The Mekanik

In the alien wars a small town had become a strategic nexus for major battles that had nearly destroyed the town and the surrounding environs. After the warfare had ended, the survivors bonded together, be they Normals or Grotesques. As a result, they held a quiet respect for one another, as those who had come through the other side, from death to life.

On the outskirts of the village stood a dilapidated workshop. Scattered around it lay skeletons of eviscerated machinery. Some slowly rusted like penitential pools returning their life to a quietly expectant, yet ravenous, earth. Others shouted their defiance in mirrored finishes that would not be brought down. But the sands, blown by relentless winds, and the acids, living in the light evening rains, slowly wore them away and took them down.

In this hovel of a workshop a ballet “fantastique” was taking place. A Grotesque seemed to be dancing around a stainless and blackened steel mechanism whose function lay stillborn, awaiting resuscitation. His soft low grunts and staccato breathing choreographed his motions. 

Sometimes he moved most delicately, almost with surgical precision. A thin strand of solder lightly brushed tiny connections and slim copper wires as the heated iron coaxed a single drop of the silvery material to gently fall in place like a beaded jewel embellishing its carefully engineered setting. Grey-blue tendrils of smoke floated over and around his massive torso which, then, clung to and adorned him. 

Now the tempo increased. Brute force and sheer power danced a tango around the somnambulant equipment. His movements reached a crescendo as he flew around the workshop, torquing the object of his attention with gigantic wrenches and drivers, adjusting the pressures and allowances until all was in balance once again. Finally, he realized the dénouement, as he threw the switch and adjusted the dials; life triumphantly returned to a resurrected metallic corpse.

He was a Mekanic, probably one of the best, and easily the best known in the valley. Bathed in rivulets of sweat, he released the air that had been captured in his heated lungs and collapsed onto a grimy, thick planked workbench. His work was like a drug. It left him in a sweet stupor in which he was transformed from the grotesque into an artistic world. But as he recaptured his breath, his dream world slowly dissolved away, and the stark and grainy workroom replaced it.  The quietly humming engine in the center of the room was the residue of the drama in which he had just performed. He closed his tired eyes briefly, trying to recapture the moment that had just escaped him. But he found it frustratingly impossible.

An overwhelming exhaustion left him dazed and blanketed in a sweet-sick torpor. His massive body now lay flaccid and spent. His cramped muscles cried out in pain, cramped at the completion of this most recent choreography. And he felt exposed as a grotesque, a caricature, an anomaly that mocked the grace and beauty of the ballet he had just performed. 

The delicacy and artistry of his craft was mocked by his monstrous and misshapen body. He was massive, almost seven feet in stature, large-limbed, barrel-trunk-ed. His ruddy skin was pockmarked by the accidents of his profession, the flying shards and tangles of metal, the searing blue white sparks that danced and eventually clung with tenacity to his unfeeling torso. His unkempt mane was sprinkled with grey and white strands that highlighted the stringy brown locks that brushed his corded neck. 

The right shoulder, due to the volume of sinew and muscle, stood slightly elevated in comparison to its partner on the left. From this base thrust an arm, half the length of a Normal’s with twice the girth. It lacked a mid-joint, but leveraged its exceptional strength from the shoulder socket which could rotate the arm almost 270°. The enlarged shoulder muscles, which wrapped themselves around the base of the arm, gave him extraordinary strength and ability to leverage his tools with massive torque.

From this versatile limb a distinctive secondary growth emerged that bore a striking resemblance to, what could be best described as, a webbed mitt. Three curled fingers were stitched together by a fine net of cartilage and sinew. Over this lightweight frame a thin but resilient canvas of skin was stretched. Its surface was pebbled and roughed by the vagaries of work and art. The palm of the mitt was supported by a truncated wrist which sprang out of the arm supported in a socket that allowed the hand to rotate nearly 180° in either direction. This contorted prehensile allowed him to work simultaneously with extreme power and delicacy. 

The extraordinary appendage contributed, on the one hand, to the Mekanic’s art and mastery. On the other hand, it was an ever-present reminder of the hideous and repulsive appearance that he represented in the quiet village. The Mekanic, already of freakish appearance, was disgusted with this strange arm that had turned him into a carnival side show freak and an object of pity by the townsfolk who would require his unique services. 

A sustained and desolate cry sprang from his cracked lips, rebounded throughout the walls of the tiny workshop, and ricocheted out of the room and echoed off the low-lying hills. There had to be a solution to the tortured reality he endured. There had to be a resolution…

…An apparition floated above the plane of the horizon much like a mirage kites close to the heated floor of a vast desert. It seemed to drift placidly within the exhausted air currents, which wandered aimlessly above the parched sands and stunted shrubs. Light refracted off the apparition, which, in turn, masked its elusive silhouette. The naked eye could not define the profile of the specter that entered the somber valley. 

As this mirage increased in velocity, it moved precisely and compensated for the ruts and moguls that lay beneath it. Like a skater on an infinite ice plane, it glided forward.

It was a long-forgotten orphan of medical-industrial triumph. It represented the intuitive high art of the physician and the technical genius of the chemical engineers. It had been created as a battlefield medic, doctor, and surgeon to heal and restore the lost civilization’s warriors. The Healer, as this and its kind had been named, had outlived the intent of its ancient fabricators. It had survived and somehow had reprogrammed itself to serve the remnant population which had welcomed it during its infrequent arrivals.

The Healer, through internal receptors, had captured the distressed transmission of the Mekanic. It calculated coordinates and plotted precisely where the cry had come from. And so, the Healer progressed, followed by clouds of dust, and broken light fragments. On it pressed until suddenly its momentum ceased while the tailings of the desert whisked round and round tricked by this instant loss of velocity. It had arrived at its destination…

…A penumbra darkened the tiny workshop. The wispy tendrils of the shadow tickled the dormant face of the Mekanic. The Grotesque’s listless muscles slowly leveraged his eyes open to narrow slits and then to flittering blinks. Fear began to gnaw in his belly as he rose from his exhausted sleep. His body sat up in rigid stance, defensive mechanisms on high alert. 

At that moment a quiet warm-hued sensation washed over the Mekanic. The Healer had sent out tendrils that assuaged its recipient’s dread and, at the same time, communicated that the troubling chimera hanging and floating in the workshop had arrived in response to the Mekanic’s cry for assistance. There were no words spoken, nor would there be any during the duration of this momentary encounter. Communication was cybernetic. As a result, the Mekanic’s initial alarm was immediately allayed. His body signaled submission to the Healer and the medical skills that it had brought to this Grotesque. The Healer seemed to shift-shape and swathe the now dormant Grotesque. It lightly stroked the porous surface of the leather worn skin and oozed, though the compliant minuscule entryways.

Imagine coarse white cotton towels filling the hollow of an old and well used anodized tub. Watch as an opaque dye is slowly poured upon the contents in the tub, the dye slowly diffuses, and through the process of osmosis, the towels are completely saturated in color. Thus did the Healer engulf its host in a diagnostic wash that was complete and total. 

With a quiet efficiency it discovered, at the base of the Grotesque’s spine, a parasitic alien presence, a small red sponge-like growth. It had been implanted some time long ago for some nefarious purpose unknown to the Healer or to its host. At the appropriate hour, under specific conditions the mass would be released from its dormant state, uncoil itself and engulf the organism in which it had been implanted. It was a mystery that the latent growth had not already been activated. 

This alien presence must be delicately contained, removed with surgical precision, and destroyed without damage to the Grotesque. With technical efficiency the Healer slowly embraced the mass within a web of nano tendrils which, in turn, penetrated the implant in its entirety.  In this way the Healer was able to manipulate tissue and separate, in a discrete manner, one organism from another. Now the web locked itself together into a thickened mass that began to function as a compression chamber. As it shrunk it applied tremendous pressure upon the implant. The compression generated the extraordinary temperatures that were required to destroy the hostile substance. At the same time the shroud-like chamber acted as an insulator that protected the host and passed on the threatening energy and wastes through the Healer, out of the Grotesque.  

The diagnosis and the curative procedure were complete. It now was time for the Healer to leave the Grotesque. Slowly this therapeutic saturation retreated moving toward the numerous pores through which it had entered. As it did, the continuous cybernetic transmissions informed the Mekanic of its diagnosis and its prognosis. 

As relieved as the Grotesque might be to discover the alien implant and its eventual destruction, this was not the reason for which he had called out only hours ago. The Healer “heard” the distress and frustration of its host, but there would be no attempt made to make the Mekanic’s arm normal. Healers did not “fix” or “adjust” the aberrations of Grotesques. Their role was to heal. 

As the Grotesque gradually understood that the healer had finished and would do nothing about his deformed arm, his rage grew and engulfed him totally. It would have been better if he had died or been turned into some mindless automaton than to live as a freak. As his fury engulfed him, the tendons and muscles in his massive body strung taut.

The intensity of his uncontrolled wrath resulted in an extraordinary consequence. The Healer had not yet completed its egression, when it was abruptly seized in a vice-like grip in the interior of the Mekanic. There was an abrupt and complete lockdown of the Healer’s progress and technical functionality. The Mekanic demanded a resolution to his physical deformation. 

It was all the Healer could do to reply in a cautionary form and clarify the risk that was being demanded. If this procedure were to be attempted, there could be no guarantee that it would succeed. There would be extreme risk to the host which might, in fact, result in unforeseen and injurious consequences. 

The Mekanic’s response was swift and overpowering. There would be no other alternative that would be acceptable. The Healer had never experienced such a state in which it had lost absolute control over its own functionality. It contemplated the possible damaging outcomes if it did not acquiesce to the will of the Grotesque. Therefore, it submitted and agreed to perform this dubious procedure. At the moment of acquiescence, the Mekanic’s vice-like grip dissipated, freeing the Healer to attempt respond to the Mekanic’s demands.

The momentum of the internal wash was reversed. In a few moments the Healer had restored its presence all throughout its host and began its untested task. The Healer began to rebuild and reengineer the malformation. It began with some of the same procedures it had employed earlier to remove and destroy the alien mass. But it was also forced to augment them with new technical approaches that would reshape and grow bone, ligaments, arteries, muscle, and all the other physiological dimensions with which the limb could be restored to a normal state. 

As the engineering and machinations progressed, the abnormal limb at first began to shift and reshape itself. Slowly the limb grew to become an arm with a hand and a thumb and fingers, ultimately mirroring its counterpart on the left. Even though the Mekanic was, at most, vaguely conscious of the internal transformation that was unfolding within him, the fabrication generated excruciating pain. As a result, his torso shuddered and quivered. Sweat coalesced into thin rivulets that ran off his body onto the dusty workshop floor below. 

And then, gradually, the fabrication was completed. The Healer signaled to the Mekanic that the procedure was complete. At the same moment the Mekanic’s viselike trauma evaporated and he choked as he sucked cooling air into his distressed and exhausted lungs. 

As the Mekanic began to recover, the Healer began the de-saturation process. Tiny black tendrils began to migrate from the host’s pores and coalesce into the shift shaping apparition that had earlier entered the workshop. 

The Mekanic’s eyes fluttered as he gained awareness and consciousness of his surroundings, as well as the strange apparition before him. Words rasped hoarsely, but with confidence, from his blistered throat, “You fixed it, didn’t you.”  In reply the Healer communicated its earlier warning that, despite its capabilities it could not fix things, only heal. There were no guarantees of success. The process could not be reversed. And as suddenly as it had been present, the phantasm left the room, the winds protesting as they collapsed into the newly created, trailing vacuum.

The room lay still in anticipation of a newfound discovery. It was as if the workshop shared in the wonder of the unfolding miracle. The Mekanic focused his eyes on his newly regenerated limb and delicately moved each beautifully crafted joint. As a master sculptor carves out the hidden beauty from a drab block of marble, so had the Healer crafted this strange and wonderful appendage from the Grotesque’s stump. It was a superb work of art. The light revealed no flaws or blemishes, the proportions were exact and balanced. It was without equal, a true master’s work. 

A shiver of recognition tickled down his spine. Not only had the work been done perfectly, beyond his wildest dreams, but now he shook himself with the overwhelming sense that he no longer stood among the residents of the hamlet as a Grotesque but now would join them as a fellow Normal. He would have his craft without the humiliation, without the degradation or shame. He was at once restored and made whole.

To celebrate his restoration, the Mekanic would begin the next ballet “fantastique.” In his mind’s eye his two normal limbs would dance together in an engineered choreography, a moment that would enliven the exhausted and weather-worn mechanisms before him. He would shower them with twirling, spiraled silver threads. He would torque massive lock rusted bolts and levers and make them sing to their newly resurrected life in the desert. 

In preparation he lifted a grease covered wrench and gently caressed it with his newly birthed fingers. This tool shone and glistened through the grime and years of exertion. The Mekanic gently nestled his compatriot into the newly generated fingers of his newly formed arm and prayed that his next “dance” would surpass anything he had ever attempted before. An internal sonata enlivened the dance that he had visualized. He stood before a dormant machine that he had identified earlier for the proposed transformation and slowly attempted to slip-collar the wrench over a wizened bolt. At his command the next choreographic moment would begin.

Nothing. At first, he thought that he was the brunt of some mental trickery. Again, he gave the command for the performance to begin…

Nothing…There was some undefined disjuncture between his will and ability to act. And then with mounting horror he realized the profound implications of the demands he had placed upon the Healer.

Of course, the limb lay stilled, since it had no practical memory. There was no history of accomplishment, no history of partnership, no history of a developing craftsmanship.  The Mekanic had grown up with the deformed arm and, together, they had learned over time to create the ballet that had worked wonders before the villager’s eyes. Now there was nothing he could say to his newly created deaf-eared appendage. The craftsman’s past had slipped away when the detested appendicle had been transformed to a thing of beauty. Alas, there had been no “fix,” no restoration.

He screamed.

The Healer “heard” the distressed transmission. But its momentum remained direct, constant, and unchanged. The winds fruitlessly chased the Healer’s forward acceleration.