The Mechanical Girl

I once met a remarkable girl, who, although she had the shape and form of a regular girl, she was made entirely of metal and ran on clockwork and steam. She had a fairly normal life, as mechanical girls go, and chances are you may have passed her in the street just today, and unless you were looking for the telltale jets of steam, you'd never know any different.

It had happened once upon a time that the girl had woken up one morning and found that a small set of inner workings inside her had ground to a halt. Whether this had happened slowly over many weeks, or simply happened overnight, she could not be certain. But, these mechanisms weren't vital to her mobility or existence, and life went on as it always does, with obligations and responsibilities. So the girl went about her daily business, for the most part unaware of the stopped machinery inside her, pausing only occasionally to wonder how it had happened and whether it might start again of its own accord.

Being metal, the girl was not susceptible to the normal illnesses that plague us all from time to time, but maybe this was some kind of illness especially for mechanical girls, for as the days went by, more and more cogs began to slow and grind to a halt, until inside the girl was a wilderness of quiet machinery. Only her very basic cogs that kept her alive and conscious still kept whirring. The lights in her eyes dimmed and her movements became laboured, her voice slow and tuneless. The girl was filled with despair and fear, and wanted to know how she might fix the broken machinery inside her. Alas, her local GP had failed his exam in mechanical girl anatomy, and so was as clueless as she.

"Maybe," he said, "you have simply been working too hard. Take a rest from your jobs, stay at home and limit all strenuous activity."

So the girl booked in her holiday time, drew her curtains, and spent a week in bed, seeing nobody and only getting up very occasionally to top up her water supplies.

But none of the cogs in her began to tick and whir from their week's rest. In fact, she felt the worse for it, for her joints felt stiff and achey, and the beginnings of rust were starting to settle in. She called upon her local watchmaker to see what advice he could give. Alas, he had never worked on anything more complicated than a grandfather clock, and could barely begin to unravel the maze of machinery inside the mechanical girl.

"Maybe," he said, "buying some new fancy cogs to whirl and hum around you might take your mind off the emptiness inside."

So the girl bought the newest and shiniest cogs in the watchmaker's shop and strapped them to her body. They did indeed tick and click rather magnificently, and filled the air with so much noise you would have thought five clockwork girls stood in the room. But rather than distract the girl, the noise and clamour made the silent emptiness inside her even more profound. After a few days she couldn't take it any more, and took the cogs off and hid them away in her cupboards, feeling more miserable than ever.

Walking home that day, the girl came across a young girl sitting in the doorway of her garage, struggling with some cogs and springs and looking like she might cry.

"What's wrong?" asked the mechanical girl.

"My grandfather's clock has broken, and I haven't the money to take it to the watchmakers. I've been trying to fix it myself for him but I can't."

Now the mechanical girl had a natural affinity for clockwork, and taking a short look at the broken clock saw what needed to be done.

"I can show you how to fix this - here." And she taught the girl all the little different parts of the clock, showed her the faulty part, and helped her fix it.

"Thank you," the girl said, smiling and giving her a hug. "My grandfather will be so pleased."

And a little cog inside the mechanical girl whirred back into life.

Over the next few days word spread, and suddenly all manner of young boys and girls were coming shyly up to the mechanical girl's house, offering out broken clocks, toys, miniature trains, robots, even a mechanical dog, to be fixed. And with each newly fixed item and each smile of thanks, more and more of the cogs inside the mechanical girl began to tick back into life. One day a young engineer came by, and suggested she open up a shop for fixing things, explained about a space in town going spare, and blushed beautifully and said she was very pretty, before tripping over a flowerpot on his way out.

And so it was that the clockwork girl and the engineer opened up a magnificent clockwork shop, fixing and creating all manner of wonderful inventions. And the cogs inside the mechanical girl turned steady and true, and never stopped again.