Apparatus I

The Damp
Desk

A small horned engineer keeps a desk by the window where the slate roofs go blue at dusk. The blotter is ringed with old coffee, the calipers are never quite where they were left, and a pipette of midnight pigment rests in a chipped eggcup. Nothing here is demonic; everything here is faintly infernal in the most clerical way — stamps for everything, neat handwriting, a calligraphic flourish at the close of each paragraph.

This is a journal, not a shop. You have been allowed past a velvet rope into a private studio whose proprietor is briefly out of the room — but has left the kettle on. Wander. Read the marginalia. Mind the wet washes in the gutters.

"Every annotation here is being witnessed by a cat sleeping somewhere off-screen."

Fig. I — a brass micrometer taking the measure of a curl of fog.

Apparatus II

The Clockwork
Pigeon

Wound by hand each morning, it carries a single folded note exactly four streets and no farther. Beyond that the spring runs slack and the bird descends, politely, onto whatever windowsill is nearest. The proprietor considers this a feature: a message that cannot travel far enough to be misused.

It does not coo. It produces a sound like a librarian turning a page — once on take-off, once on landing. The brass beak is cold to the touch and slightly out of true; this is deliberate, lest anyone mistake it for a real and therefore worrying thing.

"Range: four streets. Payload: one note, folded thrice. Temperament: agreeable, if wound gently."

Fig. II — the hand-cranked pigeon, mid-errand, four streets allotted.

Apparatus III

Distilling
the Moonlight

The glass retort runs all night on a low blue flame. By morning there is perhaps a thimble of something faintly luminous in the receiver — enough to read one paragraph by, no more. The proprietor uses it to check footnotes, and only footnotes; spending it on anything brighter feels like a small vulgarity.

The yield depends on the weather, the phase, and whether the cat has been in the room. No one has reproduced the procedure. The proprietor is content with this, in the way one is content with a recipe that only works in one's own kitchen.

"Yield: one thimble. Brightness: one paragraph. Notes: do not spend it on anything brighter than a footnote."

Fig. III — a glass retort distilling moonlight at a low blue flame.

Apparatus IV

A Bundle of
Punch-Cards

Bound in twine, tied with a clerk's bow, the cards encode a program the proprietor has never run and does not intend to. They were ordered, punched, stacked, and labelled — and that, somehow, was the satisfying part. The deck sits on the shelf radiating a quiet, completed feeling, like a letter written but not yet posted.

  • Card 1 — initialise the kettle.
  • Card 2 — wait for an agreeable noise.
  • Card 3 — go to Card 1.
"The program halts only when the twine is cut. The proprietor has not located the scissors."

Fig. IV — a deck of punch-cards, bound in twine and never run.

Apparatus V

The Quill
& the Flask

This is the mascot, the maker's mark, the thing that rocks gently in the rail every sixteen seconds. The quill writes only what is true; the flask holds only what was promised. Between them they keep the journal honest, which is a great deal of work for two objects that mostly just sit there looking handsome.

The proprietor maintains that the rocking is involuntary — a draught from under the door, nothing more. The cat, who has seen the proprietor wind the mechanism, says nothing, because cats do not give evidence.

"The quill writes only what is true. The flask holds only what was promised. The arrangement is, regrettably, binding."

Fig. V — the quill and the flask: maker's mark of the studio.

Apparatus VI

The Cog
Tower

Eleven brass gears stacked higher than is wise, each turning the one above it more slowly than the last. The top gear completes one revolution every century or so — the proprietor has never seen it move, and rather hopes a successor will inherit the privilege. It is a clock for measuring patience, and it keeps excellent time.

It hums, very low, a single note that the proprietor has come to think of as the building's pulse. Guests rarely notice it; cats always do, and arrange themselves nearby accordingly.

"Top gear: one revolution per century. Maintenance: bequeath to a patient heir."

Fig. VI — the cog tower; the top gear turns once a century.

Apparatus VII

For the Polite
Summoning of
Bus Schedules

The grand finale, and the most useful object in the studio: a folded paper airplane that, when launched with the correct small ceremony, returns within the hour bearing the next three departures from the stop at the end of the lane. The ceremony is not onerous — a bow, a stated destination, a coin left on the sill — but it must be observed, or the airplane comes back blank and faintly disappointed.

This is the whole of devil.quest's infernal commerce: not souls, not bargains, but bus times, fetched promptly, in exchange for courtesy. The proprietor finds the arrangement entirely satisfactory and the cat, as ever, withholds comment.

"Fee: one coin and a bow. Return: three departures. Refunds: issued in apologies, which the proprietor keeps a drawer of."

— end of the journal —
devil.quest · drawn in indigo and brass · the kettle is still on

Fig. VII — the paper airplane, away to fetch the next three departures.