Tinkerer Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
He wanted so desperately to be left alone. There were so many of
them and they all talked oh so much. He wasn’t selfish; he only wanted a spare
moment of quiet now and again. There were too many voices. Too many opinions.
Too many tales and too many squabbles. He couldn’t keep it all straight. The
constant jibber jabber became white noise after a while. He retreated inwards
and began to exist only within his own mind, his own solitude.
There were so many of them. There was so much talent. They were
brilliant visionaries. They were creators and inventors. They tinkered and
experimented and made things. They made so many things. There was so much
potential and promise. Unfortunately most of that was for naught. They were
spoiled and lazy and lackadaisical. They had never had to work for anything;
they had never had to struggle. Everything had been so easy. And so they never
learned how or why to truly work. They were childish with childish desires and
childish resolve.
He was brilliant. He had dreams. He had desires. He wasn’t like
his brothers and sisters and cousins. He was different because he had a fire in
his stomach. He had the fire to create, to invent and to build. His mind was
always working, always thinking, always inventing. Even when he wasn’t in his
workshop and was away from his tools, his mind never stopped.
He had very little patience for his family. There were just too
many other things to think about. This attitude did not endear him to his
siblings. But he was too absorbed into his own endeavors to notice.
The looking glass was envisioned to be a gateway to knowledge and
understanding. It could illuminate and inspire and present alternatives to
ideas and choices. It would silence fate and chance, and give rise to evidence
and well-informed choice. The mistakes of the past could be learned from and
the mistakes of the future could be prevented.
It was to be the greatest of all his creations.
But it was to be his. And he planned to lock it away. He had built
it to help, but feared the destruction it could bring. He second-guessed
himself and humanity. He was worried people couldn’t handle it, that it would
be used for persecution and destruction. He was afraid. And so out of fear he
locked it away.
Knowledge and technology are often difficult things to keep locked
away.
The workshop was ransacked. Machines and half-finished inventions
were smashed and destroyed. Ideas were stolen. Experiments had been ruined. The
tinkerer was devastated.
None of his brothers or sisters took responsibility for what had
occurred, but it was impossible to believe that someone somewhere hadn’t had a
hand it what had occurred. It wasn’t as if the tinkerer had gone about breaking
his own things.
The looking glass ended up unaccounted for. There was no broken
glass, no shattered bits or shards of mirror. It was gone, and with it
foresight and knowledge.
The tinkerer vowed never to create something so powerful again. He
swore his uncertainty at man’s ability to handle such a thing. He said he
didn’t want the responsibility. Instead of invention, he spent his time with
his family. He became a better brother. He became a better husband. He became a
better father. He found himself very satisfied with his new domesticity.
Still, when considering the occurrences and order of things, it is
rather odd that an invention that had been designed to provide wisdom and
knowledge and could be used to see into the possible futures hadn’t foreseen
its own disappearance.
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