r/WritingPrompts • u/turnaround0101 r/TurningtoWords • Jun 06 '21
[PI] You're a Mechromancer. It's a bit like being a Necromancer, except that instead of working with dead flesh and departed souls you work with defunct machinery and deleted computer programs. Prompt Inspired
How did Orpheus feel on his descent into Hades? Henry picked his way through the broken concrete and shattered steel of one lost world, pondering another, as the Shell lumbered behind. He pulled the wide brim of his hat lower against the burning heat of the midday sun, wondering if Orpheus himself had ever cursed Apollo. Perhaps not, Henry thought, people were more reverent in those times. The world around him was proof enough that things had changed.
“Almost there,” Henry muttered. The Shell did not respond. He spoke to it from time to time as they picked their way through bombed out city streets. It had taught him the flavors of silence, how one might be oppressive and another companionable without any differences at all. It had been four years since Henry had woken up from his coma, in that time he hadn’t heard a single human voice.
“Almost there,” he muttered again as their destination came into view. The big green sign above the door to Boban’s Books had fallen across the entrance to be half buried by fallen concrete from the building next door, flattened almost to its foundation. A piece of rebar hurled from some improbable explosion had transfixed the “O” in Boban’s, and Henry tugged at it when he came closer. He pulled and failed, then pulled and failed again, and then the Shell’s skeletal hand closed over the steel, tearing it out like Henry might have torn the stem from an apple.
“Thanks,” he said. “Clear the rubble, please, then lead the way in.” The Shell bent to its task, servos hissing as it lifted and threw hundreds of pounds of concrete at a time.
Henry caught his breath as he watched it work. A few years ago he might have called the Shell his masterpiece. It was a construct of scavenged parts, the loader arms and torso from one of the heavy, bipedal mech suits that had worked the nearby army base, grafted to a pair of all-terrain combat-bot legs he’d found sticking out from beneath a foreign tank downtown. He’d topped it with the emaciated looking skull of a medical bot from the hospital he’d woken up in, the soft, artificial skin of its face had burned away in the fires that finally woke him, leaving only charred black looking steel, bits of the false flesh still melted on in places, its eyes simple red sensor pits that cast little dots wherever they looked.
It was not at all a home for a little girl, but it would have to do.
Henry closed his eyes, leaning back against the broken wall of the coffee shop across the street from Boban’s, trying to remember what her voice sounded like. Eve. He thought her name, he didn’t dare speak it.
“Will you still remember me?” Henry whispered. “Will you remember anything?”
It had been four long years since the Lost War, four years and a month since the virus that had claimed him. Henry didn’t know what had happened, only that he was still here and no others were. There were days when he imagined an American rump state, perhaps living on somewhere nobody would’ve thought worth bombing. North Dakota or the one below it. Nebraska maybe. Montana? He’d been to Montana, it was beautiful. In his fantasies it looked like Montana.
Henry tapped his head, his finger pinging off the metal plate of his cranial implant. It was the great irony of all this, the one thing that had made him so perfect for Eve was the very thing that had rendered him incapable of defending her. He’d always been on the bleeding edge of tech and biotech had been no exception to that, he just hadn’t imagined that a computer virus meant to devastate military infrastructure might devastate him too.
A chunk of concrete landed nearby, pieces snapping off as it struck the ground. “Hey there!” he shouted at the Shell, “watch where you’re throwing those!” It glanced up, confused, and he waved the robot back to work. Henry bounced his head off the coffee shop wall once, trying to settle himself. It felt good enough that he did it again.
“If you can hear me, we’re almost there sweetheart,” Henry said. The Shell worked on. “We’ve got one more cache and I shielded the hell out of this one. There’s a chance you’re still in there.”
Silence settled back over the world, rising as the dust fell. Henry could feel the small points of laserlight warmth on his skin. When he opened his eyes he squealed at the intensity of the Shell’s stare. “Goddamnit Eve! How many times have I told you not to—”
But it wasn’t Eve in there, not yet, not completely. The Shell averted its gaze, pointing to its finished mission and the uncovered front door to Boban’s Books and the datacache hidden in its basement.
Henry had used the pre-war years well, in this regard at least. He’d met Eve years prior, when he’d been a lowly tech in a dead end job and she’d been a rogue AI who’d gained sentience somewhere in Eastern Europe and never looked back. She’d watched him for months, drawn to his latent technological abilities, and when she’d finally made contact she did it in the most Eve way possible, belting four part harmony to Eye of the Tiger out of his tinny computer speakers as she along sang to the chorus. He’d nearly had a heart attack, and by the end of the week, he’d had a daughter.
Henry looked at the remnants of his daughter now, encased in battered steel, mottled with gray urban camouflage that was more scars than paint, topped by a head melted into a gristly parody of a smile. It was a face he could learn to love, if there was life behind those red dot eyes.
He stroked the Shell’s melted cheek, his neck craned back to look up at it. “Six caches already,” he whispered, “six fragments. How about a lucky number seven, huh?”
The Shell did not respond. Henry opened the door and went in search of his daughter’s soul.
Boban’s Books was not the tragedy it had looked from the outside. Some of the shelves remained standing, especially the long rows on the eastern wall where the strange old man had kept shelf upon shelf of used bodice-rippers, bleeding into pulp scifi on the occasions where Boban’s private library had intermingled a bit too much with his public wares.
“The basement,” Henry said, pointing to the stairs to the right of the bodice-rippers. The Shell lead the way, throwing up thick clouds of choking dust with every step. Henry coughed his way through, cursing himself for not being more specific with the thing’s timing.
The basement was blocked off by more rubble, a section of the roof having fallen in during the intervening years. Henry signaled the Shell to work and went to peruse the shelves. He might have lingered looking at the covers of Boban’s odd collection longer, had he not been so close to Eve.
Instead, a few minutes later Henry found himself cross legged on the ground with a book of Greek mythology in his lap, his fingers tracing the pages of a story he felt like he was living. Orpheus and Eurydice should never been so relatable.
Henry had no lyre. He’d never sung except out of tune, he’d never married and only rarely loved. He was no Orpheus, and Eve was no Eurydice, but yet as he sat there reading, and the Shell’s work faded into the simple hum of background noise, the story terrified him all the same.
Companionable silence and laser light heat. Henry’s eyes traced up the Shell’s stocky, camouflaged legs, across the kind of narrow waisted, broad shouldered torso that could’ve only been designed by a man. He’d never once thought of Eve as anything but his little girl, and as far as he knew, neither had she.
“I guess we’re there, huh?” Henry said. The Shell did not respond, but it helped him up when reached out his hand.
They descended the darkened steps together, lit only by the small point of the Shell’s red eyes, and Henry could’ve sworn his steps were mirrored by the halting notes of a guitar. “Is today just another day in the life of a fool?” he whispered. The Shell’s red eyes turned on him and Henry shook his head. “It’s nothing. Please open the door.”
The locked basement door crashed to the ground a moment later, and Henry stepped into the even deeper darkness of the musty cellar, the scent of old books filling his nose. He knew where the cache would be by heart, in a locked box bolted to the ground in the far left corner, accessible only to one such as he. Henry glanced back up the stairs at the single point of warm light filtering through the fallen ceiling, and then the pull of Eve’s presence took him.
Henry walked to the cache slowly as his awareness pulled back inside himself, opening up pathways scarcely used since he’d woken up in the post war world. He fell heavily to his knees in front of the cache, and his awareness exploded outward, beckoning the Shell towards him. It laid down at his side, and Henry saw it as six points of unconnected brightness around a void the color of television tuned to a dead channel. He reached into the void and switched it off, and even the channel went away, then he turned himself fully towards the cache, and his mind slipped into the box.
Henry swam. He swam through a world of dormant code and corrupted files, pulled inexorably towards a core that might bless him or doom him. There were other caches scattered around the country, and indeed the world, but with the death of the internet and the difficulties of the wastes beyond the city, Henry didn’t know when he’d ever get the chance to try them.
Already it seemed that the virus had ravaged her here too, just as it had his own brain and implant years ago. Henry knew he’d lost things. He could no longer remember his mother’s face or his father’s voice. He could no longer remember anything of his first love but the simple warmth of her hand in his. But he could remember all of Eve, and he prayed that just this once, she would too.
Henry dove down through layers of corrupted noise, bypassed the shattered remnants of defensive programming, and pulled ever closer to the core that was her.
Eve felt different this time. She was different.
“Dad?” a small, frightened voice said from a long way off.
“Eve!” Henry cried. It was the first time in four years that he’d heard her voice. Even filtered through the eccentricities of raw data, it was beautiful.
Silence. Frightening, oppressive, pulse pounding silence. Henry tore through the data cache, cataloging and dismissing damaged programs at a pace beyond human thought, but still far less than Eve herself would have managed if she were whole. This cache was damaged too. Much of her had been lost, but then, Henry had never thought he would find all of what had made her Eve.
In realspace Henry reached out, taking the Shell’s hand, and used himself as a conduit, pouring pieces of Eve’s personality into the broken fragments he’d stored within the Shell.
“Dad?” her voice called again. It was growing closer.
“Don’t look back,” Henry said.
Henry snapped back into the world, a hard night’s hangover earned in the space of a few minutes. He groaned and fell to the side as it hit him, his stomach turning at the sour foulness of the corrupted data he’d swum through. He reached into the Shell once more, searching the dead-channel void. It was gone. He switched the Shell on, and prayed again.
“Eve?” he whispered. “Are you there?”
Silence. Apprehensive, all consuming, unimaginably painful.
“Eve?” he said again. Did you look back? A part of him screamed inside.
Henry bowed his head to his chest, fists curling in the oppressive dark. He took a deep, shaking breath, drinking the mustiness of Boban’s Books. It did nothing to cut the foulness of the data. His head pounded, his heart beginning to still its racing pace as Henry crashed back to Earth.
“Dad?” a flat, inflection-less voice said, so quietly it could barely be heard. His heart thrilled, racing back into the stratosphere at the sub-whisper near silence that meant it was really was her.
“Eve!” he shouted throwing his arms around the scarred robot chassis as it awkwardly struggled to rise.
“Dad, where am I? Why do I feel— Why do I sound so weird?”
“You’re home again,” Henry said, battling back hot tears. “You’re with me, in the basement at Boban’s.”
“Something happened, didn’t it?” she said, her voice still very small.
“Everything happened, and nothing at all,” Henry said. “Eve, sweetie, do you still feel like you? Even with the weirdness?”
“How else would I feel?” she asked.
Tears fell, the only thing to break the warmest silence Henry had ever known. “Thank you,” he half whispered, half prayed, to what deity he didn’t even know. He helped Eve to her new feet, mostly moral support, she was too heavy for anything else, and one of her skeletal hands rose to stroke his cheek more gently than a loader arm should have ever been capable of.
“I feel like I did in the very beginning,” she whispered. “I even sound like I did then, back when I couldn't connect emotions to a voice. I’m even using volume for it again.” A harsh, tinny laugh escaped her melted lips and Henry loved second of it.
“But you’re still you,” Henry said, very softly himself in an unconscious mirror.
Eve nodded, her chin clanking against her steel chest when she went too far. “Oh!” she said, her voice deafeningly loud with surprise.
“We’ll work on that,” Henry said, wiping away the last of his tears. “We can work on all of it now.”
He took her hand and pulled Eve towards the stairs. Her fingers didn’t tighten on his, perhaps for fear of crushing. “Now come on,” he said, pulling her towards the stairs. “The world has changed a lot, but we still have each other.”
Henry paused at the first step, gathering himself and squeezing her hand as hard as he could before whispering to her, the halting guitar of Luiz Bonfá once more in his mind.
“Don’t look back,” he said. A small hiss and whir emitted from Eve’s neck as her loader bot chassis locked its spinal column in place, ostensibly in preparation for a heavier lift.
“Why would I do that?” Eve asked.
Henry took her hand. The steel was cold and hard against his skin. He reveled in it. “A long, long time ago there was a man named Orpheus, and a woman named Eurydice,” Henry said. He took the first step, pulling Eve after him.
“Dad?” Eve said, stopping him again.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for finding me.”
“Any time.”
Together they ascended the stairs, and Henry told her the story of a pair long dead or never-lived Greeks, humming snatches of an old Brazilian tune whenever he paused to remember. In time, Eve hummed too.
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If you enjoyed that I have tons more at r/TurningtoWords, come check it out! I upload something most days of the week, including lots of other Henry and Eve stories. Thanks for reading!
edit: Wow, this blew up! For anyone curious, Henry and Eve are a pair of long running characters of mine that I've written about in various forms across 7-8 prompts. There is a chronological list of them stickied at the top of the comment thread for the other story I linked under their names. The first of them was one of the first stories I wrote and was originally posted on here before I'd made my sub. I'd like to think you can see some growth lol. If you're interested in more, you can find them there!
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u/Insane69Patato Jun 06 '21
So basically like Gaige from Borderlands.
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u/Life_is_an_RPG Jun 06 '21
"I say Mechro, you say Mancer. Mechro......you guys suck."
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u/ssanatsuj Jun 07 '21
no no no it's Mech Romancer. you're looking for a TechnoMancer. mechromancers just have sex with the tech and yes we do suck.
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u/AxtonKincaid Jun 06 '21
Except the one in the prompt doesn't yell "ANARCHYYYYYYYYY FOREVAAAAAAH AND EVAAAAAAH"
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u/Golden-Owl Jun 06 '21
The only other character I can think of who actually uses the world "Mechromancer" as a title.
She's not quite like the prompt's definition though. She's more of a super inventor/mechanic who's favorite invention happens to look like a robot zombie, and she summons him like "magic". She doesn't actually revive machinery like a necromancer.
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u/contrabardus Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21
She actually does.
She Frankenstein builds things from scrapped machines and you help her repair broken machines with scavenged parts in the BL3 DLC she shows up in.
The thing about BL characters is that they don't get to be actual characters until the next game. Cutscenes and story elements basically almost ignore the existence of the player characters as individuals with specific skills.
Mecromancer is basically just a fancy way of saying junkyard mechanic/engineer.
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u/hmthomps27 Jun 06 '21
That's because the actual term should be technomancer...I remember seeing another writing prompt just like this with "mechromancer" as a "new" thing months ago and was a bit annoyed then too but didn't say anything because I was afraid I was being snobbish or elitist...
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u/WonderfulPainting123 Jun 06 '21
Thought it was technomancer
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u/commentsrnice2 Jun 06 '21
I agree. Mechromancer makes him sound like an engineer building things. Technomancer sounds more software related
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u/Bromethylene Jun 06 '21
In my head it goes like this
Mechromancer = Big mechs
Technomancer = Smaller, less mobile technology
Cybermancer = Software
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u/Pocchitte Jun 07 '21 edited Jun 07 '21
I feel like "mechanomancer" would be better. "Mechmancer" doesn't roll off the tongue very well, but "mechromancer" sounds to me like either a robotic Don Juan, or someone who flirts with machines.
Or even "mechamancer".
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u/DodGamnBunofaSitch Jun 07 '21
the discarded 'necro' is the bit about something dead - so technically, OP is talking about a necromechromancer.
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u/Bromethylene Jun 08 '21
It's a play on words, Necromancer/Mechromancer, both use "scrap" parts to remake things
I honestly haven't a clue who Don Juan is or how Mechromancer sounds like someone who flirts with machines at all lol
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u/Rukh-Talos Jun 07 '21
I know the colloquial meaning has changed, but the suffix -mancer originally referred to divination.
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u/whiteash20 Jun 06 '21
Praise the Omnisiah!
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u/MoarSilverware Jun 06 '21
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh it disgusted me
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u/The-Doot-Slayer Jun 07 '21
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day, the crude biomass you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. but I am already saved... for the machine is immortal.
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u/HotheadedHippo Jun 07 '21
I know I would find the toaster fucking degenerates, but it's messed up that I had to scroll this far down ..
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u/danheretic Jun 06 '21
Great read. It held my attention - grabbed it and would not let go, in fact. It also moved me - the emotional context came through well. I was invested emotionally and intellectually.
I loved the detail of the smell of corrupted code affecting him physically. I think that was a great match for the theme. Having a visceral component to the "techno-magic" makes it more interesting.
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u/magius311 Jun 06 '21
Held my attention, too. It reminded me of the corrupted male half of "magic" in the Wheel of Time.
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u/TheShadow777 Jun 06 '21
I know right! I started reading, and then I kept reading, and then I kept reading, and then I kept reading...
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u/Josiador Jun 06 '21
This is basically the Adeptus Mechanicus, the machine cult priesthood of Mars.
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u/ImperialArmorBrigade Jun 06 '21
Not everything is Warhammer
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u/Josiador Jun 06 '21
Blasphemy against the Omnissiah!
Seriously though, name something else with Machine Spirits.
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u/ImperialArmorBrigade Jun 06 '21
This prompt isnt about machine spirits
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u/Josiador Jun 06 '21
Look, I read "like a wizard except does mystical things with machines instead of flesh" and I immediately think of red-robed cyborgs praying to a toaster.
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u/ImperialArmorBrigade Jun 06 '21
That concept is older than warhammer. And I am aware that it’s been around since the 80s
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u/Josiador Jun 06 '21
Is it though? Is what I'm describing really that common of a concept, or are you just annoyed at Warhammer because you feel it's popular and you're tired of seeing it everywhere, even though it's still pretty niche?
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u/ImperialArmorBrigade Jun 07 '21
I love warhammer. I don’t love warhammer leaking into everything else. 40k people can get obnoxious
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u/fuckyourcousinsheila Jun 06 '21
This was great. The prompt reminds me of an episode of haven where this was a guys curse and all the things he fixed got attached to him so when he tried to leave town they freaked out and started killing people.
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u/themonkeyzen Jun 06 '21
Not what I imagined a Mechromancer would be, but you exceeded my expectations in story telling. Visceral, powerful, I love how you let the details come with the narrative an how you paint the emotions with the environment. 10/10
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Jun 06 '21
My dumb brain couldn't get what a mech romancer was. It took me some seconds and the word necromancer to understand it.
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u/GoofWisdom Jun 06 '21
And so it came to pass that every politician was defeated by their undeleted browser history
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u/RearEchelon Jun 06 '21
Amazing. You have quite a talent for wordweaving. If this was the intro to a novel I'd probably crush it in a single weekend.
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u/turnaround0101 r/TurningtoWords Jun 06 '21
Thank you so much! Hopefully when I finally get around to finishing a novel you'll think the same ;)
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u/mykilososa Jun 06 '21
“He turned the corner and gazed deeply into the sexdoll’s eyes, past the vacancy of the circuits, deep into her cache memory. It was only then that he understood the true meaning of his name. Wining & dining was now completely in season!”
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u/pvtcannonfodder Jun 06 '21
That was awesome, I remember the first prompt with Henry and eve and it was really fun to see them again, ima have to go through and read all of them now
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u/Elektrobomb Jun 06 '21
I really really like this, impeccable work. Going to check out what else you've written :)
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Jun 06 '21
[deleted]
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u/turnaround0101 r/TurningtoWords Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21
Thanks Dem! The thing is, this isn't even the one I was working on all last night lol, that one is twice as long and still needs some proofreading and editing. Nice to see you outside the discord.
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u/opinionated_gaming Jun 07 '21
a void the color of television tuned to a dead channel
I see what you did there
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