Page 11 of Jinxed
Now that I know what I’m looking at, the crumpled heap makes much more sense. My blood is on the tail – that’s what sliced my palm when I was down in the ravine. The gaping, scorched hole is on the right side, where the ribcage would be. Also, where a lot of key tech would be stored. Maybe in realanimals it makes sense to have the majority of the ‘thinking’ tech in the head, but that’s not how it works with bakus – the motherboard is in the main body, not the brain. It’s a shame, as that probably means the poor thing is unfixable.
My eyes widen as my fingers run over the cat’s broken body, gentle now as if I were diagnosing a real animal. The tech on display in front of me is unbelievable.I can barely stop turning it over and over in my hands, finding something new to marvel at each time. The metallic strands that cover its body are so thin they have the smooth texture of real fur. As I attempt to follow the connections down through the body, I can see that each one of them would be charged with gathering different types of data – maybe weather conditions, or solar energy, ormeasuring information from its owner – like resting heart rate or core internal temperature. A lot of bakus have these sorts of capabilities, but I’ve never seen them encased in such an elegant shell.
I swallow and take my hands off it, placing my palms on the glass. Someone must be really missing this baku. I can’t help but wonder how it ended up down near the train tracks... or how it gotsuch a huge hole in its side.
I bite my lower lip. I should really return it to a Moncha Store so they can run any tests to see who the owner is. I could go in the morning.
Or, a naughtier voice in my head says,you could wait to see if anyone comes looking for it.If there’s still a functioning tracking beacon within the baku’s shell then someone will arrive to claim it. If not... then whowould know? It’s as good as mine, just the same as any of the other tech I’ve scavenged.
My guilt temporarily set to one side, I get to work.
For the next couple of hours, I clean the baku up, scouring off the scorch marks with a wire sponge and wiping off dirt and dust that has collected around the metallic strands of ‘fur’. Every now and then, I gasp. I keep uncovering tiny, beautiful detailsin the machine’s bodywork, elements with an impeccably smooth finish I know couldn’t have been accomplished by a machine. No, someone made this by hand. Crafted it. Soldered and manipulated the metal and electronics with the skill of a sculptor. I feel like an apprentice studying the long lost work of a master.
‘Got something good in there, kiddo?’
I almost leap out of my chair at the soundof the deep male voice. But I instantly breathe a sigh of relief. It’s only Paul. He looks the part of a scary intruder – he’s got a scraggly grey beard and a ruddy, often grease-stained face, with piercing bright blue eyes that gleam out from beneath the bushiest eyebrows I’ve ever seen. But he’s harmless. He’s my fellow basement tinkerer, hobbyist DIY-er and cave-dweller, always pottering aroundand fixing things other people throw away. Old technology that they have no use for. He’s got the best collection of telephones that I’ve ever seen. He even has an old fax machine. Positively ancient.
Sure, he scared the living crap out of me the first time we met, sticking his chubby fingers, blackened by dirt and calloused from hard work, through the holes in my wire mesh cage and giving ita shake.
He says he did it to get my attention, since calling my name didn’t seem to work. I get it. I dive deep into the zone when I’m working, and it’s almost impossible to drag me back to the land of the living. With my safety goggles and headphones on, the rest of the world disappears. It was that focus, laser-like intensity, that was supposed to get me into Profectus.Oh well.
Paul andI are comrades in engineering. Still, I find myself turning my back on him as he peers in, blocking his full view of the broken cat baku. I’ve overlooked some of his... less than legal, say, DIY jobs, the things I’ve seen gathered in his locker that I know don’t belong to him, so I’m sure he wouldn’t breathe a word. But my body is tense and defensive of my find.
I feel protective of it.
‘Oh, just a bit of junk I found on the street, you know how it is.’
‘Sure do.’ His lemur baku climbs up the wire fencing and peers in. George is a pretty advanced baku for a guy like Paul to own – level 4, at least – but he won’t tell me what his job was at Moncha before his accident. Paul only has one arm. I assume that George was his upgrade baku once he got on disability. ‘That’s why I needa baku with opposable thumbs!’ is his long-running joke.
‘Well, I’m turnin’ in for the night. You need anything?’ We often remind each other to do normal things – like eat and drink. Tinkerers understand.
I gesture to the thermos, then lift a pair of chopsticks to fill my mouth with cold, slimy noodles for good measure. ‘All good,’ I say, the words muffled by ramen.
He chuckles. ‘Well, allright then. Don’t stay up too late now.’
‘Night.’
‘Night.’
George lets out a series of beeps.
‘Wait, did you get your baku today?’ He pronounces it the old way, ‘back-you’ rather than the more modern ‘back-oo’.
My heart skips a beat. I don’t remember telling him anything about a baku. Maybe George was able to see the cat on the table and showed a picture to Paul and... then I remember.The beetle. ‘Oh yeah. I’ll show you tomorrow as I haven’t leashed it yet.’
Paul frowns. ‘But George says there’s a live baku in there.’ I pause. ‘Oh! That must be Linus. That’s Zora’s new baku. I fixed him up for her and just leashed him to charge.’
‘Huh. Always thought you’d be the type to leash yours straight away. Leash it, name it, then take it apart. You’re going to run circles around anyoneat that school.’
‘I...’ I don’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t make it to Profectus. It feels like disappointing too many people in one day. ‘I’ll show you tomorrow,’ I repeat.
He pauses for a beat, apprising me beneath those bushy brows, but to my relief, he nods and walks away, George leaping on to his shoulder.
‘Goodnight, Tinker!’ he calls out as he walks.
When I no longer hearhis footsteps, I hunch back down over the desk. I work on the broken baku for another couple of hours, until I straighten out as much of the creature’s body as I can without resorting to electronic tools. Now I can do a proper damage assessment.
One of the key finds is that the leash connection is intact. Excitement tingles in my fingers. If this works – if the baku is able to carry a charge,despite the gaping hole in its belly – then that means I might be able to bring it back to life. Holding my breath, I take the leash and plug it into the mains.
