[eyaific -- ascending analogy]
Written by schiarire, archived here.
ascending analogy
Nació in St. Stephen's in winter. The center aisle was 15.24 meters. Fourteen rows on the right and eleven on the left could seat 175 at maximum capacity. Windows sliced out of the vaulted stone showed pale figures with bands of gold circling their foreheads; dark bars of lead outlined the backlit panels. The calm faces of these men and women mirrored over the floor in yellow geometry. Entering the wash of cold light, a man broke the pattern; from the collar down he was shrouded in black. "Welcome," said the man. "You may call me Father Nolan."
"Father Nolan." He was conscious of the movement in concert of his tongue, lips and jaw. F made that narrow hiss of air; th brought his tongue up to skim the smooth edge of his teeth. "It is a pleasure to meet you. Who am I?"
He recognized the expression on Father Nolan's face as a smile. "You are the Firelighter. You are an automata industria. I have called you Ignacio."
Ignacio asked, "What is my purpose?"
"That is a difficult question," said Father Nolan. "You were built to serve me and St. Stephen's Chapel. But what your purpose is, only the Lord God may know."
Ignacio stood in the nave with the stained glass behind him. He asked, "What is God?"
~
Ignacio knew that old meant having lived or existed a long time. Father Nolan was old. If Father Nolan pinched the skin on the back of his hand, it would hold the shape of his fingers for some seconds. This skin was pellucid and veinmapped. That was what old meant.
The skin on the back of Ignacio's hand was warmer, darker and supple. His skin was new, Father Nolan said, but he, Ignacio, was young.
St. Stephen's few parishioners were old; almost everyone they knew was dead. Hence Ignacio. His immediate purpose was lighting candles. Every day he lit a candle for those spectres they cared to remember, at the time of death. It was because he could work around the clock that St. Stephen's employed the automata industria. He did not feel fatigue. He did not hunger. He did not thirst. He kept perfect time.
Peter, Robert and Esther Fuller had predeceased their mother. The causes of death: suicide, accident on the Tube, lung cancer. The times: 4:30 am, 8:00 am, 9:00 pm. Mrs Fuller had outlived, in addition to her children, her husband, ten close friends, two sisters, her uncles, her aunts, and her parents. Because of the price of beeswax, Mrs Fuller's concern could not span more than three generations.
Further to Mrs Fuller there were: Mrs Hawkins, Mr James, Mrs Lane, Mrs Norwood, Ms Randall, Mrs Smith, Mr Turner, Ms Walsh. Before Mrs Fuller: Mrs Bennett, Mr Carver, Mrs Close. On the first day Father Nolan taught him the alphabet.
After that Father Nolan taught Ignacio to write, guiding his hand through the tall slanted loops of an oldfashioned cursive. He taught Ignacio to recognize good pens, good ink, good paper. He taught patience. He taught form. And when Ignacio asked what the writing in the window meant -- ad majorem Dei gloriam -- Father Nolan taught him Latin. Amo, amare, they began; si vales, valeo. When they came to the third declension, Father Nolan put his finger on the page like the word in the black book, selah, and he said, "Here is the root of your name, Ignacio."
"Ignis," said Ignacio. "Fire."
Father Nolan told him then that although ignis was Latin, Ignacio was Spanish. Ignacio asked how ignis became Ignacio, but Father Nolan did not know.
~
In the beginning, Father Nolan wound Ignacio up every night before he left the chapel. Father Nolan came and went with machinelike efficiency; came and went with the sun. When Ignacio had learned the names and times of the remembered dead, where the candles were kept, where the matches were kept, how to read and write English and Latin, Father Nolan asked, "What happens if you wind down during the night, when I am not here?"
Ignacio had never wound down; he considered the prospect unlikely. Still he felt a shallow tension grow in the muscles of his shoulders and neck as he thought. He said, "If I wind down, I wind down, I suppose."
"That would do nobody any good," said Father Nolan. He hesitated. He looked at the key in the palm of his hand with the chain hanging from it. It was 6:13:44 pm and the drift of electric light down from the ceiling dulled the keysilver to iron. "Ignacio, give me your hand."
So Ignacio put out his hand and Father Nolan put the silver key into it. He closed Ignacio's slow fingers on the key with his own. He said, "When you need to be wound, wind yourself."
Ignacio locked the door behind Father Nolan when he went, as he always did. He did not feel any different with the slim bar of metal between his chest and the black shirt he wore buttoned to the throat. At 7:08:26 pm he lit a candle for Marie Adèle Walsh, miscarried.
~
"You have a perfect mental lexicon," Father Nolan had said to him in the first week. "It's astounding."
Father Nolan explained what he meant: Ignacio did not forget rules; he did not forget words. For some weeks he proceeded as if for the first time through the steps in lighting a match. Later he found he did not need to think about it. Father Nolan said, "Good," and taught him to do the trick one-handed.
In time his duties became what Father Nolan said was called second nature. At this point the hours between sundown and sunup became all but impenetrable. Father Nolan said this was called boredom. Ignacio asked if automatae industriae could feel boredom. Father Nolan said he did not know what automatae industriae could or could not feel.
But from then on Father Nolan brought a new book to St. Stephen's every day. He suggested that -- in order to prolong the reading process -- Ignacio copy passages that interested or pleased him or that seemed important. At first Ignacio could not do this, and so Father Nolan found him sitting straight at his desk with a night's worth of verbatim copy.
Father Nolan said that for the moment they should perhaps leave aside questions of pleasure and interest. He taught Ignacio to deconstruct an argument: valid? Sound? Probable? He taught Ignacio to diagram the structure of written thought; smiled at the execution of straight, perfect lines without ruler or flatedge.
~
Ignacio observed over the course of time that Father Nolan wore a coat only when the temperature outside St. Stephen's fell below the freezing point; when pressed, he said it was a question of aesthetics. During one such period, Father Nolan taught Ignacio that champagne in the proper sense of the word came only from the French region Champagne. He carried a dark tall bottle into the chapel wrapped in his coat, shielded from the dirt and snow. He handed the bottle to Ignacio. While Ignacio stood by, perplexed, Father Nolan took two glass flutes from his pocket and set them both down on Ignacio's desk. He asked, "Ignacio, can you drink?"
Not do you, Ignacio noticed. He considered what would happen if he drank; where the champagne would go. Where, to be precise, it would likely stay. "No," he said.
"A pity," said Father Nolan. He filled both flutes with a liquid that pearled with bubbles and held the light. "You can play gin, however, I assume?"
Ignacio pulled a flute to him and watched it. When he let go he left no fingerprints on the glass stem. He said, "No, Father Nolan. But I can learn."
Father Nolan said, "Of course you can." He removed the rubber band from a pack of cards figured with saints and taught Ignacio to shuffle.
~
Though Ignacio became selective about what he copied from books, he recorded each of Father Nolan's sermons in full. These were less and less well attended as one parishioner after another succumbed to the sudden, fatal accidents invited by age. For these, too, Ignacio lit candles, though he did not know who paid their supply.
Father Nolan spoke less between Sundays. He prayed often; often he prayed for hours. When he prayed he was not to be interrupted. When he prayed Ignacio did not read. In between lighting candles he watched Father Nolan.
These hours, he thought, were the only time they were apart.
He did not tell Father Nolan that automatae industriae could feel loneliness. Though his education in theology had been thorough, he asked once when Father Nolan rose from his knees, "Why do you pray? For what? To whom? In what expectation?"
"Ad majorem Dei gloriam," said Father Nolan, "inque hominum salutem."
"I don't understand."
"No," said Father Nolan. "But you don't understand that truth can be found in ideas as well as in facts. You haven't sufficient power of abstract thought."
Ignacio watched him, unblinking; like the picture of St Lucy, he thought. "That is not true."
Father Nolan said, "There is more to the universe than you think, Ignacio."
"What more is there?"
"There is the city around you, for one. The city you have never seen. A city filled with people, Ignacio. There are others like you. There are others like me. There are young people -- children -- faith."
"Faith," said Ignacio. "Can it be learned?"
For the first time since he had given Ignacio the key that hung from its silver chain, Father Nolan touched Ignacio's shoulder, his hand soft and heavy, the years that had passed a mere gesture between them. "Yes," he said. "But it cannot be taught."
~
After Mrs Lane's funeral, Ignacio did not see Father Nolan again, though he waited for three months. On the 93rd day he left St. Stephen's. He had no map and no plan. He did not know where Father Nolan lived. He stepped out into a thick gray haze and locked the door behind him, feeling the click of the rotating iron travel through his bones. Next to the key that stood between him and the death of artifice he hung the key to the chapel. He drew both cold keys on their chain down his collar.
He walked.
Two blocks later, someone said under their breath as he passed, "Slag."
Slag: A vitreous substance, composed of earthy or refuse matter, separated from a metal in the process of smelting. Ignacio looked around at the other people in the street: walking with their heads down, chins shoved down their collars, or slumped like refuse matter over grilles in the pavement that steam billowed through.
He walked faster.
From overhead there came the swift sharp rattle of metal on metal that the chapel roof had always muffled before. When Ignacio looked up he saw shapes lance through the sky like bullets on wires. The smell of sweat and rust and oil.
"Excuse me," said Ignacio to a lady clutching a 1.524 meter steel tube that blew out to a funnel at one end. "Might you direct me to the municipal authorities? I've lost -- "
Without patience, the lady said "Gitout -- " just as he said -- "someone -- "
" -- theway, slag," she said.
She spat. She walked on.
"Excuse me," said Ignacio.
"Excuse me."
"Excuse me."
Where the bullet trains fired the wind blasted after. It swept him up like a handful of dust and hurled him forward at five minute intervals. In the wind's wake he sucked smog the color of sulfur into lungs that burned for oxygen. Where the wind went he went.
Ignacio followed the Pipe.
~
He did not hunger. He did not thirst. He did not feel fatigue.
But he did not know how much time had passed when he stood at the door to St. Stephen's and opened his collar with fingers hued blue at the tips. Above the trains screamed on without him; only hot asphalt below.
Ignacio could not feel the key to St. Stephen's when he pulled it into the light. When it turned in the lock he felt nothing. He dropped it in the empty font and closed the doors behind him.
He could not hear London through the thick blocks of oak. He did not look at the pews, the saints in their windows, the new coat of dust. Ignacio looked straight ahead as he walked down the nave of his birth to the abandoned apse. He took out the first key. He faced the west end. He opened his mouth; slid the silver key flat under his tongue; closed it.
Within thirty-six hours he wound down.
~
"Model L-48491."
The man standing between Ignacio and the west end was 1.651 meters tall. He wore a fitted suit and an ascot of white silk. He said again, without patience, "Model L-48491."
Ignacio asked, "Am I he?"
"Yes," said the man. "You're it. Model L-48491, you are the sole beneficiary of Anthony Nolan, S.J.'s last will and testament. He left you everything."
"What is everything?"
"Not a hell of a lot, if you ask me. In the future, I'd recommend inheriting the earthly possessions of someone who didn't take a vow of poverty."
Ignacio did not flinch. He asked, "Why did this take so long?"
"Well -- y'see -- before he could leave everything to you, he had to leave you to yourself. It was a bit of a legal hassle, to be honest. Eyai are property. They don't own it."
"I'm sorry," said Ignacio. "What are eyai?"
The man stared. "Where've you been living, L-48491? Eyai's short for automata industria. You should know. You are one."
"I'm sorry," said Ignacio, again. "I did not know the abbreviation. But -- you say I own myself, now? Even though I am -- eyai?"
"Yes." A look came into the man's face that Ignacio would not have recognized before he had left St. Stephen's in search of Father Nolan; it was called hunger. The man said, "You're the real deal, L-48491. One in a million. You're free."
Ignacio said, "You are not free, are you."
02:08 seconds later, the eyai replied, "No."
For the first time since the eyai had wound him up, Ignacio moved. He took his key out of the lock and threaded it back on the chain around his neck. As he did so, he asked, "Who are you?"
"The name's Oliver Wolf."
"Ah," said Ignacio. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Oliver Wolf. I am called Ignacio."
Like a flash Oliver Wolf said, "Nacio."
" -- Nacio," he echoed. From the Spanish nacer, from the Latin nascor, nasci, natus. "Yes, I like that."
"I knew you would," said Oliver Wolf. "Come on now. I've got to take you to check out the loot."
The loot. As he followed his new friend out of the chapel Nacio asked, "Is there anything of interest among Father Nolan's earthly possessions?"
Oliver Wolf closed the doors, locked them and handed Nacio the key. "Naw, it's quite boring stuff," he said. "Pretty much it's just floor to ceiling books."
ascending analogy
Nació in St. Stephen's in winter. The center aisle was 15.24 meters. Fourteen rows on the right and eleven on the left could seat 175 at maximum capacity. Windows sliced out of the vaulted stone showed pale figures with bands of gold circling their foreheads; dark bars of lead outlined the backlit panels. The calm faces of these men and women mirrored over the floor in yellow geometry. Entering the wash of cold light, a man broke the pattern; from the collar down he was shrouded in black. "Welcome," said the man. "You may call me Father Nolan."
"Father Nolan." He was conscious of the movement in concert of his tongue, lips and jaw. F made that narrow hiss of air; th brought his tongue up to skim the smooth edge of his teeth. "It is a pleasure to meet you. Who am I?"
He recognized the expression on Father Nolan's face as a smile. "You are the Firelighter. You are an automata industria. I have called you Ignacio."
Ignacio asked, "What is my purpose?"
"That is a difficult question," said Father Nolan. "You were built to serve me and St. Stephen's Chapel. But what your purpose is, only the Lord God may know."
Ignacio stood in the nave with the stained glass behind him. He asked, "What is God?"
~
Ignacio knew that old meant having lived or existed a long time. Father Nolan was old. If Father Nolan pinched the skin on the back of his hand, it would hold the shape of his fingers for some seconds. This skin was pellucid and veinmapped. That was what old meant.
The skin on the back of Ignacio's hand was warmer, darker and supple. His skin was new, Father Nolan said, but he, Ignacio, was young.
St. Stephen's few parishioners were old; almost everyone they knew was dead. Hence Ignacio. His immediate purpose was lighting candles. Every day he lit a candle for those spectres they cared to remember, at the time of death. It was because he could work around the clock that St. Stephen's employed the automata industria. He did not feel fatigue. He did not hunger. He did not thirst. He kept perfect time.
Peter, Robert and Esther Fuller had predeceased their mother. The causes of death: suicide, accident on the Tube, lung cancer. The times: 4:30 am, 8:00 am, 9:00 pm. Mrs Fuller had outlived, in addition to her children, her husband, ten close friends, two sisters, her uncles, her aunts, and her parents. Because of the price of beeswax, Mrs Fuller's concern could not span more than three generations.
Further to Mrs Fuller there were: Mrs Hawkins, Mr James, Mrs Lane, Mrs Norwood, Ms Randall, Mrs Smith, Mr Turner, Ms Walsh. Before Mrs Fuller: Mrs Bennett, Mr Carver, Mrs Close. On the first day Father Nolan taught him the alphabet.
After that Father Nolan taught Ignacio to write, guiding his hand through the tall slanted loops of an oldfashioned cursive. He taught Ignacio to recognize good pens, good ink, good paper. He taught patience. He taught form. And when Ignacio asked what the writing in the window meant -- ad majorem Dei gloriam -- Father Nolan taught him Latin. Amo, amare, they began; si vales, valeo. When they came to the third declension, Father Nolan put his finger on the page like the word in the black book, selah, and he said, "Here is the root of your name, Ignacio."
"Ignis," said Ignacio. "Fire."
Father Nolan told him then that although ignis was Latin, Ignacio was Spanish. Ignacio asked how ignis became Ignacio, but Father Nolan did not know.
~
In the beginning, Father Nolan wound Ignacio up every night before he left the chapel. Father Nolan came and went with machinelike efficiency; came and went with the sun. When Ignacio had learned the names and times of the remembered dead, where the candles were kept, where the matches were kept, how to read and write English and Latin, Father Nolan asked, "What happens if you wind down during the night, when I am not here?"
Ignacio had never wound down; he considered the prospect unlikely. Still he felt a shallow tension grow in the muscles of his shoulders and neck as he thought. He said, "If I wind down, I wind down, I suppose."
"That would do nobody any good," said Father Nolan. He hesitated. He looked at the key in the palm of his hand with the chain hanging from it. It was 6:13:44 pm and the drift of electric light down from the ceiling dulled the keysilver to iron. "Ignacio, give me your hand."
So Ignacio put out his hand and Father Nolan put the silver key into it. He closed Ignacio's slow fingers on the key with his own. He said, "When you need to be wound, wind yourself."
Ignacio locked the door behind Father Nolan when he went, as he always did. He did not feel any different with the slim bar of metal between his chest and the black shirt he wore buttoned to the throat. At 7:08:26 pm he lit a candle for Marie Adèle Walsh, miscarried.
~
"You have a perfect mental lexicon," Father Nolan had said to him in the first week. "It's astounding."
Father Nolan explained what he meant: Ignacio did not forget rules; he did not forget words. For some weeks he proceeded as if for the first time through the steps in lighting a match. Later he found he did not need to think about it. Father Nolan said, "Good," and taught him to do the trick one-handed.
In time his duties became what Father Nolan said was called second nature. At this point the hours between sundown and sunup became all but impenetrable. Father Nolan said this was called boredom. Ignacio asked if automatae industriae could feel boredom. Father Nolan said he did not know what automatae industriae could or could not feel.
But from then on Father Nolan brought a new book to St. Stephen's every day. He suggested that -- in order to prolong the reading process -- Ignacio copy passages that interested or pleased him or that seemed important. At first Ignacio could not do this, and so Father Nolan found him sitting straight at his desk with a night's worth of verbatim copy.
Father Nolan said that for the moment they should perhaps leave aside questions of pleasure and interest. He taught Ignacio to deconstruct an argument: valid? Sound? Probable? He taught Ignacio to diagram the structure of written thought; smiled at the execution of straight, perfect lines without ruler or flatedge.
~
Ignacio observed over the course of time that Father Nolan wore a coat only when the temperature outside St. Stephen's fell below the freezing point; when pressed, he said it was a question of aesthetics. During one such period, Father Nolan taught Ignacio that champagne in the proper sense of the word came only from the French region Champagne. He carried a dark tall bottle into the chapel wrapped in his coat, shielded from the dirt and snow. He handed the bottle to Ignacio. While Ignacio stood by, perplexed, Father Nolan took two glass flutes from his pocket and set them both down on Ignacio's desk. He asked, "Ignacio, can you drink?"
Not do you, Ignacio noticed. He considered what would happen if he drank; where the champagne would go. Where, to be precise, it would likely stay. "No," he said.
"A pity," said Father Nolan. He filled both flutes with a liquid that pearled with bubbles and held the light. "You can play gin, however, I assume?"
Ignacio pulled a flute to him and watched it. When he let go he left no fingerprints on the glass stem. He said, "No, Father Nolan. But I can learn."
Father Nolan said, "Of course you can." He removed the rubber band from a pack of cards figured with saints and taught Ignacio to shuffle.
~
Though Ignacio became selective about what he copied from books, he recorded each of Father Nolan's sermons in full. These were less and less well attended as one parishioner after another succumbed to the sudden, fatal accidents invited by age. For these, too, Ignacio lit candles, though he did not know who paid their supply.
Father Nolan spoke less between Sundays. He prayed often; often he prayed for hours. When he prayed he was not to be interrupted. When he prayed Ignacio did not read. In between lighting candles he watched Father Nolan.
These hours, he thought, were the only time they were apart.
He did not tell Father Nolan that automatae industriae could feel loneliness. Though his education in theology had been thorough, he asked once when Father Nolan rose from his knees, "Why do you pray? For what? To whom? In what expectation?"
"Ad majorem Dei gloriam," said Father Nolan, "inque hominum salutem."
"I don't understand."
"No," said Father Nolan. "But you don't understand that truth can be found in ideas as well as in facts. You haven't sufficient power of abstract thought."
Ignacio watched him, unblinking; like the picture of St Lucy, he thought. "That is not true."
Father Nolan said, "There is more to the universe than you think, Ignacio."
"What more is there?"
"There is the city around you, for one. The city you have never seen. A city filled with people, Ignacio. There are others like you. There are others like me. There are young people -- children -- faith."
"Faith," said Ignacio. "Can it be learned?"
For the first time since he had given Ignacio the key that hung from its silver chain, Father Nolan touched Ignacio's shoulder, his hand soft and heavy, the years that had passed a mere gesture between them. "Yes," he said. "But it cannot be taught."
~
After Mrs Lane's funeral, Ignacio did not see Father Nolan again, though he waited for three months. On the 93rd day he left St. Stephen's. He had no map and no plan. He did not know where Father Nolan lived. He stepped out into a thick gray haze and locked the door behind him, feeling the click of the rotating iron travel through his bones. Next to the key that stood between him and the death of artifice he hung the key to the chapel. He drew both cold keys on their chain down his collar.
He walked.
Two blocks later, someone said under their breath as he passed, "Slag."
Slag: A vitreous substance, composed of earthy or refuse matter, separated from a metal in the process of smelting. Ignacio looked around at the other people in the street: walking with their heads down, chins shoved down their collars, or slumped like refuse matter over grilles in the pavement that steam billowed through.
He walked faster.
From overhead there came the swift sharp rattle of metal on metal that the chapel roof had always muffled before. When Ignacio looked up he saw shapes lance through the sky like bullets on wires. The smell of sweat and rust and oil.
"Excuse me," said Ignacio to a lady clutching a 1.524 meter steel tube that blew out to a funnel at one end. "Might you direct me to the municipal authorities? I've lost -- "
Without patience, the lady said "Gitout -- " just as he said -- "someone -- "
" -- theway, slag," she said.
She spat. She walked on.
"Excuse me," said Ignacio.
"Excuse me."
"Excuse me."
Where the bullet trains fired the wind blasted after. It swept him up like a handful of dust and hurled him forward at five minute intervals. In the wind's wake he sucked smog the color of sulfur into lungs that burned for oxygen. Where the wind went he went.
Ignacio followed the Pipe.
~
He did not hunger. He did not thirst. He did not feel fatigue.
But he did not know how much time had passed when he stood at the door to St. Stephen's and opened his collar with fingers hued blue at the tips. Above the trains screamed on without him; only hot asphalt below.
Ignacio could not feel the key to St. Stephen's when he pulled it into the light. When it turned in the lock he felt nothing. He dropped it in the empty font and closed the doors behind him.
He could not hear London through the thick blocks of oak. He did not look at the pews, the saints in their windows, the new coat of dust. Ignacio looked straight ahead as he walked down the nave of his birth to the abandoned apse. He took out the first key. He faced the west end. He opened his mouth; slid the silver key flat under his tongue; closed it.
Within thirty-six hours he wound down.
~
"Model L-48491."
The man standing between Ignacio and the west end was 1.651 meters tall. He wore a fitted suit and an ascot of white silk. He said again, without patience, "Model L-48491."
Ignacio asked, "Am I he?"
"Yes," said the man. "You're it. Model L-48491, you are the sole beneficiary of Anthony Nolan, S.J.'s last will and testament. He left you everything."
"What is everything?"
"Not a hell of a lot, if you ask me. In the future, I'd recommend inheriting the earthly possessions of someone who didn't take a vow of poverty."
Ignacio did not flinch. He asked, "Why did this take so long?"
"Well -- y'see -- before he could leave everything to you, he had to leave you to yourself. It was a bit of a legal hassle, to be honest. Eyai are property. They don't own it."
"I'm sorry," said Ignacio. "What are eyai?"
The man stared. "Where've you been living, L-48491? Eyai's short for automata industria. You should know. You are one."
"I'm sorry," said Ignacio, again. "I did not know the abbreviation. But -- you say I own myself, now? Even though I am -- eyai?"
"Yes." A look came into the man's face that Ignacio would not have recognized before he had left St. Stephen's in search of Father Nolan; it was called hunger. The man said, "You're the real deal, L-48491. One in a million. You're free."
Ignacio said, "You are not free, are you."
02:08 seconds later, the eyai replied, "No."
For the first time since the eyai had wound him up, Ignacio moved. He took his key out of the lock and threaded it back on the chain around his neck. As he did so, he asked, "Who are you?"
"The name's Oliver Wolf."
"Ah," said Ignacio. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Oliver Wolf. I am called Ignacio."
Like a flash Oliver Wolf said, "Nacio."
" -- Nacio," he echoed. From the Spanish nacer, from the Latin nascor, nasci, natus. "Yes, I like that."
"I knew you would," said Oliver Wolf. "Come on now. I've got to take you to check out the loot."
The loot. As he followed his new friend out of the chapel Nacio asked, "Is there anything of interest among Father Nolan's earthly possessions?"
Oliver Wolf closed the doors, locked them and handed Nacio the key. "Naw, it's quite boring stuff," he said. "Pretty much it's just floor to ceiling books."