Modern Love is Automatic

Modern love is automatic. -A Flock of Seagulls

“One crate?” Francis said, eyeing up the wooden box. “One crate? We always transport them in two.”

The museum gallery was empty except for a singular crate, an iron and wood park bench elevated on a raised platform, and two mannequin-like figures sitting on the bench. Neither had hair, neither had a face, but they were lovers all the same.

The figure on the right was dressed in a pair of high-waisted white pants, knee-high black riding boots, and a blue overcoat with it tails hanging down over the bench seat. The one on the left was wearing a plush violet dress with puffed shoulders and white lace trim. The hem of the dress draped down all the way to the floor. Both mannequins had their hands resting squarely in laps. It looked like a simple man and woman sitting on a bench, minding their own business.

“What’s the problem?” Hank said, removing his baseball cap and wiping the sweat from his forehead. His shirt was soaked from heavy lifting, and his smell was no better. His hat read: Haymarket Shipping and Transport.

“It’s a single display piece, but it doesn’t travel that way,” Francis said, pointing at the bench and drawing a line with his finger between the two mannequin-like figures. “The bench separates into two pieces, and it needs to travel that way. It’s a very delicate machine.”

“It doesn’t look like a machine,” Hank said, squinting at the figures on the bent. “Where’d this thing come from?”

“This is an automaton,” Francis said. “Specifically, it’s a pair of automatons whose gears work in conjunction when the pieces are connected. It was found abandoned behind the Gothic Hall in London after an exhibition in 1826. By all accounts, it was never shown, and no one knows who created.”

Hank squatted down and read the small placard affixed to the platform upon which the bench sat. The placard read: Modern Love presented by Francis Bruster, Premier Watchmaker, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

“It says here that Francis Bruster created it,” Hank said, looking up at Francis.

“I’m Francis Bruster,” Francis said. “I’m simply presenting it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I travel with it and keep it in working order. Like I said, it’s a very delicate machine. If it breaks under my care, it’s my career on the line. That’s why one crate simply will not do. The two pieces always travel separately to prevent damage to their mechanism.”

“It’s only traveling from Chicago to Milwaukee,” Hank said. He pulled a shipping manifest from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He waved it at Francis. “It’s only 90 miles. It shouldn’t be more than an hour and a half, max. We’ll separate the pieces, bubble wrap them individually, and fit them in the crate. I’ve worked this route a hundred times over. It’s no biggie. You can even ride shotgun with me if you’re that worried about it.”

Francis pulled a gold pocket watch from his vest pocket and looked at it. Time was not on his side. He couldn’t help but concede. He had no choice. All the other installations had been removed from the gallery and were probably loaded into the trailer by now. There was no point in delaying the operation.

“All right,” Francis said with a sigh. “I’ll need to separate them.”

“Um,” Hank said. “Before you do that, can I see this machine work?”

“Why do you need to see it work?”

“For these sorts of shipments, where damage can occur, we need to certify that everything works prior to the shipment. We’ve seen a lot of fraud with the museum crowd, claiming that items were broken in transit when they were already broken pre-shipment. I’ve been burned myself. So, if you could just flip it on, we can get on with the packing.”

“As you wish,” Francis said, stepping up onto the platform that held the bench. He leaned over the bench, gave a few cranks to a wind-up key on the backside, and let it go.

A heavy sound of ticking resonated from inside the two automatons, and their bodies began to vibrate. The man’s head turned toward the woman. The woman’s head turned toward the man. They both leaned in, and they kissed. All the while, their hands seemed to shake uncontrollably with a violent rattle.

“That’s it?” Hank said, rubbing the back of his neck. “A bit tame, isn’t it? With the way they were vibrating, I thought they’d be getting a lot more handsy.”

“There are locking gears,” Francis said, placing a hand on the male automaton’s shoulder. “They’re nickel-plated gears that limit the movement of other brass gears, especially in the arms and legs. The way these two are built, they couldn’t get handsy if they wanted to; not without breaking a few gears in the process.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun,” Hank said. “Maybe they’d like to bust a few gears.”

“This set of automatons dates to at least 1826,” Francis said. “A kiss on a public bench would have been more than a little scandalous. Some speculate that it’s the very reason why these automatons were not admitted to the Gothic Hall exhibition. It’s a shame that they were just abandoned the way they were. Their imagery was just ahead of its time. That’s why it was separated and auctioned off as two separate pieces to two different buyers in 1827. It’s taken nearly two centuries for the two halves to be reunited so that they could be exhibited as a working display piece. They simply don’t work in isolation.”

“And you don’t want to ship it as one piece?”

“The gears between the pieces fit together very intricately,” Francis said, pointing to a wide metal gear box barely visible beneath the bench seat. “If the piece were to be jostled in transit, it could warp the gears at the junction. They need to travel separately, disconnected, even if it is in a single crate. It may not be ideal, but we do need to separate them.”

“You got it, boss,” Hank said. “I’ll go get the bubble wrap.”

While Hank was away at his truck, Francis took the initiative to separate the two automatons before he returned. He also grabbed a broom from the janitor’s closet on the far side of the gallery and proceeded to sweep out the shipping crate. It was surprisingly dusty. When he was done, the crate was clean, and it and empty.

Hank returned with a large red toolbox hanging from one arm and a thick roll of bubble wrap under the other. “If you want to wrap the pieces, I’ll prep the crate,” he said.

Francis took the bubble wrap and watched as Hank pulled a cordless driver from his toolbox. Within an hour’s time, the two automatons were wrapped separately, tucked away in the crate, and Hank was putting the final screws into the crate’s side panel. They were locked, sealed, and secure.

“Snug as a bug,” Hank said. “Let’s wheel this back to my trailer, and we can hit the road. You still want to ride shotgun?”

“Fine,” Francis said. It was going to be a long 90 minutes on the road, and Francis wasn’t going to let the crate leave his vicinity.

Just shy of 90 minutes down the highway, Hank’s trailer was backing-in to the loading zone of the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee. Francis was on pins and needles the whole ride. Every bump, every stop, and every bit of acceleration made him nervous. He could have sworn that he heard ticking coming from the trailer as they drove, but it might very well have been the sound of his own heart beating out of his chest.

When Hank came to a stop and turned off the engine of his truck, Francis took the opportunity to swing open his door and hop down to the ground. “Can you open the trailer?” he called up to Hank.

Hank was in the process of filling-out a road log. “Hold your horses,” he said. “We can’t unload the trailer until the forklift operator comes around. Why don’t you go inside and tell them we’ve arrived? It’ll speed up the process.”

“Fine,” Francis said, feeling impatient. The whole situation made him nervous.

One crate, he thought. One crate. Should have been two.

Francis went inside, alerted the front desk of their arrival, and made his way to the back entrance where the museum’s receiving bay was located.

It felt like an eternity waiting for Hank to bring the crate around. Nearly ten minutes passed before Hank rolled in with the crate on a pallet jack. A red toolbox rested on top of the crate.

“Open it up,” Francis said. “Please, open it up.”

“Alright,” Hank said, holding his hands up defensively. “Don’t worry. The ride was as smooth as they get.”

Hank pulled his cordless driver from the red toolbox and went to work removing the screws that held on the side panel.

When the side panel dropped to the floor, so did Francis’s jaw.

Inside the crate were the two automatons, but not as Francis had last seen them.

The bubble wrap that he had carefully arranged around the two separate pieces now lay in a heap on the floor of the crate. Mixed amongst the tangle of bubble wrap was a violet dress, a white pair of pants, two black riding boots, and a blue overcoat.

The figures themselves wore nothing. Not a stitch remained between them.

“What did you do?” Francis said, pointing a finger at Hank. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Hank said, staring blankly into the crate. “The crate’s been sealed up since we left. You saw me seal it. You saw me load it.”

Francis couldn’t argue. “Just help me get them out of there,” he said.

Francis squeezed into the back of the crate to push as Hank pulled from the front. The two automatons and their bench slid out of the crate as one single, connected piece.

“They’re reconnected,” Francis said, dumbfounded. “That’s impossible.”

“And they’re looking pretty handsy,” Hank said with a smirk.

Without the clothes, the male and female figures looked about the same. Although their heads were carved from wood, their bodies exposed a maze-like fixture of gears beneath a minimal skeletal framework of brass slats and rivets.

What was most unusual was their posture. No longer were their hands in their laps.

The male figure had one hand on the female’s thigh and one hand on her stomach. The female figure had one hand on the male’s chest and one hand behind his neck.

“They shouldn’t be able to move like this,” Francis said, looking the figures over from top to bottom. “Not unless their locking gears have been removed.”

The gear box beneath the bench seat was intact, but the wind-up key on the backside of the bench was missing.

“The key’s missing,” Francis said. “It’s got to be somewhere in the crate.”

Hank reached into the crate and pulled out two tangles of bubble wrap. He flapped each in turn. “Nothing here,” he said.

Francis pulled out the pants, the boots, and the overcoat. He checked the pockets and shook the boots, but there was nothing to be found.

“Hold these,” Francis said, handing Hank the set of clothes from the male figure.

That only left the violet dress.

Francis lifted the dress from the floor of the crate to find a small set of connected gears and posts. The gears were all nickel-plated.

One of the central gears connected to a spring, and that spring connected to a post that connected to the missing wind-up key. It looked like a small wind-up toy.

Francis picked up the toy, and the wind-up key started turning. The gears started moving. Two small posts began kicking like short little legs. Another two flapped up and down like wayward arms.

“What is it?” Hank said.

“It’s made of the nickel-plated locking gears,” Francis said, feeling the ticking machine come alive in the palm of his hand. The gears must have been removed from the two automatons. That’s why they could move the way they did, locking in embrace.

“And where did it come from?” Hank said, looking back at the crate.

Francis cradled the tiny geared machine between his two hands and set it gently on the bench between the two figures. “Conception,” he said.

“And what about them?” Hank said, eyeing the embrace of the two figures on the bench.

Francis couldn't help but smile. “In flagrante delicto.”