As Lucas perused his bookshelves and workspaces, he came upon a notebook. He had hundreds of notebooks, all with crazy ideas and diagrams on them. This one caused him to pause and reminisce. It was one from the early days, before the company. The memories were awkward and happy, like teenage memories ought to be.
Lucas was working for Mrs. Bittersworth down at the Astam Garage back then, and spent his days futzing with his crude prosthetic. It was a simple hook that Bittersworth threw together after he’d been found lying on the road. A rather clumsy and hideous thing, but it was better than staring at the stub left by his childhood tormentor.
He scribbled plans in his notebook while lying in a hammock that stretched the width of his small apartment. His money was starting to accumulate now that he’d paid off his debts and he aimed to improve his lot in life, starting with his arm.
This was the first time Lucas had ever felt freedom and he was giddy as hell about it. Not that the work he did on steam-bikes and paddington wagons was awful, mind you. It sharpened his mechanical and problem-solving skills. He wasn’t quite thinking about leaving town. Astam Village was a great place to be.
Lucas finished with his doodles as a knock came from the door.
“Do come in,” he invited.
It was Mrs. Bittersworth in a festive pair of Demiber festival overalls. Pumpkins, straw, and Chanka designs made up the many buttons.
She struck a pose and posed her question, “What ya think?”
“I think you look wonderfully ridiculous, madam,” he responded.
She’d tried to get him to call her ‘boss’ or ‘Carole’, but Lucas couldn’t break his overly polite nature.
“Exactly what I was goin’ for,” she gleefully chimed, “Now don’t tell me you’re plannin’ on staying in tonight.”
“Must I go? I’ve got so many things I want to plan out and work on!”
“You’re worse than I thought! This festival’s absolutely a must! I’ll fire you if you stay in here and become a social raisin.”
“Okay, okay, okay. I’ll find something to wear and go down to the Village center.”
“Meet you there! I’ll be in the talent show!”
And with that, she was off. Lucas hoped she wasn’t going to sing in the show. She believed herself to be a musical genius, but he’d seen a shower commit suicide on account of those windpipes.
So, overly-confident Lucas strolled out his house onto Main street. To be more festive, he found a local trinket vendor and picked up a straw hat for a few ciams.
When he’d wandered his way to the center, it was fantastic. The square was lined with pumpkins, and the throng of townsfolk gave off an energy. Smiles were seen everywhere.
However, no smiling crowd could prepare his heart for the visage of a young lady. She was by the barrels to bob for apples. Her smile made his heart skip. He rushed over to the barrels and greeted her group.
“Good afternoon ladies,” Lucas tried, oddly successfully to charm.
“How do you do,” one of her sisters greeted.
“Lucas Buford,” he bowed casually and focused his eyes on the oldest of the girls who’d his infatuations were for, “and you are?”
“Cordelia, and my sisters Esther and Clementine,” she introduced them all.
“Wish me luck?” he gestured to the barrel.
“Absolutely not, Mr. Buford!” she said playfully, her gaggle of sisters giggling, “I intend to wish poor luck upon you so that I may have a better chance at the price myself.”
“Ouch, hardly sporting of you, wishing such luck on me!”
A man by the prizes knocked his cane against his pedestal and proclaimed that bobbing for the large prize, a basket of fantastic fruits - a mouthwatering prize - was to begin momentarily. They were gathering judges and confirming contestants.
Delia turned to Lucas with a fantastic smile and a dainty wave, “Worst of luck!”
Lucas dug his hook into the side of the barrel and readied himself. This would be easy.
Then, the judge put the blindfold on him. Blindfolds were not good things to him. They were horrible and disorienting things.
Lucas tried dunking himself into the water, and figured out how to press up against the side of the barrel to get the trickier apples, but it was all too disorienting.
He called quits when he’d felt like throwing up. He was trying to impress girls, but to continue would surely scare them away. No lady is impressed by the sound of illness from the man with a hook.
He felt just foul from the experience, but shook it off when he was then able to watch this happy mamselle best his pile of apples two-to-one.
She gleefully accepted the prize and walked over to Lucas, “Sorry about the curse, next time I’ll play fair and square.”
Lucas spent the rest of the evening talking with the girls, inviting them to the talent show and entreating the with tales of some more exciting and silly customers he’d dealt with at the Garage.
When the evening wound down, he walked the ladies to their house, a large estate further from the town center than he’d walked before and said his awkward goodbyes.
Weeks had come to pass and Lucas wondered if it was all just a dream, his head swimming with hormones and daydreams. However, Cordelia herself came by the shop to see Lucas. He was awfully sweaty and greased up at this point - a mess and he knew it. She, on the other hand, was dressed like a fine lady, nothing like the casual attire she’d worn for the old festival.
Lucas didn’t know whether or not she’d truly been interested in him, and she started by making an appointment for her father’s carriage.
“It was nice to see you again,” Lucas said as her booking was done and he expected to see her leave.
“And you as well. I was surprised to see you hadn’t called for me,” she said in a rather melancholy manner.
Oh, my. Lucas had his etiquette all upside-down. His head was in the clouds more than he thought. “How, um... Would you like to have a picnic with me this Tamarasday?”
“Absolutely!” Cordelia exclaimed.
And so, Lucas would fill up his notebooks with sketches of her instead of replacement arms for the days leading up to the outing. Mrs. Bittersworth gave him the whole day, even though he’d only asked for the afternoon. She’d tried to impress on him that he was to treat a lady with the same respect as the King of Kuu, and joked that if he were to upset the young lady she’d have him put in a box and thrown into the Prodigious.
Delia had prepared a wonderful spread for the picnic in the park. Lucas had spruced himself up, brought a screw-on fork to replace his hook, and purchased some flowers at a florist down the street. His nerves were fighting his bravado when he walked round to pick her up.
“Got you some flowers,” he handed them to her.
"Thank you, fine sir," she put them in the basket," I've made a fine lunch for us to spend the day over. And some wonderful iced tea as well. "
Iced tea is the drink of affection, they say. It’s easier to drink, lasts a long time, and is still just as fragrant as hot. Lucas’ heart fluttered to know that, yes, she likely felt as he did about her.
They walked to Crowley Park and found a large tree to sit under. She unpacked the blanket and spread their lunch between them.
Lucas started in with the chatter, “So, Ms. Cordelia, tell me about your family.”
“You shall call me Delia, Mr. Buford,” she emphasized his surname to prove a point about his formality.
“Okay, that’s fair. I never want to hear you be so formal with me,” he conceded.
Delia smirked and turned her eyes up and to the right, “ now then, you’ve met my younger sisters. They’re absolute nightmares to live with most of the time, but I am obligated to love them dearly. They are still going to school daily. Then, there’s my father. He’s a successful train station manager, the station in town.”
Lucas suddenly felt nervous to realize he was courting the daughter of the man who the town practically exists for.
She carried on, “and then there’s me of course. No mother going on eight years now, a mysterious illness took her from us.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, but I’m quite over it now. I hardly remember her,” she darted her gaze and paused a moment before returning to the moment, “What about yourself, mysterious mechanic? I remember you causing quite the commotion when you arrived, but I’ve no idea where you arrived from.”
“There was a lot of commotion in general that year. I’d fled the revolution, and it’s a sorely painful memory that gave me this souvenir,” he lifted his hook, “ I’d lived in Gearford up to then, far back before the new Antiford. I recall small things about my family. Shreds.
“My father would take us to the park from time to time to fly kites... My mother would bake pie when money was good...” he tried to focus on the past he rarely thought of, “and I must have had a sister. I remember playing with a doll house with another child.”
Delia was intently listening, “I absolutely love dolls.”
“Oh?” Lucas urged her to expound.
“Well, you might say that when I stopped playing with them, I became quite the collector. I’ve all sorts and sizes, even a brass doll or two.”
The nagging feeling that he was dating out of his class grew a little larger.
“Enough of me though, what do you do with your time outside the Garage?” she asked.
“Well, I’ve been drawing and planning mostly. I’ve some money saved now for my own sorts of projects,” Lucas began, ” I’m going to start with things to help me do my work better, maybe a new prosthetic that’s less intimidating than a hook. What I want to do is to build things, not just fix them. I really like all the contraptions I get to work on, but I want to design better things.”
"Sounds wonderfully big,” she admired, “and that’s fortunate for you, Lucas; I intend to be the wife of a successful gentleman. You keep those dreams big.
"If I were to work, I’d very much like to be a curator of a museum or art exhibitions, that sort of thing.”
She really did like to collect beautiful things. How fitting, he thought.
They continued on and cuddled up under that tree, whittling away the hours with a figgy pudding and each other’s company.
Lucas brought her back to the fence outside her home.
“You do know how to entertain a lady, Lucas,” she timidly complemented, “I think you’re quite likely to hold my fancy for some time. And in a month’s time, you’ll remember my birthday party won’t you?”
Lucas was dazzled by the array of emotions, from sly to shy, in that among most of her statements, “Good night, Delia, I wouldn’t miss it nor any chance to see you.”
Lucas was doomed to lose all hope of sleep with romantic overload swimming about in his mind.
He realized that he needed to keep her entertained. She was not from the common part of town. Her father had set quite the bar for him to chase.
And that birthday... what sort of gift would do?
Lucas found himself doubly motivated on his personal projects. Everything he did was ever exciting to Delia, and he couldn’t stop at any point - so he told himself. The first thing Lucas did was to build a robot to help around the shop.
He named it Bob: an impressive machine for heavy lifting with a bundle of wires connected from the head to a remote controller apparatus.
Mrs. Bittersworth was mildly amused at first, but protested it’s use for any actual work.
“That dummy of yours is going to need more repairs than the vehicles we intend to repair with it’s help. I don’t like it one bit!”
So he moved the metal creature over to a paddington wagon, lifted the front frame, and moved it to the other side of the garage. This convinced her to let Lucas keep it at the shop, if only for the more strenuous tasks.
Delia was extremely impressed by this, exactly as Lucas wanted to do. It wasn’t her normal cup of tea, but she delighted in the strange world of motors and steam.
She kept asking about riding on a steam-bike, but he had to keep insisting that he couldn’t just take a customer’s vehicle out for a joy ride, especially since most of them were broken anyways.
His next project, then, was to build a bike from used parts and cheap metal. He’d done plenty of repairs on them, so he had a basic understanding. However, it was quite an undertaking to figure out what was missing from the bike, when you start with absolutely nothing.
He went to Gearford to do some industrial trash hunting. This was probably the first time he’d done that, but he simply didn’t have the money to buy everything new. It would cost more than a complete bike. He picked up some doodads, bobbles, and widgets as well. There were plenty of odd things he’d like to learn about.
With a bunch of elbow grease, he was able to hobble the bike together. It was with great excitement that he greeted Delia one evening.
“Evening, my dear,” she said walking into the shop, “another walk down the boulevard?”
Lucas smiled, “Not tonight. I thought I’d show you something.”
He opened the door to the Garage floor and held it for her to enter. She was confused, as she wasn’t normally allowed in there.
There it sat, shiny and new. She’d never figure how much work it took to polish all the old rust off those parts.
“Is that?” she half-asked.
“Tonights entertainment.” Lucas said beaming at her.
“Where did you get this? Did you ask a customer to let you use it?” she questioned.
“No, I built this one. It was ever so difficult to keep this from you while I was building it.”
“Where shall we ride?”
“Follow the sunset?”
“A wonderful idea.”
And so, they drove off west, along the tracks at first. Once Lucas was more comfortable driving with a person on back, he became more adventurous. They rode past the twisted rocks, and into large caverns. They drove as far as their laughter would take them, and then the moons fell darker than ever.
It was the Lunar passing - the time when one moon completely overtook the other. The lack of light was eerie to the couple and they turned face not long after the sun had set.
In the dark, Lucas found making his way back more difficult than it ought to have been.
“I think we passed that rock over there,” Delia tried helping.
“No, I could have sworn we went into that tunnel.”
“I don't think we ought to be driving into the tunnel when it's pitch black!”
“There's no way I can concentrate on driving when you're chastising me!”
They were in sour and uneasy moods. This was not the special evening it was meant to be at all.
Lucas and Delia didn’t return to town until much past midnight, and her father was sitting on the porch, with pipe in hand. Nobody spoke a single word, no one needed to.
Mr. Thompson looked quietly enraged.
Lucas looked afraid and guilty.
Delia looked upset and embarrassed.
The next afternoon, Esther came by the shop with a letter. “I’m sorry.”
Dear Lucas,
My father has forbade our outings from here on. He says that it was irresponsible of us to drive into the desert and is gravely disappointed with me.
Be mindful that this letter does not come by his permission. He has, however, agreed to allow you to attend my birthday celebration. Every moment until then is torturous.
I don’t have much to say for now, as I still gather my thoughts. I promise this is only the first of many letters, and I await yours as well. One of my sisters will be by every couple days to exchange them.
Ever yours, Delia
Her sister left, and Lucas felt his heart sink.
Lucas went right to work on Cordelia’s birthday present. It meant so much more now than it would have before.
He was going to make a doll that talked.
He’d spent a good deal of money on a new porcelain doll from a shop in Argenstrath. What a busy city that was.
For the phonographic apparatus, he spent another few nights dumpster diving behind laboratories and factories. He was able to use some things he’d found on his last go through these dumpsters.
The recording device was the hardest part to build. There existed phonograph recorders, but they’d all been designed for flat disc records now. He had to modify a much older recorder, one made for large cylinders.
The tiny drum he'd designed to fit inside the doll was only able to hold 5 seconds of sound. A second drum would fit inside of the doll, but he couldn’t fit the switch to choose between the sounds. One message, it was.
Probably the strangest part of the whole process of mechanizing the doll was actually recording a voice. Lucas put on his best falsetto, but it kept sounding too silly to him. To be frank, it sounded creepy and off until he put in the flywheel to avoid horrible fluctuations in playback speed.
It was all ready to go and absolutely pretty. Delia would turn the windup key, and her father would hopefully forgive him. This was it.
On Cordelia’s birthday, Lucas awoke nervous as ever, but proud of what he’d accomplished.
He looked at the doll he’d modified with a smile and turned the key for good luck.
...
No sound came out of the doll, the key did not turn.
Lucas nervously opened up the back of the doll and found a broken gear. It was a tiny thing he’d found in a watch and wasn’t supposed to be a vital component. Alas, every piece need work.
Instead of driving into town toward the party as he’d planned, he had to drive the other way into Gearford for parts.
He found a watch repair shop.
“Please, sir, I need a tiny gear,” he said in a panic.
“Woa,” the old-timer behind the counter started, “hold on there now. I’m in the business of fixing up and selling watches. I am not a gear shop.”
“But you must have one of these!” Lucas held out half a bent gear.
“Sure I do, but I can’t just sell you a gear, son. I’d be out of business doing that all the time.”
Lucas held back calling out his non-sequitur. There was no leaving this businessman without waxing his palms a few ciams.
“Now I can sell you a watch, if you’re in the market?” the salesman offered.
“Look, I’ll buy your watch if you help me fit a gear into this doll.”
The salesman looked at him long and hard. A gear for a doll was a strange request indeed.
Lucas slammed down all the money he’d brought with him.
“Well, son, I think we have a deal.”
He imagined she was going to be massively upset with him for being late. The sun was already setting. Thankfully, the old man had a bow in the back to tie onto the box. It wouldn’t make up for his tardiness, but it would help.
Her house was lit up and abuzz with chatter. He parked his bike and fixed up his clothing, a bit disheveled from the worry.
He walked up to the door and rang the bell.
Delia opened the door and slammed him as hard as she could.
“That was for making me think you’d abandoned me!”
Then she squeezed the life out of him and snuck in a kiss to the cheek.
“I’m sorry, but It had to be perfect,” he explained as he handed the present to her.
“Come!” she ordered, both tired and excited.
She led him to the ballroom, where she had a chair waiting to accommodate her in her large gown.
She looked up at him, smiled, and then focused on unwrapping. Each fold and knot was carefully, but expertly dealt with. She reached in and pulled out the wonderful doll.
“It’s wonderful, Lucas! Thank you.”
Her father came over and offered his hand, “Hello, Mr. Buford. I see you know my daughters tastes.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Thompson” Lucas shook his hand.
Delia looked to the two, “Lucas... what’s this?”
“It’s the most important surprise.”
He’d said that with some confidence, but her father’s presence made this so hard. He feared that another junkyard piece would snap and bend, and it’d be wholly anticlimactic.
She turned the key to wind the doll up.
“How do you do? My name is Marie.”
The key stopped turning. The room stopped and turned. The doll suddenly became the talk of the party. Delia was so excited. He’d managed to take something she loved and add his mechanical touch to it.
The couple left the party to talk on the front porch.
“I’ve missed you so.” Lucas told her.
“You... you have done the most wonderful thing, Luke. There’s no way my father wants to keep us apart after that gift. You had me absolutely worried,” She broke out into tears, “ You should have told me you were going to be late!”
Lucas held her for some time. They were so happy to be able to touch again.
Behind them, her father cleared his throat. They instantly sprang to positions with appropriate distance.
“Delia?”
“Yes, father?”
“Could you leave us, I’d like to speak with Mr. Buford.”
And so, she left them with a curtsy.
“Rather impressive work.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“What are your intentions?”
“What?”
“That fancy contraption, the steam-bike, the Garage helper I’ve heard about. What are you working towards, son?”
“I’m still not sure, sir.”
“That’s the problem with youth. So much potential, so little experience to know what to do with it,” he stopped to light his pipe, “Could you make more of those things?”
“I could try, sir, but I’d used quite a bit of my savings to produce that one.”
“Well, how would you like a sizable investment to start producing them commercially?”
“I...” Lucas was confused and excited, “I’d like that very much!”
“Good. I need something new to invest in, and I know a sure thing when I see it. We’ll talk more another time, but get ready to work harder than you could ever imagine.”
“Thank you, sir!”
There was a pause Mr. Thompson used to smoke his pipe with. Lucas was expecting him to leave.
“Now about the intentions you thought I was referring...”
Lucas put down the notebook and went into Argenstrath.
He walked into the boardroom of Auto-Marie.
“Let’s talk the new line of dolls. I’m thinking of bringing back the original design as a limited Classic Marie doll.”