...
Lucy: Joanna.
Joanna: It's open. Come in.
The mechanical woman enters her friend's house.
Lucy: Did you move the TV upstairs?
She stands in a tidy living room, but there is no sign of her host.
Joanna: Yeah. The antenna's stuck. Michael couldn't fix it, so we brought it up here, where it could catch the signal.
Joanna: Come on up, Lucy. I'm trying to get this darned thing working. It won't take long, I promise.
Lucy: Are you in need of help?
Joanna: It's okay. I'm almost done. It's just this screw. It won't get in there—don't make me get rough with you, you naughty garoto!
The mechanical woman sits down and looks at the clock. It is 4:11 in the afternoon. She can easily imagine how busy her colleagues are at the Space Center.
Lucy: They should be close to landing on the moon now.
Joanna: Yeah, close. I'm close to making it work. Done!
The wires spark and burn. It strikes the woman like mocking laughter.
Lucy: It appears to be broken.
Lucy: A simple adjustment will resolve this issue.
Joanna: Alrighty then! Let's grab something to eat first, and then we'll see what I can do, or I guess, what you can do.
Joanna: Would you like to try some pamonha? It's an old family recipe from Portugal.
Lucy: I do not need food to replenish energy, Joanna. But, thank you.
Joanna: Oh, I completely forgot, haha.
Joanna: But it can't hurt to have something to eat, right? You are capable of it after all. Anyways, it's your call.
Lucy: Biological material has a much lower conversion efficiency than pure electricity.
It had been a century since she had changed her primary power source. It had increased her capacity exponentially.
Yet it came with an unexpected price: she no longer felt welcome at meal times. Humans consider fuel consumption a social activity, and some take offense to her abstaining.
Lucy: Perhaps high-nutrient foods will become more popular in the future. That way, less time will be wasted on social consumption rituals.
Joanna: Oh please, food isn't just about the health of your body. It's good for your spirit too! It's one of the great joys of living.
Lucy: Irrelevant. Whatever a spirit is, it is not nourished by biological matter. Now, consider the food we prepared for the astronauts, lightweight but densely-packed with nutrients—
Joanna: Fine, no pamonha for you. Now would you fix this machine? I don't want to miss the broadcast.
Lucy: Yes. It is possible. However, I must warn you, there is a small chance of failure. I predict between 2 to 5%.
Joanna: Well, I already called the repairman. But if you don't mind trying your luck, maybe you can give it a whirl first?
The mechanical woman reaches for the stubborn screw, and steam pours out from her core. The light of arcane skill seems to awaken the machine, and then ...
In a fit of sputtering smoke, the unlikeliest probability seems to have come to pass.
Joanna: coughs What's happening, Lucy?
Lucy: My arcane skill has failed.
A finger-sized robot now stands motionless next to a piston where Lucy had been. The piston squeaks up to Joanna from the ground.
Lucy: It has been 42 months and 18 days since the last time this failure occurred.
Lucy: ...
Lucy: How unfortunate.
Joanna: Seems like we made a bad gamble, haha.
Joanna: But it isn't so bad. Why, you almost look like a little dolly now. Very, very cute, Miss Lucy.
Joanna: But, how do you get back to your usual size?
Lucy: It will be over in just a few minutes. Do not be concerned.
Joanna: I never expected to learn something new about you after all these years.
Lucy: I am no more than a metal piston truly. Everything else is just a mechanical construction. A facade.
She looks now just as she did when she was first awakened.
When she took form as a part of that very first steam engine.
A few seconds pass, and Joanna picks up the tiny, immobile robot.
Joanna: I still can't believe this little thing was you.
Lucy: An accident caused by a rare instability with my arcane skill.
Lucy: I suppose you see now why I am reluctant to use my skills, even when they are important. It is dangerous to bet on an uncertainty.
Joanna: Thankfully it's only a TV this time. Not that big a deal, right? Besides, it was only a tiny, little accident. You can always try again.
Once again, Lucy emits steam from her core, this time successfully reactivating the television with her arcane skill.
Lucy: Done.
A signal reaches the TV from 300,000 kilometers away. On the black-and-white screen, a man begins to step out from a capsule, his feet landing on the surface of the moon.
The camera captures not only the capsule and the astronaut, but the silence and loneliness of space.
Joanna: It looks so beautiful up there.
Joanna: In some many different cultures, people believed something was living on the moon. In China, they say there's a palace on the moon, with a princess and a rabbit.
Lucy: There is no breathable atmosphere on the moon. Such a thing would be logically impossible.
Joanna: Well, we're about to see. They're taking the first steps now.
It may only be one small step for man, but for mankind, it is a journey of many thousand years.
She watches as the astronauts take their first clumsy steps across the moonscape.
Lucy: It was less than 70 years, Joanna, when most people believed humanity would never fly. And now, you have taken the first step on another world.
Joanna is still silent in awe of the moment, but in a short while, she points over to a painting on the wall.
Joanna: That painting was from Uncle Victor.
A painting that has kept her company throughout her life.
Depicted on it, a winged girl taking off into a harbor, flying past a lighthouse, heading toward the sun.
Joanna: They say she's an ancestor of our family, from Portugal. That she was the first human to truly fly.
There was no question in Lucy's mind of who this mysterious woman had been. It was a remarkable likeness of the scene.
Lucy: I started this project in 1835 in Lisbon. Jimena and I made the first prototype of those wings.
Lucy: There was no engine in the first designs. We could only catch the wind.
Lucy: It was something of a bitter moment—I had to use my arcane skill to alter it so that Jimena could reach her ship. I never saw her again. I did not even know if she survived.
Joanna: ...
Joanna: I knew she had a partner, somehow, I never realized it was you.
Lucy: I spent a lot of time on other work after that. By the time I heard about your uncle's project, it had been 70 years.
Lucy: But still, we could not solve the problem of power. The technology just was not available to lift the frame for any significant length of time. He gave up.
Joanna: Did you know after he left Boston, Uncle Victor went to New York, made it rich with some olive oil business?
Lucy: No, I never knew. But I am happy for him.
So, he achieved his goals after all. Just like Jimena did, in a way.
Lucy: He had always realized the business value of the wings.
Lucy: But he came to believe that it was impossible to achieve the design with the technology we had available.
Lucy: Humans have so little time, when you look at it. The future is always slipping out of their grasps.
Lucy: It is understandable why they grow frustrated after failing again and again. They do not have the time to wait around for the next miracle.
Joanna: But by handing down that ember, through you, he helped us get here. Now we've realized his dream, and Jimena's, and her father's before her.
Lucy: Yes, ideas, too, have a process of slow iteration.
Lucy: In the 19th century, only a few people even dreamed that humans would ever fly.
Lucy: In your uncle's time, it had already changed. People knew it was possible, but thought it would only ever be a novelty.
Lucy: Now, no one doubts where we can go.
Lucy: It is always only a matter of time, Joanna.
And time moves all, like a river. It cannot be stopped, and no one can control where it will take us.
No matter whether you rage against it, take every moment you can, or give up halfway.
Lucy: All that we need is patience.
Joanna: We will eventually get there, even though many of us may fall along the way.
Joanna: But you witnessed it all, Lucy. You kept that ember glowing.
Lucy: I just kept you company along the way.
Lucy: That is all I did.
