The boy is beautiful. He hears them say it as the winding key coaxes his gears into motion, as he wakes in a building of steel and sunlight. He is made of gleaming brass; sculpted plates are his face and breast, and delicate mechanisms are his fingers and neck and feet. They press their ears to his chest, one at a time, to hear the click of his mechanical heart. Brilliant, they say, beautiful.
The boy is fragile. The man who brought him home forgets. Now, the man smooths the dents in the brass plates and turns the winding key with a deceivingly gentle hand. Something is still broken—the gears grind and resist when the boy lifts his arm. Beautiful, the man says, and he opens the curtains.
The boy looks through the window at the golden statues in the street. He takes apart the clock on the wall and touches the gears with brass fingers. He presses the man’s pocket watch to the curve of his ear and listens to its mechanical heart. Father? he thinks. Father? Father?
The boy leaves to find the building of steel and sunlight. He wonders what it is to be born.
The boy makes it to the end of the street before it begins to rain.
The man comes to collect his body, one flooded piece at a time.
The boy lies in the alleyway mud, strewn where the garbage collectors will find him tomorrow morning. His drowned gears lurch—his eyes loosen in their sockets. But then he sees, in the grime next to him, a limp cloth doll. Its face is painted to look like a child’s. There is no click of machinery within. Father, the boy’s mechanical heart sighs, giving a final relieved putter before the gears scrape to a halt.
