Steampunk Story - Later On

Metal clambered and clanged as he worked. Hammer struck molten blade, sending sparks into his face. Shadows danced around the cave’s walls, fleeing the fire. Sound reverberated back into the depths, and then escaped to the shining entrance. The hand arced near his stern face, clutching the hammer, squinting as he brought it down. Veins popped from sinewy arms. Simple oscillations in perfect harmony.

My ears throbbed. I gulped dusty air. Out the entrance I could see trees rustling in the wind with brilliant white clouds flying overhead. From the forest, a few birds floated into the sky. I looked over to the town by the water. A sea of orange stucco bricks and dark pine roofs shimmered in the sunlight as the sky sipped smoke from their chimneys. A few fishermen milled around the docks, waiting for the steamships to return to harbor.

Turning back to the man, my ears twitched. His frequency had been interrupted, probably because he had noticed me. Looking closely over his shoulder, I saw that he was crafting a steel rapier.

Of course, swords are one of the most intimate forms of death. One degree of separation. You have to look your man in the face, feel the jolt of shock through his system. You have to smell what he ate for lunch; take a guess about who he ate it with. Finally, at the very end, you see the light leave his eyes, knowing that the murderer is in this room. And it’s just you and the blade, no other suspects.

The man kept on clanking away at his project. We each bore witness to the deadly dance between hammer and unshaped metal. I met once a gunman who refused to admit he’d ever killed anyone. Sitting on the cratered hill after a battle, his machine gun smoking behind him, he’d explain how he was sure glad he had been assigned this job and not something more personal. When he was first drafted, he said his biggest worry was “having to kill”, but the machine gun gives him a way out of it.

“You see,” he’d assert, “All I ever do is apply pressure to this trigger and aim.”

He’d pause to let it sink in; smiling, rather satisfied with his discovery.

“Then,” he continues, “a couple of gears turn, flint ignites, gunpowder explodes. And presto, a bullet is propelled across the field hundreds of meters away. That’s what kills the guy. Not me.”

Though I find his preposition entertaining, perhaps chuckling for its novelty, I understand how dishonest it is. Fundamentally, the gunman is no different from the swordsman, the axe man, or the assassin. Certainly, his job is less familiar, for he cannot sense his targets surprise after being hit, nor can he smell their breath or look into their faces. Yet his association with death is the same. There are more degrees of separation, but the relationship is no less causal.

This I knew and this he knew. I could see it in his face during a battle. I saw how at the very instant when he pulled the trigger; his eyes gave way to trepidation, to fear. For a small moment, some part of him understood the truth. Also, I saw in that instant, his right hand letting off the trigger ever so slightly, not so much that the gun wouldn’t fire, but enough that perhaps in his own mind he could blame the wind, a nearby shockwave, or the beating of his own heart. Anything to avoid facing the truth of what he’d just done.

So it is too with the blacksmith. I wonder if in that exact moment when hammer strikes metal, when their deadly dance develops into an acid kiss, I would be able to see something in his eyes, that same fear. I wonder if he too lets a little pressure off the hammer, pretends gravity is shaping the weapon; pretends the hammer has a mind of its own, that he is not to blame for the shape of the metal. Perhaps he too understands deep down what he’s really doing.

The gunman lets the machine do the work but supplies the input. He provides that spark, that ever essential force we call will and intent. The blacksmith is no different: he is simply an input. But his input goes into a much bigger machine, a much less physical, more ubiquitous type of machine. This machine we call war.

But of course, he too is probably like that gunman, thinking he is not to blame for the deaths he causes. He too thinks that the degrees of separation between him and his victim are enough to pardon him. As do those fishermen on the docks, who catch food so the blacksmith and gunsmith can eat while they continue to craft their weapons. Then there are the dock workers and the sailors, who supply this town with everything it needs to keep the machine going. And all these men have wives who make sure they have a nice place to sleep at night and a good meal to eat. Then there are all those children who helped their mothers prepare the food or clean the house. Everyone in this whole goddamn nation, in this whole goddamn world, is part of the machine, albeit with varying degrees of separation. And that machine just gets more efficient each day.

That’s why I prefer these kinds of weapons, the ones that kill effectively but keep you close to your enemy. Because in the end, I’m not like this man, or those fishermen, or those children in town who helped their moms collect food for the men today. I don’t lie to myself about my life’s purpose: death. I kill. No other options. No question.

Bionic Extensions

 

So, yesterday I donated blood for the first time in my life. I wasn’t scared, because people do it all the time, and the worst thing that happens is that they sometimes pass out. Plus, it’s a really great cause and I figure in case I don’t achieve something in my life, at least there’s a chance that my blood will be used to save someone who will.

I will say this, though, the process of giving blood gives one plenty of time to think about everything that could possibly go wrong. First, they have you sit and wait to be registered. Then, they take you to an enclosed little area where you sit and wait for a nurse to do tests on you. All in all, this process takes up a good hour, and especially since I’m one of those people who has no games on my phone, my mind wanders off into all sorts of horribly improbable scenarios. Like…what if I’m getting my blood drawn and there’s a power outage so they accidentally let me bleed out?  …or what if the lights go off and the nurse misses my arm and hits an eye or my neck or something? …Or worse yet, what if all this blood actually goes to feed a giant alien trying to take over the Earth and the nurses are actually cultists who worship him? Seriously though, I had a lot time to think.

Well, I guess being totally honest, they did give me something to occupy my time: their donor info packets, filled with wonderful information about all the different disclaimers they have. For instance “If you have a 101 degree fever in the next 36 hours… If you cannot walk, drive, stand, sit, or breathe in the next two weeks… Or if you find that you have a flesh-eating virus in the next 4 hours and 8 minutes… please contact your local blood bank immediately.” So, in a way, this actually did nothing to remedy my wild fantasies about everything that could go wrong. I just kind of decided not to think about it.

Instead, I decided to take their survey so they could determine whether my blood was good enough for them. My rule of thumb was: if I don’t know what it is, then I’ve probably never had it. For anyone who wants to cheat on the blood donor exam, most of the answers are no. I’m sure if you guess no on everything you’ll get like a 90%, which is probably enough to have them let you give blood. The survey had to make sure I don’t do illegal drugs, and that I don’t take exotic pharmaceuticals. Also, they had to make sure I wasn’t engaging in a so-called “high-risk” behavior for HIV. However, for some reason I wasn’t allowed to answer this section until a nurse was present, which like I said before, took like an hour. So, by the time they actually arrived, I was so bored that part of me wanted to mess with them to see how far I could go and still be able to give blood.

“Have you provided sex for money at any time in your life?”

“Ummm... not with official currency.”

“Have you engaged in male to male sex, even once, since 1977?”

“Ummm… 1977? Oh good, my last time was ’76.”

Just a side note: I don’t get the point of isolating gay sex as a risk factor, because presumably, someone could get HIV from any type of sex. Apparently, if I had male on male sex until 1977 when I underwent a sex change, and I continued to have sex with the exact same people, I would be eligible to give blood. But if I’ve been in a monogamous gay relationship since 1977, where both participants frequently test HIV negative, I would not be eligible. To me, this makes no sense, but then again, I’m no expert.

I didn’t mess with them though. Instead, I answered all the questions honestly and they decided, yes, my blood would be fabulous for their purposes. So, next I had to sign the consent form, which basically says that I agree that they can do pretty much whatever they want with my blood: store it, freeze it, use it in movies, feed it to vampires, etc., etc. So, I signed it and everyone was very happy. And they checked my blood pressure and iron levels and all that good stuff, and they finally gave me permission to bleed.

And after that I was ready! Well, not quite… first they had to feed me pretzels and water. Then I had to make my way over to the table, and I had to wait for the guy to get over to me. So actually, I wasn’t ready at all, and I had even more time to dream up awful blood drive-related catastrophes.

Yet, they did eventually reach me, and the man who was to draw my blood seemed very professional. However, my arm was apparently a particular challenge for him, because he immediately groaned when I showed it to him. “Your veins are small,” he said, and he tried to look at my other arm, but that produced the same reaction. Then, apparently desiring a second opinion, he called over another nurse and told her the same thing.

“Oh, no their not,” she replied in a very motherly tone, glancing at me, as if she thought I might have taken offense to his comment or something.

I don’t think nurses realize this, but it is a little strange when people give you compliments about your blood or veins, even when those people spend a lot time learning about those things. For example, when they finally got me hooked up to the blood machine, someone said, “Whew, it’s comin’ out fast… Nice!”

And so I was just like, “Thanks?”

Honestly, I can’t see why that is supposed to be a compliment, because in a zombie apocalypse, I’d probably be the first one to die if I bleed the fastest. Then again, I have small veins so maybe it offsets.

While I was hooked up, I asked the guy how my blood was getting into the bag. After all, it couldn’t be gravity. The sack was suspended from a hook with the blood flowing into it from underneath.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “That’s your blood pressure doin’ that. Your heart’s pumping the blood into the bag.”

For some reason, this made me feel a lot weirder about the whole thing, and I couldn’t quite figure out why. But then it hit me. I thought: “In this moment… I’m actually a cyborg.” My blood is pumping into a machine. Granted, that machine’s purpose is to take my blood, but still. In a cardiovascular sense, it was part of my body.

So, I had that to think about as I left the bed, made my way over to the snack table, and got a bite to eat. And sitting there, I couldn’t help but consider the transferrable nature of time. I had just given up an hour and a half of my time, but potentially, I had saved someone else a lot more. And really, who am I to complain about the waiting, the questionnaires, or even the nurses’ odd compliments? Because I have my healthy blood pressure and iron content. I’m HIV negative, and I don’t take medications for hypertension, anemia, or clotting. In other words, I’m fortunate to be on this end of the blood drive. Those who aren’t so lucky, those who truly need my blood, really benefit from the afternoon I spent here. Surely, that’s a worthwhile use of my time, even if it does make me really sore afterwards.