Chapter Forty-Five. Rory
Rory
“What’s the worst thing you can say to a pastry?” Elliott asked, lips already twitching. Behind him, the windows of the student café were fogged with heat, the air smelling of wet wool and reheated scones.
“What?” Noah asked dryly.
“Don’t be flaky.” Elliott held up his limp croissant. “Get it? Because—flaky.”
Noah snorted.
“Come on, Rory. It was brilliant!” Elliott nudged Rory’s elbow.
“What? Oh, yeah. Sure.” Rory shook his head, trying to dispel the looping replay of the fight with Wynne in his head. He forced on a smile. “Hey, have you talked to Hanna lately?”
“We have four classes together. I talk to her pretty much every day,” Elliott said. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” Rory sighed. “It’s just that I think maybe she’s avoiding me, even more than usual.”
“Maybe you just haven’t crossed paths yet, with all the intro classes you’re stuck in.” Even Elliott didn’t sound convinced.
“Or maybe—and I know it’s a long shot,” Noah said wryly, “she’s still pissed about that thing where you kissed her and then spent months pretending it didn’t happen while avoiding her like the plague.”
“I didn’t avoid her like the plague,” Rory mumbled. “And anyway, she seemed fine with it until a few months ago. Mostly. But ever since I started taking classes, it’s like she’s going out of her way to avoid me.”
“Guess she wasn’t fine with it.” Noah hefted his bag. “I’m off to my ethics seminar. What do you have next?”
“Intro to construction work.” Rory screwed his lips.
Noah burst out laughing, while Elliott groaned in sympathy. “Must be riveting stuff for you.”
“You have no idea,” Rory answered. Sometimes it felt like all he did was sit through lectures about things he’d learned years before, wasting time that could have been used to do something, anything, to solve the quagmire that was Daye’s dependence on him.
Just thinking about it made Wynne’s voice echo in his head.
You’ve been over this for years now. You know as well as I do that it’s not going to happen.
Maybe Wynne was right, Rory couldn’t help but think as he trudged into another lecture hall for another inane introductory lecture where he learned nothing useful.
Maybe it was impossible. Why had he ever thought that he could crack it?
He was learning nothing, doing nothing. Daye kept falling apart, and he had nothing to show for his efforts but a whole lot of wasted time and useless lecture notes. What was he even doing here?
“Over the last weeks, we talked about what makes construction such a core branch of engineering,” Professor Boudin droned.
“We talked about the low price of production, the abundance of materials, the relative ease of upkeep, and delved a little into the role of tradition and unions in preserving construction’s key role within the engineering and production fields.
Just to review, who can tell me what is the difference between constructs and other products of engineering? ”
Rory doodled branches in the margins of his notebook, crossing and twining and crossing again, until all one could see was an overlay of black lines.
Someone in the second row raised a hand. “Constructs are made of plants.”
Rory rolled his eyes.
“Good,” Professor Boudin said. “One of the main things that differentiate constructs from other engineered objects is that they are made entirely from flora, while other products often involve multiple components such as metal, wood, wiring, and so on. What else?”
“Constructs are automated,” a girl in the row before Rory said. “Once you give them instructions, they can work without supervision.”
“Wonderful.” Professor Boudin smiled. “That’s right, constructs are essentially automatons, and depending on their specific type, they can perform a variety of tasks without need for oversight—from assembly lines in factories to maintenance work in remote locations, or even small everyday things such as mail sorting or street sweeping—all that without any need for fuel, other than regular upkeep, though their useful life cycle is limited. ”
Rory’s pen punched through the page, what used to be a branch now a gaping hole. He sighed and turned to a new page.
“What about Blodeuwedds? Are they automatons as well?” The question came from somewhere in the back of the room. Rory stilled.
Professor Boudin’s lips pressed together.
“Blodeuwedds are outside the scope of this class, so I’ll answer this one quickly.
Blodeuwedds are a notorious edge case of construction, and there is an ongoing debate on whether they are indeed automatons, as well as a thorny ethical debate regarding the morality of their creation.
Now, moving on.” Professor Boudin clapped her hands.
Rory fought not to flinch.
“Today I want to start talking about the construction act itself,” Professor Boudin continued.
“While you’ll have a chance to get some hands-on experience in lab next semester, let’s talk about the theory behind it.
As I mentioned already, the ingredients needed for construction work are usually simple and consist of local flora.
Other than that, you need only—to quote Porteous’s iconic phrasing—knowledge of weave and words, hands to work, voice to speak, and the will to make it so. ”
Someone a few rows down raised a hand. “Knowledge and will seem obvious, but why add hands and voice? Are they really essential? What about communal work, or using tools? Same with voice—is it truly necessary? Aren’t there mute constructionists, or a way to work around it?”
“That’s an excellent question. Simply put, the answer is no.
Hands and voice are necessary, though—” Professor Boudin was still talking, but Rory was no longer listening.
His pen was still pressed to the page, a pool of ink slowly spreading across the last item in the list he had just scrawled.
It was a short list—one word, followed by five short lines:
Construction:
1. Materials
2. Knowledge
3. Hands
4. Voice
5. Will
Rory stared at the list, pen still on paper. The blot of ink was growing across the page, bleeding down to the one beneath it. The discussion moved on to definitions of will. Rory still didn’t move his hand.
A slow smile was inching across his face, a kaleidoscope of smiles flickering from disbelief to wonder, from shock to incredulous hope, and back again. How had he never seen it before?
Rory picked up the pen and slowly, reverently, circled the fourth item on the list. His hand shook. Voice, he mouthed silently, and closed his eyes.