Just Like Clockwork

As a child, I loved the Wizard of Oz books, by L. Frank Baum. The clockwork man Tik-Tok, who is a character in the later books, always fascinated me. So I wondered what would happen if the idea of clockwork interested someone else, someone with a few more skills and some mad-scientist capabilties….

Bits and pieces of clockwork. They were scattered everywhere. Every time Josiah Banks could, he visited junk shops, antique shops, flea markets – anywhere he might find an old, wind-up style alarm clock or watch. He had tried the newer ones, but too often nowadays the gears inside were made of plastic. “And I need metal gears, metal ones!” he would say as he rummaged through a box of miscellaneous junk at a yard sale or auction.

Each clock or watch was taken home and carefully disassembled, and the gears, large and small, were sorted according to size in piles that were all over his workroom, which doubled as a living room. But that was all right, because no one ever came to visit him anymore, not since the time he got upset with his favorite aunt and uncle for accidently mixing up two piles of gears.

Now he was invited other places and happily went visiting, because Josiah was sociable, just very intense about his clockwork.

“Josiah,” his friend Andy would say, as he carefully placed a glass of  soda between two piles of tiny gears on the coffee table -Andy was the only one left who would come and see Josiah as his house , “Josiah, what are you going to do with all these gears?”

“Build something, of course,” Josiah replied seriously.

“But you’ve been collecting the dratted things for years! You must have enough to build something by now?”

“Maybe. I’ll know when I have enough,” Josiah said, shrugging. He wasn’t about to admit to Andy that he had actually built something already. That part of his work room, the assembling part, was in his basement where no one else ever went. He was careful to keep the blinds pulled and the door shut, so no one could see what he was doing down there. He passed a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies that his Aunt Agnes had sent him to Andy, and that was the end of the subject.

When Andy left later on that day,  Josiah looked around the room at the piles of clockwork, really noticing for the first time what it must look like to an outsider. The piles were all over the room, falling over untidily, dusty and, in some cases, rusty, covering almost every flat surface. There were thousands of the things. “Almost. I’m almost ready,” he thought. “I just need that one big set…”

That weekend, he found what he was looking for. A massive grandfather clock, whose once-elegant case had been ruined in a flood, was waiting for him at an auction with other flood-damaged goods. Josiah gasped when he saw it, and counted the money he had with him three times over to see how high he could bid on it. In the end, it went home with him, along with a few smaller alarm clocks for good measure.

He worked far into the night, carefully taking the clock apart and examining the gears and mainspring. They were in perfect condition, and he carefully placed them on his living room sofa in a place of honor.

The next day, he arranged to take a week off work. He took care of all his bills, the shopping, the laundry, and anything that could distract him, took the phone off the hook, canceled dinner with Aunt Agnes and Uncle Ben, and told Andy that he wouldn’t be available for a while. Then he locked the door, rubbed his hands together, and descended to his basement.

His pet rat, Clicker, came scurrying up to him as he turned on the light. He picked up Clicker absently  and put him on his shoulder, staring around the room as he did. Everything down here was in place and seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation. Josiah went over to where the pieces of sheet metal he had cut and shaped and welded were ready and waiting for him. He gave a great, wobbling sigh, and  reached for the first piece. He had been waiting for this moment for so long…

The week was busy. Josiah ran up and down the stairs, retrieving gears of various sizes and spent long hours with a magnifying lens strapped over his eyes. Clicker scuttled over the bench keeping him company as the days wore into nights and back into days again. Several times, Josiah woke up to find that he had fallen asleep at his workbench and had several sizes of gear imprinted on his cheek.

By the end of the week, he was working at a feverish pace, no longer stopping even to eat. The piles of gears upstairs were disappearing and the newest, biggest gears had long since been fitted into place. The shaped pieces of metal had been welded together and finally, Josiah was almost done. As he held the last piece of clockwork in his hands, he looked at it with tears in his eyes. Then he smiled and carefully put the piece in place.

The next day, Andy came knocking at the front door. The week was up and he was determined to know what Josiah had been up too all this time. When Josiah didn’t answer, he peered in the front windows. To his surprise, the living room was clean. No, it was beyond clean. It was immaculate. Startled, he returned to the door and knocked louder. Just as he was ready to give up, he heard a noise from inside like the slamming of a door and then the lock on the front door clicked open.

Josiah opened the door and stood there, looking at Andy. He was gaunt, and there were huge circles under his eyes, but he looked happy – happier than Andy had seen him look in ages, in fact. He grinned hugely when he saw Andy, and said, “Come in! I was just about to call you! I’m done! It’s finished. After all these years, it’s done!” He stepped aside and motioned Josiah into the spotless front room.

“What’s done? And where are all the gears…Oh, wait a minute, you mean you finally used those things and made something?” Andy stood staring around the room, looking to see if whatever Josiah had made was up here.

“Yes I did! I’ve worked all week, and it’s finally done!” Josiah crowed.

“Great! When can I see it? Is it up here?” Andy asked, pushing into the room. The movement of something scuttling under the sofa caught his eye. “What was that? A rat!?” he exclaimed as he realized what he had seen.

“Oh, that’s just Clicker. He’s my pet. I usually keep him downstairs, but now, well, I really don’t need to.” Josiah knelt on the floor and pulled Clicker out from under the sofa.

Andy got a good look at Clicker and his mouth fell open. “Josiah, is this what you made? A clockwork rat? He’s amazing!” He reached for the rat, who was indeed made of clockwork.

Josiah handed Clicker over to Andy and smiled hugely. Clicker was amazing, he had no doubt of that. “Do you like him?”

Andy examined the clockwork rat. “Josiah, this is more than amazing. I mean, I can see that this is made of clockwork and you wind him up, but he is acting like a real rat. Just the mechanics of him are astounding – he has joints that act like real ones – but, Josiah, he’s acting like a real pet rat!”

“I know. He came out pretty well. But he was just my first project. I made him quite a while ago.” Josiah was still grinning like mad. “I’ve done a lot more since then.”

“You mean that you have even bigger and better stuff than  this?” Andy looked back up at his friend.

“Yep, sure do! And I’ll show you in just a few minutes – I was waiting for you to be here for the grand unveiling!” Josiah said with pride.

“What else have you made?” asked Andy, handing the rat back to Josiah.

“Oh, I made clockwork dog, and a few others small animals, but I ended up taking them apart again so that I could re-use the gears and the brain material.”

“Brain material?” Andy got a funny look on his face.

Josiah laughed, saying, “Not real brains, Andy. Just some stuff in a bag that I found with a set of gears one time at an auction. You know I’ve always loved clockwork, ever since I was a little kid, and I’ve haunted auctions for the stuff for years. A couple of years ago, I bid on a big lot of loose gears, some plans, and what they called miscellaneous junk, in a box. When I got it home I found that the miscellaneous junk and plans included a bag of sand-like stuff and some notes.”

“Go on,” Andy encouraged when Josiah paused.

“Well, the notes were by someone who had been trying to make a clock work man. The intact plans were for a rat and a dog and a cat – there was one page of stuff about a man, but it was pretty torn up. The person who wrote the notes created this, this, brain-stuff, like sand – I guess must be silicone or something – I really don’t know how it works. I just know that it does. That’s what’s inside Clicker.”

“So you decided to make a clockwork man.”

“Yes, and he’s done. Since the plans weren’t complete, I had to figure out part of him myself. And I used up all the brain-sand on him, so I can’t make another one like him. But Andy, he’s going to be amazing! Come on down and we’ll wind him up!” said Josiah.

Andy was examining Clicker again as they descended into the basement. “How are you going to get him to do things?” he asked. He looked around at the big open room which he had never seen before. It was pretty empty. There was a few bit of clockwork here and there on a very tidy workbench along one wall.. A few more tools were on the metal shelves attached to the opposite wall. Like the upstairs, the room was immaculate.

“Well, I suppose he’ll have to learn. Clicker here was a bit wild at first, really afraid of me…but he tamed down pretty quickly.” Josiah walked over to a sheet draped something roughly man-sized in the middle of the room. He whisked it off, and there stood his clockwork man.

“Wow. Just wow!” said Andy, his eyes sparkling. “This is really neat, Josiah.” And the man was. He had a round head and body, and articulated joints. Josiah had even put a pleasant expression on the man’s welded face. A large key stuck out of the middle of the man’s back.

“So what took you so long to make him?” Andy asked as Josiah prepared to wind the man up for the first time.

“I needed to find a certain type of clock for parts and I had a hard time finding it. Last weekend, I got it.”  Josiah finished winding the man and then paused with his finger on a switch. He cleared his throat importantly. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” he proclaimed theatrically, “I GIVE TO YOU THE ONE AND ONLY, THE FIRST, THE AMAZING, CLOCKWORK MAN!!!”

And he flipped the switch.

There was a whirring, and a little clicking sound as the gears began to move inside. The man’s arms moved, and he turned his head back and forth.  Then his legs moved, and he moved forward and backwards. His head turned towards Josiah and Andy.

And then all hell broke loose.

The clockwork man ran from Josiah and Andy, clearly terrified. He rammed into the workbench,  scattering the leftover gears everywhere. Then he charged towards the stairs. He got up to the fourth stair before the weight of his metal body broke through the treads and sent him back down again. Undeterred, the clockwork man tried again to get away. This time he managed to crash into the post holding up the rest of the stairs and the entire staircase collapsed.

Josiah and Andy had stared in shock as the clockwork man began his frantic attempt at escape. By the time he broke the bottom steps, they had fled to the far side of the room, and as the whole staircase came down, they climbed to the top of the metal shelving units and crouched there, watching in shock as the man destroyed the rest of the workbench, running into it and trying to climb on top of it.

Josiah whispered to Andy, “These are anchored to the wall with big bolts. I think we’ll be safe here.”

Andy looked back at him, his eyes huge with fear. “A little wild, you said. Maybe take a while to tame down? My God, man, this thing is dangerous! You said that plans you found, they were torn up? How badly torn up were they?”

Josiah swallowed then blanched. “I didn’t think about it before, but they were pretty torn up. And there were some stains…I thought someone had spilled cocoa on them…”

” Old, torn up plans with bloodstains on them for something no one ever heard of before. Brains-in-a-bag. Not such a good idea, maybe?” Andy sniped.

“Yeah, maybe. I didn’t really think. I just wanted to make him – it was like a dream come true for me.” He shuddered. “Now it’s a nightmare.” He looked around the room. “I wonder if we could reach the window from the edge of this shelf without falling.” He eyed the distance speculatively.

Andy looked at it and shook his head. “I don’t think so. And I’d hate to think what would happen if we fell and he ran into us. We’ll just have stay up here until he winds down. At least we had a chance to get away.”

They watched as Clicker scuttled across the floor and the man tried to get away from Clicker, ramming into the shelf next to them. It held tight to the wall, but they could still feel the impact. Tools flew everywhere.

“Uh, yeah, about that. The reason it took me so long to be able to make him?” Josiah swallowed again, and closed his eyes.

“Go on…”

“Well, I was waiting for  a special sort of clock, with a special sort of winding mechanism. The one I found this past weekend.” He paused again.

“And?”

Another crash sounded below them, and the shelving unit shook again.

“Well, it was  called a Seven Day Wonder, the sort of clock you only wind once a week.”

-She Wolf ©2008