“Our silent partner requests your involvement.”
My hands stopped their work, and I laid the mechanism down. Tapping the tip of my screwdriver on the workbench, I asked:
“So that’s it, is it? Whose money, exactly, did you accept?”
He looked away.
“You want me to kill someone.”
“No—” he began.
“Well, I don’t exactly see another use for the thing you’re asking me to make.”
“It’s destructive,” he said. “It could be used that way.”
“Are you going to tell me it won’t?”
“You’re seeing it as a gun of sorts.” His arms gesticulated up and down as if he might pluck the words he was searching for out of the air. “I can’t tell you the whole situation. There’s a door, alright? It needs a sort of harmonic key. I’m not trying to boil anyone’s brains out their eyes. If I try to make it, it will take twice as long and work half as well as whatever you make. If I try to make it, it probably will explode and kill someone.”
I snorted and laid the screwdriver down.
“You promise me?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
I nodded.
“Alright. Let me think about it.”
He gave a half smile, turned, and left. I looked around my workshop, tapping my screwdriver against the bench. My eyes turned toward my hand and the tool I was fiddling with. Was it a screwdriver? An ice pick? A stiletto? Even something as simple as this, the telos is hard to fathom.
Tale Told 