39 Loop 1 Part 19

Both golems went still at the same moment. They looked straight ahead, their stone faces fixed in the distance.

“The activation was successful,” the Keeper said.

“Are they ready, or are we still in the part where I pretend to understand what’s happening?”

“They are active,” the Keeper said. “Readiness implies intent, and they do not possess that.”

“That feels like a flaw.”

“Yes. It is a limitation of soulless golems. They can follow instructions, but cannot choose what to do with them.”

“So if I tell them to carry something, they’ll carry it.”

“Yes.”

“And if I tell them to stop, they’ll stop.”

“Yes.”

“And if I tell them to stand there silently and not ask me follow-up questions, they’ll do that, too.”

“Yes.”

I liked the two golems already. They continued staring at nothing with absolute dedication. I nodded slowly.

“Walk,” I commanded.

I put a picture in the golem’s head: walking to the left. The golem on the left walked to the left, one foot in front of the other, with slow, even steps. When something blocked its path, it picked the obstacle up, moved it to the side, and then kept walking. When it reached the far wall, it stopped on its own.

Interesting. The one on the right hadn’t moved. I needed to direct my commands better if I wanted both to move at the same time.

I looked at the one by the wall and commanded, “Walk back.”

It started toward me.

“Stop.”

It stopped two feet from its original position, immediately, as soon as I said stop.

“Go grab that stool.” I pointed at the stool. It nodded toward it and walked over, grabbed it above its head, and returned to its position, just like I imagined. “Put it down.” And it put it down.

The first few commands were exhaustingly successful. They worked, but I had to put in the effort to make them work.

The hard part was that the words were only half of it. But it opened several doors in my mind, and most of them had comfortable chairs behind them.

I pictured the room clean.

Not perfectly clean. I wasn’t a monster. Perfectly clean rooms were suspicious and usually belonged to people who alphabetized socks. I pictured crates against the wall, batteries in one place, tools on the workbench, anything sharp away from where I might eventually want to nap.

The golems moved.

And as the golems lifted things above their heads and placed them down, a new idea came to me.

“Stop.” The golems stopped mid-pickup. I liked how easy it was to command them. “Come here.”

Both golems walked toward me.

“Carry the chair I’m sitting in to the center of the room.” They slowly picked up the chair with me in it—slightly unevenly, given the weight, I assumed—and carried me over to the center of the room. “Put me down.” They lowered the chair.

I was already getting used to this. I would never have to cast a movement spell ever again. I just needed to make sturdier golems to get around things like Frollarts.

As much fun as having two golems was, if I wanted to wake up the other two, I needed more mana. Which meant I either needed to meditate or I needed to sleep. And considering the fact that it was almost 10 p.m., maybe, if my internal clock was correct, I was about due for a nap.

I gave a mental thought to my golems and said, “Organize.”

They immediately got to work. They were loud. There was a lot of noise, stone footsteps on stone, stone grips on wooden and metal crates. They didn’t seem to have a volume switch, no matter how many times I sent thoughts of them being as loud as a mouse, or said “quieter.”

But I quickly succumbed to my grandest desire.

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I woke up a few hours later with a crick in my neck. The room had changed while I slept.

It wasn’t perfect, exactly. But it was cleaner. The crates had been stacked against one wall in square, joyless columns. The empty mana batteries sat in a row along the floor, each one placed the same distance from the next. Tools covered the workbench in straight lines. Books had been piled by size—which was interesting, to say the least.

The two golems stood in the middle of it all, waiting. They had simply finished the work and remained there, available for more work. It was an attitude I found both alien and deeply useful.

It was like having two Finns who didn’t ask whether I had eaten, slept, or processed my trauma. Truly, civilization had peaked.

“You did all this while I slept?”

They didn’t answer.