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Aqua Music Tart
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"Okay, sure, I'll fix it," Pektil said, walking behind Miss Priesmeyer.
"Excellent. Follow me."
She stood still a moment to let him catch up, then began walking briskly into the depths of the Machine area. As they walked, the hulking devices grew larger and the lights more sparsely spaced.
"So, uh, is there any reason why you need me for this? It seems like it'd be really simple to do or to get somebody to do, you know?"
Pekil saw that many of the bulbs on the overhead lights here were burned out or broken. He had to use the sharp, white lights on her faceplate to see. They cast a little circle of light in front of her. The dim orange lights overhead gave him a fuzzy impression of the outlines of the machines that they passed. They were so huge. Individual engines were far larger than the range of his vision. They clattered and purred, pounding away in the blackness.
"I do not see through light optics," Miss Priesmeyer said, causing Pektil to jump. "My faceplate is a convex casting dish for the subsonic sonar pulses that I use instead of vision. When it is removed, I cannot see, hear or speak. It is therefore almost impossible for me to perform repairs on the device itself. I have alternative perceptive devices, but they do not assist with mechanical work."
They walked further into the gloom, her metal hooves striking the cold concrete floor. Pektil could see a brighter light ahead - a dim green glow that he hadn't seen before.
"Having my faceplate removed makes me extremely vulnerable. I would not want to give a stranger access to me in that state." Her voice squealed and cracked. He wondered how long it had been since she'd had it worked on.
They rounded the corner of an engine larger than a city block. Like an island in the darkness between the massive engines were a collection of devices bolted to the floor. The first was a thronelike chair. The seat was scuffed maroon leather, the high back was padded with the the same, although plugs and sockets studded its curved surface through holes in the padding. There was an adjustable padded brace for the head and neck of the person seated in it although the back was upright, and the heavy armrests had a variety of knobs, readouts, and displays. It was bolted to the floor with bolts the size of Pektil's fist, and thick rubber tubes and conduits ran up into the darkness above, or snaked across the floor to the strange containers that littered the area. They were each roughly the size of Pektil, short and round, and filled with some sort of viscous green slime. The tops and bottoms were heavy metal, covered in wires and machinery. At first he thought the slime was glowing, then he noticed that the bottoms of the containers were lit from above. He could see the heavy socket that plugged into the top of the jars, and the thick hose that attached to the bottom. Dried patches of the substance were spattered on the concrete, and some of the containers were dark and empty.
They cast the whole area in a eerie green glow. He also saw a toolbox and buffing wheel, as well as a few other pieces of machinery that he was now familiar with.
"So, uh, Miss Priesmeyer," he said as she approached the chair, "Why do you work here instead of doing surgery or something?" he approached the thing hesitantly. It looked old and dangerous. "Is it because the surgery thing is sexy to you?"
She lowered herself onto the seat, connecting hoses to plugs in her legs. "Surgery is not 'sexy' to me," she said sternly, "Unless I engage the cortical rams in my head, I am incapable of sexual feelings, such as arousal." She leaned back, the back of the chair reclining with a mechanical purr. He heard things click into place as she pressed her back into the old red leather. "Nevertheless, because of my training, I would be incapable of performing in a satisfactory fashion in a normal medical center." The chair was reclined almost all the way back. Even still, Pektil had to drag over a little stool to stand over her faceplate. Pektil saw a little surgical cart with a crooked wheel, and put the tools he would need on it before wheeling it over to her chair. "Besides," she said, "I prefer to work with machines, in a place where the contact with organics is minimal."
Pektil asked for and received instructions on what to do. The machine began to hum, and he could hear fluids traveling through the hoses as the body of the chair vibrated slightly. He used the proprietary tool to remove the strangely-shaped bolts from the rim of her faceplate. Despite what her white flesh would indicate, her skin was hot, almost feverish. This close to her organics, he could feel the heat rising off of her in waves. The sheen of sweat made sense, anyway.
The bolts were tight and slightly rusted. Her head rocked back and forth as he pushed down on the tool, slowly working them free. As he removed each one, he dropped it in a little dish of machine oil. using the end of a screw driver, he pried the edge of the faceplate up enough to get his claws underneath, lifting it off of her skull. The lights slid through holes in the faceplate, as did the speaker beneath the grille. He set it gently to the side. He would have to buff out all the rust and scratches, make it nice and smooth and shiny, but first he wanted to fix the speaker.
The smell beneath the faceplate was unpleasant. A musty, unwashed dead-skin-in-a-cast sort of stink, mixed with a sickly-sweet musk and the smell of oil and engine grease. The sight was no more pleasant. A ring that the faceplate was on was bolted directly to her skull, and a line of red flesh was stapled to the exposed bone visible beneath it. So much meat and skin had been removed that Pektil found it impossible to determine exactly what she looked like before. There was no bottom jaw, no teeth or eye sockets or nasal cavity. Her skull had been chipped down to the brainpan, although he could make out empty sockets where molars might have been, once. The skin of her throat was stapled to the underside of what was left of her skull, and the whole area beneath her faceplate was crammed full of complex electronics, sockets, plugs, wires, tubes and devices, Many of the hoses and conduits traveled down into the skin that used to contain her throat and larynx, although some were affixed with metal sockets to the living bone.
Grease and flakes of matter had built up in the space between the components, and Pektil got a toothbrush, some cleaning solution and a rag and began to remove the built up gunk. He could see the eight flat speakers that would normally press against the curved surface of her faceplate to make her subsonic sonar clicks. He could make out a few more components, but many were a mystery to him. The area around the speaker was dirtiest, because it was only protected by the grille instead of being pressed flush against the metal of her face. The LED lights in their cowls provided enough bright, bluish-white light for him to work, although the rest of her body was lit only by the dim green light from the glowing fluid containers.
She did not move as he worked. Maybe she was asleep? He wasn't sure. The chair hummed and vibrated as he replaced some pinched wires on the speaker and cleaned it out, being sure to soak up the mild solvent and rinse off his tools. He laid the completed speaker against the mass of components that made up her face, and made short work of cleaning her grille and buffing the faceplate. He packed contact grease around the eight sonar speakers, and used a little to line the speaker, to create a seal between it and the grille. He pushed her faceplate carefully back on, making sure not to pinch any wires or hoses, and then bolted it back tightly with the now-clean screws. When he was finished, the seat slowly returned to an upright position.
Miss Priesmeyer's hand flexed, and when she spoke, her voice was crisp, clear, rich and feminine. She stood from the chair, the hoses and plugs audibly popping free of the sockets in her back, and reached around behind the chair, withdrawing a small cloth sack.
"Thank you Pektil. Your work was satisfactory. My vision and hearing have been returned to optimal condition, an improvement of more than 76%." She disconnected the hoses from her legs, standing in a quick, sharp surge directly upright. She dropped the bag into his hand. It clinked.
"Perhaps you should take the remainder of this period off. I know tomorrow is your scheduled free period, but perhaps it is not unwarranted for you to have an additional period free." She turned sharply, walking back through the darkness of the deep Machine area. Pektil followed, unsure exactly of how he was supposed to act.
She said nothing as she walked, playing the same music that she did while they worked. Now, it was crisp and clear, not scratchy and distorted. It seemed much more cheerful. The sharp clank of her hooves punctuated the old-timey beats.
"So uh," Pektil said, deciding he might as well ask questions while they walked, "How did you end up like this? Do you wish you could go back to how you were before? Do you get out much? Do you have many friends? What kind of power does the Mall use, anyway?" Pektil could have waited for an answer before asking the next question, but you know, that seemed really inefficient to him.
Miss Priesmeyer answered, her voice rich and soft. It sounded like a singer's voice. "I was captured and transformed by would-be galactic conquerors from the existence I am originally from. I ended up here, eventually. Whatever or whoever I was before was erased completely in the process. I know who I am now, and have accepted it. I do not wish to me a stranger to myself. Anyhow, I am useful. I prefer to stay here and do my work. The rest of the Mall can make me uncomfortable." The lights grew brighter as they advanced, returning to the places Pektil was more familiar with. "There are some other mechanics, although we rarely encounter one another. As to the last question, I am discrete and not particularly curious. Electricity of various voltages comes in wires through the ceiling. Other wires carry other sorts of current. I do not question the purpose of the devices I operate on, although some are clearly fluid pumps, water pumps, HVAC and generators."
They were back to Pektil's room, close to the exit to the MACHINE area. He'd have to tell Sommer that her advice helped, and think of a way to spend his free day.
"If there is nothing else, I will leave you to your own devices. I will expect you in seventy-six hours and eight minutes." She began to slowly turn away. It was so weird to hear her deep, rich voice speak in clipped, precise tones. It was weird to hear the voice at all. He'd sort of gotten used to the staticky warble.
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