Lizzie's Automaton Clock

Ellie' Sole Purpose Automaton Clock

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Ellie's Automaton Clock - Tinkering with Creation

Mechanical automaton clocks get their power from moving weights or springs. Their parts are attached to gears and toothed wheels. As the gears move, they move their hands at a consistent pace. The Drury Row Theater clock doesn’t require winding. Its innovator Ellie Ogden, who built the clock, used waves of energy given off by atoms long before it was officially invented in 1955. In 1857, Ellie worked with alchemists and spiritualists.
The alchemists turned everyday substances into precious metals. The spiritualists worked their magick to animate the objects made with the metals. When Ellie educated herself about science, she continued to argue with her sister Lizzie that a clock she loaned to the Library Archive wasn’t a work of science. It was a work of art and supernatural influences. There was no way for Lizzie to confirm or deny her claim. Fifty years later, she is the owner of a bakery in Crooked Mile and a member of the Crooked Mile Circle. Ellie is convinced that the clock remains under a magickal influence. She named her clock Raptor, originally wired to answer life's quintessential questions about health, family, investments and best use of time for a solitary coin. She never expected the clock be used for any other purpose. She threw away its winding key.
Unfortunately, the beautiful clock Ellie built with the assistance of her clock maker father, and inventor in his own right, was stolen from the archive. Somehow it ended up in the hands of Drurys. Not a cautious family, they took the clock to a repairman who completely repurposed the arcane clock. When the Crooked Mile Gazette editor asked a Drury family son what possessed them, he answered the clock hadn’t worked for years. Their repairman used to steam to animate the machine parts and electricity to move the hands. The result was a useful clock they planned to use in the theater they planned to restore. His excuse pleased most readers. They wrote letters of praise to the Gazette editor.
Neither Ellie nor the clock appreciated the work done to the clock without her permission. It wasn’t likely the clock would take the changes well.

Ellie's Imprinted Automaton Clock

Chronology of an Automaton Clock IV by ROD w/Midjourney

Arnie's Money Maker Clock - Tinkering with Destruction

The clock was a centerpiece of interest at the Drury Row Theater when it opened in grand style. Patrons lined up to buy a ticket with a nickel coin. Some stuck a quarter into the slot. It dispensed two nickels’ change. Emcee and owner Arnie Drury-Baker loved watching the faces of a short changed audience. He nailed up a disclaimer sign. “Expect correct change at your own risk.” He saved the change in his child hood piggy bank. Seeing children lose their money to the automaton made him laugh longest. He told their parents it was an excellent lesson to learn. “Always read the posted print.”
After midnight, when the theater closed to the public, invited guests were allowed to pull the automaton’s lever. It worked much like the slot machine Arnie saw used by Charles Fey in 1895. The machine’s arcane beauty made it even more difficult to leave. He would stand there and watch his customers pull the lever and win three or four times. When they started to feel comfortable with the possibility, they would beat the house, the gamblers couldn’t quit losing. A perfectly acceptable method for making money. No actors to pay, no card dealers to please, no spinners to him. They required sleep. He kept his late night casino open until 4:00 am. When he got word the Periphery (local police department) planned to make a raid, he closed the theater at midnight. He could hear the die hard gamblers grumbling out in the street after hours. He loved the sound of their disappointment. He counted on their yearning, and he knew they would be back more obsessed with his contraption than ever.
What Arnie didn’t know is that the Clock missed answering life’s question from its clockwise perspective. For reasons Arnie and his repairman did not understand, the clock’s hands jumped from one hour to another hour in a matter of seconds, its chime rang on the wrong minute, and it moved across the room during the nights police came to raid the theater’s burlesque shows. Arnie remembered only Ellie could fix the clock’s internal mechanisms. But he never trusted the Ogdens (father or the sisters). They did not share his appetite for cruelty,ridicule or money. Ellie’s father, given the chance, preferred his friendships and loyalty. The Ogden daughters, in a moment of desperation, would likely steal the clock back.

The Automaton's Clock - Tinkering with Resurrection

It only took a few months for the Clock to grow weary of watching patrons pull its handle obsessively, only to curse him later for robbing them of their savings. So he retaliated on a steamy October 31st midnight when the theater filled to capacity. A long line of sozzled and gamblers, a few wealthy and destitute, stumbled their way to the slotted clock. The clock paid no mind, and the losers lost their money in the usual manner.
The clock waited patiently until a working man, a member of the crew, who couldn’t afford a theater ticket, pulled the lever. The crowd of onlookers burst into snickers, unable to contain their amusement. Only the night sky falling could cure his compulsion to fiddle away his hard earned day’s pay. Arnie, in particular, enjoyed watching the fellow fizzle.
After winning three nickels and losing seventeen, the man took out his last coin and slid it into the slot, prepared to lose again. At least he could go home and sleep off his shame. So he pulled the handle with so little passion, no one expected what happened. The watching crowd tripped over one another while backing away from a year’s worth of coins that showered out from the clock. Not only did the clock chime ring, its face beamed long enough for bystanders to see Arnie run toward the clock to scoop up what he screamed out was “his money” Then the clock went dim, and opened its hands to grab him.
Arnie squirmed out of the clock’s hold and struck it with a nightstick. Nevertheless, the coins continued to pour from the machine. A few of the crew members, bold enough to bag the coins for their friends and selves, slid into the clock that toppled. The clock didn’t appear to care. It let itself fall over directly onto to the bloke that hit him. By the time the emcee drug himself out from under the automaton, he lost all feeling in his legs and back. When the crew pulled the clock off them, thunder rolled and lightning crashed. There was no need to set off fireworks. The theater went dark.
Denouement
After weeks of therapy, his doctors at the sanitorium moved Arnie the ornery Emcee to a chair, saying this was the best they could do. Now he pushes himself to speak through the microphone. The crew worker invested his coins in the low income Goose Valley housing project. He earned enough interest in the first year to buy the brokenhearted automaton clock back from the Drury family. Then he took back to the Archives where it belonged in the first place. Thanks to Ellie Ogden, her father and sister.

Arnie's Automaton

Chronology of Automaton Clock I by ROD w/Midjourney

The Raptor's Recovery

Chronology of an Automaton Clock III by ROD w/Midjourney

Drury Theather Playbill

Tell-Tale Heart Playbill by Ruby O'Degee

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Ellie and the Clock Archive Tintype

Lizzie's Raptor by ROD w/Midjourney