Jenga!

[c_macaulay]

Bored to tears, Camilla had gone rummaging in the gift shop to find a game to play. She'd played so much solitaire she was beginning to develop an irrational dislike of some of the face cards. It was there that Mr. Wednesday found her again

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[c_macaulay]

"The first bit's from Pinocchio, yes. But I know that poem," Camilla objected. "It's got nothing to do with the Blue Fairy, or with turning dolls into humans. It's quite the opposite -- it's by Yeats, it's a Celtic thing, and the gist of it is that they're trying to get a human to join the fairies. To join the fairy world. And those last two lines you said, 'The quest will be perilous / Yet the reward is beyond price', those aren't part of the poem at all."

Wednesday shook his head. "You could be talking about any number of wood nymphs, and none of them have a power like you've described. More like than not it's a ruse to lure the subject into drowning. Water spirits feed on that kind of thing." The comment lacked any judgement, either against the nymph or its prey; utterly neutral, matter-of-fact, this is the way the world is and has always been.

[cuppa_mecha]

Straddled by two intellectuals, both with their different specialties, Joe was a tad overwhelmed by their contrasting answers. On one hand, Camilla was disputing any validity in Dr. Know (a program Joe had grown to trust over the years) and on the other Wednesday had prescribed a perfectly dismal fate for David...except

[callmewednesday]

"A boy who can't drown won't be any use to a nymph, wood or water, or to any rusalka. She'll let him go. Might have to drive him off, if what you say is so. Her trap won't work with prey already in it and refusing to leave." Cold comfort seemed a specialty of Wednesday's

[cuppa_mecha]

Joe was starting to doubt Wednesday's suspicions on what David could have found. It occurred to him that perhaps someone could be too knowledgeable and even the most wise of people could be at a disadvantage when met with another universe with differing rules.

"Do you think," Joe replied with a softness rivaling hers, "that this...move past his programming would have been possible? Do you think he would have given up his primary design to unconditional love for self-preservation?"

Joe gave her a hopeful look, as if Camilla had the power to look through Joe's blue/green eyes and into the ocean to David to find out if he had survived or not. It was, perhaps, the most purely independent question Joe had asked. Ever.

[c_macaulay]

Camilla considered this question. Honestly, from what little Joe had told her of David, she didn't know if his chances were all that good. Her answer, when it came, was careful and quiet.

"I think," she said, being as sincere as she could without sacrificing tact, "that if you can do so, perhaps he could as well."

Wednesday found this exchange more interesting in what it said about Camilla than what it said about Joe or the unknown David. She knows that thing hasn't got a sheep's chance in hell. And she'd be kinder just to say so. She doesn't want to deal with the fallout, does she? She doesn't want to be responsible. He'd met women like her before. Courteous to a fault, but their give-a-shit only went so far

[cuppa_mecha]

Joe could see Camilla's lie but wasn't angry with it. It was what humans did. They lied to friends to prevent pain. They lied to enemies to cause pain. And they lied to themselves to both prevent and cause pain. An honest human was rare, if they existed at all. He lowered his eyes

[c_macaulay]

Wednesday nodded grimly in answer to Joe's question. No sense in sugarcoating it. "That indeed may very well be what's happened to David. You know, there are some people who don't believe Jehovah made man at all," he commented on Joe's mythological digression, producing a neatly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and offering it to the 'leaking' mecha.

Camilla, raised a Catholic, and not knowing Wednesday's reasons for preferring certain cosmogonies to others, ignored her Jenga partner, turning to Joe. "You're not leaking, I don't think -- I hope you're not leaking." He seemed to be weeping, silently, except that she wasn't sure whether he was supposed to be able to do that. Probably he was, she supposed by analogy with other secretions she knew he could produce. Still, she looked concerned. "What was the apple you ate, Joe? And how was it blue?"

[cuppa_mecha]

Joe took Wednesday's handkerchief with slight hesitation. He unfolded the tight creases pondered if the hanky had ever been used. He rubbed his face tentatively, inexperienced with the act.

"The apple was knowledge and realization as in Eden. It was blue because all it has cause has been upset."

He chuckled.

"I had told David that I would cause his fairy to blush but I think she has, instead, spread her hue to me. Tell me how that is possible when there is a substantial possibility that she doesn't even exist."

[c_macaulay]

Wednesday grunted. "There's a story for piss-poor shepherds. Knowledge an apple just hanging ripe and ready to be plucked. Pipe dreams and pap. Knowledge is hard-earned and fought for. You buy it with your blood and sweat, and if that's all the coin you have to pay, consider yourself damn lucky. Things other than fruit hang from trees."

Camilla's eyes went a little wide at this, not in astonishment so much as in a wary kind of recognition. Not recognition of what Wednesday was, per se; recognition that he was telling the truth, though, and a truth Camilla herself had learned. "I know," she said to him, simply, aside, before addressing the mecha. "A fairy that doesn't exist can't blush, that's true," she said. "But you exist. Did you want to be the fairy? Give David his wish?"

[cuppa_mecha]

"No," Joe admitted, with a faint smile. "I never desired David to be human nor to earn an orga's love by becoming an orga himself. I wanted to keep him safe but he was headstrong to his fate. The only time we parted ways was when I challenged his Blue Fairy and offered that he stay with me. But we quickly met again. I suppose that was my fate."

Joe thought.

"If robots even have fate. Fate IS a wholly human concept, after all."

[c_macaulay]

"I don't see why anyone should be excluded from fate." Camilla believed in fate, very strongly, maybe more strongly than anything else. She also didn't see much difference between an organic person and a nonorganic one. Joe seemed human enough to her, really.

There might be no being in all the worlds so fate-bound as Mr. Wednesday. "Many a machine of my acquaintance has met its own fate," he rumbled darkly.

[cuppa_mecha]

Joe was about to respond to Camilla when he heard Wednesday's comment. His eyes were immediately trained on him with a swift movement of his head. His eyes nearly overflowed with curiosity, but he didn't say anything.

He wasn't quite sure he wanted to be aware of Wednesday's previous encounters with mechas. He looked down at the currently abandoned Jenga tower and then back to Camilla.

"Is fate not a form of slavery? Programming that can't be undone?"

[c_macaulay]

"There's a lot of literature that deals with just that question," Camilla answered quite seriously. "How much free will do we really have, within the strictures of fate?"

"Perhaps you're all the gods' playthings," said Wednesday with an edgy grin.

Something about that grin made Camilla rise quickly and say, "I think I'm going to go get a drink. Joe, I know you can't drink anything or you'll break, but Mr. Wednesday, would you like anything?"

"Jack Daniels for me," said the old god, still grinning.

[cuppa_mecha]

Curiosity could no longer be with held. It was impressive of Joe to hold off this long.

His new clothes shifted differently than his stiff jacket as he straightened toward Wednesday after Camilla left. He met him with an intense look of interest.

"Have you many encounters with mechanical creatures, Mr. Wednesday?" he asked without any malice.

[callmewednesday]

"You could say that," said Wednesday. "Mechanical creatures and the spirits thereof." What would you really call Media or the technical boy? Not so much a machine as the spiritual manifestation of some technology, an ur-machine.

[cuppa_mecha]

"I get the impression that you aren't particularly fond of mecha. Is there a reason for this?" Joe asked innocently. He had no idea what Wednesday had been through. After all, rebellion against orgas in Joe's world would be unspeakable. Mechas were more wary of humans harming them than the other way around.