The knock was an obscenity. Three hard raps against the oak door, a sound as coarse and unwelcome as grit in a gear train. It was the precise, brutalist rhythm of the Imperial Chancellery. A summons. Sineus stood motionless in the sterile silence of his workshop, the flawed silver watch of his father still heavy in his palm. He had built this fortress of order to keep the world out. And the world was hammering on the gate.
He set the watch down with deliberate care, the hairline crack in its crystal catching the gaslight. He crossed the workshop, his steps measured, silent. He did not want to open the door. Opening it was a concession, an admission that the chaos outside had a claim on him. He slid the heavy bolt. The door swung inward on silent hinges, revealing a man in the grey, rain-soaked uniform of a Chancellery courier. The man was an automaton, his face impassive, holding a sealed oilskin pouch.
— A summons for the Technologist Sineus, — the courier said. His voice was flat, another mechanical part of the state’s vast engine.
Sineus took the pouch. He broke the wax seal, the insignia of the two-headed eagle crumbling under his thumb. He unfolded the single sheet of heavy paper. The request was a command, phrased as a courtesy. His presence was required at the Chancellery offices. A consultation. Regarding the analysis of contraband memory-artifacts seized in the factory districts. He read the words, and a familiar disgust rose in his throat. They wanted him to wade into the filth, to catalogue the psychic diseases of the city’s desperate and depraved.
He folded the paper with sharp, precise creases. He held it out to the courier.
— I am unavailable, — Sineus said. The words were quiet, but they carried the weight of a vault door swinging shut.
The courier’s expression did not change, but a flicker of something—confusion, perhaps even alarm—registered in his eyes. A refusal was not a variable in his programming. He was a delivery mechanism. The message had been delivered. A response was not part of the protocol.
— Sir, the summons is mandatory.
— I am unavailable, — Sineus repeated, his voice dropping lower, colder. He did not raise it. He never raised it. He simply removed the possibility of argument. He placed the folded summons back into the courier’s unresisting hand. Then he closed the door, the heavy oak cutting off the sight of the rain and the grey uniform. He slid the bolt home. The chunk of the tumblers was a deeply satisfying sound. He had refused. The price for that choice would be logged in some dusty ledger deep in the Chancellery’s bowels, an entry against his name. A debt incurred. He did not care.
He stood with his back to the door, breathing in the clean air of his workshop. The silence returned, but it was different now. It was the silence of defiance. He had pushed the world away. He had won. He turned from the door and walked towards the dining hall. Lilya was waiting. Another kind of chaos.
The dining hall was an extension of his will. The long table of dark, polished wood was bare except for two place settings. The silver was old, heavy, and arranged with geometric precision. The plates were white porcelain, empty. A single gasolier overhead cast a low, steady light, reflecting in the dark grain of the wood. The only sound was the drumming of the rain against the tall, armored windows, a frantic and irregular rattle that grated on his nerves. It was the sound of the world trying to get in.
Lilya sat opposite him, a splash of unruly life in his monochrome world. Her dress was a deep blue, the color of a twilight sky. Her hair was not perfectly coiffed. A few strands had escaped their pins, framing a face that was too expressive, her eyes missing nothing. She watched him as he took his seat. He could feel her gaze, an unwelcome probe into the state of his mind.
— You look tired, Sineus, — she said. Her voice was warm, a stark contrast to the room’s cold perfection.
— I was working.
— Always working. Shut away in your room of ticking things. You will forget what the sun feels like.
He picked up his water goblet. The crystal was cool, perfectly clear. He had sterilized it himself that afternoon. — The sun is a variable I have accounted for.
She sighed, a small puff of exasperation. She looked from his face to the stark, empty table. A servant entered, placing a tureen of clear broth and a plate of black bread on the sideboard. The servant ladled the broth into their bowls and retreated without a word. The meal was simple, pure. Uncontaminated.
— You could at least have flowers, — Lilya said, gesturing to the vast, empty space at the table’s center. — Something to remind you that things grow.
— Things rot, — he corrected her. — Growth is the first stage of decay.
She put her spoon down. The small clatter echoed in the hall. — Is that what you tell yourself? That everything beautiful is simply a disease in waiting?
— It is a statement of fact. Not a belief.
— No, — she said, her voice gaining an edge. — It is a cage you have built for yourself, and you are polishing the bars while the world outside is on fire. You cannot just cut away the parts of the world you don’t like, Sineus.
The words landed like stones thrown against the armored glass of his windows. A direct assault. He felt a muscle in his jaw tighten. She was talking about more than just flowers. She was talking about his work. His life. His entire philosophy. He had just pushed the Chancellery out his door, and now she was inviting the whole, messy, screaming world to his dinner table.
He met her gaze. Her eyes were bright with a passionate, foolish fire. — I do not cut away what I do not like. I excise what is diseased. Memory is a contagion. Sentiment is a fever. I am seeking a cure.
— By becoming sterile? By feeling nothing? What is the point of a world with no memory, Sineus? A world with no love, no grief, no history? It would be a world of perfect, useless machines.
He saw her hand go to her throat, her fingers closing around the simple silver locket she always wore. It was a small, plain oval, slightly dented, hanging from a thin chain. An object saturated with sentiment. A vessel of the very disease he fought to eradicate. It was an offense to the clean logic of his world.
— Some things are worth more than a single life, — she said, her voice softer now, but no less intense. Her fingers tightened on the locket. — Some debts can’t be paid with machines.
There it was. The core of her delusion. The belief in unquantifiable things. Debts of honor. The weight of love. Ghosts. He had no patience for it.
— All things can be measured, — he said, his voice low and flat. — And what can be measured can be controlled. What you call ‘life,’ Lilya, is a cascade of chaotic, emotional impulses. It is a system spiraling into disorder. Control is the only sane response. The only moral response. To impose order on the chaos is a duty.
They stared at each other across the polished expanse of the table. An impasse. The gulf between them was a thousand kilometers wide. He had his logic. She had her faith. The only sound was the unsteady rattle of the rain, a frantic, chaotic beat against the glass. He had won the argument, in his own mind. He had presented an unassailable position. But he felt no satisfaction. He only felt the vast, cold distance between his chair and hers.
She knew what the summons was about. He could see it in her eyes. She had some network of friends, of gossips, people who traded in information as if it were bread. Another system of infection.
— They want your help, don’t they? — she asked, her voice quiet again. — The Chancellery. With the memory contraband. The things they are finding in the Iron Palimpsest.
He did not answer. He picked up his spoon and drew it through the clear broth. The liquid was tasteless, sterile. Pure fuel.
— You could help those people, — she pressed. — The ones afflicted by it. The ones trapped in the echoes. Your sight, the things you can do… you could make a difference. You choose not to.
— It is not my concern, — he said. The words were ice. He had made his choice at the door. He would make it again now. The cost was the look in her eyes. A flicker of pain, of disappointment, that was more damaging than any political fallout from the Chancellery. He had pushed her away, too. Another victory that felt like a loss.
She stood up, her chair scraping against the polished floor. The sound was a violation.
— No, — she said, her voice trembling with a sudden, cold anger. — It is your prison. And I hope you find comfort in its perfect, empty silence.
She turned and walked out of the dining hall, her footsteps echoing. She did not look back.
Sineus sat alone at the head of the long table. The broth in his bowl grew cold. The rain continued its assault on the windows. He was alone. He had his order. His fortress was secure. The silence he had craved was absolute.
But for the first time, it did not feel like peace. It felt like a vacuum. He listened. Not for a courier’s knock, but for the sound of her footsteps returning. There was nothing. Only the ticking of the grand clock in the main hall, a steady, mechanical rattle counting out the seconds of his isolation.
