The Clockwork Changeling

by Sylvan Scott

Half expecting to find Wiste waiting in his bedroom, only Anthony’s mother was at home when he returned. He told her that he’d see her for lunch and went upstairs. He collapsed onto his bed, exhausted. He was surprised to feel the sting of a tear at the corner of his eye. He lay on his back for a few minutes before fishing out the wind-up key and looking at it.

  It was a tiny thing of polished silver. It had an intricate, filigreed head on one end and small, delicate tines on the other. Unlike the key to Wiste’s mask, it was finer and looked like a piece of art. The head was heart-shaped with a hole in its middle. He stared at the key for a long while, wishing—for the first time—that he could forget his childhood adventures.

  He put the key on his bedside table, picked up his brass alarm clock, and prepared to smash it. But he paused. He didn’t know why hesitated, but he couldn’t bring his arm down. He looked at the key but only saw the haunted eyes of the stranger who’d tried to defend the changeling. He heard the door open. It wasn’t his closet door. It was his bedroom door.

  Wiste stood there, holding the locket.

  Closing the door behind him, he took off his mask and resumed his goat-legged appearance.

  “Addison dropped me off,” he said. “That’s his name; Dell’s boyfriend. He drove me back here when I explained—”

  “There’s nothing to explain.” Anthony picked up the key and walked to the window. He looked out and saw an old, wood-paneled, nineteen-seventies station wagon across the street. “Great. Now he knows where I live,” he muttered. Louder, he said, “He should be thanking me. I revealed the truth to him.”

  “About?”

  Anthony turned. “About him sleeping with a fucking robot; a machine!”

  “Oh.” Wiste glanced down. “He already knew about that.”

  “What?”

  “He already knew. Dell told him on their second date. Apparently he showed Addison how he could change his shape.”

  “But not that he was a … a machine.”

  Wiste nodded. “Yes, that too. Or, well, not a ‘machine’; not fully. That he was artificial, though:  yes.”

  Anthony looked back at the young man sitting the car. He shook his head. “God, and I thought I could be desperate.”

  “It wasn’t desperation,” Wiste said. He held out the locket. “Dell was being honest and Addison, well, Addison said it was love at first sight. Dell was his type:  someone who made him smile.”

  “Except that he wasn’t a ‘someone’,” Anthony retorted. “And he ran around small-town America being openly gay with my face? Didn’t he think how much trouble he could get me into?”

  Wiste shrugged. “I doubt Dell thought about much other than his happiness; like most people.”

  “Stop calling it ‘Dell’; it wasn’t a ‘he’, it’s an it.” He nodded at the locket. “A ‘he’ doesn’t fold up into a hand-held piece of jewelry.”

  “You’ve been calling him ‘he’ since I came in.” Wiste moved to sit on Anthony’s bed. He dangled the locket from its chain. It swung like a pendulum as he stared at it. Anthony didn’t say anything.

  “I think he was excited by having a life,” Wiste said at last. “Being on his own and treated as something alive.”

  “I don’t care about that.” He looked at his friend suspiciously. “Why were you talking with them; why did you go behind my back?”

  Wiste looked up, sidelong. “I wanted to work things out,” he said. “It’s not as if I couldn’t see all the problems Dell could cause, especially in a town where you used to go all the time.”

  Anthony walked closer and rested his hand on Wiste’s shoulder. “Thanks for bringing the locket back. I think I can manually wind him down completely, and—”

  “I didn’t bring him here for you, Tony,” Wiste said. “I brought him to be restored.”

  At first Anthony had thought he’d not heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

  Wiste nodded and stroked his curling beard. “I can only imagine what would happen were he discovered by the authorities,” he said. “But even so, you didn’t see what I saw. They’re in love. Like you and Karl, they’re in love.”

  “He can’t be in love; he’s a machine.”

  “And what about Addison? Is he a machine, too?”

  Anthony glanced at the window. He imagined those teary eyes in the car, below, and frowned. “He’ll get over it.”

  “Would you?” Wiste asked. “If it was Karl, I mean.”

  “That’s different. Addison wasn’t dating a real person. He was dating—”

  “He was dating the perfect duplicate. Sure, he doesn’t have your most recent experiences, but he made his own. In many ways you’re brothers:  he looks like you, behaves like you...”

  “But he isn’t me! He’s a copy!”

  “So?”

  “So, I … I’m supposed to be unique!”

  Wiste looked startled by the shout.

  The two stared at each other for a long time. Anthony could see the disappointment in his friend’s eyes. He walked back to the window and looked out at the old station wagon.

  Addison was leaning against the driver’s side door. He looked uneasy. Anthony couldn’t tell from the distance but he bet he’d been crying.

  “Isn’t this like what you told me most bothered you, at first, about Karl visiting NeverEarth? That he was seeing it as an adult and, somehow, was tromping all over your childhood?”

  “This is different.”

  “I don’t see how. As a kid, you acted like you were unique in your visits to my world even though you knew you weren’t. You even met friends, there, from Earth:  others who’d had adventures. For centuries there’s been a tradition of the occasional, mortal child showing up in the Alabaster Kingdom.” He stood up and walked over next to Anthony to look down at the car. “And you knew that, too. So tell me, again, how you thought your experiences were unique.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “They just were. With Karl, I admit I was being selfish. But this... I never had a twin; never had a brother. I thought that I was unique. This totally undermines that.”

  Wiste nodded. “It didn’t bother you when you were eight. You liked Dell, then.”

  “I was a kid; I thought it was cool to have my own robot.”

  “He’s more than a machine. You knew that then and I suspect you know that now.” He took Anthony’s hand and squeezed it.

  Anthony was surprised to feel the locket pressed into his palm.

  “Like I said,” Wiste continued, “I agree there could be trouble from this but what’s more important?”

  Wiste stepped back. Anthony felt shame creep across his heart. He looked at the small, ceramic locket. At its base there was the tiny hole into which he could insert the key.

  He remembered the times when he would wind up his friend after getting back from NeverEarth in the days before fully forgetting an adventure. The two would talk for hours and, sometimes, slip out of the house to go down to the nearby park to play. He’d treated the clockwork like a person back then, when he viewed the world through a child’s eyes. What had changed to make him take such offense at Dell’s mere existence? Did he really think having a copy diminished his own value? How did the mere presence of someone else undermine his own worth?

  He backed away from the window.

  Minutes passed.

  Then, almost of its own accord, Anthony’s hand withdrew the key from his pocket. He slid it into its hole and, holding his breath, turned it counter-clockwise before tapping it four times with his fingertip.

  It vibrated in his hand. Then, faintly, he heard the “tick-tick-tick” of gears starting to whirr and move. Suddenly, it flipped out of his hand and struck the floor, unfolding as it went. In moments he stood facing his mirror image once more. The tiny key receded into Dell’s chin.

  “Hello, Tony,” the changeling said.

  “Hello, Dell.”

  They talked for a long time. Wiste invited Addison up and got strange looks from Anthony’s mot
her. Anthony knew he’d have to make up a story to tell her, later.

  Dell announced that he wouldn’t give up the face he had—it was the face Addison had fallen in love with and that his employers knew—but if allowed to go on his way he’d take care to be less conspicuous. Anthony didn’t like it but couldn’t argue:  it was Dell’s life even if patterned on his own.

  “But you have to come when I call:  if you get to use my face, that’s the price,” he said. “Look, it won’t be often—maybe not ever—but if I need you to stand in for me, you have to come, okay? Bring Addison if you want—or any boyfriend you have at the time—but just come.”

  Dell bristled. “It’ll be Addison,” he said, putting his arm around his boyfriend. “This isn’t some sort of one-night-stand.”

  Anthony suppressed a smile. It was almost cute the way Dell thought that his first love would be “the one”. Who knew? Maybe it would be. He knew it was unlikely but didn’t say anything more on the subject. He’d threatened enough dreams for one day. He just nodded.

  Dell and Addison went outside. He watched from his window as they stopped in the middle of the street, hugged and, then, kissed. Anthony bristled, hoping none of the neighbors were watching. But, after a moment, the two pulled apart and with an embarrassed wave, got into the car and drove off. Anthony felt a part of him go with them.

  It was over.

  Wiste hung around for a few more days before deciding to use the closet door in Anthony’s old bedroom to go home. It was a portal he knew well.

  “Next time, you come visit me,” he said.

  Anthony smirked. “If I remember, sure.”

  Wiste chuckled. “Right.”

  They embraced and Anthony hung on for a long time. Then, reluctantly, he let Wiste go.

  Four knocks and a backwards turn of the door knob, and his friend was gone again. Anthony would have to tell his folks Wiste had caught a cab to the airport. Mostly he was just glad they’d not seen Dell leaving the house. He sat alone in his childhood room with his thoughts. He felt a strong urge to call Karl and vent about the whole ordeal. He didn’t know what to say. Maybe he’d call tonight, after dinner. Maybe tomorrow.

  He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Maybe it was time to get a part-time job. His parents didn’t ask him to, but he wanted the money; wanted something to do.

  Maybe working behind a counter would satisfy him.

  Tomorrow he would check to see if the hardware store in Northbrook was hiring.

  The End