[Original Novel] Not Long Now, Part 7

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So I tucked it into the book, wondering if I’d once done the same with the envelopes but forgotten it since. Not likely as both were sealed, but I’ve done stranger things. This book’s been with me for so long, I’m constantly rediscovering parts of it I read when much younger.

Some delicate association in my brain still exists between familiar passages in the book, and other memories from the same period. Such that when I re-read these portions, flashes of the past come rushing back. I knew it was important even then, as everyone around me missed no opportunity to impress upon me what an important man my Grandfather was.

One particular entry tickled me as a small boy, but became less amusing and more perplexing with age. It was one of several diary style entries where Grandfather took a break from describing some new pivoting linkage or toothed belt system to recall memories from his own youth.

“I have never felt as if I belonged here. On this Earth, or even in this body. I often shudder to think how the world might react should my mask ever slip. What they might think should they glimpse the cold, featureless object I have always felt myself to be...beneath this deceitful flesh.

How quickly they would turn on me, should any of them discover that the countenance I maintain conceals a mind which boils down to metal on metal. Churning pistons, belts and gaskets. Nothing more than machinery in there now, and I can remember no time when I was any different.

I daresay I make a passable old man, being that my indifference to human affairs is easily mistaken for the average codger’s grumpy disposition, but I was never properly a child. I hadn’t the time for toys or larks. Things of that nature seemed wasteful and frivolous to me, even then.

Naturally this alienated me from the other children, though I hardly related any better to the adults. I remember one day I was sent home and paddled over Father’s knee for some smart alecky answer I gave a teacher.

To hear Mother tell it, the teacher was asking each of us what we hoped to accomplish with our lives when we grew up, and whether our parents would be proud. I’m said to have responded that, if I accomplish what I hope to, it would hardly matter what my parents, my teacher, my peers or anybody else thought of it.

She scolded me for rudeness. I could see nothing rude about it. Then she added that by the sound of it, I planned to become some sort of nefarious scoundrel, and if that’s the case she might get an early start on reforming me before the police.

Reportedly I told her that, should I succeed, she would be in no position to do such a thing, nor would anybody else. That was enough to earn me the dunce cap until my mother arrived. A tale she would recount with raucous laughter over many a Christmas dinner afterward!”

I thought his remarks so cutting and uproarious as a lad that I repeated them to one of my own teachers and received a whupping for my trouble. Mother and Father weren’t as cross as I expected, especially when they learned the source of my quip.

What a strange thing to get to know a person so thoroughly after their passing. On top of which the more I learned about his life, the more curious a figure he became. He’d passed by most common developmental landmarks with total indifference. First kiss. First realization of mortality. First romance, first reckless adventure.

Passing through life like a tourist, or a ghost. As if none of it had anything to do with him. I could detect no apparent fear of missing out on what life has to offer, but instead a recurring certainty that none of it mattered to begin with. That human experience was yet another thing he regarded as frivolous.

His sole, all-consuming passion seemed to be the completion of this masterwork I now inhabit. As if it were some sort of ‘winner takes all’ gambit. Like if he could complete it within his lifetime, it would make up a thousand times over for every ounce of satisfaction he passed up along the way.

Yet now his bones lay still in a casket buried on our family plot, this ramshackle tower of rusting iron, gears, chains and pistons the only thing resembling a lasting legacy. I couldn’t see the grandeur in it that he clearly did.

Maybe he was crazy. It’s crossed my mind more than once. Easy to see how such manic, frenzied cogitation could burn one out prematurely. In which case all of his notes, however sophisticated, however suggestive of some master plan...would be so much sound and fury, signifying nothing.

No. Surely not. If that were the case he’d never have had so many successes in business. His grand scheme, whatever it was, could never have made it as far as this. The orphanage really was built. By dubious means, it seemed. But even so I now sat within tangible proof that he wasn’t all talk, nor smoke and mirrors.

He was going somewhere with this. A destination visible only to him, but so enticing as to render irrelevant everything else in life. It compelled me to believe that whatever he meant to accomplish with this project, it was of such far reaching importance that the whole of human civilization until then would have been little more than apes stacking stones in the mud.

A solution to poverty. To homelessness and hunger. A permanent end to human suffering, to hear him tell it. Isn’t that worth some sacrifices here and there? Isn’t it in fact worth the joyless, repetitive life devoted to mechanical innovation which grandfather led right up until they buried him?

I closed the book, laid back and made my best effort to fall asleep. I was certainly exhausted from the kitchen work. But my mind raced feverishly in defiance of my aching muscles, driving back the sandman with chair and whip every time he drew near.

I couldn’t leave it alone. I suppose I get that from him. After a few more minutes of futile efforts at relaxation, I finally gave up and headed out for a walk. At least that’s what I’d tell anybody who objected to my wanderings, I decided. Of course, what I really meant to do was explore.

The door, though it may better be described as a hatch, groaned slightly as I swung it open. I cringed, then peered out in either direction to find out if I’d aroused anybody’s attention. The corridor appeared empty as far as the light from the dim, flickering electric lamp above the doorway could reveal.

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