Inner Workings

By Andrea Trask

Mil-spec work was kind of a pain, but Winnifred Gurry was happy to take it on because it helped fund her research on her own pet project: a humanoid clank-bot to learn multiple tasks and serve as her shop assistant. She never expected a metal construct to be the catalyst for change in her work with military liaison Major Dewar - or for her assistant to be commandeered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrea Trask
• Release date: Mar 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301891177

Andrea Trask

Relentlessly cheerful and dedicated to the proposition that all people deserve happiness, Andrea picked up the name Bliss early in her college career, and it has stuck with her in the many years since to the point that she's far more likely to answer to it in a crowd.

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Inner Workings

by Andrea Trask

Published by Andrea Trask at Smashwords

Text Copyright © 2013 Andrea Trask

All Rights Reserved

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Cover design by Andrea Trask with elements from Grandeduc http://www.dreamstime.com/grandeduc_info and argus465 http://www.crestock.com/portfolio/argus456.aspx

Cover font is Roman Grid Caps by by Manfred Kelin from dafont.com http://www.dafont.com/manfred-klein.d302?

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Dedicated to Ovid

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Author's Note

About the Author

Also by this Author

Chapter 1: Basketcase

Mil-spec work was kind of a pain. Granted they paid decently enough, and the work was steady, and since concerns with her health had kept Winifred Gurry from actively enrolling in any branch of the city militia, it let her at least contribute to their cause in her own way by developing new and better ‘bots and transports for them. But the constant inspection visits were disruptive, and she hated when she put a bucket-load of time into a project only to have it scrapped thanks to performance (or lack thereof) on the testing grounds that she’d never been invited to see.

The only thing really wonderful about the sprawling contracts from the local militants, Freddy reflected, was that they accepted without question her need to delve into human anatomy and extra parts, ostensibly for the sake of researching and testing the best possible inventions to perpetrate whatever offences or defences were on their dockets for the week. Not that they didn’t already pay her enough for the work that she did, but she rather liked being able to put together some projects of her own without dipping into the funds already slated for maintenance, for power needs, for upkeep of the workshop, or for the care and keeping of her critters.

For all that each was very useful in its own way, however, the utility of Basketcase (as she called the somewhat arachnid bot that skittered this way and that across the floor, pausing when it came across anything that was not loaded into its memory as belonging, and hoisting the object into the wireframe basket atop its central body to bring to the bin beside her workbench) was still very single purpose, as was that of the others. She wanted a proper assistant clank, a multipurpose helper – an extra set of hands on demand.

Oh yes, hands. She’d better get that jotted down while she was thinking of it, Freddy thought, and set the blueprint box aside with a whisper of the shifting rolls in it, reaching into the hole in the floorboards to pull out her prized personal project. She certainly couldn’t have an assistant with Basketcase’s three-pronged pincer claws, not for the kind of work she had in mind.

She knocked a wrench off the far end of the bench, reaching for her pencil, and ignored it, as well as Basketcase’s whirr of consternation as it changed course without turning, beelining for the landing point. Pencil scratched across paper, picking out bit by bit the shape of a five-fingered clockwork hand, wire and gears under a surface of forged metal face with textured leather for gripping. Most of what she needed for it, she had by now, and the rest could be easily enough got or made.

The Timer-coo on the corner of the top shelf had whistled three times by the time Freddy finished her sketching, erasing, sketching more, and then tracing over her own lines with pen. Everything was sorted except the pump, she realized as she straightened and pressed the crick out of her lower back, then stretched and tilted her head back to draw more air into her lungs and clear the creeping dizziness that slid in when she spent too long hunched over without a break. The pump, she’d have to make herself.

Chapter 2: The Trundle

The heart, it turned out, was the most difficult bit to get right. Ultimately, after trying several different designs that included imitating the pump action of the air-bellows they used in the MediHall to help people breathe, she ended up pulling in a favor (and letting go of rather a goodly bit of coin) to have a contraption made very much after the fashion of a human heart. The exterior was of a shaped and tempered glass, made to withstand heat and pressure, fitted inside with valves to stay or loose flow as needed. Once it was finished and tested, though, she was delighted.

It was a jolly good bit of doing to get installed, sealing the tubing to the glass and then the pipes that wound down through the body cavity, to the furnace and the tank and to the joint workings. When it was finished, however, and tested out leak free, her stomach fluttered with eagerness.

Timer-coo double-whistled, warning that she was coming up on a visit to inspect the progress of her work on the new version of the Trundle Engine, and Freddy cursed softly. There was enough time to get the assistant tucked out of sight, or close up the torso to protect the work she’d just done. It was work she didn’t want to lose, moreso than she was loath to let a project be espied by someone it wasn’t going to end up with. She kicked on the torch to weld the chestplate hinges in place, and dropped in the pins to swing it shut and latch it.

Wish I could wipe you down, fella, she muttered, scowling at the grease-smears all over the metal. But Timer-coo whistle-tweeted the third quarter of the hour, and she settled for dropping a rag on the ‘bot’s lap. There wasn’t even time to change out of her leathers into something more presentable, and she made do with brushing off her trousers and trading the long work apron for a shorter, slightly cleaner vest before the bell rang, followed closely by a sharp triple-knock.

Major Dewar, she greeted the man on the other side of the regular door set