Magnum Opus
by
Troy Davitt
"Why don't you just fuggin' admit yer a piece of shit, 'eh old Pete? I mean really, yer' worthless tuh' the world! Yer' nothing! You've caused nuthin' buh' trouble for me! Because of you, Amélie lef' me, she took the kids with her and she- y'know what, Pete? Those kids wer' eree-think tuh' me! They were more precious th’n gold! I did eree-think for them! Alla' this, allllllla this was fer' them!" Honza waved his arms about as if there were shimmering palaces of gold all around him, made from the sweat of his brow and the blood of his body. Instead, what was around him was a dusty old room with a single foldable iron cot on wheels, an ancient armchair with a sheet covering it, and a single lightbulb on a chain above him and Peter. A door to an old musty-smelling hallway with peeling wallpaper was to his left and a window that had a view of the next building's brick wall and the five floor drop down to the alley littered in trash sat to his right.
Peter remained silent and stoic as he always did, as the drink in Honza's hand spilled onto him as it was waved around. Honza began to weep, his head in his arms as he bent over onto the table and his back convulsing with each stuttered breath. Finally, after a few minutes Peter spoke. A voice that was cool and calm, yet warm and rugged filled the room. Each syllable felt purposeful and methodically thought on, every word as if it were precious and valued. He asked a single question.
"Honza. Was it all worth it?"
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"Quiet, boy," barked Honza Sr. from the other room. Honza sat in the kitchen at the dining room table with wiring and pieces of old electronics scattered before him. Tools he had made because he couldn't afford new ones from the shop sat in an old tattered cloth bag on the floor next to his seat, his "toolbox." His father sat in the living room with newspaper in hand and the radio on as he did every evening after work. Honza didn't know what his father really did for work. He never asked, and his father never mentioned. He knew it was something laborious, but that was the extent of his knowledge on the subject. That knowledge was gained from the feeling of when he would be slapped or hit by his father, the calluses on the large hands that hit him nicking his skin.
One of the only times Honza heard a kind word from his father is when he fixed the radio for him. His father put his hand through the speaker when a politician he didn’t like said something he hadn’t agreed with. Honza had been up all night, without being asked or told to, and used his collection of parts to replace what had been shattered by the hulk of a man. The next morning as he ate breakfast, his father had walked into the doorway and stood quietly for a moment. An emotionless and quiet “thank you” came from him before he promptly turned around and sat in his chair. Honza sat stunned, a fork full of eggs paused halfway to his mouth.
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During college, Honza had been pressured by his few friends to go out and socialize more. Every night he would sit in his room with his single light on above his desk, tinkering with speakers and wires and Kestrel Filaments and AI Sub-brains and crystalline audio bulbs well into the midnight hours. He had been reprimanded a handful of times from the university for using soldering irons in his room and blowing a fuse in the building’s fusebox almost weekly, but those infractions never slowed him down.
As the semesters went on, he skipped more and more classes and became increasingly isolated. His roommates had often tried to throw parties in their shared communal space in order to get Honza to socialize, but all that those seemed to do was cement his isolation even more. On one such night, the party had gone on until the early morning hours and his fear of social interaction, let alone confrontation, seemed to break. The music had been pounding and shaking the walls, and the clatter of dancing feet on the hardwood floor just beyond his door felt like nails being pounded into his skull with each step.
He jumped out of his bed and rushed to the door, flinging it open and immediately becoming blinded by the colored lights that danced throughout the room. He winced and covered his eyes with his hand, the red and purple lights feeling as if they had burned his retinas and seared his brain itself. As he attempted to lower his arm, he felt a light touch on his shoulder and hot breath on his cheek.
A feminine voice shouted over the music into his ear, still barely audible over the volume, “I'm so sorry, we didn’t think anyone else was here! Are you the other roommate?” The question angered Honza; of course he was the other roommate, who else would be sleeping in the only room not part of the party? He turned towards the girl in anger as his brain registered that she was still speaking, “-and I’ll see if he can turn it down for you!” As he faced her to reply in the rude manner he had also been so accustomed to, he stopped before he could get the first syllable out.
He never knew a human could be this beautiful. Her eyes pierced through the shimmering lights like a lighthouse through the fog, her smile like a panacea for every ailment known and unknown. The touch on his shoulder now felt like it rejuvenated his lifeforce with every passing second it lingered, and the voice that spoke to him once more soothed his soul, saying, “My name is Amélie, by the way!”
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Honza had been through four different jobs in the past year, and Amélie’s patience had begun to run out. He had been fired for repeated unnotified absences from two of them, attacking a customer from another (which led to a small lawsuit in which Homza promptly lost,) and stealing parts and tools from his most recent employer.
Early in their marriage, Amélie would become furious when she woke up in the night to find her husband down in the cellar, working on the audio machines he constantly took apart and rebuilt. Now, she found comfort knowing he was no longer in bed with her most nights. With their second child on the way, she would lay in bed most nights and dream about the best way to improve her situation. He never hit her; quite the opposite. He would isolate himself physically and emotionally, oftentimes spending entire weekends in the cellar and leaving the household chores and child rearing all to her. She had given up on trying to convince him to help.
As the months would go on, she would see the family funds shrink and shrink as the pile of parts throughout the house grew. Sounds of clanging metal and rudimentary A.I. voices answering binary “yes/no” questions came from the floor beneath her and the smell of fresh solder and metallic stains wafted from under the cellar door. Honza’s voice being heard below her would grow in frequency over time and eventually Amélie could hear whole conversations occur as she tried to sleep, a tinny and robotic voice responding to Honza’s questions and queries into the early hours of the morning. She would begin to wonder if her children would even recognize their father with how little he left his workshop.
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“Amélie! Come see! I’ve finished! Finally, my Magnum Opus! It’s complete!” shouted Honza from below the floor. Amélie stood in the kitchen as she prepared formula for her new born second child.
“He won’t even bring it upstairs, I have to go down there…” she muttered as she grabbed the infant from its high chair. Readjusting the baby on her hip, she opened the door into the dark cellar and balanced herself with the hand rail as she descended down the worn and rickety wooden stairs. The coolness of the basement was a significant change from the warmth of the kitchen, and resentment was immediately noticeable to her towards Honza for never having to brave the heat of the kitchen.
A warm humming and buzzing came from behind Honza as he blocked his creation from her view, the smile on his face seeming almost inhumanly happy. A slight bounce of excitement was noticeable in his stance.
“Amélie, do you know what the term parsing means?” asked Honza through a toothy grin. With a monotone voice and emotionless face, a “no” came from Amélie. “It means to carefully analyze something by looking at each of its parts individually. Essentially, ‘thinking’.” Honza stepped aside with a prideful stance as he revealed his creation behind him: a maroon box about the size of a cigarette vending machine, with a small ledge in front to be used as a table, and an ornate bar stool. A large, rectangular speaker cone was inserted into the front and a microphone connected to a long spool of wire that was hooked onto the side of the machine sat on the ledge.
“I present to you, Peter the Parser! A machine designed to replicate human conversation, he can answer any question you ask as well as any other human! He isn’t rude, isn’t a pushover, holds his ground yet listens to your input and considers it in decisions; he’s the ultimate companion! No more shall humans have to deal with the confusion or complexities of other people, not with Peter around!” Honza quickly sat down on the stool and pressed a button next to the speaker. “Peter, how are you?” he asked excitedly. A whirring and a humming came from within, then, a warm voice emanated from within the box.
“Hello, Honza. Good to see you! I’m doing grand, nothing to complain about! How are you? I heard you’ve completed your greatest work yet, how is that?” replied Peter. The two conversed a bit more as Honza kept looking at his expressionless wife while he spoke, looking for some sort of confirmation of a job well done.
After a while, Amélie put a hand up for Honza to stop talking. As he did, she said quietly, “Ultimate companion, huh? What am I to you then? You choose a box over your wife? What a fool I was to love you…” She quietly turned around and made for the steps, a slight hope in her heart that Honza would step up and stop her. That did not come; she could sense his presence remaining on the barstool.
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“Honza. Was it all worth it?" asked Peter as the shell of a man wept on the polished maroon exterior of his “greatest creation.” The inventor lifted his head between sobs and looked at Peter, not particularly anywhere on the box, but somewhere in his eyes if Peter had had them.
“Wuz’ it worth it, you ask?” The sniffling subsided as a moment of sober pondering seemed to come over him. “I… I don't, I mean I- I know I wasn’t…” said Honza as his eyes began to dart around in panic. “Wuz’ it worth it?! Wuz’ it worth it?!?” he shouted as Peter remained unresponsive. “Yeah, it wuz’ worth it, worth losin’ my wife an’ my kids, losing my home, my cash, erry’one I knew!” he yelled sarcastically, staggering out of the stool and once again waving his arms. “fffffffFUCK YOU, ya’ stupid machine! Why’d I even make ya’?? Yuh’ve dun’ nuthin’ but ruined me!”
The drunk man grabbed Peter by the side and while stumbling and slipping, began to push him across the uneven floor. “Honza. Honza, I don’t think you know what you’re doing. Honza, please, wait a moment!” said Peter. The machine began to try to calm his creator down as both got closer to the window.
“Shuddup, you!” Honza screamed, finding his footing and giving Peter a hefty push. Peter tilted and leaned against the glass panes of the window, cracking one of them in the process.
“Honza, please! I did not mean to hurt you!”
Honza lifted from the bottom of Peter’s case, and with a surge of drunken strength, heaved Peter onto the window sill and pushed him through the glass. Hundreds of shimmering shards fell into the alleyway as Honza shoved his greatest creation to its destruction five floors below. He stumbled as he leaned out of the window to see Peter fall to the littered ground below, impossible to tell how far he had fallen until he suddenly exploded into scrap metal in an instant. Springs and coils and circuits and wires spread across the pavement as a wry smile crept across Honza’s face.
“Sorry, Petey ol’ pal, ya had to go.” The smile then disappeared on his face. “Don’ worry though, I’m soon ta’ follow.” whispered Honza to himself. He knew Peter was no more, and now it was his turn. In a sort of drunken hypnosis, he stood onto the window sill. The wind swept through his thinning hair as his clothes flapped against his body, the cold night air filling his lungs. The dark night sky had not a single star, and even the moon seemed to hide from him. Honza took a deep inhale as he allowed himself to follow his creation to the ground below.