Repair

 

Demi-assistant Pavel trudged along the hallway with a metallic half sphere, holding it almost comfortably with two hands. He elbowed the door to the Quarter-prefect’s office with a kind of tired sigh.

“We’ve got a...” he began

“Put it on the ... well, floor I suppose.” interrupted Quarter-prefect Claut.

“...broken...” Pavel trailed off, the word hanging in the air, looking for somewhere to land.

The room was full of half spherical shapes, matching the one in Pavel’s arms. Six on the large desk, a dozen on the floor and one on each of the otherwise empty three chairs in the room. They looked a bit worse for wear than the one that had just joined them, but still theoretically functional.

Claut growled lightly and Pavel left quickly. “What now?” the Quarter-prefect asked of no one in particular. He grabbed a random tool from his desk drawer and shuffled over to the new object in the room. Tapping it loudly in several places he made a note of the echoes.

Placing it down gingerly on the floor he weaved between the mess on the floor to a writing board. #22 Dorsal section intact, three empty cavities – positions 9A, B and C. A blueprint of the device was nearby for reference, but Claut had memorized it in the years prior.

The half-spheres were a strange type of mechanical life they had found underground about nine years ago. The faculty had be studying them in hopes of discovering their secrets. They hadn’t learned much, but found them very useful for pest control and building inspection.

For the most part they simply just worked. They seemed to thrive without appreciable amounts of water or food, but various hints made the scientists classify them as living nonetheless.

Their overall intelligence seemed both rudimentary and sophisticated in equal measure. They were slow to respond to stimuli but acted in a decisive and planned way once they did.

Over the last week, a number of the device-creatures had begun to slow down and finally stop. Not rest – they had no apparent need for downtime - but something else. Claut brought out the dissection notes again and poured over them.

Claut had become the defacto biologist of the group since he had spent the most time with the deceased units. When their life cycle ended they simply fell apart, breaking open the top casing and revealing the now detaching innards. The others around them reacted quickly – surprising in itself – and wasted no time absorbing the metallic-organic gears and springs. Only by chance did they manage to grab a dead half-sphere before it was consumed. Future observations noted a barely audible noise from the creatures before they passed.

The autopsy-dismantling was a fruitful project, they learned more about mechanical advantage in a single night than the previous dozen years of undirected study. The layout of the gearwork for precise timing and self-winding pushed the field ahead.

Claut’s watch was a product of the breakthroughs, it kept near perfect time and his body movement was enough to keep it powered. Lately though, it had gone missing. About a week ago he noted.

That was about when the half-spheres had stopped as well. It was an odd stray thought, but he didn’t dismiss it.

Something in the room seemed to shift. He normally didn’t stay this late, but the new arrival had derailed his intention to leave. Out of the corner of his mind he noticed a light ticking noise.

Near one of the more cluttered corners – under a pile of 3 half spheres - was his watch. He knelt down to retrieve it, and the three devices moved suddenly, as if to protect it.

Another odd image flashed in his mind – a mother cat doing the same thing when it had kittens. “Maternal?” he thought to himself.

Then he remembered something about the end of the life cycle of the creatures – the smallest ones had first dibs on the new parts. All the ones he had seen were nearly the same size, but a clear fostering of the runts was in place.

The ones that moved made the tell-tale death rattle and disassembled around Claut’s watch. This time none of the larger creatures appeared to feast.

Claut took the opportunity to pick up his timepiece, and shake it few times to get it running again. Then suddenly the other creatures stirred and began consuming the fallen.

A knock at the door signalled Pavel’s return. The rest of the still creatures returned to ‘life’ as the door opened. They scattered down the hallway and vanished into the holes in the wall.

“What did you do?” asked Pavel.

“Nothing” said the Quarter-prefect. “But I think they thought my watch was a dying youngling. A few sacrificed themselves for it, but the rest scattered when my watch was revived and you opened the door.”