42

It was the 6th of July 1859, he could recall vividly, the day when he met Michael, a man whose moustache twirls with an unyielding confidence he had never seen before, his slender figure wrapped in a tight tuxedo. 

With Michael, he would not be ordered to deliver letters, although he was allowed to bring along his postman hat when the manager sold him. Everyday, he would wait for orders, bristing in the hallway with his chubby, metallic body glistening, but none would come. 

However, when it did, Michael would correct him, and tell him it was more of an invitation, an invitation to sit on the bench for hours, an invitation to have a walk in the forest, an invitation to gaze at stars and buy bread from the bakery. 

He had wondered if Michael had been lonely, but the numbers of maids and butlers Michael had had contradicted his hypothesis.

In just 4 days, 42 had carved the map of Michael’s mansion in his memory, just like what he did to the map of the whole town. He knew every room, every staircase, every twist and turns like the back of his hand, every name of the maids and butlers except…

There was one room on the second floor at the very end of the hallway, the door was locked firmly with specialised keys. The knob was dusty, and cobwebs formed at the corner of the wooden entrance with a symbol of a frog carved onto its surface. 

When Michael passed by it, his pace would quicken and he would not look at the room, and his brows would furrow when 42 was caught staring at it, the same went with everyone else in the building. 

“Don’t look at it,” was what the butler told him.

Every moment he passed by the room, something grew inside him.

---------------------------------------------------------------

It was Saturday when Michael invited him for a stroll in the forest.

During their walk they were quiet, and vapours from the dawn formed dews on 42's armour. They stopped beside a road sign, Toymaker’s St, and a log was lying quietly under, greenery protruding from the cavities gnawed by the weather. Trees flaked both sides of the dappled mud road. 

Instead of heading back like they always did, Michael sat on the fallen timber, drawing in the cold air with the fragrant smell of grass. He told 42 to sit beside him, and was surprised to see that the wood was strong enough to withstand his weight. 

He never understood Michael's invitations, but it was not his duty to ask.

Soon after, a monarch butterfly emerged from the bushes and swirled around the human and the machine, then another and another. They weren’t too many, only five or so, but they were enough to have their beauty gazed at by them both. 42 raised a finger for the insects to perch on, then marvelled at their intricate wings woven with fiery colours.

Michael beaconed at the monarch on 42’s finger with his eyes, his legs crossed.

“They look grotesque, crush them.” 

42 stared at him, surprised by what Michael had said. 

Still, the automation hovered his hand over the insect, the critter unaware of what he was going to do. As a machine, he was born to execute orders.

But something felt...wrong. 

“What are you waiting for? Crush it.” Michael urged, but 42 remained frozen.

“Is that an order?”

“Are you obliged to question?” came a stern reply.

42 wavered.

He imagined the crushed body of the butterfly, its delicate form turning into a bloody mush. 

He couldn’t do it, could he?

He wrestled in his head, juggling his logic. 

He knew if he turned against Michael's order, he would be sent back to the facility to be smelted into iron, and he would miss the star gazing, the bread in the bakery, the bench in the garden, the books in Michael’s library…

But if he followed....

...

He made his decision.

“A gear is broken in the left arm. Position U46.” for the very first time, 42 lied. He lowered his hand guiltily, his movements sluggish and sheepish. When the butterfly fluttered away unharmed, he did not dare to look at Michael.

There was a moment of silence, he waited for the cuts from Michael’s disappointed looks, his angry growls and-

“You’re trying to protect it, aren’t you?” Michael questioned, his voice agitated but soft. He was smiling now, proudly, his head high and his slick back hair glimmering in certainty. 42 did not reply, his eyes in the shape of two holes in his hemispheric head were pinned on the ground.

“I require a repair.” 42 said, and Michael shook his head. 

“You’re not broken, 42. That's just you, and I will not send you to the facility. It's time for breakfast, I believe we should to head back.” Michael stood up and walked back to the mansion, 42 followed him, puzzled.

Along the way, Michael questioned, “Tell me, what did you feel?”

42 touched his chest, contemplating, then answered, “A blockage, a system malfunctioning. There were more than one order.” 

‘Oh, and where did that order come from?”

42 pointed at himself, “Inside.”

“Next time, 42,” Michael patted him on his shoulder. “Follow that order.” 

---------------------------------------------------------------

Since the butterfly incident, Michael’s invitations had been numbered. For the past months he had taught him to use a typewriter, showed him how to dance and gifted him a violin. Most importantly, their conversation had doubled and 42 was glad it did. There were no schedules for him either, the activities were all available for his choice. He had noticed how he no longer bristled in the hallway for orders. He felt different now.

The energy from the bile must had been amplified, he had been feeling more things than he once had: his heart leaping when there came the climax of a musical, his mind wandering freely when he waltzed across the key and the movies when someone cried would make him feel empty inside.

He never understood the bile, just like how he never understood Michael, even after so long that Michael grew to become more like a friend than a master.

He thought it would continue that way, until Michael started to sit in front of an easel, a colour-plate in one hand and a brush in the other.

"Painting, 42, is the window to one's mind, you need to find yours." babbled Michael as he moved his strokes on the canvas.

He called the maid to set up another easel for 42, and a firm chair for his use, and taught him to draw. For the first few days he had been copying Michael, despite the fact that he was told to listen to the order from inside. 

“Apologies, Michael. It has been quiet inside.” 42 told him. 

“Maybe you need a rest, my friend. Walk around and maybe you'll find things that intrigue you.” Michael said as he took a break by the balcony. The butler poured him a cup of tea, clouds of steam rising from the rim of the porcelain. 

42 held his postman hat as he nodded politely before ambling out the room. 

What intrigues me, 42 pondered in the hallway, crouching by the wall like a child. Looking around, his gaze stopped on the tapestry by the hallway, a familiar alluring symbol of a frog with perfect geometry. 

Then, he heard it, the voice leading him to the locked room. The thing inside him grew even more, aching, pounding. It had been quiet, and now it had been resuscitated.

Standing in front of the door, the entrance was still sealed and the texture of it untouched. He recalled the monarch, the first beautiful thing he had seen in his life that triggered something inside him he could not explain, but the feeling is somewhat similar to what the door had brought him. Unwittingly, he reached for the knob. With his strength he could crush it, and he could go inside. 

He couldn’t do this to Michael, could he?

The thing had been spreading like wildfire inside him.

“42,” 

He woke from his own thoughts, and faced the maid who he knew was called Maria. She looked worried, fidgeting in her own dress, her meagre body only half of his height. She was carrying a vase of sunflower as she squeezed out a few words, “Michael told me that you shouldn’t be near that room.”

“Apologies.” he tipped his hat.

"It's alright," Maria responded shyly as usual and handed him the vase. "I've heard you've been facing a problem in painting. I think this might help."

"Thank you, they look lovely." 42 answered.

"Not at all." the maid chirped with a blush and trotted off.

He gaze faltered between the sunflowers and the door.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The next day when he headed towards studio, he had already chosen.

“Inspirations?” Michael heard him trotter in. 

“Yes, you’ve told me to walk around and find things that intrigue me.” 

“Excellent.” Michael’s eyes sparkled with excitement. 

Whipping up the paint, he started to doodle on the canvas. He painted a door and a monarch-winged frog in the middle, surrounded by butterflies. The door was ajar. Unconsciously, he could find himself tilting his body, trying to see what was inside. Before he finished the canvas, he added in an iota of sunflowers, for Maria.

When he was done, he heard a thud, then a bright, rolling sound of ceramic. It was the cup that belonged to Michael, who now wore a pale expression like he had seen a ghost.

“I told you to not get near that room!” Michael barked, flinging the painting to the floor. 42 gawked at him, perplexed, Michael’s moustache no longer carried the confidence he once had. He paced in the studio like a madman, murmuring something.

 “Get rid of the painting.” He tried to recollect his calm and instructed the butler. 

“Yes, sir.” 

The butler took the painting immediately and marched out the room. 42 thought Michael didn't like how he painted. Did he mess up the colours? Or were the strokes too heavy or too light?

Michael wiped away his sweat on his forehead with his handkerchief, his eyes red and watery. He was shaking, taking deep breaths. 

 42 felt a strong sense of guilt. He did not know what he did wrong. Maybe he was right, that voice inside him was a malfunction after all. 

He should have chosen to paint the flowers instead.

Michael held onto an empty easel for support, his hunched back facing the automation. He exhaled shakily, “Pardon me, 42. I need you to leave right now.”

And so he left. After just a few puzzled steps he bumped into Maria, who had heard Michael’s outrage and came to investigate. 

“What happened?” asked Maria. 

“Michael did not like the door.” 

“You drew the door?” Maria exclaimed, “Of course he wouldn’t like it! It belonged to Isabella-” the maid shut up as she spoke of this name

“Isabella?” 42 repeated.

“I need to go.” Maria put her hands over her mouth and ran off.

Watching her leave, his circuits tied into knots. He entered his room Michael had prepared for him since the first day he got here, a bedroom with a bed he never slept in, and hid inside the closet. 

The sense of being back in his own box when he was a postman again comforted him, shielding him from all the strange things in Michael’s mansion. Isabella, the name rang in his metal skull. 

 He missed the world when his life was only letters. That was where he belonged, wasn’t it? He was made for letters. 

---------------------------------------------------------------

Michael came with another invitation the next day, as if nothing had happened, though 42 had noticed how his eyes looked more hollow than what they were before. He had heard him discussing something with the maids and butlers in the foyer. Were they getting rid of him? He wasn’t sure. 

Humans were always confusing. 

They sat side by side on a bench in the garden, overlooking the labyrinthe terrace peppered with spring flowers. 

“I believe you’ve reached the stage where you would start to question,” Michael said suddenly and peered over his hooked, chiselled nose, his hands gripping on the handle of his staff he pegged between his legs. A family of sparrows lanced across the sky. 

“Do you believe that there’s a meaning to life?” Michael spoke slowly,

“I do. I am made with the purpose of delivering letters.” 42 answered. 

“Do you enjoy it? Delivering letters?” he countered. “More than the things you’ve been doing here?”

“...No,” 42 admitted. Michael waited for him to elaborate, “but I could see many expressions when humans received their letter.”

“And what does that bring?” Michael raised a brow. 

“It brings…” 42 gaped at his hands, his palm reflecting his own image. He moved his joints and watched them curve and straighten out. “Something I can’t understand inside. Something that makes everything look bright, like what your invitations do. A new source of energy, I guess, though I know clearly my main source of energy came from my bile so it might have enhanced it, thus causing error to surface.”  

“Nothing can enhance the bile, 42. I’m certain of it.” 

“Nobody can understand completely how the bile works, except-”  

“Except a Toymaker?" Michael declared, "I AM Michael Toymaker. I discovered the Toymaker bile with a toy frog,”

Michael blurted as if he had been holding it in for too long, “it is not an enhancement, 42. It is your emotion. The bile gave it to you, I can't explain how but now I am sure of it. You've showed us what the bile could do. You're almost...human, my friend."

"I'm not." 42 disagreed.

"Not yet, perhaps. A decade ago we thought it was merely a new source of strong renewable energy, until..." The man swallowed in pain, his eyes drifting off.

“Isabella?” the name slipped out of his mouth. Michael’s eyes bore into him. 

“Where did you get that name?”

“Maria.” 42 answered carefully. 

The Toymaker’s face fell.

Masking his closed eyes under his fist, he could feel the name puncturing his chest, years of guilt flooding him. 

“Michael?” the machine was concerned.

Repressing his emotions, the man dabbed away his tears tiredly, the maids were snooping on them through the windows from behind, clenching on the silk curtains and frowning in distress, especially Maria. 

"I was a bad father, a long time ago. She was sick and I was out there."

"You're not." 42 reassured him.

"She was the first to discover, she'd always notice little things." Michael bent down and picked up a fallen leaf, observing the network clear in its withering epithelial in the sun. 

“She had been writing to me when I was away. In her letters she told me no one is born for anything. Life has no purpose, but it is the most precious thing we could ever have, because once taken we could never get it back.” 

42 gaped at the leaf, watching Michael trail his slender finger along its spine which forked into different routes to the sides, “However, this meaninglessness let us choose our own meaning, she told me this is why life is more colourful than anything in this world. Though some choice may lead to negative outcome, just like how I chose to cultivate the bile to achieve fame and wealth, and…” 

Michael sighed, “At least that’s what Isabella told me. The day you opposed my order is the day you chose to be alive and value others like you, and that day was when I believed what she said was true." 

He squeezed the leaf into 42’s hand, his voice was gentle like a breeze, the boulder on his chest was lifted off for a little, “She thought every machine who carries the bile is alive, and therefore should be given the freedom to choose for themselves. I've meant to leave this speech at the very end, but you're becoming more and more curious about her room. We think that, perhaps, you have the right to know what is happening, judging by the fact we see you as a part of our family."

Curious, 42 remained silent, the thing inside finally had a name. For years he had thought that he was born to deliver, and right now, he knew, those are only what the others wanted him to do. He heard his knowledge of the world crumble down around him.

He clenched the leaf in his hand tightly.

"Thank you," 42 said, "for letting me choose."

"It is always yours, my friend." Michael nodded, "Shall we head in?"

"No," 42 shook his head, "I'd like to stay out here for a while, the spring looks lovely today."

Michael beamed.