Spare and Found Parts

by Sarah Maria Griffin

  She focused all her thoughts on the hand in her bag as they wound down a side street that led behind the huge, desolate building. The smell of fire was shocking, and her eyes started to water. The building held some massive, unspeakable power; she hadn’t been this close to it in years. The things that had happened inside the gray walls were unspeakable: this house of failure. And Nell was following Oliver Kelly inside.

  She’d known her route passed the hospital. Had a part of her wanted this excuse? Wanted to bump into him, longed for coincidence? Her ticking escalated again.

  In the ashen shadow of the alley, they approached a huge steel fire exit, with no apparent handle or release. Oliver dropped to his knees and snaked his bony hand under the slightest crack between the door and the pavement, rustled around for a moment, and then click, the door opened onto the darkness of the hospital.

  Oliver flipped on a light switch, and in two blinks the corridor was illuminated. Nell preferred the shield of darkness to the sudden arrival of scorch-marked white tiles, the eerie buildup of filth and dust and ash where the floor met the wall, and the seemingly endless depth of the hallways before them. A disquieting whir emanated from the sickly blue lights above them, as though they were struggling to stay aglow. Oliver marched confidently on, his footsteps echoing out into the labyrinth of the building.

  They passed doorways upon doorways upon doorways upon doorways, each with a small square that should have been a window where one could have peeked in had it not been so filthy. Most were charred to a solid black.

  Those had been the wards. Some remaining doors even still had toxicity signs on them, bright red, warning visitors to stay out. Some were open only a few inches; some sealed shut, framed by iron welding and painted an alarming, screaming red. Some had blown open completely and were just frames leading to pitch-black rooms. The morning light streamed into other wards they passed, illuminating scorched steel bed frames and the remains of chewed-away curtains.

  Nell scurried along after Oliver fascinated and appalled by the horrors around her. She wanted to explore. But before she knew it, darkness was upon them again. They had arrived in an atrium, and Oliver halted her, then left her alone for a paralyzing moment, disappearing into the blackness.

  Suddenly, with three flickers, then a bloom of light, the enormous hall was illuminated. The remains of reception areas littered the sprawling hub, and it was clear, in the very center of room, that this is where the biggest fire had been lit. There were the remains of a pyre, black and broken, like a crooked skeleton of an unknowable, featureless animal. For a moment Nell blinked and saw an elephant in flames, but she knew this was no creature’s remains; this was a man-made solution to a man-made problem. Fire for the disease. Fire to scorch it clean. The ceiling, far above them, had been burned almost all the way through, and stray wires hung, crackling, down into the room.

  “It’s over here,” Oliver called. “We have to hurry. I can’t leave these lights on for long.”

  Nell scampered across the tiles to a bright green, hastily painted door where her unlikely guide stood. Oliver fumbled with his keys, then swung the door open, triggering a light inside.

  “Wait here. I’m going to shut off the electricity behind us. I’ve nearly burned this place down again too many times forgetting it. Those loose wires are the bane of my life.”

  “Aren’t they dangerous?” whispered Nell, but Oliver was already dashing back across the room. She shook her head and walked into the workshop, each footfall landing in time with the now enormous ticking from her chest.

  It wasn’t a big room at all, but it didn’t need to be. The fire smell seemed to fade as she stepped out of the atrium. The windows were covered by clean, whitewashed wooden panels, and the false light wasn’t blue tinted or flickering, just cool and clear. The ceiling was unexpectedly high. Had she ever been in a place this clean, this untouched by the ancient grime of the city? A table stood in the center of the room: long and silver and almost mirrorlike in its shine. And the walls . . . Nell’s ticking suddenly changed from a steady march of uncertainty to the flutter of a baby bird; there were so, so many parts in all shapes, sizes, colors. So many limbs.

  Some were just plastic; others, wood. Many were painted exquisitely: looping, grand signatures along forearms, family crests on calves. Bright gouache flowers grew across limb after limb, the red lick of flames on one or two. Arms, legs, hips, feet, hands, all of different sizes, in neat, organized racks, behind set panes of clear new glass. There were cabinets with keyholes, displaying sets of dentures and single teeth, false eyes, wooden and porcelain fingers, steel and plastic toes. Nell peered down at the eyes, wondering which Ruby would choose for herself. Some were mechanized and wired; others, just crescent moons of painted glass. Oliver had really found an incredible stash. These would be worth a fortune.

  She wanted all of it. She wanted every single thing, to inspect it and play with it and see what she could make it do. This was what her father’s lab must be like, a mechanical menagerie of limbs all spread out on the walls like specimens or pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She was transfixed. How—

  “It’s stunning, isn’t it?” Oliver broke her reverie, gazing at her expectantly, knowing he’d impressed her.

  “Yes,” she murmured, still scanning the inventory.

  The door clicked behind him, and they didn’t say anything for what felt like an awfully long time. Nell walked slowly around the perimeter of the room, examining each wall. How full of genius each prosthetic was. Each of these strange inhuman things had lived a human life of its own. What must one feel like? She placed her hand to her chest, still thrumming. What must it look like in there? There was such beauty in these augmented human shapes. And so many of these contributions were in her family’s name.

  She would hold on to Julian’s augmented arm for a moment longer next time they embraced.

  From nowhere then she was brave. Here, in the room adorned with limbs—some analogue from before her father’s creations, some of Julian’s marvels—here in the charred museum, she decided to tell Oliver about the hand. She wanted to show him. She wanted to talk about it. Oliver was the only one who had the same vocabulary as she and her father, who spoke the language that existed on the strange border between machine and human. She hated that Oliver would understand, but he would.

  “I’m about to show you something, Kelly,” said Nell, quiet, dangerous, “and if you ever tell another living soul that you saw this, or if you take the piss out of me in front of Antoinette or Ruby, I’ll take you apart.”

  His eyes flashed, and his mouth opened ever so slightly. Did he think she was flirting?

  “I am under no circumstances flirting with you.” Nell’s voice was dry. “Do you understand?”

  Oliver flushed slightly and nodded.

  “Good.”

  Nell reached into her satchel and felt around for the hand. She fished it out from the depths, brought it into the light, and presented it to Oliver across her palms. He knitted his brow.

  “Is that a hand?”

  “Yes,” Nell began, “and it’s the best thing I’ve ever found.”

  “Why?” Oliver peered closer. “It’s . . . a mannequin if I’m not mistaken? Never would have been worn by a survivor of the epidemic, even in the worst of it. It’s a display piece.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Nell said. A blush prickled at her cheeks.

  “What a strange piece to hang on to, Crane. Do you mind if I take a look at it?” Oliver wasn’t teasing her now; their swords were down. No combat. Just conversation.

  She hadn’t a moment to protest before he was holding it up to the light, examining it closely. He removed an eye loupe from his coat pocket and placed it between the lids of his right eye to get a better look, clearly scanning it for some distinctive marking or other. She considered him for a moment: his keen eye, his imagination for building things, his absurd dedication to courting her. Nell then thought of her drawings, her boy drawn out on cream paper
on her desk. The hand’s specter, the boy that it wasn’t—the boy that it could be. His eyes, his nose, his hair billowing back from the invisible breezes in her paper world. Her choices were this possible boy, or Oliver.

  Her ticking spoke to her body in a low metronome. Oliver was all wrong. She should cut him loose. Being useful wasn’t justification for keeping him hanging on. It wasn’t fair.

  “If you pulled it apart at each joint,” he was saying, “each knuckle, then each mound, then hollow out the palm, hide a battery in the center so nobody could see it, run a wire down the center of each finger, and attach the smallest hinges you have, I think you could make it walk.”

  Nell laughed despite herself. “Yeah, and what use would that be? I can hardly stand up in front of the council and present the Incredible Walking Hand. I’ve enough tiny machines to be toying with.”

  “I don’t envy you, Crane. You’ve a lot to live up to. I mean, Cora and the statue was one thing, but what Julian makes”—Oliver whistled, low—“they’re something else. I mean, just look at the walls. Look, you can see his marksmanship all over them; the rudimentary wooden home-brewed parts up there look like something a child made in comparison. His pieces are so intuitive. If they didn’t need a charge to sustain their movement, they could definitely move on their own; the sheer detail of their mechanics is, just . . . your father is a genius. I figure, if you got enough of these things together, you could make a whole person.”

  As the last words escaped Oliver’s mouth, Nell gasped as though she had come up for air after years underwater. Despite her best efforts, she beamed, almost laughing with joy. If you got enough of them together, you could make a whole person. The possible boy was right here in front of her, not whole yet. She could almost just take him.

  “You’re right actually, Oliver. A whole person. That’s so interesting,” Nell replied, taking the hand back from him and turning it over in hers again and again. She could see wires growing from its wrist, kinetic hinges, and clever sockets. If she set it up just right, she could get these spare parts to speak to one another, to work together. These old prosthetics that had lived entire lifetimes with people: they were beautiful and familiar; they were the opposite of the hard alien lines of the computers her city feared. These spare parts would make an excellent costume; they’d make an excellent boy. She could almost feel it whirring and pulsing to life, almost see the arm and the shoulders and neck and face—almost.

  “No idea how you’d do it, though,” said Oliver.

  “Neither do I,” Nell lied.

  Penelope,

  My last letter has gone unanswered. I am sure you are simply rushed off your feet with your project, or at least this is what I hope, given that you haven’t even delivered a proposal to the Youth Council yet.

  Last night I dreamed of your face, your bright eyes the spokes of a bicycle, frogs on your tongue, your cheeks scorched with ash, your hair wet. You said something I could not hear, your tongue too cold, your mouth a lake. I am worried. Tell me how you are. I don’t want to have to go through Julian to make sure you are all right.

  Write me soon, please. All my love, all my blessings.

  Nan

  CHAPTER 12

  Two days later, Nell sat with her knees to her chest in the great, cavernous hall of the Youth Assembly. Her eyes were closed, and in the darkness she placed together limb after limb, the pieces of her plan. Normally Youth Council made her anxious; every session that passed was a reminder of her lack of a contribution. This time was different. It would be her on the deep stage soon, her in the footlights. A creation by her side.

  Determination flourished inside her as she watched her peers milling about. They had no idea what she was planning. They had no idea what she was capable of.

  She was folding and unfolding Nan Starling’s latest letter as she sat, fresh that morning.

  Once there had been schools, order, organized education. Julian had told Nell all about it. His great-grandparents had sat in classrooms with teachers. They’d even been able to speak more than one language; they’d known things about other countries in the world. But after the toxic pulses, as the epidemic tore down the city, the next generation had been sent to work. All their learning had to be practical, so they could contribute as soon as possible. How else would they rebuild?

  Now the mayor called together the young apprentices between ages thirteen and twenty once a month, and those who had contributions ready would present them to their peers. The mayor and treasurer sat side by side at a small desk, adjudicating, taking questions from the crowd. It was meant to be encouraging. It bored Nell to tears.

  She had a huge woolen shawl draped around her and the mannequin hand nestled in her satchel. Her wrists ached from drawing plans, and her eyes were dry and sore. She sipped her flask of tea as she looked down onto the auditorium.

  This building, before the Turn, had been a theater, a fabulous ancient thing, tucked subtly between buildings on the south side of the river, still posing defiant and beautiful. After the Turn it had been repurposed by the surviving city dwellers for the government because it wasn’t too decrepit, had a stage and some functioning electricity lines leading through it. The government buildings from before the Turn were long, long gone; all that was left were burned-out unwalkable halls.

  Nell had seen pictures of how this theater had once looked: stained-glass awnings and delicately carved buttresses and dark velvet curtains. It felt haunted; that fine layer of mystery that hung in the air was especially dense here. How many places were rife with ghosts after the great descent of death over the city? Where might her mother haunt? Nell prayed it wasn’t the hospital, but somewhere warmer, maybe even their home. She wouldn’t mind or be scared; even the imagining of it gave her comfort.

  She picked at her bootlaces, mostly ignoring the presentation being made by Mara, the baker’s daughter, and Timothy, the budding confectioner, about the shopfront they were repurposing to become the first cake shop since the quarantine had ended. Cake shop. Mercy. Nell rolled her eyes. Something about its being important for community, for morale. They were bright eyed, full of ideas and plans. Optimistic, though she had no idea how they summoned the bright tone in their voices, the genuine hope.

  Nell smirked to herself, wishing Ruby were sitting beside her so she could give her a nudge. But Ruby was in the ground seating, sitting close to a familiar curly mop, Charlie Klaxon. Looking over the balcony, Nell could just make out Ruby resting her head on his shoulder.

  More secrets. Ruby would probably slap her wrist for being judgmental, for being a snob, and remind her that people needed distractions, that they needed to be happy. And cakes and good food were the easiest way to give people something to smile about.

  Cakes were one thing. Code, now that was what Nell dreamed of.

  Nell had not spoken to Ruby since the Bayou, and she was strangely eager to share her fresh, shiny plan; what if she couldn’t carry it out alone? It had blossomed into a vast, potentially dangerous web of almost insane steps, but it would eventually lead to her possessing enough spare parts to build an invention surpassing even her parents’ contributions.

  She held on to the glow of the thought. A machine that is also a person. A whole person. Arms and legs and hands and a smile.

  It was the smile that was the thing. The smile summoned out of helixes and rites of ones and zeros and ciphers—reams of language Nell could never speak or even hope to parse, let alone write. Without access to this knowledge, Nell would need something very dangerous to make a heap of clever metal feel.

  She really, really wanted to tell Ruby. What good were secrets unless they could be poured into the ears of your best friend? Maybe Nell’s secret would encourage Ruby to share hers, too. Ruby used to tell her secrets all the time, usually sordid and occasionally hilarious, full of detail, but because Nell could never bring herself to court anyone, she never had any secrets to exchange. She just listened, scandalized, envious.

  She’d soft
ened under the construction of her new plan; there was no use in holding grudges. She’d need Ruby’s help if this was going to happen. She had to apologize for being so distant. She slipped her hand into the satchel to touch the cold, solid firmness of the hand, but just as she closed her eyes, she heard movement, scuffing, someone—

  Embalming fluid, cologne, there he was again. Nell fought the urge to lean over and growl, “Get away from me. I don’t want to look at you,” and instead trilled, “Hello there, Oliver, lovely to see you again!” while quietly putting Nan’s letter away in her bag, out of sight.

  A grin broke across Oliver’s face: pure delight. Nell was never glad to see him, but she was going to need access to his room in the hospital again. She was going to need everything he could give her. And he couldn’t know why—not yet.

  She would tug the fishhook gently, keep him where she wanted him. Confiding in Ruby would be one risk; Ruby would stand by her no matter what. Oliver, however, was an opportunist. He had to think he was gaining something by helping her, and for now it would be the illusion of her interest, the possibility that she might finally be breaking. She smiled back at him with her mouth but not with her eyes—it was dark enough that he couldn’t tell—as he sat down right beside her. Nell breathed slowly and deliberately to stop the ticking’s rising and adjusted her scarf.

  “What has you up here hiding all on your own?” he asked, his voice flirtatious. Sickening, like too much dark treacle. Nell held her nerve.

  “Much better view in the circle. What brought you this far from the crowds?” she replied, her voice singsong and cheery. This was the hardest part, this smoke and mirrors. Nell would have made a really bad magician, but even a single flower produced from thin air would have been enough to enchant the poor fool.

  “Bored down there. Not interested in a lot of the commercial contributions. I mean, fair enough, they’re important, but I’ve got bigger things on my mind. All I have to do is be seen here once a month; everyone knows what my projects are and what my contributions are. So as soon as I’ve checked in, I go for a wander around the theater. And look, I stumbled upon a leading lady.”