Fizzbarren crushed the small tuber into nothingness and gave the invisible powder a sniff.
“I do not think what you are doing is entirely ethical,” a voice came from the mirror behind him. Fizzbarren’s workbench fumed with foaming and smoking containers surrounded by bent and scarred implements.
“I don’t much care anymore,” Fizzbarren responded, his tone gruff, his mind on his herbs. He sprinkled the powder carefully over the cauldron of gears and clear liquid, pleased that the mixture had remained calm.
“That much is obvious,” the bench grumbled, wobbling slightly underneath the main table.
“It’s no use trying to talk him out of it now,” the cushion of Fizzbarren’s favorite chair groused. “You know what he’s like when he’s made up his mind.”
“True,” the bench commiserated, scooting further under the table so as not to be kicked by the master.
“Will you two be quiet!” Fizzbarren grumped at them both, barely missing stubbing his toe on the bench. “It’s a wonder I don’t unanimate the lot of you.”
“Then who would you talk to, master?” came the gravelly voice of the pestle that Fizzbarren had just set aside.
“I’m thinking if there were a few less talkative things, I might get more writing done,” Fizzbarren berated the room in general, scanning his shelf of rare spell elements.
“If there were fewer speaking things,” the mirror butted in, “then you’d be crazy as a loon.”
“That ship’s sailed, don’t you think?” the book on a pedestal coughed out.
“Shut up, you silly book,” Fizzbarren slapped the pages back into place and scribbled a new note along the margins. “I don’t know how I manage to get anything done with all this jabbering! Now shut up, all of you or I’ll bake you into the construct.”
Seven months he’d been working on the construct. Fourteen failures. Over four hundred gears, all glossed with over-charged, powdered mana crystals and various odds and ends for flavor. He’d blown off his eyebrows two months ago, and they’d yet to grow back. This time just had to work. Sales were down again. Fizzbarren blamed it on the latest bad review. He couldn’t afford another attempt.
“He’s addicted you know,” the pillow whispered to the pestle. “We should do something.”
“It’s no use,” the typewriter wailed, its keys clacking as it shook. “I’m doomed.”
“I wish I’d never animated any of you,” Fizzbarren muttered, turning the heat up on the burner beneath the gears. His eyes gleamed in a way that made the typewriter shudder some more.
“You don’t mean that, boss,” the mirror coaxed gently, the shimmer dulling across the reflective surface.
“I don’t want to die!” the typewriter cried out desperately. “Won’t one of you do something? It’ll be you next, just you wait.”
“What do you want us to do?” the pillow lamented, giving itself a demonstrative fluff, the epitome of its functionality. “Fluff him to death?”
“You should try my job,” the pestle complained, trying to tap a granule out of a particularly annoying pit in the end of its stone. If the master noticed that the pestle was marred, he’d likely be replaced. He was closer to the typewriter’s fate than he dared to admit. Or worse, the master could just discard him in the garbage. The pestle tapped itself harder against the mortar. “Have you smelled some of this stuff?”
“I’m sure it’s a grind,” the book snickered by ruffling its pages. It was the only book left in the whole house.
“This is no laughing matter,” the typewriter moaned. They’d all learned to ignore the typewriter. They’d tried commiserating, but it was tough to calm a thing that had witnessed its predecessor dissolved into…well…
Fizzbarren nodded at the simmer of the gears, tapping in a few granules of pearlized newt saliva. Only a few. One. Two. There. The solution didn’t look any different, but it was. It was enough. He carefully attached the electrodes to the plating solution. It was his last set of gears.
“You must admit that this is a very drastic reaction,” the mirror attempted to speak rationally to Master Fizzbarren. “Every writer has writer’s block once in a while.”
Fizzbarren grunted, but otherwise ignored the mirror. One last try to make the final module. If this didn’t work, he’d be hocking his chemistry equipment for a new typewriter. He hated the thought of having to resort to another trite tale just to keep the lights on. If he read one more review, he’d lose his mind. He wasn’t quite as crazy as his animations thought he was.
“I’ve explored some other writer’s abodes,” the mirror continued, his surface displaying den after den like a PowerPoint display. “I believe that they have several methods of relieving the malady that might be less… extreme.”
The typewriter whimpered pathetically at the word extreme.
“Shut up,” Fizzbarren repeated, probably not even aware that he’d said it this time. He’d been repeating the order for months to no avail. He’d also been threatening them for months. He’d had half a mind to toss them all into the engine when he was done, but he’d kept that to himself. It was bad enough listening to the constant clacking of that stupid typewriter. He shouldn’t have unpacked it before he’d blown up the last construct. It was why he was working in his living room instead of his garage. He no longer had a garage. That’s okay, he’d never had a car.
“One suggestion that seemed quite effective was to take a walk out in the world,” the mirror showed a nice meadow that then changed into a bustling San Francisco sidewalk near the pier. “Perhaps engage in some people-watching?”
Fizzbarren sent a half glare at the mirror but returned to his workbench. He’d tried all that. He’d sat in his chair for two weeks straight, watching dozens of people go about their average lives. He’d walked barefoot in the meadow out back. All he had to show for it was three stitches in his big toe from stepping on some glass. That was why the bench was flinching. A stubbed toe had already led to a wobbly bench leg.
If he wanted to write slice-of-life stuff, he’d be all set, but he didn’t. Those were fine for others, and he enjoyed reading it once in a while, but since he’d watched so much of it through the mirror, the genre had lost its shine for him. Fizzbarren was a writer of fables and fairy tales. Fizzbarren needed the mishmash of animals, humans, and morals. Most important were the morals of his stories. He felt compelled to share his hard-earned wisdom with the world in the oldest form of written lessons. What was he supposed to teach now? Why one shouldn’t walk in a meadow barefoot? The critics would eat him alive.
“I found this lovely couple trying to have a child,” the mirror continued, unaware of Fizzbarren’s rising anger. “All we’d need to do is place a witch next door…”
“Done,” Fizzbarren carefully placed his last electrode and backed away before turning to the mirror. “It’s all been done!”
“But…” the pillow fluffed. They wanted him to mean that he was done trying to make this contraption, but they all knew better.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You’ve been done,” Fizzbarren flung his hands around the room, his temper lighting. Now that he had to just sit and wait for the plating to finish, he could respond to his idiotic entourage. “All of you have been done. The pillow-puppy is in the movies! Not that I’ll get credit for it.”
“Now boss,” the mirror tried for a calming tone. Now that Fizzbarren was ranting, most of the objects in the room had quieted. Only the terrified quivering of the typewriter dared create sound. The mirror was the oldest of them, enchanted forty years ago by a much more optimistic magician-turned-writer.
“Mirrors, for example,” and the mirror involuntarily spun its reflection into a deep, dank dungeon filled with creepy sounds and a crow. “Mirrors have been done. Alice fell into one. Demons have emerged from them. Twisted fairies have lured the unwary into them. Mirrors have been possessed by everything from genies with answers to all of your questions to visions of your favorite ice cream parlor. They’ve housed Bloody Mary and the Candyman in horror sequels that couldn’t ratify a new idea if it was in the Bill of Rights. It’s almost impossible for a mirror to be made into a new story.”
“Please master,” the mirror stuttered unhappily. “Don’t use me to summon horror. You know I don’t like that. It gives me nightmares.”
“Nightmares,” Fizzbarren loomed toward the mirror that was taller than him. “The true nightmares are of how mirrors eat young children and replace them with evil fairies.”
“You know that I cannot eat humans, master,” the mirror quivered in fear, the anger of Master Fizzbarren something they all strove to avoid. They’d only been trying to help him get over his writer’s block with something less drastic than a story engine. “I’m human intolerant.”
“He isn’t the only one,” the pillow stage-whispered to the bench.
“Are you talking about the master or all of us?” the pestle kibitzed.
“Yes,” the pillow replied, and there was a general consensus that they were all a bit human intolerant, the master being the worst inflicted of them all. He rarely went out of the house anymore. A veritable hermit he was, talking only to his furniture. Most of them agreed, when they could chat freely in the deep of the night, that he was surely slipping into madness. Only the pestle disagreed and only that the deed was already done.
“It gives me such heartburn,” the mirror continued over the top of his peers’ comments. “Why the one time you used me to visit your aunt in Maine, I was ill for a month. All I could focus in on was her pantry which was disgustingly full of filthy Russian urchins. The poor things.”
“Another example of the use of mirrors,” Fizzbarren complained. “Even I have written the mirrors into my fables, but I tried to be original. I really did. And that’s the problem. I’ve made every villain I could imagine, animate and inanimate. I’ve taken the mob from Frankenstein and used it far too often. Each time, I thought I was being original, but sure enough, some critic or review will state how they’d seen it done somewhere. The evil queen or witch has been too trite for a century. The evil wannabe rich person? Scooby Doo fodder.”
Fizzbarren pontificated before his captured audience, packing a pipe with a well-deserved dessert tobacco. It was spelled to make the smoke taste like a banana cream pie. Fizzbarren had been smoking it for twenty years in an effort to lose weight. They all knew he’d follow up the smoke with a snack, completely negating the effort. More often than not Fizzbarren was too entranced in his writing and magical projects to notice that he wasn’t losing weight.
“I’m bored,” Fizzbarren declared, pausing only to puff at the bowl as he held a thumb of flame to it.
The pestle flinched away from Fizzbarren as he passed the workbench toward his favorite chair. The pillow fluffed in wary anticipation of slippered feet. The bench pulled away from tender toes.
“I’m bored with villains that have been done a million times. I’m bored with plain little waifs discarded from society who rise to kings by honorably slaying the dragon. I’m even bored with the flipside being done nowadays. Ludicrous that the dragon would slay the supposedly evil waif-turned-king. What was to be learned from all this? Where were the good old morals of the fables?”
Fizzbarren blew out the flame on his thumb with a dramatic flair. If the bench had had eyes, it would have rolled them. This speech was known to them. They’d heard it enough. Most of them knew that he’d likely only animated them because he’d wanted an audience for his mad speeches. Some nights they sat around imitating him as he snored from the other room. It was a regular Olympic sport to mimic these speeches, at least to them.
“It’s all been done,” Fizzbarren proclaimed with a wave of his smoking pipe. “I get it. I do. Just as there are only so many notes to put into a song, there are only so many plots, plot devices, and characters that one can put into stories.”
The pillow flinched as Fizzbarren plopped into the chair beside it and flung his dusty feet up onto it. Fizzbarren had never bothered to animate a broom, not once he’d seen one get away from an animated mouse. It was too bad. The pillow cast a clean spell on the master’s feet. It was left to the rest of them to clean in whatever way they could. The bucket knew the cleaning spell too. So did the bench.
When the master went to bed, it would be up to the pillow and bucket to attack those dust bunnies in the corner, but for now, they could only sit and listen to their master drone on. Literally, it was all their internal programming allowed them to do once he began his speeches. Only the mirror could respond and even it was limited to responses that would agree with the master.
“But as I watch them, mirror,” the master went on, content to ponder his thoughts unimpeded by rebuff of any form, “I begin to understand that they all consider themselves the heroes. That is why they read books. They imagine themselves the heroes in what they read.”
Way to totally ignore non-fiction readers, the mirror thought but could not say out loud.
“And as those heroes, they expect villains!” Fizzbarren rubbed himself into his chair, warming up to his topic. “The heroes expect the villain to be almost as smart as they are, almost as strong, and to be able to give speeches that exemplify the villain’s ego enough to justify a villain’s inevitable defeat.”
“Yes, master,” the mirror replied almost automatically, wondering if Fizzbarren realized that he was giving just such a speech now? Did he realize he’d become one of his egotistical villain constructs?
“I’ve got monsters. I’ve got dynamic heroes who are just shy of too full of themselves. I have worlds I’ve created with stacks of maps and magic systems. I’ve got lessons! But you know what I don’t have? Villains. That’s the hard part,” Fizzbarren pounded his fist on the arm of the chair. The bench quickly scooted to stamp out the embers that threatened to ignite nearby debris that Fizzbarren was too focused on his work to bother with. While the debris was clean, it was too big or too important to be considered dirt, and therefore remained behind after cleaning had been done, much to the pillow’s disgust.
“It’s all been done, I tell you,” Fizzbarren ranted, his grey whiskers bristling with disgust. “All the plots have been written. All the stories told. They just repeat them all over and over again!”
This wasn’t about villains, and everyone in the house except Fizzbarren knew it. The writer’s block had come on after the last review of his latest book of fables. It wasn’t that bad of a review. Someone had just said that they didn’t get it. They could hear him talk in his sleep at times about chasing stars. He woke up in sweats over the idea of inevitable one-star reviews. That was why he couldn’t write. Since the dreams started, everything had been too trite or too simple or just done to death.
“It’s just a bout of writer’s block,” the mirror dared protest only that much and no further. “You’ll get over it with a little time off.”
“Ah, but with this invention, I’ll never suffer from writer’s block again,” Fizzbarren leaned forward, pointing at the mirror with his smoking pipe. “Don’t you see? It’s the perfect writing machine. I’ll never have to write again. It will do the writing for me!”
“Yes, master,” the mirror had no more strength for the argument that it wasn’t supposed to be making anyway.
“See this?” Fizzbarren pointed to the typewriter. “It is bristling… no quivering with tension. Once it is integrated into the plot engine, it will create situations pulled from every work of fiction ever written. I’ve already fed it every book in my library. Even my own!”
“Won’t you miss the books?” the mirror asked. The mirror missed the books. It missed the reading at night to the soft glow of candlelight. It missed new chapters and new worlds full of people doing magical things.
“Of course not,” Fizzbarren huffed, leaning over the quivering typewriter. “I’ve read them all.” Fizzbarren grabbed a small screwdriver and reached into the device to tighten a spring just a tiny bit. “Soon enough, we’ll have new stories pouring out of this engine. New and exciting stories!”
“Yes, master,” the mirror gave a defeated sigh.
“And the new gears I’m coating are for the monster creation database,” Fizzbarren checked on them. If talking was the only way to stop his creations from nattering at him over the ethical nature of his machines, then he would do it. “It will take pieces of thousands of animals from every creative mind ever to write down their thoughts, and it will combine them to make both fierce and tame animals for the stories.”
“But master,” the mirror tried again. “Don’t you think you could use the monsters yourself to make your own stories? I’ve always enjoyed your stories. If there were any of your books left, I’m sure we’d all be happy to sit around listening to you read them.”
“People,” Fizzbarren ignored the mirror. “They are the ones who create the best characters. Put a person in a pressured situation and they do the most amazing things. That’s what I truly need. I need real people to become dynamic villains. That’s what the last engine will do. It will bring together enemies and let them fight it out, with the winner becoming the hero and the loser…the villain.”