The Escapement Mechanism, Part 10
Wemly barely slept that night. The device was probably for defence: for fleeing, for escaping her surroundings. Was it some sort of wearable explosive? The thought hitched her breath, which the device had synced to so effortlessly. Had holding it been temping fate? What if she took a deeper breath, and held it longer—a minute? What was a reasonable timeframe before death was assured and detonation took place, especially if critical information was involved?
It was possible she was close to becoming a suicide bomber by accident and she imagined the news trying to make sense of her life: searching the apartment for an explosives lab; a reporter in black re-contextualizing the mundanity of her life as a radical with more zeal than skill, another brilliant but fundamentally cracked scientist; a frantic search through her online presence, hunting for the link to extremism that would tie the story together.
Maybe her grandma had been just lucid enough to remember that final functionality, and unable to manage it herself, or perhaps not even thinking of the ramifications, tried to get Wemly to activate it. To be the conduit of her permanent escape.
Wemly tried to forgo the endless speculation and focus on the facts. Approach it like the scientist she had trained to become, and that Trudy had been. No matter its purpose, she had an interface that had to be supplied by the escapement mechanism running on her monitor and responding to her keyboard through a technology that was currently unknown.
Even if she never discovered the true purpose of the device, understanding the interface alone would be worth it. She wasn’t the business focused member of the lab, but even she was aware it would be worth a fortune if she figured out how it worked.
She dreamed that night of trying to hold on to her grandma’s locket as it slipped through her fingers and out into the infinity of the solar system.
In the lab the next day, she brought up the interface while Utsab worked in an apparent flow state. She glanced around, feeling observed, but Utsab remained oblivious and no one else was around. It was just her conscience, guilty for conducting unauthorized work in the lab.
The display had three windows. At top left was a simple grey box with the word, “Default”. It appeared to be a drop-down menu, but when Wemly clicked the arrow, there was no response.
The second window at top right was labelled, “Attachment”, and had a single row of math equations, or maybe a single equation that wrapped within the window and continued past it, complete with a grey scroll-bar straight out of the 90s interfaces Wemly remembered from her youth on her grandparents’ computer.
The third window was smallest and hovered untethered below the others. It was a single frame with a radio-button choice: Test / Run. Test was selected. Wemly clicked on “Run”, and was satisfied to see her selection acknowledged with a darkening of the button. There didn’t seem to be a means of saving her choice, and nothing happened following the switch.
Utsab hadn’t paid her any mind, but Wemly still observed him while he worked. Focused. Headphones blocking the world and locking him in. He had a clearly defined purpose and was pursuing it, while she had a defined destination with no clear path to it.
Though it was mid-morning, the window above Utsab let in only a weak metallic light, the surrounding buildings blocking out most of the sun. Wemly was debating whether it was a was deep blue or dark mauve, when the interface to the escapement mechanism appeared on the window, like it was the monitor connected to her computer.
She couldn’t believe it; she hadn’t done anything to summon it, and tried to blink it away, but the Escapement Mechanism display remained. Wemly glanced at her computer to verify she wasn’t insane. Her monitor was completely black. When she returned her focus to the window, the interface had disappeared from it too.