[Apocrypha] The Connection-Fabricant of Lord Sotha Sil

[Bellertristically rewritten record of the events in Lord Sils Chamber in the Clockwork-City]

The gigantic gears creaked as they pulled their unstoppable circles in the Clockwork-City. Here in the chamber of the Lord rested his most recent Fabricant project. It was not the biggest device he'd ever built. It was not the most complex device ever built neither, but it was the most important of all.

For more than 1000 years he has been working on the device, which he has just called the Connection-Fabricant. It was, in several ways, his heart project, and yet he was ashamed of his creation.

For the first time the thought of a Connection-Fabricant came in his mind when he was walking around in Mournhold with a false face and sat a Dunmer-boy, not older than forty, sitting next to a young and beautiful Female-Dunmer.

They sat side by side and did not look at each other. The boy had folded his hands in his legs before he laid the hands down on the stone bench.

Sil was completely confused. The hasty breathing of girl was a clear sign that she wanted the boy, just as he wanted her, but they did nothing. Both were in stress which was physically noticeable, but they just sat there. The great question that Sil asked himself was: Why? Then the girl reached for the boy's hand, and they looked at each other in the eyes. Her heart beat even faster, which Sil could only recognize by the technology in his mask.

And when the lips of the two touched each other in love and the stress was transformed into pure happiness, lord Sil had an idea that could solve the biggest problems of this era and the next ones, and he teleported back to his city.

This problem that he was finally able to solve had tormented him for the last few centuries. It steered him more and more from his important researches to the colonization of life-hostile environments, and he could not allow that anymore.

He did not know yet what this problem was and where it came from but now it all came to a conclusion, and he looked for all the biological resources he had in his database, and he had them all. He studied the biological composition of the concept of beauty and quickly reached its limits, because there was no perfect beauty.

Some people found mass more attractive than grace. Some size instead of brevity. Some people liked light skin rather than darker. And so Sil had to decide for an optical concept to finally save the world, because the landfall was near and without his colonialization technology no one would be able to survive in the Mundus.

The greatest problem lord Sil had been to bring the necessary thermal-technology and movement-equipment into this, for him optimal elegant case without making the technological origin of the creation recognizable.

The second problem was the Uncanny-Valley-effect. After the miracle of compressing the necessary technology from the size of an estate to the size of an adult, possible through time and relative dimensions in space, optical perfection was the most important aspect.

The more detailed the image of a living creature, the faster the appearance of false features, errors in the optics were recognizable, which could destroy the impression of a real being.

First the optic-sensors were too small, the oxygen supply barriers did not move naturally enough, the angles were too slow for a few milliseconds, and the heat raised too fast. Nothing natural get so fast so hot.

Prince Sil used every time to work on his project. He lost all sense of time and only after a scout-fabricant came into his chamber, saying “He is dead,” he could let himself get sway from his work for once and was shocked at how long he had been working on the Connection-fabricant.

His first trip since the start of his project took him back to Mournhold. He saw an old dunmer-woman with an ash-vein in her hand, sitting on a stone bench and Sil sat down beside her.

He asked her about her gone husband, and she told him everything she knew about him. As she spoke of her husband, Drandan, began to smile and tears running down her cheeks. Her sense of life sparked anew in her and while Sil listened to her he reached into his coat, drew out shiny metal, and cut the throat of the old woman, which he saw with his deceased man on the same bench centuries ago and which gave him the inspiration to start his current project. He teleported her to his city and remained seated for a moment, reaching for the ash-ash which Balya had dropped.

Sil stood up and handed the urn to the ashtray. Sil stood up and handed over the urn to the ash priest of the city, who poured out the content into a basin and Sil returned to his chamber.

On the ground was the bleeding Balya and did not move anymore. One of his fabricants was already preparing her for the surgery and Sil stood up to her, stroked her beautiful face with his thumb before he took the brain from her.

Sotha Sil's research on artificial intelligence had quickly turned into an unworthy research, since no construct of the world could ever sense the complexity of a brain, so he needed a brain for his project.

He had hoped Balya would not be willing to live because of the death of her husband, but the conversation with her showed that she wanted to live very well and Sil will fulfill her wish with his new project.

After hours of surgery he put the brain into the shell, which he had designed so perfectly, and had only to improve detailed improvements that took only decades. Then it was time, and he put the Welkynd-Stone in the belly and the energy flowed through the mechanism of the device and the Connection-Fabricant opened its mechanical eyes.

Sil took a deep breath and his eyes filled with tears as he undressed himself. He stepped closer naked to his perfect work that had the perfect shape of a perfect woman and that he wished so long for himself.

He wrapped his arms around her neck, laid his head on her warm shoulder and the fabricant replied his hug, and for the first time in thousands of years Lord Sil felt again human proximity and the warmth of a woman, making him the first time in thousands of years for joy crying. He was no longer alone.

In a trembling voice he said, “I love you,” and continued to cry. The mechanoid answered him with an honest “kill me” which Sil ignored.