Fixing goes both ways

[moonshadows]

“Morning,” Artie said cheerfully into the microphone as he sat at his desk. He only jumped a little when the shabti appeared. “Helena is very excited to meet you, according to Myka, but can’t get time off to come visit until weekend after next. With any luck, it will be quiet today and we can get your…oh, no.” Resignation, apprehension, and a little black humor. “Of course. Mrs. Frederic has a Regent Thing to discuss with me.”

“Bad artifacts.”

“Yeah, I don’t like them much, either. Well, there goes today. I may as well send Steve and Claudia out on this ping and have Pete and Myka do inventory. Keep them out of my hair for a bit. You should probably make yourself scarce, too.”

“Yes.”

He busied himself with papers for a few moments, gathering himself physically and mentally. When he straightened, the unvoiced uncertainty and longing was loud enough even without words, and the shabti hugged him.

“Thanks,” he murmured. “Okay. I’m going to go give everyone their marching orders.”

Hours later, Pete and Myka were sent away on another ping. Artie was in the Core, digging into what he explained was a card catalogue while the shabti stood out of the way, watching in fascination. A whisper of intent was all the warning given; the shabti was moved elsewhere just as the Caretaker arrived with…

…with an artifact that elicited the same combination of emotions as the ones called Regents.

“Hello, Arthur.” The Caretaker gave him a moment to settle. “This is Abigail Chow.”

“Hi,” the new artifact said warmly, but its emotions didn’t match. It was here for a reason.

Artie didn’t return the greeting. “Yeah. I’m just reorganizing here. What, are we having an open house?”

“Ms. Chow is the new owner of the bed-and-breakfast.” That was a warning, but Artie didn’t hear it.

“New owner?” Hurt, fear, indignation on Leena’s behalf. “H-How did…was- was she…?”

“She has been briefed by the Regents…” Another evasion; whatever the new artifact’s goals, the Caretaker didn’t agree with them. “…and there has been a request made that you show her around.”

“Around?” Artie repeated in disbelief. “Around the Warehouse?”

“Well, just enough to get her feet wet. No need to frighten her off.” That was a direct warning. Mrs. Frederic knew her favorite artifact well.

“I don’t frighten easily,” the new artifact said, attempting to reassure, unaware that it had just laid down a challenge. “Arthur, is it?”

He wasn’t buying it for a second. “Artie,” he corrected in a hard tone.

“So nice to meet you. Mrs. Frederic has told me so much about…”

Despite his irritation, Artie was amused by the Caretaker’s exit. He was in control here. “Yeah,” he tossed off nonchalantly. “You’ll grow to hate that.”

The new artifact’s composure was shaken; that pleased him. He led the new artifact through various aisles, casually saying things he hoped would, in fact, scare it off, but the artifact dismissed them as being irrelevant to its real goal, whatever that was. Quite irritating. Furthermore, the deceptive artifact also dismissed Artie’s warnings of danger and genuine concern at its recklessness until he lashed out angrily and then, ashamed, pulled the emotions back.

Excitement; the kind of excitement that came with finding clues. This was a familiar swirl of emotion. Whatever the deceptive artifact’s goals were, it thought it had found a way to attain them. Artie, poor Artie, blinded by his guilt, let the deceptive artifact lull him into nearly letting his guard down. If only he could see!

Then, the suspicion he habitually wore reasserted himself and hid a seed of hard anger. Now it was his turn to probe, and the deceptive artifact felt uncertainty and fear. He won, and lashed out again in anger and shame that the Regents would feel the need to stick their fingers in his mind in the first place, and that they thought they could do it without him figuring out what they were up to. Furious, he stormed off and left the other artifact standing there in helpless irritation.

“Sorry about that,” Artie said gruffly as he stomped into the Core, barely even looking at the shabti as he stopped to let it hug him. “The Regents decided to send down a psychotherapist to spy on me. It’s not enough that Myka thought I was going to disembowel myself right in the middle of your nice clean floor, now the powers that be have made my grief their business.” He sighed, letting the anger flow out of him. “And you probably felt me seething all the way back. I’m sorry.”

“Shh, good Artie, favorite artifact.”

“I smell apples again. That’s your way of saying you love me, isn’t it?”

Was it? That did make sense. “Yes.”

Fragile joy. “I love you, too. I know you can feel it, but we humans like to actually say it.” Tentatively, he smiled. “So…how’s Ms. Chow dealing?”

“Bad artifact angry, unhappy. Want fix Artie.”

“Yeah, well that’s what she gets for not being honest,” he grumped. “Hey, listen. You can keep a figurative eye on her and stop her if she activates something she shouldn’t. Why don’t we go upstairs and work on your vocabulary?”

He hadn’t seen the new home of the bubbly artifact yet. “Yes.”

Artie stopped when he saw the bubbly artifact hanging on the wall and stared at it, then at the shabti. “That’s not what I meant when I said find a home,” he chided, but there was no anger.

“Artifact happy, want make other happy. Artie need happy.”

“See? You’re already a better therapist than Ms. Chow.” He lay down in the hammock and let shimmering lights play over him, frustration fading. “Let’s talk about names. ‘Artifact’ isn’t really a name or even a good descriptor, especially around here. You know Abigail Chow’s name, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you use it?”

That was a silly question. “Not favored artifact.”

He looked at the shabti. “Wait, you think- of course you do, your very foundation in language comes from the ancient Egyptians. All artifacts have names, not just the ones who are people, much less the favored ones. Uh…do I need to explain for you the difference between a person-artifact and an artifact-artifact?”

“No. Claudia.”

“She handled that, huh? How about male and female?”

“Yes. Artie, Pete, Steve male persons. Mrs. Frederic, Claudia, Leena, Myka, Helena female persons.”

“Aren’t you leaving one out?” he asked sternly.

“Vanessa female person.”

Artie said nothing, but the chiding look he directed at the shabti didn’t need words.

“…Abigail Chow female person.”

“Good. Now, uh, either call her just Abigail or call her Ms. Chow.”

That was not the first time the subject had come up. “Why?”

“Well, because it’s easier. Less formal, less awkward. There’s more to a person – or an artifact – than a simple name could describe, but most of the time, all of that information isn’t necessary. Take me for example. My name is Artie, but that’s not my full name. My full name, Arthur Nielsen, only needs to be used when someone wants to make sure it’s really me. And even then, there’s information about me that my full name doesn’t take into account: my history, where I’ve been, what I’ve done, what I do now. But unless that information absolutely needs to be verified, I’m just Artie and not Arthur Nielsen who used to be Arthur Weisfelt and worked for the NSA until the Russians got really mad at him and he changed his name and now he works at Warehouse Thirteen. Does that make sense?”

The shabti nodded slowly; that summed up the problem with words. “Yes.”

“Even artifacts that aren’t people have more than one name sometimes, and while the names we give are descriptive, they don’t cover everything either. That artifact, for example, is named the Norge porthole but unless we need to differentiate it from other portholes that came from the airship named Norge, we don’t need to get more specific than that. Let-let me give you another example. You know the mirror?”

“Bad Artifact. Dark Vault. Hurt Artie, hurt Myka, hurt Claudia, hurt Vanessa.”

“You see? You identified the mirror that belonged to Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, in which the spirit and-or body of Alice Liddell was trapped, and you did it with a common name rather than a full name. Now, around here, if we say ‘Alice’ then it’s understood we mean Alice Liddell who was trapped in the mirror, but around other people, in other areas…that wouldn’t be enough of an identifier.”

That made sense, but there were still some questions. “Caretaker?”

“Ah, job titles. Those come into play when more than one person has done the same thing. Mrs. Frederic wasn’t the first Caretaker, and she won’t be the last. Agents, Regents, they’re both job titles and not names. They describe what a person does, but nothing of who they are. Sometimes, the title will be used with part of a name to specify one out of many. Agent Lattimer, Agent Bering, and so forth.”

“Bad artifact Chow?”

Artie laughed until he had to gasp for breath. “Oh god don’t let anyone hear you say that. It may be accurate, but it goes back to being polite.”

“Why?”

He thought about it. “Humans try not to make each other angry, because bad things happen when people get angry. A lot like angry artifacts loose in your aisles.”

Oh. That made sense. “Abigail.”

“Yes, that will do.”

The shabti opened its mouth, but there were no words for the question. Artie waited, then looked concerned when its mouth stayed open.

“Wh-what, what’s wrong? There’s something you want to say, o-or to ask, but you don’t have the words in English. Could you ask it in hieroglyphs?”

“Maybe not quite?”

Slowly, Artie climbed out of the hammock. “Well, maybe it will give me enough of an idea to ask a question you can answer.”

The shabti followed a troubled Artie back down the stairs, took the pencil, and stared at the blank paper for a long minute before slowly sketching.

“Where you work,” he murmured, translating. “And you have an empty cartouche, and one with ‘thirteen’ in it and a blank space, and one with…that’s the symbols for Warehouse Two.”

“Yes.”

Realization, horror. “My god. You’re asking what your name is.” He ran his hands through his hair, mind working very fast, as if he were solving an artifact problem. “Of course. You couldn’t ask your own name without any concept of self-identi…ty…” More horror. “You don’t have any sense of…cogito ergo sum, but you…you’ve been linked to Mrs. Frederic’s mind since day one, your only concept of yourself is from third person, your life…is written in the passive voice. You’re not even a character in your own play, you’re the backdrop, the scenery. You don’t have a sense of self because you’ve only ever been treated as an inanimate object.”

“Maybe?” There was a man…did he have a name? All artifacts, all people, had names. What had his been? Had he been a male human? Knowing what Claudia had taught, male and female, it made sense that he would have been a male human. A voice singing, but not his, a female voice echoing through the microphone. And the emotion, echoing what was broadcast through the artifact…love. He had felt love, but not for the singer, not for the song. What was the song? Could the keyboard help? Ignoring Artie, the shabti moved to the keyboard. Questions rippled through ebony and into plastic: What was this? How is it played? The keys responded, and were pressed accordingly.

“Wait, what are you playing? Give me- let me just…”

The shabti kept playing. Artie did something at his desk.

“Uh…Lili Marlene,” he said moments later. “Someone played it a lot?”

Sound and love echoing… “Yes.”

“Can you tell me anything else?”

“Male human. Favored artifact, broke. Liked…” One carved hand made a broad, sweeping gesture.

“Liked his job? Liked…where he worked?”

“Yes.”

Artie looked at the shabti and asked slowly, “Liked…you?”

He wasn’t talking to the artifact; he knew it was just an artifact. He didn’t mean the Core, or even the building. He was talking to…

The shabti’s mouth opened, but all that came out was a thin keening. This was a concept without any familiarity, any kind of…of…

“Sh-shh, it’s okay, it’s okay!” Artie hugged the shabti tightly, radiating concern and reassurance. “You don’t have to answer that. It’s okay, we’ll get through this. As-as soon as Claudia gets back, I’ll make that my priority. We’ll get you a voice somehow, one that doesn’t rely on words. It’s okay. Uh…how-how is Abigail doing in the stacks?”

Something that could be answered! “Frustrated. Angry, some. Afraid, some. Want artifact fix Artie.” There was something else; attention, intent. “Caretaker come.”

“Okay. Tell you what.” Artie took the shabti’s face between both hands and stared into its eyes. “I will look into all the agents who worked here before my time and see if I can find one who fits the description. You go check on all the happy artifacts, make sure they’re still happy. Mrs. Frederic will show Abigail the way out of the stacks, I’ll grump at her, she’ll go away, and then…” he swallowed sorrow and bleeding pain. “Then…we’ll see if we can get something…worked out.”

“Artie hurt.”

“Yes. Yes, I am. I’m hurt because you’re hurt, the same way Vanessa was hurt because I was hurt. It hurt her that I wouldn’t let her help; if I can’t help you, your hurt will hurt me. So just…just let me help, okay? And we can…fix ourselves together. You need me, right? I need you, too.”

This felt…right. There was a problem somewhere, and the Caretaker’s favorite artifact would find and fix it, because that was his job. Everything would be okay. What was broken would be fixed.

“Good Artie.”

He smiled, preparing his fake-grumpiness. “Alright, now get out of here, I’ve got work to do.”

 

The Caretaker was speaking with Abigail, angry at the Regents for putting her in this position, challenging Abigail to fix her favorite artifact instead of whining that he was stubborn. She knew no artifact would help Artie, but if it could be a way to get them working together like good artifacts, she would give Abigail a suggestion.

Intent and implicit inquiry rippled in from the walls. Fix Artie.

Caretaker knew, that was the command and it would be obeyed, but people-artifacts were needed to fetch others, care for them, make them stop fighting, and even if she wasn’t very tame at all, Abigail was a people-artifact created specifically to fix other people-artifacts.

That made sense. Fix Artie by using a people-fixing artifact. Yes.

Words resonated through the microphone; Artie talking to Myka. The Caretaker brought Abigail to the Core on her way out. Artie was angry, but Abigail was angrier and explained that Artie’s hurt was the same kind of hurt that had caused her to become an artifact in the first place. Her purpose was to fix hurt people-artifacts, and his hurt was hurting her because he wouldn’t let her help. Guilt stabbed at him, and he remained silent as she left. He couldn’t help if he was too hurt, he didn’t want to hurt others. He would use Abigail to fix himself.

When the shabti was returned to the Core after Abigail’s departure, he barely looked up. “You heard all of that, didn’t you,” he said heavily. “Not just the words; the emotions, too.”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think about it?”

“Mrs. Frederic unhappy. Want Abigail artifact fix Artie.”

He looked at the shabti intently. “That’s not what I asked.”

The carved mouth opened; he waited while nothing came out. The mouth closed. After a moment, it opened again. “Artifact stop angry artifact hurt Steve. Norge Porthole make Artie happy. Abigail artifact fix Artie.”

The grim intentness faded, along with the guilt. Artie smiled. “You used an artifact’s name; that’s very good. Now, I think you were trying to say that talking to Abigail about what happened to Leena is no different than letting the Norge porthole show me the aurora borealis that made it so happy, or using the jade elephant to stop the gargoyle. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

Resignation, affection. “Alright. I’ll talk to her.” The intent to bluster bubbled up and popped. “I don’t have any face to save with you, do I? You already know me, the good and the bad, and you love me anyway. My god, I really am essentially your husband. You’re with me for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death – hopefully my death – do us part.”

It was confusing, how much emphasis Artie was placing on the natural order of things. “Yes.”

He laughed, shakily. “I’m married to my job, and my professional spouse wants me to go to grief counseling. Leena would probably tell me my aura looks like hell. Fine. I’ll talk to Abigail, but I make no promises about liking her.”

“Good Artie,” said the shabti as it hugged him.

“And tomorrow,” he promised as gratitude billowed out, “I will get Claudia in here and we will hook up something to give you a voice.”