredura laughed again, and this time it was nothing like the carefully crafted smiles and chuckles she had offered before. This time she laughed from the heart, joyously.
There was another crack of the gun.
No. The pain. It hurt. Somebody, help. Sophie crumpled and cried out, but no one heard her.