The Conductive Stranger
The Defect: Part III
In-universe date: Era Nova, August--September, Year 2
Real-world date: 20 August 2026
Author: Henry Westcroft
I am trapped inside my own workshop, staring at a right arm that no longer belongs to me. The muscle is entirely rigid now, a useless weight of cold flesh hanging from my shoulder. My tools sit untouched on the workbench.
Conventional engineering cannot solve this. If I am to build a mechanical replacement that actually responds to my mind, gears and steam pressure alone will not be enough. I need a catalyst-something to bridge the gap between copper filaments and human nerves.
Sitting in the dim candlelight, my mind keeps drifting back to a strange encounter from the beginning of the year.
A traveler had arrived in Clockhaven by accident, an old man with a long white beard and a calm, peculiar demeanor. He introduced himself as Electrus. Most of the locals dismissed him as an eccentric wanderer, but we ended up sharing a table and exchanging names.
He spoke at length about the conductive properties of copper, describing how the metal could channel unseen elemental energies. At the time, I listened with the polite skepticism of an engineer, focusing strictly on the physical properties of the metallurgy while he spoke of a grander power he called Lux Arcana.
Before he departed the Technate to return to his distant lands, he spoke of his tower and the research he conducted there. I paid little mind to it then.
But now, in the silence of my isolation, his words about copper and conductivity carry a terrifying weight.
If my own biological current has failed, perhaps his copper-harnessed energies are the exact key I need to breathe life into a mechanical limb.
I cannot let the citizens of Koperdam see me like this, but I cannot rot here either.
I must chart a course out into the frontier.
I must find Electrus.
My pack is ready. Nestled inside, beneath the charts, lies my first crude copper prototype- a cold, unmoving weight that I pray he can bring to life.