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.