Humans have their nerves, robots have their wires, and puppets have their strings. The last of these is the odd one out for two critical reasons: in addition to the lack of an animating force, puppets have the misfortune of their nervous systems existing outside their bodies. This nakedness prevents them from achieving true autonomy, as their motions must be granted to them by creatures of a higher order.
Strings can be implanted inside of puppets as well, but as one might expect, doing so prevents them from being pulled by an outside source. Because of this, it takes a special kind of string to make this configuration viable: the sort that can tug itself.
Such filaments come from a variety of manmade sources, yet their most important property cannot simply be manufactured. Some begin as broken fishing lines, whereas others are plucked from the bows of cellists mid-note. Although these strings remain static while isolated, they begin to writhe and twist once bound by knots to one another. Each such fiber carries within it an unresolved urge, which manifests itself as tension when forced to compete with the desires of another.
When only a handful of these knots have been made, the resulting structure is barely more complex than a wriggling mound of earthworms. Once several thousand have been made, however, the network starts to display integration, with bands and ribbons of its form behaving with singular interest. At this point, the Gordian creation can be incorporated into the puppet’s anatomy, joining nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems into a unified entity.
After several weeks of flailing, the puppet begins to familiarize itself with its new, more complete body. If constructed correctly, it can even learn to walk upright. Its apparent humanity is largely illusory, however; in this state, it has no senses of its own. All it knows and feels is an all-permeating itch caused by the compulsion to complete thousands of unfinishable tasks. It is entirely absorbed in the need to resolve this inner tension, which can only be relieved by tearing out the spools in its own vertebrae.
Puppets that attempt to snap their own wires are classified as gremlins.
When the wires tug themselves, who is in control?
INGREDIENTS
1 Noh mask
1.5 gallons rooibos tea
7 specimens dried coral
1 pair caribou antlers
Around a century ago, through arts no longer practiced, a player piano was taken apart, then reassembled as an android. Her wires were formed into something like sinew, and the miles of perforated paper which once passed through her body were elegantly folded into an ever-churning brain. A few transplants from other instruments helped to complete her anatomy; an accordion split in two formed her lungs, and segments of brass channeled an animating wind through her limbs.
In the early days of building humanoid automatons, the ability to construct an intelligent brain ultimately proved beyond the skill of Renaissance inventors. For this reason, many of the earliest robots ever built were entirely headless. They were not, however, thoughtless.
I’ve fallen in love with the lady who lives on the seventh floor. I do not know her first name, though her last is written on the doorbell: “Geppetto.” I do not even know what she is, but this does not seem to be a barrier between us. I’ve begun something that I must see through, even if it costs me my humanity.
The arcade burned down three years ago, along with the rest of the mall. Without cabinets and circuitry to support them, all that remained of the games within were their electric ghosts. They stood shoulder to shoulder, quivering beings of naked neon, waiting for the chance to be experienced once more.
He withdraws her bones one-by-one from the living flames, violet-hot from the forge. With each blow of his hammer, he discovers yet another intricacy of his lover’s interior. He measures out the breadth of her collarbone, the space between her radius and ulna, and the diameter of each individual vertebrae. It pains him that he cannot reach down and touch them; at least, not yet. He leaves out the two bottom-most ribs on the left hand side, a reminder of her distance from life’s original creator.
There are many devices which consume and digest coins in order to survive, and in turn, fulfill the desires of humanity. They have many different names: vending machines, claw machines, gumball machines, slot machines, jukeboxes, wishing wells, arcade cabinets, frontloaders, payphones, and so on and so forth. Each one exists in symbiosis with our species, finding a niche product or service that convinces us to manufacture more of its kind. There is an exception to this rule, however, for only one Baph-o-Mat was ever constructed.
A closer look at the fluid inside the jar reveals that it is, in fact, alive. Magnetic ants have formed a colony within, and are living in extremely dense quarters, crawling all over each other’s bodies. It is difficult to discern at a glance where their tunnels end and the insects begin.
“The clawfoot bathtub,” this book begins, “is a distant cousin of the crockpot and cauldron. Although its natural habitat is typically found outside the kitchen, it demonstrates a particular susceptibility to culinary magic due to its shape and composition. Being quadrupedal and wrought from relatively flexible materials, bringing one to life is often one of the most basic lessons taught to apprentice deep chefs.”
For a handful of Canadian hunters, it was not enough to craft trophies from the bodies of their prey. A particular sporting lodge in Newfoundland developed a technique of stuffing animal skins with wooden bones and glass organs, allowing them to return to the wild. The primary agent of reanimation was an artificial blood formulated from, among other things, blackberry syrup, gunpowder, and crushed fireflies.
The art of building a properly functioning scarecrow is largely forgotten. Most that exist today are merely decoys, unable to hunt pheasants or play mandolins like their forerunners. Even so, every now and then, reports emerge of straw men wandering the land of their own accord.
Humans have their nerves, robots have their wires, and puppets have their strings. The last of these is the odd one out for two critical reasons: in addition to the lack of an animating force, puppets have the misfortune of their nervous systems existing outside their bodies. This nakedness prevents them from achieving true autonomy, as their motions must be granted to them by creatures of a higher order.
The flintlock brain is a primitive form of artificial intelligence loaded inside of an iron mannequin. Knots of jellied sawdust are formed around copper wires, which themselves are coated with black gunpowder. The hammer and frizzen of the firing mechanism rest between its two lobes, typically positioned so that they can remain exposed outside the android’s metal skull.