G
Gepetto did not carve her from wood; he forged her from copper and hope. In the gas-lit streets of Victorian London, where the fog tasted of coal and secrets, the old clockmaker lived alone with his ticking creations.
He called her Tick. She had eyes made of sapphire glass and a heart that was a perpetual motion machine, a secret stolen from the Royal Society. She was perfect, save for one thing: she could not feel.
"Father," she asked one evening, her voice the melodious chime of a silver bell. "Why do the children outside weep when they scrape their knees? My sensors indicate damage, but I do not leak saline."
Gepetto sighed, polishing a gear. "Pain, my dear, is a reminder that we are alive. It is the cost of having a soul."
"I wish to have a soul," Tick stated. "I wish to understand why you cry when you look at the portrait of the woman on the mantle."
Gepetto stopped. "That is a different kind of pain, Tick. That is grief. And I would not wish it on my worst enemy, let alone my masterpiece."
But Tick was curious. And curiosity, as they say, is the spark of the soul. She began to wander the city at night. She observed the lovers by the Thames, the beggars in the alleys, the brawlers in the pubs. She mimicked them. She learned to tilt her head in sympathy, to laugh when others laughed, though the vibration felt strange in her brass throat.
One night, she found a stray dog shivering in the rain. Its leg was broken. Logic dictated she ignore it; it was a drain on resources. But something in her mainspring tightened. A tension. A... feeling?
She scooped the dog up. It bit her metal hand, snapping a tooth. She didn't recoil. She carried it home.
Gepetto found them the next morning. Tick was splinting the dog's leg with a discarded clock hand.
"He is damaged," Tick said. "I am repairing him."
The clockmaker smiled, tears welling in his eyes. "You felt pity, Tick."
"Is that what this is?" She touched her chest. "This... heaviness?"
"Yes," Gepetto whispered. "You are becoming real."
Tick looked at the dog, then at her father. "It hurts," she said softly. "I do not like it."
"I know," Gepetto said, hugging her cold metal frame. "But it is beautiful, isn't it?"
Tick listened to the dog's heartbeat, a soft rhythm against her own ticking. "Yes," she decided. "It is."