Forty-six Hewitt brand steel cuffs rock to and fro in lockstep with the pistons, their composite enamel bracing succeeding in determinately miniscule margins to prevent a catastrophic engine failure, for such a gross betrayal of the artisan’s slogan: “A Hewitt Will Do It”, would still blood in the long-pumping veins of tradition and trust. One must regard the immaculate phrasing of Hewitt’s pledge. A Hewitt will do it. No ground is given to the notion that a Hewitt can do it, that a Hewitt will try its very best, as along with the quality of material and an impressive statistical credibility, a Hewitt engine is purchased for its assurance of safety. A long legacy of reliable service. Among sailors, certainty is beyond value. Its influence extends into the spiritual, obscured behind a veil of superstition and benign ritual, places where only a rabbit’s foot walks. The pistons flutter, a hummingbird’s heart, ten thousand rotations per minute. Fourteen million successful rotations per piston per working day, and each executed with essential efficiency at a margin of error in the tens of billionths, lest the whole ship be cast to that abyssal black without name or end. Fortunately, a Hewitt Will Do It. Unfortunately, some must settle for a Fischio V12, superstition, and me.
I coddle our poor Fischio and continue dreaming of finer hardware. I say “our” only in the sense that the rest of the crew relies on it, and because I don’t legally own it. By all spiritual rights, the machinery is mine. I’ve been working on Fischio for longer than I knew my own parents. I’ve lost two fingers to it, and abiding the times I’ve sliced myself working on it, I would say we’re blood relatives now. In fact, I do, and many regard that statement as pure dramatics, but the point I illustrate is this: If someone else were to touch Fischio, I’d know, and they’d be doing it wrong. I’d bet another finger on it.
The engine room is a scalding headache to the uninitiated, and a ragged hazing process is due from there. It takes years to feel welcome in such a place. There is something lost to that metamorphosis from sluggish little maggot to sturdy chrysalis, a certain quality of bewilderment that loses the traction it once held when a blaring light or harsh sound grinds against one’s senses, and though innocence has never fit, I cannot ascribe a closer word. Cocoon is perhaps more apt. Tranquility blossoms from within, a numb shell cauterizes the senses, and soon enough I would hear words like “lobotomite” tossed about in the mess hall. The engine room was made for Fiscio and nothing else, making it a dark and cramped place by necessity, caught in perpetual cacophony, and sweltering as a rule. For most aboard, those who see only the shell, it is a door at the end of a dark shaft beset by reflective yellow placards from which a small figure emerges on occasion.
Not by choice, mind you; It was two years ago that I was ordered not to sleep in the engine room. I don’t recall the official reasoning, it hardly matters, I believe the Captain simply finds the idea disquieting. For weeks I found no rest, the arrhythmic rasping of the crew emanated through the walls of my cabin and left me entirely out of step. So slowly they breathed, I would lie awake hearing only sputtering old engines, wondering which one would go out first, and filling with dread for a similar fate befalling Fiscio. I spent my wages on a first rate recording device when next we drew to port, and strapped it to the engine’s solar plexus. From then on I slept with noise-blotting headphones. It was an amicable compromise, I don’t expect the others to understand that I sleep easier listening to seven thousand and forty six rotations per minute.
Yet as I work on Fiscio, a dampened whine slips from the flywheel, meaning we have begun to accelerate without my forewarning, risking limbic cascade for some unworthy efficiency in our course. I set upon the pistons most likely to backfire, straddling the pinching acrid metal and soothing as best I can the ambushing stressors. So close to the pounding of the dorsiventral organelles and the rattling of gaskets, I barely parse a sound of wrenching at the hatch rising faintly above the other noise, distinct by its dreadful intrusion as a weevil in grain. I jolt, and turn my head instinctually to meet a spillage of bleaching light leaking around two figures. I creak into salute, as is custom in the First Mate’s presence. The other form, like a swollen barrel, begins to retch, then swiftly shrouds the noise in bewildered laughter.
“Now that’s vile,” it states with some flavor of exhilaration before regarding the First Mate. “Or, that is to say, sir, with the smell I thought for a moment I was being reassigned to the latrines. Been some time since I last worked on an engine, I suppose.” My eyes adjust to this intruder on the threshold. He is overlarge, and morbidly so. Despite the ample flesh on his face, his features remain jagged and harsh, like a poorly scored ham. The smile that breaks his face is a slash that digs to scalding white bone, and hearing his words, I place a protective handon Fiscio. Since I last worked on an engine? The thought is too terrible.“You’ll get on fine, lord knows more skilled hands are needed in here,” says the First Mate. Now it is I who feels like retching as my eyes fall to his hands, bloated and infantile. “At ease,” says the First Mate absentmindedly to my rigid posture, impossible as the suggestion may be. Introductions are being made but the words slip by me. I wonder if either of them see the absurdity, and then I wonder why they can’t, because it is so obvious that he will not fit. Even drawn and quartered, the man would fill out much of the passageways in the room, and though I want to remind them that there is a reason children are preferable when assigning engine apprenticeships, the words catch in my throat. My silence is noted. It is clear in their expressions that I am supposed to say something, but screaming ‘go away’ is all I can think to do now as I see the large form squeeze into the room, smothering the light of the passageway. It reaches, and my hand is crushed between a workman’s sweaty ambergris clots, then given two shakes.
The intruder tries on a grin and says, “Don’t suppose they allocate nose plugs for this position, eh?” His eyes say that my work is some sort of joke we’re both in on. The hatch shuts at the First Mate’s back, leaving us in a sparse red glow that just manages to glisten off his teeth.
“Resign.” I hiss, yanking my hand from between his. He giggles nervously.
“Come again?”
“Fiscio’s mine, you clod, and we were getting on fine without… ‘extra hands’. I doubt you can contribute more than a breakdown, so leave.”
“I’m afraid that’s not gonna happen,” he says, looking not nearly fearful enough. “I’ll be indentured ‘till the end of the decade at least, and you’re psychotic if you think I’m returning to the abattoir deck now, this reassignment was overdue as it is.” The Clod draws himself up a little higher as I sink into my mortification. Poor Fiscio, they’ve assigned us a butcher. “I’m an educated man, only joined this husk when I heard it crewed a single engineer. Imagine my shock when the Captain said-”
“And, what, control decided not to tell me you’d be coming?”
“They did, there were meetings. Three of them.” There is a barometric tightening in my chest. I ignore most appointments in favor of working on the engine, and that has suited me well enough for years. I try to withhold my reaction, to keep my face sharp, but Clod’s eyes glint knowingly as he chuckles, “Not that I blame your absence, of course. A single engineer on a ship of this size? It’s downright miraculous we’re moving at all, I would’ve thought you’d-”
“You’re fat.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.” His words crisp at the edges, hostility rising with the corners of his mouth. Like an ape. I feel a squirming in my gut as I take in just how imposing of an issue his size will be, and not wanting to get pulverized I speak to cover up Fiscio’s chittering, and the prickly silence between us.
“The passages are narrow. Don’t stuff them.” The way his face refuses to form a frown is confusing, as if his mood operates on absolute value, and seeing the twinkle of gums I realize that his civil facade was not to be taken for granted, so I shift gears. “You’re an educated man, right? I’m sure you can see the issue here.” My head cools, I begin to accept that we will be shut in this room together often.
Clod shakes his head solemnly, clicking his tongue. “The issue’s not mine, friend. This room is hardly up to code.” His hand drifts over the auxiliary piping I added some years ago, and I flinch at the defilement.
“I can see you’ve been making additions.”
“All necessary.” I grunt back.
“But not regulation. I could have you written up.” Clod warns, but
I only laugh.
“The ship needs me, and it’d do just fine without you. You could have me written up? I could have you keelhauled.”
“I’m sure you’d rather have me work though, wouldn’t you?” The longer he talks, the more unnerving I find his persistence. “If I can’t get past the threshold I’m useless.” I snort at the notion he’d be any different otherwise.
“Get a chair, then. I don’t need you.” Clod stands there thinking for a moment, then leaves. When he returns with a stool I decide we’re finally on the same wavelength. The weeks proceed in this manner, with him perched at the throat of the room cradling a tablet, either reading or typing, and though I continue to riposte his attempts at conversation he remains unabated. All the while I toil on Fiscio, doing my best to ignore the Clod’s presence. The logic in a new engineer soon avails itself to me as the workload grows voraciously, and I return to my cabin with greater infrequency as Fiscio wails under the demands of our course. In place of rest I oscillate between periods of intensesedation and frantic energy spurred by Fiscio’s shuddering, but I dare not sleep in the engine room anymore, nor anywhere Clod can see me. It is so simple to lose track of time out here. The day persists only in the context of its ability to record periods of work and rest, as does the week, but the lack of a proximal sun renders months and years esoteric. All this is to say that Fiscio is sick, and I pray we reach port soon. Somehow the ship is still accelerating yet it has been so long, a strain I have never before forced Fiscio to work through, and I am proving an insufficient steward. I resent Clod, he sits at the entrance idling away, never rising from his stool, and I am so tired. Despite never moving, his size leaves him exposed to the desperate pace of the machinery, his gasps and howls occasionally joining the symphony of the engine room as Fiscio nips and pinches at his sides. Once this made me smile, like Fiscio and I were conspiring to evict him from our domain, but it has long since faded to the ambiance of the chamber. Perhaps Clod has simply stopped singing, regardless he remains.
A backfire ricochets off the confined passageways and latches to my ears, and in the residual flash of light I see that my hands are gummy with oil and offal from my work. Clambering to the guilty chamber I prepare to make a quick hack job. Isolate and sever, the loop must be closed, and though demand will ratchet up in the remaining chambers I remain confident in my supernumeracies. When I move to cut the feeding line, a sharp and sickening tug brings my hand further into the engine and instinctually I rip it out. The lights of the engine room wink out across a vanishing point of no return to which every receptor in my body directs: ‘In no uncertain terms,’ it says, ‘your thumb is gone’.
Fiscio’s rhythm is sawtoothed, irregular. The machinery frays as I drift, though I am dimly aware of pain in my hand that leaves me shivering on the floor. Another backfire strikes my temple but I am unable to stand, left vexing myself for how stupid the mistake was, for all the chances I had to avoid it. All were veiled in my deranged exhaustion.
“I haven’t heard anything like that in ages,” says Clod. I am thrust back up into the world, bleary and stinging. “The screaming, I mean. When I started working the killing floor, I’d latch in animals for the stunner.” I am crumpled at the entrance by his stool, my maimed hand is in his lap and he works at it with slender instruments, though I scarcely feel it. “Supposed to put them down clean, that’s the idea. Sometimes it’d miss, though. Y’know? Then they’d start squealing and bucking, usually bull me right over. And hey, no one’s perfect, but it’d happen to me quite a bit.” Clod’s tone is an imitation of soft and motherly, his words pass by me without ever quite landing. “As it turned out, some of the guys were just initiating me, making sure to misfire more often for my sake, so that i’d see the whole picture.” He suddenly drops my hand to flap against my chest. I stare in disbelief at the restored digits, not a phalanx out of place. “Their lesson only ended when Istopped reacting to it all, and stayed still while the animals thrashed. The game was up at that point. Get it?” This is not my thumb. I look up at Clod, who reads the confusion on my face and shrugs. “Nevermind.”
“Wh – Fiscio-”
“Take it easy, friend. Your engine’s doing just fine, though I can scarcely say the same for you. Not that I didn’t try my best.” Clod’s eyes twinkle, he winks at me and says, “Oh, and you have my word that not a lick of this will reach the Captain’s ear. Wouldn’t want to be keelhauled, would I?” I sputter out words of gratitude as best as I can manage, and Clod gives a barking laugh in return, eerily akin to pistons backfiring.
“This engine of yours… it really is an opus, though all the clutter is dangerous.” He clucks his tongue and shakes his head, though a frown never shows. “I fail to see any logic in your design, these bits and bobs are entirely superficial.” Clod plucks at mechanisms on the wall. With a start I realize the entryway has been covered over with tacked on pages, scrawled over with diagrams and anatomical sketches penned by a skilled draftsman. How had I not noticed? “I’ve been cross-referencing this room with the ship schematics, you see? A few of your modifications serve some purpose, but most of them certainly don’t.” Sure enough, the pages present a precise map of that which I have learned by touch. I wonder how he could possibly see to the back of the room, but my murky train of thought is cut short. “Your composition is flawed, you were bound to get unlucky eventually. I’d hear why you consider all this ‘necessary’.”
I heave and push myself into a sitting position, then say, “There’s no flaw, nor bad luck.” Still delirious on whatever medication he’d put in me for the pain, I go on to explain my rituals. The disjointed valves I dutifully twist each time I pass them by, the cursed levers I never touch,the machines that thrash and bite endlessly. “Fiscio is so much more than metal, there’s patterns beneath the skin waiting to be read. We are family, nothing else explains how far we’ve come together.” Clod now wears a smile of deep satisfaction.
“Taboos and superstitions, then. You’ve built up the frivolous bits to imitate skill where only chance prevails?” I scowl at this, not that I expected any different. I could smell the conceit dripping off of Clod the moment he first came through the door all that time ago.
“You don’t understand. There is magic here, it strengthens with each new complexity, and there’s no other way to fight the alternative.”
“Meaning death?” Clod stares down at me intently, the conversation appears immensely entertaining to him, though his pose remains calm and unmoving, with hands folded lazily across his gut.
“Right, the ultimate simplicity. You have to tell it what the rules are, make a labyrinth that it needs to work its way through to find you.”
“Do you really consider complex and simple to be true opposites?”
“Like fire and water, yeah.”
“Water? No, the opposite of fire is stillness.”
“You’re missing my point on purpose,” I sigh.
“No, friend, you’re missing mine. The way I see it, complexity is only abundantly layered simplicity. Now a true opposite, say, fire and stillness, is mutually exclusive to the core. Compounding stillness will never strike a blaze, only result in evermore stillness.” Clod speaks with a fervor I did not know him to possess, a trickle of marrow spittle running from his lips as he talks. The metal floor is dreadfully cold, and a shiver pierces into my bones.
“I… I think we’ve gotten away from my engine.”
“Au contraire, we are gracing the pinnacle, if you’ll bear with me a moment longer.” I nod, capable of little else. “I am only getting at this: Are death and life opposites, or different forms?”
“What?”
“Are you not a compounding abundance of endings? Simplicity died with each step you took, in each loss, from the fingers to the nails to the cells that composed them, yet it would have been unfair to call you anything but alive. Do you see the whole picture now?” I writhe, trying to reach the hatch. He sits there, utterly still, as a chortle escapes through his static lips.
“My friend, I’m afraid you can’t leave the engine any more than I can the abattoir. Even now you are churning in its teeth, caught within the gears. If it’s any consolation, Fiscio did take the crew to port with your nutrients. The engine lives and you are one, is this not what you wanted all along?”
“When… when did…” I am searing through my memory, looking for the moment of my end, trying to find the point on an unraveling line, but all loose ends slither out into a growing darkness.
“Come on now, haven’t you been paying attention? I was always there. A maze you may have built, yes, but you remain a creature of habit, a creature that seeks only patterns, built of only patterns, one of which is me. A part of you, apart from you. Were you a simple creature? By no means, yet we are what we do repeatedly, wouldn’t you agree?”
I try to