The Escapement Mechanism, Part 3
Notes and Introduction
At the mercy of memory. Familiar thoughts like holes punctured in clouds. Rained words pooling into unassembled sentences.
Wemly managed to free herself from dumbfoundedness, was just pushing herself off the vinyl chair, arms slick with sweat in perfect hand facsimiles, when Trudy succeeded in removing the locket. She slapped it into Wemly's palm.
A smile—relief, Wemly realized—spread across her grandmother's face. Trudy closed her eyes, exhaustion flooding in like salt water contaminating a fresh spring, but the clarity wasn't gone, not completely.
Wemly knew the locket. It was one of the few things to survive the transition from childhood memory to nursing home. It held a picture of both her grandparents before they were married, but after they were living on the military base. There is always a war, Wemly's grandfather was fond of saying. In the black and white photo, they both wore military issue, a fashionable wool that no longer existed.
Her grandfather still had his hair, and it was dark and cropped short. His half-smirk seemed to gloat—no scream—Look at who is on my arm! And even in, or maybe because of the uniform and her pulled back hair, the beauty of Trudy Gorland (née Gunn) transcended the photo. Though hidden under years and dementia scars, that beauty was once again leaking through in Trudy's gaze.
A gaze that was rapidly losing purchase, but the beauty of the the person, the fullness of her grandma, had already permeated the room. It hung like the heavy perfume Trudy wore before it was forbidden by the nursing home. If nothing else, this presence was what the nurses would notice when they came to change the sheets. It was unmistakable, this overflowing of a person.
After great effort, Trudy's grip on the present slackened, then stuttered, and she fell back into the pillow and murk that had held her for so many years.
Wemly squeezed the locket in frustration at the bliss and brevity, then slid the friction clasp open. In her memory the picture was viewed as if through the top of a frozen lake—clear, if slightly distorted. But seeing it again, Wemly realized her memories had been formed from a handful of youthful viewings, and had diverged from reality at a point in the past more distant than she realized. Especially her grandfather. The knowing smirk melted to awkward smile in her hands, the true fortune of his being with Trudy revealed.
The picture in the locket had also swung forward on a hinge, as if lifted off its setting by a thumbnail. A secret compartment. Working as intended, Wemly thought.
A smooth black rock, its material so obviously foreign and polymerized that only a non-geological process could have formed it, sat with such fit and purpose within the shell that it gave the impression one had been designed for the other.
As Wemly watched, a red dot bloomed in the center of the stone. Its formation so slow that she at first dismissed it as a visual artifact. But the intensity of the red grew between blinks and shakes of her head until it ripened to a red so brilliant Wemly looked away. It faded out just as slowly, until Wemly wasn't sure whether she was looking at the dot or the after image.
She turned the locket over above her palm. The stone held. She gave it a flick with her finger. The stone held. Finally, Wemly managed a nail between the stone and the locket, and was able to shuck it free into her palm.
Polished obsidian. Or glass. Cool, then warm, in time with the pulsing. Obviously a work of technology, it resonated deeply—fundamentally—inside Wemly. She watched transfixed as the period of the waxing and waning light changed, and adopted the rate of her own breathing. She took a deep breath and held it. The light glared back at her. She blew out the breath, and the light dimmed, only the blackness of the stone remaining as she forced herself not to breathe.
Wemly closed her eyes, feeling compelled to. House fires, car crashes, and drownings flickered weakly at the edge of her vision, which vanished with the opening of her eyes. She shivered to find Trudy hooked into her own gaze, nodding rhythmically, fighting her own body like a fish against a line.
The military had funded Trudy's work in memory and cognition long past any point of reasonable employment. Beyond the months when her grandfather had brought in a live-in assistant. The official word was early onset Alzheimer's, but it wasn't just conspiracy theorists who found the coincidence of her employment and eventual condition unlikely. There were whispered accounts of a laboratory accident, but Trudy was in no condition to resolve any disputes.
A tenuous connection to her grandma was what she held. Wemly felt an answer barely concealed, like the stone itself. Whatever she was holding had a deep connection to her grandma. It also began to itch, a predicament that Trudy seemed to understand as Wemly scratched at her palm.
Trudy tried to speak, but it came out a thick guttural drawl, and the frustration burned through their unbroken gaze. She began slapping the back of her neck with one hand, and pointing to the stone that Wemly held. This motion took an enormous effort from Trudy, her whole body twisting to accommodate it. Eventually it was too much, and she collapsed back into the pillows, the tenuous connection to Wemly severed.
Wemly shook Trudy gently, "Grandma?". And then again, louder, when there was no answer.
But it was clear what Trudy had been trying to communicate. Wemly placed the smooth stone against the back of her neck. The itching immediately stopped. The stone felt sticky, and as Wemly moved her head it pulled at the soft hairs of her neck. When she removed her hand, the stone stayed in place. She needed to pry with her fingernails to get it off again, and was surprised to see no remnants of glue or adhesive on the device.
Wemly's mouth was dry. Her hand holding the warm stone had started to itch again. She placed it back in the locket, and as she did noticed an inscription on the inside of the shell that she had missed in her initial excitement. It was a twenty five digit string, separated every five digits by a dash. Wemly had no idea what it meant, but it reminded her of an activation code for software, from the days when purchases were verified in that manner.
A nurse poked her head in. "Strange, right?" she asked, and then noticed Trudy sleeping. "Is she doing okay?"
Wemly could only agree.
"Was she able to say anything?" asked the nurse. "She kept trying. Her eyes were so alive. So awake." She considered, then added. "We even brought her a paper and pen, but it was futile. She couldn't make anything more than scribbles." She shook her head. "I never really get used to the swings." And then the nurse was halfway to the next room along the pattern of her shift.
Wemly wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, stood, and leaned close to give her grandma a kiss. "I'll figure it out," she said. Trudy had been trying to tell her what the stone meant. Wemly had no idea, but she wouldn't let her grandma down. She hadn't felt this motivated since the beginning of grad school.
The problem gripped her mind, cut through the cold, and deflected the snow that had started to fall. When Wemly arrived home, she was only aware of her hands because they were barely able to turn the key in the lock. We all break differently, but it's a collective decay, Wemly thought, and entered the inner warmth of her apartment.