The load roar of a stomach growling wakes me up.
“Hngh?” My vision is blurry, but I look around the room. Tak is still sitting in her chair, hands covered in oil as she’s brushing each component of my watch with a toothbrush. “How long,” I yawn, “have you been at this?”
She doesn’t respond.
“Hey,” I reach over to tap her shoulder.
“AAH?!” She drops her items and they fall to the table, the sealed bottle of oil tips over as well, and she nearly falls out of her chair trying to back away. “W-who, how did-you’re!” She stares at me for a moment, then her face softens. “Oh, you’re the guy who gave me the watch.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“You were asleep?”
I shake my head, “how long have you been working on my watch?”
“Uh… I dunno. I don’t have a watch, funny enough.”
“Have you figured out what’s wrong with it?”
“Ahhhh, no.” She settles back in her chair and returns to work, scrubbing oil on everything. “I mean, I’ve determined that the internals are fine. Not a gear broken or anything like that. Uhh, there was some rust though, and it looked like you’ve never cleaned the insides-“
“Because I’ve never once thought to take it apart and clean the insides.”
“-exactly! So I’m just doing that now.” She fully brings her attention back to her work.
“So what made my watch stop working?”
She doesn’t answer.
I tap her shoulder, causing her to jump, “y-yes? What do you want now?”
“What’s causing my watch to not work?”
“Oh, well, the leading theory is that piece there,” while holding a toothbrush, she points her pinkie at a silver-colored piece of metal, shaped like a coin. “That’s the battery. I’ve got a device in isle four, cabinet two, shelf one, box one. It’ll scan how much juice the battery has. If I’m right, and I’m sure I will be since there’s no other reason for your watch to not be working, it’ll reveal that the battery is dead. From there, I’ll either recharge or replace it.”
I tap my fingers on the arm of the chair, “and how long with that take?”
She shrugs, “I ‘unno. I still have to replace the glass window since there’s a scratch, the paint on numbers 4, 5, and 12 are rubbed off a little, there’s a dent in that piece over there, and I’m pretty sure I can rearrange the innards to remove three gears, without suffering any loss in time-keeping capabilities.”
“What if I said I don’t care about any of that, I just want you to make it track time again?”
“I’d say too bad, haha! I’m not giving it back until I’ve ensured this little guy returns to peak condition.”
“And what if I said I’m taking it back regardless of your thoughts on the matter?”
Tak pauses, then turns her head far enough so her real-right eye can see me. She looks me up, then down, then finally meets my gaze. She purses her lips, winks, then blows me a kiss, “I’d start crying, making you feel bad for bringing such a cute girl to tears.”
“Where would you get a cute girl though?”
“Tch,” she turns back to my watch, “why does that never work?”
Before I can decide if I want to press the issue, her stomach growls. It’s loud, a deep groan. “Was that your stomach?”
“Uhh, no. My stomach had to be removed due to tumors. That was my food cavity, and the noise meant that the cavity’s food intact has been too low.”
“So basically it’s exactly the same as a stomach, and you’re hungry.”
“I guess? My expertise is repairs, not biology.”
I roll my eyes, “you got a kitchen? I’ll make you dinner.”
“Bah, you aliens are such busy-bodies. I swear, every time I bring one of you here, you start wanting to cook me meals.”
“Where’s your kitchen?”
“Upstairs.”
I get up and slip my way around her isles full of crap, making my way to the stairwell on the back left wall.
“Don’t steal any of my stuff!” She calls up after me.
“I don’t want any of your crap!” I call down.
The second floor has three rooms, and a hallway running from front to back, with another stairwell moving to the third floor. One room is the kitchen, one is a bathroom, another is meant to be a pantry, but these mutants tend to turn it into a library full of pictures documenting every repair they’ve done.
The third floor is a treasure room, where the mutants keep their favorite personal projects.
The hallway is stocked with more cabinets full of crap, and I have to turn sideways to tiptoe past. The kitchen is similarly full of garbage, but the last person to make Tak food cleared space off the stovetop. The fridge doesn’t have much food, but all of it seems to have been bought recently, since nothing is expired.
Eggs, milk, vegetables, mushrooms, and jelly. I throw it all into a pan and make two omelets for the both of us.
I set one plate down in front of her, shifting various small parts of machinery.
“Aaah! Wha-what is this? My stuff!” She takes her oiled-covered hands and grabs the side of the plate, lifting it to check her items underneath.
“It’s an omelet.” I toss her a towel for her hands, “eat.”
Her gaze rapidly shifts between the plate, the towel, and the organized parts of my watch. “I-uh,”
“Eat.”
With a grumble, she sets the plate down, rubs some of the oil off, then starts scarfing the omelet down. Large bites with her small mouth, and she doesn’t chew much before swallowing hard.
“Good?”
“No.” She says with a mouth full of food. “It’s interrupting my work.”
“Yeah, yeah, how’s it taste though?”
“…it’s good.” She takes another bite.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“Uuuuh… two or three days ago, I think. I fixed someone’s radio and they made me a meal as thanks.”
“So you just rely on the kindness of your clients for food?”
“I don’t rely on anything.” She takes her last bite and tosses the plate to the side, where it clatters against the ground, yet doesn’t shatter. “I’m just repairing an item, you’re the ones who start freaking out and getting obsessed over my life.” She effortlessly swings back into her work. At this point, she has a little paint brush and is redrawing the numbers. “It’s kind of annoying, actually. How bothered you all are.”
“That’s to be expected though, you’re like a malnourished little girl.”
“Wha-? Oh, great, so now I’m a cute girl. How come that never works to my benefit?”
I shrug, “that’s just how it goes. How old are you, anyway?”
“I… I don’t know, man. I’m not gonna know something like that.”
“Well, were you born here, or were you born on Hemlock and rescued?”
“I have no memories around the time of my birth.” She sets down the watch face, all the numbers freshly painted and now drying, then closes the bottle of black paint. She grabs the paintbrush and hurries upstairs, using her bathroom to clean the brush, and her hands, of any remaining paint or oil.
When she returns, she slips the damp paintbrush into a specific part of a cabinet on her desk, then walks over to the mess of isles full of boxes. Grabbing a step ladder with wheels on the bottom, she slides it over to the correct isle, locks the wheels, then climbs up to grab a specific box. After bringing the box to her desk, I look inside to find it full of small glass domes, for the watch window.
“Where’d you get so many of those? You’re just hording them?”
“It’s salvage, thank you very much. Not every item I find needs to be repaired, sometimes it’s better to break it down and keep the undamaged bits, while smelting the remaining metal and forging it into new parts.” She starts taking out domed glasses and comparing their size with the metal hull. Her one eye has a good attention to detail, and she doesn’t need a ruler to figure out which is the best fit. Tak sets the chosen glass window down, then stands up with the box.
I quickly stand and take it from her.
“Hey!”
“I’ll put it back, I saw where you took it from.” As I walk, I feel her staring daggers at me, watching to make sure I put it back exactly where it should go. I find the empty spot on the shelf, then slide it back in.
“Wrong side! It’s backwards.”
I take the box out, flip it around, then slot it back into place.
“Good. Now, if you insist on making yourself a menace, bring me 4-2-1-1.”
“What?”
“Bah!” She gets up and storms over to her desired location. “Isle four, cabinet two, shelf one, box one, geeze.” She grabs the box and I follow her back to her desk. Inside the box is a small metal machine with four adjustable talons coming from the four sides, and a display on the front with various buttons and symbols. “This baby here, since I know you’re going to ask, is a battery charge conduit quad-linked RX-24 pro-hydraized industrial model wired-B.” She takes the circular battery from my watch and adjusts the four talons so it’s secured above the box. “It’s going to tell me how much charge is left in the battery.”
She takes the plug and crawls under her desk to plug it in, then the machine sputters to life. I hear hundreds of gears churn inside the box, rumbling the mechanism, the table underneath it, and rattling all the discarded parts of my watch which are still in place on her table. She presses a button on the surface, and thick blue bolts of electricity spark and crackle up the talons, into the small battery.
“Don’t touch this by the way,” she yells over the crackling energy, “you’ll die!” After about 10 seconds, the machine dings, and sections of the display light up. “Ah, see? This bar right here is empty, and this bar right here has four green dots out of five.” She looks up to me, “that means the battery is uncharged, and the life of the battery is old, so it can only keep 4/5ths the charge of a new, fresh battery.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s terrible!” She cries. “If we simply charge the battery, you’re only going to get around 80% of the original life span. So, like, if this battery originally lasted for 10 years, you’d have to come back and charge it again in 8 years!”
“That’s fine, I’ll just get it recharged then.”
“I agree, it’s completely unacceptable.” She takes the small disk battery out of her large contraption, then thoughtfully rubs her thumb over the surface. “Don’t worry about the fate of this little battery though. It served you well over these long years, so I’ll make sure it’s properly recycled, and the materials are put into newer batteries.”
I cross my arms, “okay, but what about my watch?”
She waves me off, “ahh, don’t worry about that,” then hops off her little chair and walks back to her many shelves.
I follow her. The box she’s looking at is on the top shelf, so rather than waiting for her to grab a ladder, I pull it out for her. It’s full of old watches.
“Thanks,” her arms are forward, “gimme.”
Passing it off to her, she stumbles slightly beneath the weight, yet heads over to her desk and sets it down on a clean space with a thud. She takes one watch, quickly dismantles it to remove the battery, then puts metallic disk in the machine. The machine crackles, then dings.
“Nope, only four out of five bars.” Tak puts the battery into the old watch, puts it back together, then grabs a new one to repeat the process.
All I can do is sigh and sit in the nearby chair, one leg folded over the other. “Is this the last thing you’re doing?”
“I’unno,” she shrugs her small shoulders. “It’s what I’m focusing on right now, who knows what I’ll focus on when it’s done?”
“Can you just fix it to a state where it tells time, and give it back?” I reflexively check my wrist, but there’s nothing there. “I’m pretty sure I need to leave soon, drive my hauler back home.”
“Yes, I will fix it to a state where it tells time accurately, and then give it back.”
I narrow my brow and adjust my glasses as she places another battery in the machine. She presses the correct buttons, electricity crackles, then she gives a sigh that tells me that battery is old too.
“For all that talk of making sure my watch’s battery gets recycled, you sure have a lot of old ones.”
“I got all of these watches last week and haven’t had time to test them.”
“Oh.”
This goes on for a while, with me sitting back in the chair, tapping my foot impatiently, and Tak checking one battery after another. I don’t know how long it goes on for, but probably ten minutes or so. Finally, Tak squeaks.
“Ooh! Perfect!”
I glance over, and she’s eagerly putting the battery into place. From there, she attaches all the gears and internal components until, finally, my watch is put back together. “Eyy, finally, can-“
“Now to set the watch to the correct time,” she mumbles to herself as she heads off to her many shelves and brings back a large clock with wooden furniture, and a flat base so it can rest on her table. It has an hour hand, a minute hand, a second hand, and a spinning millisecond hand. She leans forward on her chair, my watch in her small hands, staring at the clock without blinking. She sets the hour, the minute, and even gets the second hand to line up.
“Alright, cool, so-“
“Tch, I can’t get the timing right, the seconds are ticking 1/15th seconds too slow…”
“Are you serious? I don’t-“
“Agh! Now it’s too fast!”
I sigh, and lean back for her to finish.
“Aaaand… there!” With a bright smile, she holds my watch to the side of the clock to compare the timing. “Perfect!”
I open my mouth to speak, but she cuts me off again.
“Now to check the consistency. I removed a few gears, so hopefully it stays in sync.”
I think she’s narrating her actions as a subtle way to get me to shut up and not complain.
A minute goes by, “hmm, it’s slowed down a little.” She quickly whips her head to look at me, snarling a little, “that means, after a few days, your watch will be noticeably slow. After just a month, it’ll be around six minutes behind. I have to fix this now, or you’ll continually be adjusting your watch, which defeats the purpose.”
I raise my hands slightly, showing off my palms in a ‘fine, whatever’ gesture.
She opens up my watch, makes adjustments to the gears, puts it back together, then sets the watch to be in line with the millisecond hand once more. Another minute passes, “slightly off again, you’ll be a minute faster after a month.” Repeating the process once more, she smiles, “good! It’s not off at all!
“Gr-“
“Now I just need to check for an hour. If it’s still synced at that point, your watch should be in line pretty much until you need to charge it-“
I stand up, reach over, and snatch my watch out of her small hands. “No thank you, this is enough.”
“Hey!” Tak stands up and reaches for it, but I simply raise my arm. “Give that back!”
“Looks perfect, no adjustment necessary.”
“N-no!” She’s jumping to try and swipe it from me, but she doesn’t get close. “I’m not done! There’re still problems!”
“Nah, looks great. I’d pay you, but you don’t even accept money, do you?”
“I-I do! It’s, ah,” she’s slightly winded from jumping, so switches to punching my leg and kicking me in the shins. It doesn’t hurt at all thanks to the shin pads. “There’s a cancellation fee. If you leave before the work is done, you get fined, uh… 100 money!”
I head for the door, “you don’t even know the name of our currency?” She follows behind me, grabbing my leg and trying to keep me in, but she’s too light and gets pulled along. I reach into my wallet and pull out 1,000 pelmarks, “that’s the smallest bill I got.”
Tak, sucking down air, sluggishly slaps my hand. “I don’t..! Want that..!”
I continue to the door, set the money on her cabinet, then grab the handle.
From there, Tak quickly roots through her cabinet, grabs a taser, and presses the two metal endpieces against the back of my thigh as a million volts of electricity crackles between them.
“Agagakgakgakgak!” I yell as my body convulses violently. Every muscle involuntarily flexing as my mouth starts foaming.
I fall forward, smashing my face against the wooden door, and sliding down it until my knees hit the floor. Then Tak steps over my left calf, yanks the watch from my hand, and sighs in relief.
“O-ow,” I grunt as my shaky hand grabs the doorknob for stability.
“Ah!” She presses the taser against the side of my neck, and holds the button until my skin starts smoking.
My consciousness, naturally, fades out.
I wake sometime later and want to vomit. My horns are heavy on my neck, the world is sloshing back and forth.
“Hngh,” gritting my teeth, I manage to stand, and I even stumble my way over to Tak’s work desk without knocking over her shelves. She isn’t there, and the door to her bedroom is closed. Walking over, I grab the handle and twist, but it’s locked.
“Go away!” Her voice is muffled behind the door. “I’m doing important work!”
“Give me my watch back, you little goblin!”
“No! It’s not ready yet!”
I shake the handle, causing the door to rattle. “Get out here or I’ll break your door!”
“Ha! You think you’re the first person to try that? I’ve repaired that door myself, it’s neigh-unbreakable.”
I slam my shoulder against the wood, it’s solid. “Did you reinforce the lock?”
“Sure did! And the wood around the look too, so I don’t think you’ll be ripping it anytime soon.”
“How about the hinges?”
“…y-yeah.”
I smile, then back up. Head down like a bull, arms on the ground and strong legs ready to kick off like a record-setting sprinter. I’ll smash my reinforced head against the left side, and transfer all the force to the middle hinge. “If you’re close to the door, I recommend getting out of the way!”
I start running, 0 to 20mph in an instant!
But then Tak opens the door and I try to stop, skidding along the floor. The momentum carries me, and I raise my hands to slap the walls on either side of the door. There’s a reverberating thud, and dull pain travels up my arms.
Tak looks up at me, smiling, then raises my watch with both hands. “Done! Perfectly synced. Based on my estimates, by the time you need to recharge the battery, your watch will only be one second slow.”
I look down my nose at her, but she stays smiling and happy as if nothing’s wrong.
After standing upright, I rub the slightly charred spot on my neck, then accept my watch. “Thank you.” I put it on, tying the leather strap just as tight as I like. I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but I’ve been in this house for six hours.
“Good?”
“Yeah, it’s good.”
She follows me to the door, doesn’t tase me again as I open it, then stands in the doorway and waves as I walk down the street. “Remember to come back if you have anything else you need repairing! I also specialize in scrap jobs for broken machinery and trinkets!”
I raise my left arm in acknowledgment, and hurry out of there.
When I return to my hauler, I find that the tires have been rotated, there’s a fresh coat of dark paint, the windows are clean, the rust has been scraped off the bumper, the cargo hydraulics no longer grind when the back lifts, the battery has been recharged, and the air conditioner sends out much colder air.