It was once again time for Sigmund Montague to have an appointment with Cecilia Silva. He had been in this industry for a very long time, helping both mages and wealthy common people manage their fortunes, but he had never had a client like Cecilia, or “Cece” as the girl continued to insist he call her. In his opinion even Cecilia was technically too familiar, but she refused to answer to Ms. Silva, wholesale. She was an enigmatic girl, and since he was familiar with her past, his first instinct was to treat her like a scared child. Her family had been entirely wiped out, as mages are want to do, so she had no support from relatives, and to his knowledge she had few if any friends as well, but despite this, she was anything but a scared child. She oozed a certain kind of confidence, not a braggadocios kind that could be expected of a child living on their own with a vast fortune, but the kind that said, “I know what I’m doing, stay out of the way.” He had tried his best when she was younger to encourage her to rely more on him or really any other adult, but now that she herself was eighteen, he had little excuse to suggest that anymore. Still, he worried for her, although he was pleased to hear that she was attending a few social events. He wasn’t trying to spy on his best client, that would be gouache, but he kept an ear to the ground of high society, it was part of his job. It was relieving to hear that she was spending at least a little less time working, the girl was a genius alchemetrix, he had no clue why she remained anonymous, she had even published a few papers, and that was without going to a university, although he was sure she must have had some tutors as a child, mage families didn’t usually muck about with institutions of learning lest their children accidentally reveal family secrets. She was certainly his most profitable client as well, most people who come into a fortune are content to let the money sit and grow on its own, it’s why Sigmund had a job, but if she kept going as she had, she would have soon doubled what her family left her. Despite this he was glad she was taking some time away, he’d rather she be happy and healthy, than a money machine, although it looked like she was somehow doing both.
Sigmund had the boys wheel a crate to her door this time. It wasn’t Cecilia’s usual delivery, that would come the next day like usual, no this was a gift. He had suggested time and time again that she hire a few servants, god knew she had the money for it, he wasn’t even sure why she chose to live in this apartment, nice as it was, she owned an entire estate not even thirty minutes away drive in that car of hers. Despite his suggestions, she always denied the idea of having any help, she claimed she did not want any human beings in her “sacred atelier” He hoped this would be a suitable compromise. He knocked on the door.
“Sigmund! Welcome in.” Cece said while opening the door. She gave him a onceover before noticing the large crate. “Oh, is the shipment early?”
“No it’s just a gift, something that I thought you could use.” He replied, with a hopeful smile.
“Oh my, you shouldn’t have, that’s so thoughtful. Well come in, come in.” She beckoned Sigmund and the delivery men inside, where they began to open it for her.
“Sigmund, I sincerely hope you didn’t bring me a human body.” Cece laughed, noticing the size and shape of the box.
“No Cecilia, I can get rid of those on my own.” He said.
Cece immediately burst into laughter, Sigmund joked very rarely, but when he did it always caught her off guard. They didn’t even have to be funny, but the stuffy old man so rarely kid, that she would always find it amusing.
Inside Cece recognized what she saw, a doll, or rather a golem, made to look like a beautiful girl wearing the garb of a maid, when they propped it up she could see it had a large wind up key on its back. Cece was familiar with golems, artificial constructs that moved and performed jobs on their own, they were made by alchemetrixes, and although it wasn’t a field that Cece practiced, it was one she was very intrigued by. This one was one of the popular designs by Heinrich Gustave, a cleaning golem that could perform a variety of other functions. Yet another scheme from Sigmund to get her to have a servant, once he had hired two maids without even telling her, she had been furious. Cece supposed this one wasn’t that bad in comparison. Her main objection to the matter was that she didn’t want to be around anyone who could leak information, and this was a viable solution to that particular anxiety, at least once she stripped the inscriptions and made sure it couldn’t be used for such a purpose.
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“Thank you Sigmund, I’ve never gotten to see Gustave’s work up close before.” She said touching the white porcelain that served as the golems skin.
“I hope you can get some use out of it, I worry about you all by yourself here.” He said.
“I’m very careful, Sigmund, you shouldn’t worry.”
“I worry about all my clients, Cecilia.”
“Yes, yes, where would you be without my considerable fortune.” She joked. “Now, let’s get to business.”
Once Sigmund had taken his leave, Cece gave the curious machine a disdainful look. It was a sweet gesture and she planned on at least trying to use the thing, but she didn’t believe in leaving someone else’s work in her home. She started with its appearance, it was a beautiful creation, very elegant, but it had dull black hair, eyes, and clothes, made to not out shadow a young mage lady’s outfits. Cece welcomed competition. It took a little elbow grease to pry the glued wig off the base of the thing’s head, It wasn’t much of an improvement, but she glued down the short bob, brunette wig she had used for her “Jean Brown” disguise, she wasn’t planning on reusing it. Next she pulled its shell like eyelids up, and used a few cheaper inks to make her eyes a nice forest green. Finally Cece pulled out an old green dress that she had never worn, but didn’t have the heart to throw out. It was all very wasteful, and she would likely redo the process in a more aesthetically pleasing way later, but she had to have her fun somewhere.
Fortunately for her the fun was just beginning, as it was time to start altering the golem’s inner workings. She wouldn’t touch the golem core, the magnetic alchemical construct that allowed it to store working memory, at least for now since she wasn’t experienced with their operation. She also wouldn’t touch the chassis of the golem. Although she could theoretically use transmutation to alter it, transmutation was a painfully delicate process of rearranging materials molecule by molecule. If you happened to have a scroll prepared, or had a good reference for inscriptions it would be easy to turn powdered metals and glass into pieces similar to the golem’s porcelain exterior, but to create them wholesale would take weeks for a normal alchemetrix, and her at least a few days. Days she did not currently want to spend. So she contented herself with taking out the metal scroll rods serving as the golem’s instructions, and creating a make shift brace for the largest rubies she had. First she analyzed and copied the old inscriptions into the ruby, then she went through her mental library to consider what to add. She had read quite a few books on golem inscriptions so she wasn’t completely clueless, but she had little practical experience. First she threw in a few failsafes and procedures that would be convenient for her, how she liked her tea, how to treat Sigmund specifically versus other important people. The kinds of things that would help in her day to day. Once she spent a few minutes hard coding her preferences into the automata, she got to the most exciting part. Experimenting.
She wanted the golem to be able to grow and learn, several newer golems already had said ability, but they usually ran into storage issues. The bulky, stationary, things that took up entire building didn’t have this problem and on occasion displayed something approaching intelligence, but she was hopeful she could make something very useful with her largest ruby. It was a clunky process as the only way to store information on said ruby was for Cece to use her scribe’s eye, but she could work around that by having additional inscriptions stored inside the golem core, and periodically copying them to the ruby. She set up the process over the next few hours along with enhancing the golem’s ability to understand and utilize speech, as well as the ability to have commands related to its growth logged in the core. She of course also had to slip in a few contingencies of course, like gold detection spells so it could verify that Cece was its creator, and because she was far too paranoid for her own good, a self-destruct feature. It wasn’t for the golem, all commercial golems have inscriptions to prevent them from harming human beings, rather it was on the off chance someone attacked her while she was out and about. Presuming she wanted to bring the golem with her.
This would certainly be a work in progress, but Cece was done for the night, and the golem was ready to be activated. Cece carefully winded up the key on its back, and after a moment its green eyes opened.
“Hi, my name’s Cece, yours is Charlotte, but I’m going to call you Lotte”