BONUS:

AN IRREPLACEABLE
EXISTENCE

1

Lord Voyevoda’s request necessitated a trip to the scrap metal yard. Many of the orders I’d received of late had been troublesome, especially those coming from his lordship. Apparently he was on the battlefield, driving tanks in the armored cavalry.

There were scrap metal yards north and west of the city of Cité, but the one up north tended to yield better finds. The upper class was concentrated in the ghettoes north and south. Although I lived east, the pass issued to me by City Hall afforded me free passage.

I ambled beneath the steel framework towering diagonally over the entrance of the yard and felt my eyes sting.

I squeezed my eyes shut. When I managed to look up, countless plumes were rising up from the cityscape shaped like an inverted minimido into the gray-blue sky. The jagged protrusions comprising the skyline were the famed chimneystacks of Cité. The sky would lose its blue luster in no time.

Why was this scrap metal yard stretching three kilometers square even called a yard at all? It had been a subject of debate since the first metal fragments were cast away here. I believe this place would more accurately be called a dump.

Probably because the first scrap metals discarded here were still strewn about, though they were displayed with some meaning and sentiment.

Others must have followed suit, as the stairs, which took me down a hundred meters to the bottom, were fashioned from steel beams stacked one on top of the next.

I turned right at the junk pile of coils, rusted generators, cracked condensers, and walked a ways past the mounds of obsolete computer motherboards towering on either side of me like mountain ranges, until I spied an inky silhouette in the shadows on the right.

The figure was veiled in haze, so I could not make out its arms or legs. Doubtful that it was a fellow scavenger on the hunt for precious metals, I stopped and waited for him to make the first move. Man or woman? Probably neither. Certainly non-humans were capable of thieving and killing.

As I debated whether to walk past or call out, a blue hand emerged from somewhere about the dark figure’s chest. Its gaudy blue hue served to heighten the theatrical and surreal air. But my curiosity lay in whatever the wiry index finger pointed at.

It was pointing toward the corridor on the left, much like the one from which this dark figure had emerged.

Trying not to appear terribly interested, I ambled before the corridor and stole a quick look. Though I’d intended only a glance, my eyes fastened upon the figure lying in the middle of the corridor about fifteen meters away.

I froze, not because the female figure was naked, but because her prostrate body disrupted the orderliness of the place. Her haphazard presence relegated the yard to a dump.

My attention instantly shifted to her body. Her gleaming black skin, the rivets hammered into her shoulders, elbows, and neck captivated my artistic sensibilities honed over forty-something years. The left arm was exquisite, but the right arm and neck dangled from the body, each barely held together by one rivet. There were crescent-shaped holes around the right elbow, knee, and ankle where the rivets had gone missing.

“Who created her?” I heard myself ask. My voice sounded distant.

The woman was perfect. Her finely burnished hair, graceful neck, a shiny black back that would reflect lightning, the curves from her hips down to the ankles were like a dream. What impressed me most was the beauty with which the rivets and screws had been driven. This particular craftsmanship was rivaled only by the 3,004th descendant of the Zaitan line, and myself.

Ah, just look at the workmanship of her face!

I glanced back to ask why the black figure had alerted me to this woman’s presence, but the figure had vanished.

When I drew closer and looked down upon the woman, I felt something wasn’t quite right.

She was not perfect. But it was not because of some flaw or damage.

Maybe something is wrong with her other side. I put a hand on her shoulder to sit her up, when I sensed the presence of others behind me.

They quickly surrounded me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice of the young woman clanged like an alarm bell.

“Nothing,” I answered, not even bothering to turn around. I knew what they were doing here. It wasn’t at all strange that a woman was among junkyard bandits. After all, we lived in an age where women won mixed-gender weightlifting competitions. Using the Tendo breathing method, women were capable of transporting a hundred, even two hundred kilos of scrap metal in their slender arms. Three women working in concert were capable of carrying over a ton.

“Nice find,” said the voice kindly. A faint scent of perfume wafted into the air. “But we had an eye on her first. You will have to leave her here.”

“Your voice sounds very hoarse.” Pulling the robotic woman’s arm over my shoulder, I drew her to her feet. Solving her mysteries would have to wait till I evacuated her to a more appropriate location. “It can’t be the effects of the smoke alone. You’d best have a doctor take a look at your throat.”

One of the bandits behind me kicked my female companion in the hip, which shook my shoulders.

“Please leave her here,” the female bandit requested again. She would likely apologize and ask for my forgiveness in that same gentle tone when she shredded me to pieces.

This was going nowhere. At this rate, we would only continue to inhale the filthy air from the city. “Here are my terms. Come to 1313 Yami Street in the Shin Shin District in two weeks, at which time I will give you—”

Before I could offer another woman in place of this one, the bandits cried out in unison, “Yami Street! Shin Shin District? Then you must be—”

“Master Craftsman Monde,” I answered. And before the second chorus of cries had died down, I slipped past my captors and turned around.

The bandits were all women wearing long dresses and gloves, no doubt daughters of good families living in the core wards. Their masks also appeared to be expensive—too expensive, in fact, for merely concealing their identities from witnesses to their bad deeds.

Before turning the corner with my prize, I said, “In two weeks then.” The bandits did not answer. The sky had turned violet from soot and smoke.

†

Upon returning to the workshop, I found Shwann inside. He was my part-time assistant. By “part-time,” I mean that he was not officially in my employ, so he came and went as he pleased. Still I did not refuse his help when he offered it. Shwann was as adept at fastening rivets and screws as I. All he needed was to improve his welding technique, and he might have passed for a twenty-year veteran of the trade.

As I suspended the woman from chains, I asked Shwann what he made of this creation.

“She seems odd,” he answered, exactly as I had expected. It was not that his answer was obvious. In fact, if you were to ask the craftsmen in the city, only one in a hundred would answer likewise—in other words, zero of them would, given how there were exactly fifty craftsmen approved by the city.

Listening to the beautiful squeak of the ceiling pulleys, I went about the work of securing the woman’s body in chains, a task that required the sensitivity of a poet, when a whistle issued forth from one of the speaking tubes hanging from the wall. It was a gentleman who’d called previously about an odd job too small to consider taking on. After inquiring his name as a matter of courtesy, I explained that I was busy and slammed the lid over the cone. I received no less than a thousand such minor requests each year.

I cast a long, unabashed look at the woman. The only time I’d felt any desire for a woman’s naked body was the month immediately after I’d fired up the coals in this workshop for the first time. Shwann still could not look at such a sight without blushing. It was this innocence that had compelled me to take him under my wing.

“Oh? Odd how?” I asked, the devil getting into me. His delicate face flushed again with embarrassment, imbuing him with a look of insolence.

Yet he did not fail me with his answer.

“The left side of the throat.”

I nodded my approval. There was indeed a tiny hole just above her carotid artery. In fact, there were two. Discovering them amid the jet-black gleam of the woman’s steel skin was no easy feat.

“What beautiful punctures,” he said, fascinated, as I tried to imagine what kind of punch and hammer was used to produce them.

No doubt the tools had been extraordinarily dense, sharp, and heavy. Were they tools from the so-called “stars in the sky” people were talking about? Shwann’s question brought me back from my reverie.

“What do you intend to do with her? Will you fill in the holes and restore her to her original pristine form?”

I shook my head, though that task might also have been to Shwann’s benefit. “No, not that.”

“Then why did you bring her here? Do you plan to use some of her parts to build Lord Voyevoda’s requested item?”

“The wound on this woman’s neck—wouldn’t you like to recreate the thing that carried out this exquisite workmanship?”

“Wasn’t it done with a punch and hammer?” he asked.

“To the eye, yes. But my instincts tell me otherwise. We must suspend our work for Lord Voyevoda. I will let his servant know immediately.”

“He will not be pleased. Forgive me, but Lord Voyevoda has been the greatest champion of your work.”

“In twenty years, the greatest champion I’ve never met.” I felt my lips curl into a self-mocking smile. No matter how much work he commissioned or the size reward he promised in return for my creations, I could not bring myself to warm to a supporter whose face I’d never seen and who always conducted his business via servants. Even his address was unknown to me. “I will deliver his order by the promised date. But we must work around the clock. You may leave if you’re not interested.”

“Not a chance.” Shwann rolled the sleeves of his white cotton shirt up to his elbows. The distorted reflection of his hands—hands too pale to know physical labor—danced like mystical creatures over the woman’s shiny black stomach. I was struck by the strangeness of the scene but knew not to whom, Shwann or the iron woman herself, this feeling should be attributed.

†

Our first order of business was to examine the wound on the woman’s throat.

Extrapolating the shape of the tool that produced these holes based on the depth and diameter, as well as their internal measurements, required a full day.

While it was all strictly conjecture, I stuck the drawing I’d sketched based on the collected data in front of Shwann’s nose. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know…”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

“But who would—why would someone do such a thing?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. It boggles the mind. But frankly, I’m not surprised. The kinds of jobs that enliven a craftsman are all like this.”

“Just what is it that the dark figure from the scrap yard wants you to accomplish?”

“Who knows? Perhaps I am already carrying out his plan without even knowing. In any case, if we begin to stray, we will need some redirection. Let’s pray that he will appear again when that time comes. What are you looking at?”

I peered down at Shwann’s hands. He was staring at my recreation of the wound.

“Master Monde, your rendering is brilliant as well. But this time…” He cast an admiring look at the woman’s neck. “Her wound is more beautiful.”

“Let’s get back to work.”

“On Lord Voyevoda’s item?”

“Fool.”

“But—” Shwann blurted out. “We know what put this mark on the woman’s throat. What more is there to do?”

“Are you satisfied? The thing that created this wound, which so enthralls you, is not what we guessed.”

“Well, no, but…” Shwann fell silent.

I fixed a hard look on his pale face. Whoever this young man was, it was unlikely he’d ever had to confront such a gaze. “Consider this your opportunity to prove yourself a full-fledged craftsman,” I said, envisioning that blue flame burning in every artist’s heart. My wife, when she was alive, used to chide me that it symbolized perversity.

“With pleasure, Master Monde. I swear by the gleam of Liber steel.”

“You will recreate the item that made this wound. I shall conceive the being that wields it. Only when we accomplish this will my ambition, and the wishes of my strange patron, become reality. Should your measurements be off by even a millimeter, the pressure applied on the chisel too strong or not strong enough, or the temperature of the coals even a degree off, the whole of my work will come to nothing. Whether we succeed in earning what will likely be a peculiar reward from a most peculiar patron or become the laughingstock of his world—rests entirely on your skill.”

Shwann’s knees appeared to buckle as the gravity of my words registered in his mind. I half expected him to fold under the pressure and run.

But my mysterious young assistant—whose past was unknown to me—put a hand on his minutely detailed gold buckle, swept back his gold locks with his other hand, and answered exactly as I had expected. “On the gleam of Liber steel and my soul, you have my word.”

2

What Shwann made of this task, I did not know. I only know that he did not take this challenge lightly.

First, he recreated the deadly weapon by pouring molten iron into the woman’s wound. Gauging the eutectic temperature and just the right moment to remove the objects from the mold requires no small amount of skill and concentration even for me, but Shwann managed it deftly.

The moment the items were submerged in the vat of distilled water, clouds of steam hissed and billowed in the air, forming a faint rainbow in the corner of the workroom. Shwann and I stopped for a moment and stared, mesmerized by the color spectrum arching across the room until it faded like a mirage.

As I looked down at the tiny items on the tray, I heard Shwann ask from behind, “What do you think they are?”

“I haven’t a clue,” I answered. In all my years as master craftsman, never had I seen anything that was so outside my realm of knowledge and experience.

Two objects, no more than two centimeters long, with pointed ends. What in the world could they be?

“Find out how these two might best be fitted,” I said, offering what I thought to be the next plausible step.

“Might I employ the services of a metal burnisher first?”

“Yes, all right.” I nodded, trying to conceal my embarrassment. It had completely slipped my mind! Once cast into shape, the metals had to be carefully polished by the hand of an expert. The god of smithing would never forgive me for such an elementary lapse in logic.

Ever since I had chosen the path of craftsman, my metal burnisher had always been Shwalde, a woman from the Yufu district, where the rowhouses stretched ten kilometers like dominoes.

The combustible engine popped and wheezed as the steam car carried us to a street lined with brick tenement houses.

The old woman, who was over three hundred years old, welcomed us into her cramped apartment home on the top floor of one of the tenements.

“Now, what are these odd things you’ve brought me?” Shwalde asked suspiciously. Cité’s most skilled burnisher took the deadly weapons in her hands and examined them, squinting beneath the colored light streaming in through the stained glass skylight in the ceiling.

“Any idea what they are?” I asked as if we’d met for the first time.

“I seem to recall a very long time ago…” Shwalde shook her head. “No, perhaps not. I’ve become forgetful in my old age. Still…”

“Still?”

“I can’t shake this feeling that they’re very dangerous. I’ll take extra care in polishing them.”

“I shall be most grateful.”

After Shwalde promised to finish the job within three days, I stood from my chair to part ways.

But the old woman did not follow. Her head bobbed against her chin first and then the rest of her body fell forward onto the table without a sound.

The poor woman was as light in my arms as if she were made of tinfoil, as Shwann helped me carry her to her bed. Thankfully, she came to before we had to give her water and medicine, which was a great relief to us.

“It’s my lungs,” Shwalde explained. “But don’t you worry, I’ll finish the job as promised.”

“Can we find you some medicine?”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried already? Never mind that, would you mind bringing them over here, lad?”

Shwann grabbed the weapons from the table and placed them in her wrinkled hands.

Saying nothing, I watched her fingers slowly close around them.

“I am at peace,” Shwalde said, as if in a dream. By the looks of her, it appeared to be a good dream. “What we have here seems to be very dangerous and precious at the same time. Why do they calm me so? Now how much longer are you going to stare at me in my sorry state? Go on home.”

†

Upon receiving word on the morning of the appointed day, Shwann headed out for the old woman’s home.

When my assistant returned several hours later, I was studying the liquid metal bubbling from the window of the smelting furnace, pleased with the exceptional quality of the coal and iron he’d procured this year.

“Shwalde has been taken to the hospital,” Shwann informed me upon his return. Holding a small package with both hands in my direction, he continued, “She gave this to me at the hospital. She was clutching it in her arms and did not let go until she saw me.”

I took the package and asked, “What do you think it is?” despite knowing the answer. I felt a desperate need to achieve some modicum of mutual understanding.

I set the package on the worktable and opened it. The tiny lethal weapons glinted inside. Was the fact that I had not yet reached Shwalde’s age the reason why the burnished items did not appear any more sinister?

I refrained from asking Shwann’s opinion.

“I believe I know how they are fitted,” my assistant said a bit bashfully.

“Oh? And?”

“I made a model out of clay and plaster. May I show it to you?”

“Of course.”

As Shwann turned on his heels to retrieve the item, the doorbell jangled violently.

I hurried to the several dozen speaking tubes sticking out of the wall, removed the lid covering the cone and tube connected to the entrance, and asked, “Who’s there?”

“We made your acquaintance at the scrap metal yard up north a week ago,” answered a clarion voice. An image of the ladies in their long white gloves and elegant dresses floated into my mind. The high-rise district, from which they came, held lavish balls every night.

After waving Shwann off, I said into the speaking tube, “Forgive me, but I have nothing to offer you in exchange for the woman. You’ll have to wait another week.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do.”

Several seconds later, the building was rocked by a loud explosion. The heavy thud of the outer door falling inward shook the speaking tube in my hand. The outer door was made of iron. Just how had the young ladies gotten their hands, so delicate that they might break, on such a large quantity of high explosives?

The door separating the workshop from the residence was three times thicker than the outer door. I undid the lock and waited for Shwann.

Boom! The door shook.

The door buckled inward, as cracks formed around the hinges and streaked across the wall. Boom!

The door fell with a dull thud.

A woman made of steel stepped over the rusty fallen door and rushed into the workshop first. She was a meticulous female recreation down to every last eyelash and strand of fluttering hair. The workmanship on her jet-black skin, despite paling in comparison to Shwalde’s technique, was extraordinary.

“Whose creation is this?” I asked the shadows in flowing dresses standing behind the steel woman.

“A craftsman who works for me,” answered an exceedingly beautiful girl. I was blinded by the brilliant glare of the stone hanging from her necklace. It was not an adamantine spar, but a gem. “Now how about returning the other woman to me?”

“I haven’t finished examining her yet.”

“That’s a matter of your convenience. I insist you honor our agreement.”

“According to our agreement, I still have another week.”

“I’m afraid you will have to accommodate our schedule. The woman is being sold earlier than expected.”

“What am I to do?” I cried out, gripped by a sudden worry over the girl’s future. “Now look, it’s not too late. There’s still time for anyone who wants to leave. You must understand you are about to rob a craftsman.”

A wave of unrest stirred among the young women.

A diminutive shadow quietly crept back toward the doorway. It was a girl wearing a red jewel at her chest.

“Traitor! Turncoat!” cried a chorus of shrill voices.

“We let you into our group, you ungrateful wench. You lower district girls are rotten beyond saving!”

Tears rolled down the girls’ faces.

“Get her!”

The steel woman lunged at the traitorous girl. As the girl tried to escape, the android grabbed her arms with one hand, pulled her close, and wrung her neck.

The red jewel from dead girl’s chest clattered on the ground.

“We wept for her,” the girls turned to me and said as if in defense of their friend’s cruel end. Then with the steel woman leading the way, one by one, they stepped across the fallen door and entered the workshop. When the last of the intruders cleared the door, I raised my hand.

The door was lifted upright and back in its original position.

As the girls cried out in disbelief, I heard Shwann call to me from behind.

“What is it?” I asked without turning around.

“According to my calculations, this.”

I felt something heavy being placed in my outstretched hand.

The girls’ whispers turned to gasps as I watched their elegant silhouettes dance like a mirage. Suddenly, the look in their eyes wavered from menace to terror and another emotion.

One of the girls cried out, prompting the steel woman to march toward me.

My only worry was that the furnace door would not open on command, but my invention worked like a charm.

I pressed the button on the remote control handed to me by Shwann and watched the molten metal pour down from the smelting furnace and over the steel woman. The red heat spread across her black skin. Her hand, dripping steel like blood, reached out and came within a finger-length of my chest before receding along with the rest of her melting body into the cascade of liquid metal. Within seconds, she disappeared into the orange-colored current flowing toward the door. For many years, the cement floor of the workshop had been severely slanted toward the entrance and was badly in need of repair. So terrified was I by my own prospect of death that I did not notice the shrieks of the girls being burned and swallowed by the lava flow that swept them screaming out of my workshop.

“Such a cruel turn…” Shwann muttered.

Though I might have ignored him, I asked, “Do you think so?” curious about how he might answer.

“No.” His unmitigated response was filled with a greater brutality than I possessed. It was in this moment that I intuited this city would in time become home to the greatest craftsman in history.

†

Soon, a rumor floated around the city that investigators had taken up the case of the disappearance of the young women. The rumor was probably true. I didn’t give a damn. After being swept up in the molten flow and into the drainage pipes, their skin and bones should have ended up in the “roving lake” that is said to exist somewhere belowground.

From the time the sun rose in the violet smoke-filled sky to sundown, I spent my days staring, with unflagging fascination, at Shwann’s creation.

One day I asked, “What do you think they are?”

“I believe they’re teeth,” was Shwann’s answer. The two pointed objects that had so beautifully left their mark on the woman’s throat were fitted on either side of a steel model of a dental arch.

“I believe you’re right. But have you ever seen such vicious bestial fangs in your life?”

“No.” Shwann’s green eyes were lit with curiosity. “But there is no mistaking. These are what left the marks on this woman here.”

“Exactly. By God, I am stumped. No human that I know has fangs like these. Which is why I am thinking about creating a human that might rightly wield these teeth.”

My young assistant was struck speechless, but only for a moment. “That’s—that’s incredible, Master Monde. I hadn’t even considered such an idea. But you will be bringing into existence a being not of this world, an act Lord Voyevoda strictly forbids.”

“Again with Lord Voyevoda. In the past, thousands of craftsmen died by the guillotine for resisting the edicts of a certain higher noble—beheaded for refusing to aid House Voyevoda’s effort in the Million Year War against an indeterminate enemy. I refuse to cower against such tyranny. On my name and honor, I will neither cower nor back down. Shwann, if you do not feel likewise, I bid you leave now.”

The young man took one step back and bowed his head deeply. The invincible smile that came across his face was the only answer I needed.

From that day began what I recognized as the challenge of a lifetime.

Two teeth must form the basis of an entire being.

From the shape of the lower and upper jaws, facial form to the size of the nasal and ocular cavities—we could not be even one millimeter off.

Holing myself up in the musty library, I pored over tomes written by the sages of antiquity and, using a calculator and protractor that were heretofore of little use me, extrapolated the exact measurements of each of the required parts.

On the eve of our appointed day to begin casting, Shwann and I sat at the table and stared in silence at the teeth.

As the sky turned from violet to blue, the black teeth gleamed in the moonbeams filtering in from the skylight. What the girls must have felt when they’d first discovered them!

Suddenly, Shwann snatched the black teeth off the table and shot a piercing gaze at the fangs. He was not yet a full-fledged craftsman. I caught his hand trying to sink the teeth into his own neck and slapped him across the face. When I slapped him for a seventh time, Shwann came back to himself.

“What…what did I do?” he groaned, to which I shook him by the shoulders and said, “Don’t. You must never repeat what you just attempted. Only the creature that wields these teeth is permitted such a violent act.”

“Yes, I understand now.”

I stroked the boy’s hair, pushing my fingers through his gold locks like a hydraulic tank mowing down reeds.

“Perhaps it would have been kinder to send you back to your family,” I muttered, looking up at the purple constellations through the skylight in the bedroom. “But no. I don’t know where your parents are. I’m not even certain you have parents. In the first place, the very concept of parents is foreign to me. I was a test tube baby, you see. Though I do not know the female and male donors, I harbor no resentment. At least, they had talents worthy of passing on to me.” Whether Shwann understood or even heard me at all was a mystery. When I turned back from my soliloquy, the lad had bundled himself in blankets next to me and was sound asleep as if he were not even breathing.

†

The next three months of suffering to complete the face is certainly worth chronicling here.

When it came time to mold the facial skeleton, I began to doubt my own talents. If my measurements and imagination proved accurate, the completed face should look exactly like the drawing before me. But was I skilled enough to carve these same lips, nasal bridge, eyes, and above all these very pupils into steel?

I must have considered abandoning my name, rank, and workshop and running away to the oft-rumored neighboring city over a hundred times.

The chisel in my hand trembled relentlessly as I carved the cheekbones, and the lips that I’d managed to sculpt after much agony let out a scornful laugh audible only to me. The eyeballs reflected the image of a middle-aged man balled up in a fetal position in a corner of the workshop, terrified by the enormous task before him.

But it was this task that also saved me.

Exhausted, Shwann fell asleep with his arms and head spread over the table cluttered with my many failed attempts to produce a face. With more faces scattered about his feet, Shwann looked like a gravedigger who’d enjoyed a night of merrymaking with skulls in a cursed underground cemetery.

He came in the dead of night. I heard the door creak open, but I was too hopeless and exhausted to raise my head.

I sensed the visitor bypass the countless faces scattered about, stop before my desk, and take up my latest creation that I’d set down next to me.

“Exquisite,” I heard him say.

I lifted my weary head. Was there a savior that reached out to every man drowning in the depths of despair? Even if that savior was a faceless specter shrouded in a shadowy cloak?

“You have my esteem and trust in your abilities. You must continue the work you have started. Here is my payment for your troubles.”

I glimpsed a blue hand—the same blue hand I’d seen at the scrap metal yard—withdraw a satchel from the shadows of his cloak, and I felt myself warming to this black figure at last. The satchel left on the desk contained fifty gimli coins.

After watching the shadow stride out into the dark gray world, I strained to stand.

Somehow I staggered to my feet.

I shambled over to the table where Shwann slept.

“Let’s get back to work,” I said. My assistant picked himself up without complaint.

Three days later, the face was complete. Then on a snowy day three months later, I hosted an unveiling ceremony for my creation.

Shwann was the only audience in attendance. The black figure had not visited again since that night three months and three days prior.

After Shwann alone applauded the unveiling, he gazed at the finished product and asked, “Does such a creature exist?” His voice had the hollow ring of a man for whom the answer was obvious.

With his hair combed neatly back, his face exuded a refinement rarely seen in upper-class society. The well-to-do citizens of Cité might have seen it differently.

I’ll say no more about his visage. The parts I had labored over the most were the ties and wrinkles of the cloak. I doubted the being himself would complain about my craftsmanship.

His forward-bent stance with one foot forward and arms crossed over his chest had also been extrapolated from the fangs.

At first glance, he looked as human as you and I, from his hairstyle to his facial features, his cloak and the garments underneath. Yet no human grew fangs the likes of which this creature wielded now.

“So these are the fangs that punctured the woman’s throat,” said Shwann, haggard. I nodded. “But for what purpose? There is absolutely nothing to be gained, that I can think of, from doing so.”

“Why don’t we ask the victim directly?”

Shwann gasped, perhaps not thinking to ask.

“Bring the woman to me,” I said, but Shwann shook his head.

“She’s not here. She has been missing since yesterday.”

I stared at my assistant’s drawn face and asked, “Has this happened before?”

“Yes,” he answered. “While we were working on the face, she sometimes went into the other room. But she may have slipped out of the house several times this last month. And I say may because she has always returned to her room after two or three days, and I have not actually seen her outside.”

“Why do you suppose she’s run away?”

“I imagine she doesn’t want to be wounded again.”

I nodded in agreement and asked, “Do you think she will return soon?”

“There’s just no telling, although I understand this is rare.”

“Do you think you can find her?” I asked, reluctant to order him outright.

Shwann bowed and hurried out of the workshop straightaway.

Within ten minutes, the front door burst open and a gang of police officers stormed into the workshop.

“May I help you, officers?” I asked, affecting civility.

An officer distinguished by his spiral moustache stepped forward and unfolded a metallic-colored document. “By order of the court of Cité, we are here to search the residence of Master Craftsman Monde on Yami Street, Shin Shin District. We have a report filed by ninety-five-year-old Ver Non of 22,605,984 north high-rise district, claiming that his seventeen-year-old niece Ayla Non and nine friends disappeared three months ago after visiting your home…”

I felt my lips curl almost imperceptibly.

†

I had not reported the deaths of the female bandits. Though an interrogation would no doubt find me justified in my actions, clearing my name would take some time, especially against the word of a well-to-do citizen of the high-rise district. There was also the risk that the police might have been bribed. Even if the truth were revealed in time, that might be after I’d been tortured, with molten lead poured into my bloody back at the hands of the police.

I had only one option. Death. But it would afford me the time I needed before my execution.

I interrupted the bearded man from pronouncing the date of my so-called questioning and confessed to the charges. “I confess to the murder of the women as charged. I understand that the proper punishment for my crime is death. But I wish to exercise the second of three privileges accorded all confessors—two weeks of unconditional probation.”

After the bearded man agreed to my terms, I was made to sign several documents and was spared immediate arrest.

All I could do now was wait.

As the day wore into night and still Shwann did not return, I began to wonder if I’d sent him on a fool’s errand.

I woke up in the dead of night for some unknown reason. I crept out of my bedroom and into the workshop.

A mysterious presence stood in the corner of the room, where the steel woman lay crumpled at his feet trying to back away from the shadow’s clutches.

I called out my assistant’s name, but he did not appear.

“So you have returned…of your own volition,” I said to the woman. Naturally, she did not answer. “You escaped on your own and chose to return on your own. For what unearthly reason? Just what is it about this,” I said, gesturing toward the fanged being, “that so terrifies and attracts you? I can only think that you too are some unreal presence who is connected somehow to this—my unreal creation.”

I left the couple in the workshop and returned to the main house.

Shwann soon returned from his search, hanging his head. “I could not find her.”

I led the lad into the workshop, whereupon he gawked, dumbfounded at the sight of the steel woman cowering before my fanged creation. After I explained that she had returned here on her own, Shwann shot me an admiring gaze and said, “How I aspire to your skill, Master Monde. I hope to become the kind of craftsman capable of bringing the unreal into being someday.” He ran a tender hand along the woman’s steel skin, until his fingers stopped at the side of the neck, where the mystery had all begun and would take another turn.

I noticed the cause of his consternation before Shwann spoke. “Master Monde, next to the holes…are more puncture wounds.”

On the volcanic flames of Yoga, I swear that the punctures were not there when I had found her earlier. “These must be new. Apparently the same forbidden act is being repeated in our absence.”

“For how much longer?”

“I do not know.”

“For what purpose?”

When I did not answer, Shwann walked calmly toward the worktable and snatched up the hand drill. Before I could intercede, he plunged the drill into his neck. Drawing it out, Shwann tilted his neck so that I might see. “Anything different?”

“No,” I answered. I detected only a tiny discoloration on his milky skin but nothing that might reveal any earthly reason for anyone to puncture a woman’s neck.

“What now, Master Monde?”

“I imagine our client will be by to collect them.”

“These beings belong here,” said Shwann, shooting me a defiant look for the first time. “This fanged creature is your masterpiece.”

“I have already been paid a fee.”

“You must not,” said Shwann, his tone growing angry. “I cannot bear to see you hand over your creation—no, the product of our first collaboration, however small my part, to some stranger.”

“Only when we deliver our products to the client do we earn the right to call ourselves craftsmen. Apparently your time under my apprenticeship has been wasted.” Then, trying to suppress any hint of sentimentality, I bade him never to darken my door again. Shwann opened his mouth as if to speak. Had he appealed to our relationship, I might have gone to my grave despising him. But the young man had more dignity than that. Saying nothing, Shwann took one step back, bowed deeply, and showed himself out of my workshop.

†

It was two days later that my client arrived at last.

The metallic couple stood before the black-shrouded visitor, as ghostly blue flames from the gas lamps danced off their steel skin.

“I am greatly satisfied. A recompense for your labor.” The black figure dropped a heavy satchel on the table.

I slid the satchel back and said, “I’m afraid I have no use for money.”

“So I have heard. I regret the trouble I have caused.”

“Then perhaps you’ll answer one question.”

“Please.” The visitor bowed, which aroused a strange feeling in me. I know now that it was a paradoxical feeling. Something told me that this man was incapable of displaying such deference.

How could this be? It was the familiar gesture of a man I knew well.

“Your previous visit also took place when my apprentice was gone.” The black figure might have pulled away had I attempted any large movement. Instead I stepped on the pedal that I’d rigged before my client’s arrival, and a hook swung down from the ceiling and tore off the hood shrouding his face. I had calculated the trajectory of the hook according to the man’s presumed height.

Recognizing the face, I grunted, “What is the meaning of this?”

“Who is it that you see?”

“Shwann.” What was he doing shrouded in a black overcoat?

“Yes, that’s right.” The young man smiled.

And then innumerable footsteps surged like a tide from the entrance, and a mob crashed through the door. There were more of them this time. The policemen that packed into the room exceeded a hundred.

Shrouded in black, Shwann remained collected as one might expect, and I too remained perfectly still, this time stunned by another face that confronted me. I uttered a name I did not expect to repeat. “Shwann?”

“That is the name of your apprentice.” Shwann brushed back his blue cloak, revealing gold insignia on the shoulder and chest of his armor underneath. Engraved on his chest was the insigne of a noble family that might be forever emblazoned in anyone’s memory.

It was the insigne of House Voyevoda.

“My name is Schranz, the 249,974,031st Lord of House Voyevoda,” said Shwann solemnly. “I became your apprentice because I thought it a shame to lose your skill and these creations with no one to succeed you. Your creations may serve my House in battle, but I will not allow them to pass into the hands of anyone who refuses to show his face.”

When I turned to where Shwann pointed, the second black-shrouded Shwann had pulled his hood over his face. “Forgive me, but I cannot reveal my identity at this time.”

Stepping forward, Shwann—or Lord Voyevoda—grabbed hold of the man’s hood and cried in disbelief the moment he pulled it off. The shouts of the policemen and my own that followed shook the workshop.

The black-shrouded figure now revealed a face that was mine. “Who do you see now?” he asked.

“Master Monde,” Shwann gasped.

“Indeed, I am he.”

The eyes of everyone in the room ricocheted between me and my doppelganger in the black shroud, as Shwann said, “But which is—”

“Do not be alarmed,” said my double as he pulled the hood over his face again. “Who am I now?” He pulled back the hood, and it was Shwann again. “And now?”

As he pulled the hood on and off again, he assumed the face of the policeman next to Shwann. And then the policemen next to him, and next to him.

Before any of us recovered our senses, the man, his face shrouded in the hood again, said, “I am each and every one of you. As well as the selves you do not know, and the totality of the worlds you have yet to know. One such world desires your two creations as its own. There, they together shall become an irreplaceable existence in the world’s history.”

“Where is this world you speak of?” asked Shwann in a thread-thin voice.

“I do not know, for my part is but to collect them and send them on their journey.” A blue hand rose and beckoned.

The policemen cleared a path, and my two creations rose several centimeters from the floor and glided to their places on either side of the black-shrouded figure.

Suddenly, Shwann swung his right hand over his head and brought down the gold knife and plunged it into the black figure’s chest.

“Now if you will excuse us.” The black figure bowed. The knife in his chest quivered. As the figure turned and headed for the door, the two steel shadows followed. No one dared pursue or stand in their way. We had all been paralyzed by terror.

As I watched the steel woman drift past me, I felt as if a spike had been driven into my eye.

My shock did not dissipate for a long while after they left and the echo of their footsteps faded. “Did you see?” I asked Lord Schranz Voyevoda—no, Shwann—my entire body dripping in a cold sweat. “What will befall the world after their arrival? I fear its history will be a cursed one.”

“What did you see?” Shwann asked.

Try as I might to answer with the dignity of a master addressing his apprentice, my voice quivered. I said, “The woman also grew fangs.”

†

In the end, my fate traced a path up the platform steps to the guillotine. The young lord did not appear at my beheading. When the cold blade was brought down upon my neck, I felt gratified for my fortunate end.

I intuited that those who would encounter my creations would never be so fortunate as to greet a death as peaceful and swift as mine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba in 1949. He graduated from the Aoyama Gakuin University of Law and, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, began publishing supernatural fiction in the early 1980s. One of the most prolific authors in the field, Kikuchi has published over three hundred books and still produces multiple novels per year. He has enjoyed international success as a novelist, and much of his work has been adapted for manga and anime. Kikuchi is the author of the ongoing series Vampire Hunter D. Wicked City, A Wind Named Amnesia, and Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula number among his works available in English.

HAIKASORU

THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE

VIRUS: THE DAY OF RESURRECTION
—SAKYO KOMATSU

In this classic of Japanese SF, American astronauts on a space mission discover a strange virus and bring it to Earth, where rogue scientists transform it into a fatal version of the flu. After the virulent virus is released, nearly all human life on Earth is wiped out save for fewer than one thousand men and a handful of women living in research stations in Antarctica. Then one of the researchers realizes that a major earthquake in the now-depopulated United States may lead to nuclear Armageddon …

SELF-REFERENCE ENGINE
—TOH ENJOE

This is not a novel.
This is not a short story collection.
This is Self-Reference ENGINE.

Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order. Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two dead Freuds. Note your position in space-time at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri. Remember that the chapter entitled “Japanese” is translated from the Japanese, but should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed.

From the mind of Toh EnJoe comes Self-Reference ENGINE, a textual machine that combines the rigor of Stanislaw Lem with the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges.Do not operate heavy machinery for one hour after reading.

AND ALSO FEATURING WORK BY HIDEYUKI KIKUCHI

THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE
—EDITED BY HAIKASORU

A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese! Includes Hideyuki Kikuchi’s “Mountain People, Ocean People.”

WWW.HAIKASORU.COM