002: Deus Ex Machina

Before the wedding reception ended, a sobered-up Kallen, fully aware of the trouble she’d caused, slipped away in disgrace. She was there to represent her company's HR department, a token of corporate goodwill, but had ended up throwing a tantrum and ranting against the very institution of marriage. She was in for a rough time when she got back to the office.

Fortunately for her, Kallen was an elf, and her parents were executives in Mithra Group’s HR department. No matter how badly she had behaved, she wouldn't be fired over something like this.

As for Hayden, ha, he never cared what the corporate elites thought of him. It was a moot point; they’d always see him as a low-life anyway. And with Kallen's outburst, no one was focused on the crazy things he had said earlier.

Why would the elites care about the drunken words of a plebeian?

"Uh, sorry for the trouble."

But Hayden wasn't a complete ingrate. Once Adam had pulled him outside the hall, he immediately realized the mess he'd made and dutifully apologized to his old friend.

"I can handle it. Besides, Kallen was the one who really caused a scene. Some of the guests actually found your drunken rant amusing. As a form of publicity, it might even be good for business."

Adam brushed it off, then asked another question.

"Are you sure you don't want to order a custom replicant? Think of it as an advertising fee for today's little drama. I can get you one at cost."

Hayden immediately shook his head. "Artificially mature a gene-modded infant and then brainwash it? That’s disgusting. Not my style."

"Then what's your plan? Like Kallen said, even with today's advanced arcane technology, we still can't create an AI with human-level emotions and intelligence."

A puzzled look crossed Adam's face.

"Magic isn't omnipotent. The most practical approach to strong AI right now is to use the blank slate of a human embryonic soul. Even a genius like you can't crack that problem on your own."

He had a point.

But Hayden, perhaps still buzzed from the wine, just snorted derisively. "You became a salesman right after graduation. You dare talk to me about this? I could give you a first-year required course problem right now, and you wouldn't know how to solve it!"

"Why do we love magic? Because magic is the power to grant wishes! No matter what the academics say, the essence of magic is 'I want to achieve something'! Let those self-limiting losers eat shit!"

Adam didn't get angry at the drunken tirade. Instead, his curiosity grew. "What are you hiding up your sleeve? Are you expecting some mysterious technology to just fall from the sky?"

Hayden didn't answer, just gave a cryptic smile. "You'll see. Soon."

He gave a jaunty wave and turned to head home.

"Hayden," Adam called out from behind him. "I'm now the Assistant Manager and New Project Supervisor for Mithra Group's New Atlas Business Division. I'm building my own team."

"Want to come work for me? I can offer you a five-figure monthly salary, at least. And a stable job at a major corporation would make it easier to find a girlfriend."

Wow, a five-figure salary. That sounded incredible. The average wage earner in New Atlas probably only made two thousand a month.

"A square peg doesn't fit in a round hole," Hayden refused. "Forcing it will only cause problems. I'm a man as free as the wind. I'm not cut out for the 996 grind."

He raised a hand and spoke a single word: "Ventus." The magic took hold instantly. His body dissolved into a gust of wind composed of billions of tiny molecules, floating out of the wedding venue and into the light rain of the New Atlas night.

"If I didn't know he was just too broke to afford the fee for a teleportation spell," Adam muttered to himself as he watched the wind disappear, "I'd actually think his little trick was pretty cool."

The wind that was Hayden zipped through the skyscraper jungle of downtown New Atlas, dodging busy sky-cabs, whipping past the new, sky-piercing Space Needle, and breezing by the high-rise luxury apartments that looked down upon the ant-like masses below, flying all the way to his home.

As he crossed the boundary of the city center, the scenery changed drastically. The buildings suddenly became squat and low, as if New Atlas, the Emerald City, that elegant giant, had been severed at the knees.

The stark contrast between New Atlas's districts was a microcosm of the world's class divide.

The city center was a well-maintained, modern metropolis of gleaming skyscrapers, beautiful parks, and flawless public services. The mansions of the rich and powerful rested on quiet hillsides, serene as poetry. Neon lights, as if flaunting a surplus of magical energy, blazed all night, adding to the endless glamour of this technological heart of the American Federation.

But the rest of the city was not so fortunate. This area was visibly poorer, more dangerous. The buildings were ugly and squalid, the residences mostly low-rise townhouses scarred with graffiti. The streets at night were dimly lit. Streetwalkers lurked in the shadows of lampposts, junkies curled up in doorways, and fat rats leaped from half-open dumpsters to scurry into the gutters on the other side of the road.

This was New Atlas's Bay District, one of the city's lowest, most decayed areas, just one step above a true slum. Just walking through here required courage; living here was another matter entirely. But Hayden's house was in this district. For one, someone like him, unaffiliated with any corporation and with no family ties, couldn't possibly buy a decent house. For another, the Bay District had a simple code not found in many other parts of New Atlas: "You don't fuck with me, I don't fuck with you (unless they're worth it)."

So, for the past five years, his kennel had been here: a simple, single-story bungalow surrounded by a fence, with one bedroom, one living room, a kitchen, and a storeroom. The living room was spacious, the bedroom had an attached bathroom, and the basement storeroom had been converted by Hayden into a magic workshop. For a bachelor, it was quite comfortable. The low-wage laborers and gangbangers living nearby knew not to mess with him, lest they be turned into frogs.

As the wind that was Hayden arrived at his doorstep, the spell dissipated. He felt his constituent molecules suddenly reassemble, slamming back into shape at an indescribable speed. It hurt, and the excessive amount of wine he'd drunk made him want to vomit. Flying as wind might look stylish, but it was incredibly uncomfortable. It was more trouble than a standard flight spell; at least when flying normally, you could see where you were going. But as wind? Each of your molecules has its own perspective, something the human brain can't properly process. You could only roughly guess where you were.

But true teleportation magic, which tore through space itself, was expensive. It required an astonishing amount of mana, a price generally only the elites could afford. So poor, broke mages had to turn themselves into wind, or a stream of energy, to move quickly over a distance before re-forming. The technique was difficult, few people knew it, it was unpleasant, risky, and not even as fast as teleportation. Its only benefits were its low mana consumption and the fact that it was slightly faster than a conventional personal flight spell.

Hayden fought down the urge to gag. He passed through his home's defensive wards, slipped inside, and shed the evening suit for a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He stretched to work out the stiffness in his muscles before heading down to his magic workshop.

If Kallen or Adam were to see what was in his workshop, they would be stunned.

Because there, on the central workbench in the basement, lay a mechanical doll in the shape of a young girl!

Her form resembled a human female of about eighteen. She lay supine on the workbench, eyes closed, completely still. Her hair had the luster of pearls, her beautiful face was perfectly symmetrical and flawless, her skin was as smooth and fine as silk. A slender waist accentuated a full bust, and her perfectly proportioned body possessed a certain inhuman beauty.

Which was only natural, as she was not human.

Beneath her soft, nano-dermal skin was no flesh and blood, but a construction of hundreds of millions of components: gears of all sizes, artificial muscle fibers, superconducting analog nerves, reinforced silicone, carbo-ceramic alloys, springs, alchemical circulation fluids...

"Hahahaha! Those two fools! They'd never have guessed—I started building my own clockwork wife a year ago!"

Still drunk, Hayden walked to the workbench and threw his head back with a maniacal laugh.

"Hahahaha! Adam! You think I had the balls to spout off at your wedding for no reason? It’s because I'm just one step away from finishing her!"

Anyone else would have thought he was an idiot. If Hayden hadn't been so drunk, he never would have said such nonsense.

But why had he started building this clockwork automaton a year ago?

The reason was actually quite simple.

One day, a year ago, Hayden suddenly realized that if he continued on his current path, there was a very high probability he would die alone.

Hayden was twenty-nine and had never even been in a relationship. It wasn't that he hadn't tried mixers, blind dates, or online dating. The result? Every time, he was met with a parade of monsters, with looks ranging from goblin to cyclops. It made Hayden wonder if he'd accidentally stumbled into a dungeon in the wild.

Of course, Hayden had tried at first. A cyclops might be huge, but maybe she was a good person on the inside? An orc might look terrifying, but perhaps she had a secret passion for flower arranging? Maybe a cheating bitch juggling eight guys at once would become a chaste and loyal woman after meeting him?

But reality doesn't work like that! Damn it!

Perhaps there were kind, gentle girls out there who weren't obsessed with social climbing and would be happy to live a carefree life with him. But the odds of meeting one were about the same as being hit by a meteor. The probability of running into a bad woman was much, much higher.

So, after simulating his life at thirty, forty, fifty, and beyond in his head, Hayden finally realized that his current path led to only one outcome: a life of extreme loneliness, devoid of any warmth.

Even if he lived to old age, his only companion would be a hospital bed, with no one to visit him, completely cut off from the concept of happiness. He would die in unimaginable agony, his tears long since dried up, unable to even cry out in pain.

A year ago, when he realized the horror of this, Hayden felt a profound shock and terror. That was why he made his decision a year ago: even if it meant spending all his savings, he would build the perfect clockwork bride. Because he couldn't go on like this!

Dating burned money, and marriage burned even more. And there was no guarantee of a return on that investment; it was more likely a bad woman would take all his money and run. So if he was going to burn money anyway, he might as well go for broke on a big gamble!

And so, he began his "Project: Clockwork Bride."

As Kallen had said, it wasn't hard to "just get a talking robot fleshlight."

Two hundred years ago, Edison the Great Inventor, in his quest to create a companion that could embody "ideal love," built the first clockwork automaton with a human-like appearance and movement. But such automatons were ultimately heartless. Though they looked and acted human, they were merely mimicking human behavior with clockwork cylinders, simulating a certain degree of emotional expression. They had no self, no soul, and thus could not embody the ideal love the Great Inventor had envisioned.

Edison's dream had fallen, but the technology of clockwork dolls was not lost. Over two hundred years, robotics technology had improved generation by generation, and software technology had taken a quantum leap. Now, many companies sold humanoid robots, from priceless custom-made clockwork idols to household servants affordable even for the middle class... and, of course, courtesan-bots for the legal sex industry.

But they were all still just machines simulating humanity with pre-programmed routines and emotion engines. They had enough intelligence to pass an old-fashioned Turing test, but they were, in essence, philosophical zombies. Most consumers didn't see this as a problem. Many were content to have a pet at home that could chat, do chores, and even gyrate its hips.

But Hayden didn't want that.

He wanted an ideal wife! Just like the dream of Edison the Great Inventor two hundred years ago!

But even if the body could be bought with money, what about the soul?

Hayden couldn't possibly design a breakthrough strong AI on his own. It wasn't his field, and even if it were, he couldn't do it alone. His major in college had been in the School of Evocation, and his thesis was on ancient magic. It sounded cool, but ancient magic had been rendered obsolete by modern arcanum. The world of magic was constantly evolving; an arcanist today was far more advanced than a mage from a thousand years ago.

Could the obsolete defeat the advanced? Could something that had been discarded actually be superior?

Impossible.

Even though Hayden hated the megacorporations, he admitted that they had the most advanced technology.

But while Hayden lacked the infinite resources of a big company, he had plenty of tricks up his sleeve. For every task, he had about five different ways to accomplish it, just as he could turn into wind to travel instead of teleporting.

So, Hayden had considered settling. He'd thought about ordering a high-end blank AI and raising it from scratch, which might have been good enough. A backup plan was similar to Adam's idea: using a living soul to drive the automaton. But where would he find an ideal soul? And even if he did, the difference between a flesh-and-blood body and a mechanical one meant it might not even work.

In the end, a living being was a living being, and a machine was a machine. That was common sense.

But today, perhaps because of the alcohol, and perhaps because of the conversations he'd had, Hayden had thought of a new, clever, loophole-exploiting method.

Isn't magic the power to grant wishes?

Hayden reached behind the doll's neck, inserted a platinum winding key into the keyhole hidden beneath her white hair, and turned it three times. The mana furnace deep in her chest began to hum, feeding energy into the mechanical body. With a nearly silent, low-frequency thrum, nano-runes glowed with an emerald light, indicating the machine was ready for activation.

She had a body and a power source. The only thing the doll lacked was a soul.

But no one knew how to create a soul, and Hayden was no exception.

So he was going to do something crazy.

"What? Adam, what did you say? I'm 'hoping for some mysterious tech to fall from the sky'? Fine! I'll tell you what, Adam!"

The wine going to his head, Hayden spouted nonsense as he grabbed a staff leaning in the corner.

"Anyone with a dream is amazing, and I can fly a plane drunk! Today, I'm gonna pray to the heavens and ask for an AI—!"

He waved his ashwood staff, shouting in a drunken fervor:

"Elelohim eloho elohim sebaoth! Elion eiech adier eiech adonai!"

"O, World! O, World! Hear my wish!"

As an expert in ancient magic, he was skilled enough to chant the spell fluently even while drunk—at least, he was fluent up until the wish itself.

"I wish for this doll to receive a soul that... loves me, loves me, especially loves me, uh, can't love anyone else, loves me unconditionally, will build a family for me, and loves me—!"

The mix of high-end liquors from the wedding had a serious kick. Their mana was still churning in his blood, making his wish come out as a jumbled, drunken mess.

But the magic still worked.

If someone had asked Hayden when he was sober what this magic was, he would have told them it was the oldest, most primal magic in the world. It was the magic of ancient legends, of wishing upon a magic lamp, of entrusting dreams to a miracle, of pulling riches from a cornucopia, of a fairy godmother conjuring a pumpkin carriage and glass slippers.

The most primal magic was, quite simply, the power to grant wishes.

Sounds great, right? But in reality, because primal magic was so raw and chaotic, there was no way to be sure if it would work, or how it would work. Its success rate was as low as that of a miracle.

One in a million? One in ten million? Or was it one in a hundred million? What were the actual odds of fulfilling a wish with this primal magic? No one knew, because it couldn't be effectively studied.

That was why, in ancient times, those who could wield magic were few and far between, worshipped as gods by others.

Today, modern arcanum could (in theory) allow even non-magic users to enjoy the benefits of modern technology. People who didn't understand magic could use magical items, and simple spells could be downloaded from the internet. As such, primal magic had naturally been phased out. With modern technology, who needed to bet everything on a completely unknown miracle?

So, almost no one in this era still believed in this most primal of magics. It had become mere superstition, like placing a relevant item next to your phone before a gacha pull in a game to increase your odds.

If Hayden hadn't drunk so much high-mana liquor at the wedding today, if the phrase "magic is the power to grant wishes" hadn't stuck in his head, if Adam hadn't taunted him about "hoping for some mysterious tech to fall from the sky"... he probably never would have attempted such an ancient and primal spell.

"Watch me pull a miracle on a single draw!"

He was still spouting drunken gibberish as he made his wish.

But the magic still worked, and it was stronger than any spell Hayden had ever cast in his life. Mana surged, shattering the staff in his hand. The shock was like a giant sledgehammer, making the veins bulge on his skin and his body contort. It washed over him like a tide, draining his life force, leaving him feeling cold all over. The agony of overcasting the spell wracked his body. The vital signs monitor on his wrist immediately reported a nervous system disorder, a racing heart, and rising blood pressure.

A maddening sense of omnipotence.

A terrifying sense of bliss.

He was seeing things that shouldn't be seen, hearing things that shouldn't be heard.

The released mana surged through the room. Blind, chaotic, indescribable colors beyond the scope of reason erupted with hurricane-force power, sending everything flying. A crazy, bizarre roar shattered countless jars and bottles. Hayden had no mana left; he could only brace himself against the impact.

Seven seconds passed, feeling like an eternity.

Then, the mana finally dissipated, and a miraculous silence filled the workshop again. Hayden's shoulders slumped. He propped himself up with one hand on his knee, gasping for air like a marathon runner.

But he was so shocked by what had just happened that the alcohol seemed to evaporate in a cold sweat. He remembered the foolish thing he'd just done and quickly looked up at the clockwork doll on the workbench.

The doll had opened her eyes.

Her emerald eyes adjusted their focus several times, as if startled from a dream. She looked at Hayden with an expression of surprise, a look that bloomed on her features like a flower on a dead branch, making her seem vividly alive.

Her initial movements were a bit stiff, but they quickly became fluid. She stepped off the workbench, landing as lightly as a feather on the concrete floor. Her gravity control system had activated, allowing her to take light, precise steps. A simple white garment, like a wedding dress, clothed her slender limbs.

Then, the clockwork doll bowed politely.

"Good evening, Master," she said, her voice as crisp and pleasant as a music box, a gentle smile on her face. "This one was created to serve you. My sole purpose is to love you, to grant your wishes and ensure your happiness."

——

Addendum: The Clockwork Key

This is not, of course, the power source for the clockwork doll, but rather its controller, functioning much like a car key.

It can only be activated by the master's unique clockwork key, and no other.