The Toy-Maker's Dilemma

[Karl the Mad]

A few minutes after Ciaran's arrival, another car drove up past the gate and into the lot. It was an older Mercedes-Benz sedan, retrofitted for the latest in clean technology, dark blue with muted chrome highlights and simple leather seats inside; the driver waved at the cameras as she came in.

She parked and got out, stretching briefly and eying the facade of the old hall. It was the lawyer, of course, Katherine Starr; Kat to her friends, but never Kathy. No one, not even Aldergard, was allowed to call her Kathy. Today she wore a tailored navy blue suit with matching knee-length skirt, low-heeled pumps and a plain diamond stud in each ear; in one hand was a clipboard holding a file, and the other had a cell phone to her ear. "Yes, yes, I know what Greene said," she was saying impatiently as she walked toward the ornate front doors, "but Greene's a lying prick who doesn't deserve his salary. Tell him we're not budging, that he gives in or he'll find himself in front of a judge and a full jury. He'll cave, believe me."

That dealt with, she hung up and shook her head, muttering about dummkopfs as she walked inside, following the sound of voices to Archie's office. "Lord Holden," she said with a nod. "Miss Zainall, Misters Wallace and McCodrum. How does the afternoon find you?" She noted the box, and tilted her head to one side out of curiosity. "Something up?"

[TennyoCeres84]

"McConmara, Ms. Starr," corrected Ciaran, then following her gaze. "That's a piece of our first case Tam is going to tinker with and see if it reveals any secrets to who our culprit might be. It's apparently linked to some bizarre murders," he answered. "So I guess the afternoon finds me expectant of what we'll find out."

[Weirdlet]

"I'm heading out to deal with it now," Tam said in reply, glancing back at Archie. "Unless there's something else?"

[IamLEAM1983]

Archie produced a soft, but still vaguely annoyed harrumph. "I had been in the process of preparing documents synthesizing the murders which seem to match with these objects' proprietors, but Shamus so genially pulled the proverbial rug from underneath my feet with his thorough assessment of the situation."

The big samurai shrugged. "What can I say? You've always been the dilly-dallier, pulling and pushin' your little doilies this way and that so they're absolutely perfect and, well - I tells it like I sees it."

Shrugging, the Victorian automaton returned his attention to Tam. "Yes - before reaching the Institute, do see about stopping by Mister Gammell's Toybox. His employees are rather concerned, as they have not spoken to him since two days ago. His being a recluse, they allowed for some time to pass before signalling his disappearance - but they would appreciate being able to make a deposition. As our mysterious local toymaker has some experience with all things mechanical, perhaps this will be of some use to you during the process," he said, lightly fingering the box.

George Murray Gammell was an enigma. The only thing anyone knew was that he was old, was more than likely covered by the Vienna Accords in one way or another, and that his shop had been around since Hope's incorporation into the British Empire. He was a name, a skilled set of hands, and a trademarked image that was updated every so often, but always with several decades of willing distance. "Mister Gammell" was a Gepetto-like figure for most kids, if you went by the store's flyers and paid-for advertisements. Many speculated he was actually a dynasty of male toymakers, or that the initial Gammell had died off and allowed his name to more or less be picked up like a trademark.

In an age where immortals carried the same name they'd always had in a completely legal manner, not being able to trace anything definitive to one friendly old toymaker was unusual. The floor manager for the toystore had never seen his own boss before, only ever speaking to him on the phone.

For them to have noticed his disappearance, this meant he hadn't called at the shop in days, and that his own manager had violated the one sacrosanct rule Gammell had put in place: to never be disturbed. They'd probably kicked the doors of the studio down, expecting to find a dead or dying old man of some kind - only to find a fat load of nothing.

[TennyoCeres84]

Ciaran scoffed at the banter between the two clanks. Hearing doors open and close in the distance, he looked in the direction of the noise to see his sisters enter the office. "Hello, Aislinn, Neasa," he said, waving to them both.

"Hey, Ciaran," Aislinn replied, then nodding her head to Tam and Katherine. The smaller of the two selkie women wore a black halter top and black jean leggings tucked into high-heeled ankle boots. Her usual blue and black tattoos swirled down her arms and partially exposed back. "So, what's the big news Archie called us here for?"

"Oh, weird shit involved in some murders," he answered, gesturing to the gilded box Tam held. "Some humans and clanks are dead because of that box and some spindle they used for tweaking," he explained.

"Great, death by masturbation and boxes right out of Hellraiser," she muttered. "You think it might have something to do with the snuff industry?" she guessed.

"I don't know. Tam's going to take it over to d'Aubignier's to check it out."

After putting her purse down on a nearby table, Neasa smiled at her brother and glanced over at the blue-skinned Drifter. "Watch yourself, Tam," she cautioned after a momentary glimpse of the item she held. She was clad in a lavender wrap dress with short, capped sleeves and ivory-colored pumps. Obviously, the eldest of the McConmara siblings intended to tastefully show off her long, lean legs. "Good afternoon, Archie, Bucky," she greeted, her tone shifting ever so slightly to a playful one when she regarded the samurai.

[Karl the Mad]

"Ooh, nice dress," Katherine remarked when Neasa came in. "Such a pretty color too." She tried to look at the little puzzle box, but something about it made her uneasy and she let them pack it away again. "You've got quite the opening number lined out, I see. I'm certain Mister Kuhn wouldn't mind if I gave you guys a hand." She checked her watch. "I'm sure we have time for Lord Holden's debriefing. Well, I do," and she gave Bucky an arch look.

[IamLEAM1983]

Archie returned her glance for a second and then looked down on his neat pile of papers. "I should be about done," he mused, mostly for his own benefit.

At about the same time, Bucky's lower eyelids went up, his shoulders hunching a little. That was more or less his approximation of an amused grin. "Uh, hello to you too, Neasa," he replied, replicating her tone at a slightly lesser degree, to make it clear he wasn't being dismissive of her greeting. Rather, he hadn't quite expected that kind of inflection to come from her, of all people. As a man who continuously sold himself short, he had trouble imagining that his actions would give anyone cause to tease him or flirt with him.

In that short instant, the British Clank stood up from his desk, smoothing out his pile of papers. "That should do it... Fall in, everyone!" he announced, raising his voice a little. "Bagley," he said, addressing the House Spirit, "would you care to notify Sir Percival and mister Drake as well? They are to join us in the smoking room at their earliest convenience."

A slightly stuffy-sounding if still rather pleased masculine voice could be heard responding from a small battery of speakers arranged in the current room and the surrounding ones as well. "Of course, sir," the house said. Just about the only thing missing was the manservant himself, giving a little bow before heading out.

Archie handed one sheet to each of those currently present, including Katherine. Then, cane under one arm, he made his way to the room underneath the main staircase.

***

Three clambered inside the room five minutes later, his hair still tousled from a hasty exit from one of the shower stalls in the old servants' quarters. The wife beater and sweatpants were gone, replaced with jeans and a fairly simple white tee-shirt with a Flippy design, of Happy Tree Friends fame. "Sorry, sorry!" he hurriedly said, hurried for Archie's pile, snatched a sheet and found a seat. Percival was already there by this point, his own briefing simply laid out in front of him, largely because he still only served as a training and supervisory instance. He wasn't going out on the field; his job was to see to it that the fledgelings knew how to handle an official investigation.

Archie, as always when faced with something contemporary he hadn't seen before, gave Three's tee-shirt design an arch look. There'd maybe be casual questions about it later, once Earl Grey, a comfy chair and some scones could be allowed to enter the picture.

[Weirdlet]

The box stuffed firmly into a deep pocket, Tam turned to leave. Connected to ick-some things the toy might be- but once she could get her hands on it, *properly* get her hands on it with the right tools and under the bright white lights of a lab- well then, it was a puzzle, and puzzles were *fun* to crack open...

But first, the toymaker-fellow's shop. If it was important enough to ask of her while she was transporting highly-sensitive evidence by hand, then it was important enough to actually stop in and not just skip on ahead to the Institute.

[TennyoCeres84]

The three selkies took their respective sheets and followed the Englishman into the smoking room, where they each found a seat. They turned their attention on the clank and listened intently.

[IamLEAM1983]

Archie cleared his throat, gave Shamus one last arch look, nodded to Percy, and looked down on his own sheet, his other hand, as always, rested on his sword cane's pommel.

"Whilst I am aware that we all have met other automatons before and that we all are reasonably acquainted with the idea of everyday life as experienced by persons of my persuasion or mister Wallace's, let me begin by dispelling any disparaging thoughts the following evidence may bring forth."

He gave a bit of a dulcet smile to the assembly. "Yes, we do have our secret gardens. We all do experiment with the finer points of our anatomy, in order to discover new sensations and potentially reconnect with the notion of physical pleasure as it had been known in the past. Every single culture in existence has its definition and form for self-stimulation, and automatons such as myself are no exception. If elaboration is required, I would kindly ask that you take note of miss Zainall's destination. Gentlemen there will be more than willing to ply clinical and sufficiently decent details to the hotly contested practice known as tweaking one's body."

He stopped for a moment. "I see no snickers, no amused errant thoughts... Good. It's with obvious relief that I find myself in the company of sensible adults. Now-"

Three raised his hand. "Doesn't everyone already know Clanks masturbate?"

The word made Archie's eyes widen, and Three's own eyes roll. "You're not shocking anybody, Holden," lightly chided Three. "I'm more interested in trying figure out why people would kill Clanks who had the bearings to pull one-armed bandits. It seems pretty random to me."

Shamus couldn't quite hold back a chortle at the use of Aidan's chosen expression. That was certainly a new one to him - and that earned him another look from Archie.

Archie went over a series of five murders, beginning with Ephraim Locke, Clank since 1898, whom they'd found with an abnormally long wind-up spike wedged in his main spring's gears, like a stake driven through his heart. The expression on his face did have smidgens of pleasure, but horror was definitely the core perceptible element. Sixteen separate assaults and murders followed, Archie going into exhaustive detail for each and every one of them...

This made the Viscount grunt. "Thine attention to detail is... unique, spymaster," he commented, his tone suggesting to the Clank that he hurry it up a little. "Let us not be accused of fastidiousness. Time spent conversing is time not spent tracking our culprits."

Archie was obviously thrown off a bit. "Yes, well - all of these spikes were fabricated on special order by the only man in town who has seen it fitting to bring carnal pleasure to automatons," he said. "George Murray Gammell."

That, however, would be brand-new information for most of everyone. Three's eyes widened a bit. "No way. Seriously? My grandmother gave my mom about a dozen little wind-up dolls and toys; they all came from Gammell's! I figured he was just a nice old guy or, you know, a corporate trademark of some kind! So he's been selling these, uh, stimulation aids for how long, now?"

To Archie and Bucky, this, however, was definitely old news. "Since your first Naughtons got machined on American soil," replied Bucky. "The toy store's a town fixture.
- And nobody outside of the core demographic even knew?"

Archie let off another good-natured scoff. "Would a gentleman of leisure publicly advertise as such, Aidan?
- Well - no. It's illegal. They'd use some vague term, like businessman or entrepreneur. Clank sex shops shouldn't be illegal, though."

Archie raised a finger. "Spoken like a true man of the 21st century. In our early days, the notion that those of mine or Bucky's stripe could have impulses to fulfill was inconceivable to our rescuers and creators. To be an armature user was to be freed of all mortal desires and allowed to pursue higher, nobler deeds."

Three blinked. "Wouldn't anyone just go insane? Not just from the withdrawal - more from being withdrawn from the sensation at the end of it all. They seriously thought you could be cut off from sex entirely?"

Bucky scoffed. "Well, I dunno about me, but Archie, though..."

The Englishman glared, but a corner of his lips twitched at the same time. "Er - Victorian social mores, mister Drake. The body as the seat for mysterious forces you know to be germs, microbes and viruses, but as something which should be held as an object of fear and contempt, for the likes of myself. We all believed it would be possible to somehow stop desiring for companionship. Many envied our Russian enemies for their alien culture's dispassionate temperament."

Partly satisfied, Three pursed his lips together. "So, the box?
- Ah, yes. The box. Mister Gammell, whom I now believe to not only factually exist but to be in a fair bit of a pickle if the HPD's deposition from the store's on-floor manager is to be believed; has always been in the habit of assembling ornate little lockers and jewellery boxes. Some are mechanical, others obey the Japanese Sun system of trick drawers and hidden levers and catches. No springs are involved, no kinetic force comes into play..."

He picked up a cigar box from his corner table, and began twisting it this way and that, his fingers working on slides and levers they barely had time to see. His gestures weren't exactly abnormally fast, they were merely quick out of force of habit. Some twenty-two steps were blazed through, before the seemingly ordinary humidor creaked open, revealing a few stogies that would keep waiting their suiting occasion.

"That's a twenty-two Sun box," added Bucky. "It's just a complex series o' catches, honestly. Gammell usually does more complex stuff, though. I'm guessing y'all know the Hellraiser movies? Not that the guy's staff actually defies the laws o' physics - they don't - but there's enough gears in one little box to make your average Clank feel damn well humble about his own nuts and bolts, lemme tell ya."

From that point on, though, the rest of staff, Katherine included, could fill in with their own knowledge of the town legends. Some people claimed that their purchased puzzle box couldn't possibly work; that it wasn't supposed to work. More often than not, a quick examination by a specialized Clank or someone from Masterson Armatures debunked all claims about some box or another being fairly otherwordly. Everything that was in circulation around town, as far as the best experts in the matter in the East Coast could tell, was on the up-and-up. Everything made sense. It was all the result of a tremendous amount of planning and a virtuoso's management of confined spaces and minuscule gears. To a layman's eyes and ears, it might very well seem like their pricey little toy could do things no mere box should do.

Three crossed his arms on his chest. "So that box they found at the latest site..."

Archie shrugged. "We haven't the foggiest. We do not know, primarily because the one forensic specialist in kinetic sciences and arcane mechanisms spent six hours alone with this very box. Larry Fulton was forty-six, married and with children - and yet Inspector Locke of the Supernaturals Division found his best man with his own eyes gouged out, even as he giggled hysterically and somehow managed to scrawl sigils from the cube onto his cubicle's walls - with his own blood."

Three blinked. "And Tam's going out there with that thing in a flimsy cardboard box, no HazMat suit or three cubic meters thick of Scribing work done on her because...
- Because she is to solve the box by proxy. Fulton was foolish enough to attempt it directly, while video feeds do not transmit arcane energies of deleterious effects. The Institute's Isolation Chamber has allowed mister Quigley to converse with major demons in the full blaze of their glory. I believe Non-Euclidean geometry is something a pair of robot arms, several hundred meters' worth of sealed corridors encased in thick and liberally warded concrete, all paired with a modern video feed, could conceivably attempt to solve."

The wraith eyed the room's single door, out of which Tam had stepped, for a moment. He then gave Arch a fairly pointed look. "That's just my vote, but if she pulls it off, she gets a raise. Jeeze; our first day out of the grinder and Aldergard throws stuff from a bad Clive Barker story right at us..."