The Automaton

Part 1

The automaton lifts its feet at a steady cadence to match the speed at which the carpet underneath it retracts into the distance. There are many other objects on the carpet, although not all of them are as skilled at keeping up with its movement as the automaton is. There are some little crawling things that fall behind quickly, and if you listen closely you can hear a grinding sound after they have passed into the distance, not very far behind us. I have often wished that the automaton would turn to look back and see what the grinding sound is, or where the end of the retracting carpet goes, but it never has—perhaps it is not capable of doing so, or lacks even the ability to wonder—but my guess, from the auditory clue alone, is that there is a mechanical gear behind us, into which the back end of the carpet is continuously wound, perhaps in order to generate power for someone else’s city.

I am not the automaton, I am not the carpet itself, I am not any of the other objects striding on the carpet. I am the little monkey inside the glass eyeball of the automaton. I am very small—smaller than all of the crawling things that fall behind so quickly and are ground into the carpet behind us, so I am grateful to be carried by the automaton and kept safe from the pressures of marching. I am so small that even within the automaton’s eye I have a lot of space, which I have filled all around with air sculptures. My air sculptures are the focus of all my time, now—they are very delicate and require a lot of patience to maintain; they are constructed by directing dust particles into a particular shape, and as soon as I step away from one end of my sculpture the other side’s neat arrangement has already begun to droop or disperse into a fuzzy edge—dust does not like to be in order, but it is the only material I have. I have learned a few tricks since my first attempts—one must direct them in light and quick sweeps, into shapes that are as natural as possible, and above all stay away from too many details.

I started my air sculptures because someone taught the automaton to read, once, and I followed along, peeking through its eye. The automaton did not seem to take to reading very heartily, which I suppose I can understand, given its preoccupation with keeping a steady march on the retracting carpet, but it meant that I could only read when the automaton read, which was rarely. Then I figured out how to preserve some of the pages from the book for myself, within my glass eye, by writing them in the air with the dust particles there, and then I could read at my leisure, whenever I wanted. For a while I did nothing else. Then, after I got bored, I started to form little shapes in the air with the dust particles, delighting in the way they rearranged themselves so quickly after I had disturbed them, and after that, I began trying to sculpt my own versions of everything else that was out there, all the other objects on the carpet, the carpet itself—though I could never make my versions move in the way everything did out there.

One day, I challenged myself to create an air sculpture of a little crawling thing that had just been born and which I knew would fall behind very quickly. It was difficult because I had to rush. After I had lost my model to the grinding gear behind us, I observed that I could maintain my version of the thing, sloppy though it was, for a longer moment than it had even lived. I tried to see how long I could keep its form. When my air sculpture finally dissipated, for the first time I was angry at the intractability of the material I worked with, and at my own lack of skill.

Not long after that, following quickly on the heels of that realization as if it were the striking tail of the same thought, I realized that I would die. Perhaps the automaton would not, as long as it could keep up. I wondered if anyone would make air sculptures of me. But how could they? No one had even seen me before.

For the first time, I tried to speak to the automaton.

“Hello,” I said. “Please don’t be alarmed, but I am living in your eyeball.”

Very little that can alarm me, I have been walking a long while, the automaton rumbled in reply.

I told the automaton about what it was like for me, living inside its glass eyeball, and I told it about the air sculptures that I had made, and which I was laboring now to try to make permanent. The automaton was very amused. It had its own method of air sculptures, though it did not call them that, and was amused at my describing them so.

These objects on the carpet, they are my companions, the automaton thundered. Some of them travel much better than me, and are able to take longer steps. My friend the tree has not lifted his foot in a good long while. I touch them, and they give me a gift from their present: they remind me of the last time we touched. For them, it was only a step ago, for me it was a thousand.

“That’s very nice of them,” I said, jealous. “But you can only touch the things that have kept up.”

Well, those are the only worthy companions, it chortled in reply.

For a while after that, the automaton and I did not speak. I was sulking and meant to win an apology from the automaton for its snub against littler things, but eventually I realized that silence was no punishment for the automaton, at least not on the much shorter scale at which I passed my time. There would be no justice, at least none that could be enacted by a little creature like me. I still needed the automaton, and it did not need me.

“We’ve never touched,” I said to the automaton.

Indeed we haven’t, it rumbled. I could tell it was just as cheerful as it had always been, and, as I had suspected, hadn’t noticed my willful silence at all.

“I wish we could,” I said, “because one day I am going to die.”

The automaton chuckled. Why would you die, unless I die? And I intend to walk for a long time still.

I cleared my throat and tried to speak clearly, though I was trembling with the emotion that I was feeling, and which the automaton would never understand. “Because one day, when you get very tired and very old, every step will be a burden and you will resent the weight, little though I am, that I place on you. And you will pluck your eye and toss it onto the carpet, and since I cannot walk and your eye cannot roll forward on its own we will be ground into the gear of the carpet and gone forever, perhaps in order to water someone else’s fields.

“I cannot ask you not to do this. It would not be fair of me. I am grateful for how far you will have carried me until that point. But I do ask one thing of you—and I want you to promise before I tell you.”

So demanding, for a little creature that’s living on someone else’s marching, the automation rumbled, but it did not think much of me, and so agreed.

“Before you throw me down, let me touch something, perhaps your friend the tree—let me see just once how much better your memories are than mine.”

Part 2

The automaton began stripping its parts. “Just a little lighter, and I can go a little longer,” it said. One by one the discarded objects began rolling down the carpet, past all the crawling things (and crushing a few of them to a premature death), into the grinding gear of the carpet’s back end. First it was an ear, then the mouth and the nose, then the eye, then the entire head and finally the automaton was satisfied for a little while. When it became tired again, an arm tore off the other and tossed it away, and it almost landed on a tree because the automaton had already discarded its eyes and ears to direct its aim, and then the arm grabbed the torso of the automaton and lifted it clean as it flung itself away. All that was left of the automaton after that was a pair of mechanical legs with no mind to direct it and no body to collect its strength, mesmerized into continual movement. I, within the eye, had happily lodged against the trunk of the tree, which for now was content to strive forward against the burden of my little weight and did not yet see fit to discard me, and noted with wonder that the automaton had found a way to live forever.