Washington, D.C. · June 21, 2230
The machine that replaced Iva had a padded wrist rest.
For eleven years she had asked Berrit to wrap the edge of her bench. He had tried folded cloth, which collected metal filings, and a strip of old hose, which rolled away. The machine arrived with gray padding curved to fit a person.
“Try it,” he said.
She put her wrists down.
It was very comfortable.
Behind her, Len made a noise she chose not to hear.
Her son had dressed for his first paid day at the shop. He wore a shirt borrowed from someone with larger plans for his shoulders. In his pocket was the little measuring fork she had bought him when Berrit agreed to take an apprentice.
That had been before the lease man returned with a smaller number.
Now, while Len was taking off his borrowed coat, Berrit explained that there was no apprentice position. There was an operator position, three days a week.
He looked from Iva to her son.
“Either of you could do it.”
The machine sat between the salvage tubs and the fitting press. Feed it a tray of used pump collars and it measured the openings, examined the seams, and pushed each piece into a labeled drawer. Uncertain pieces went into a red tray for a person to inspect. It had learned its categories from years of shop records, including Iva's crooked drawings of faults too small to name conveniently.
Berrit had paid her for copying the books. She had used the money to settle a coal bill.
Above the drawers, a brass plate said LEAVE THE REPETITION TO US.
“What did you do with the old bench?” she asked.
“It's out back.”
“Covered?”
He went to cover it.
Len touched the little screen.
“Don't.”
“I've used one.”
“Where?”
“The training room by the market.”
She knew the room. He had brought home a certificate from it. She had put it above the stove, away from the steam, and told two neighbors.
The screen offered him six ways to sort the same objects. He selected the shop's markings, enlarged the labels, and set the red tray to stop the feed when it filled.
“How did you know to do that?”
“It says.”
She looked. It did say. In small letters beneath a drawing she had mistaken for decoration.
Berrit came back with rain on his sleeve. They began.
The machine sorted a morning's collars before the kettle boiled. Iva checked every drawer. She checked the red tray twice. One collar she had meant to pass had a fine crack under its flange. The screen showed her the crack enlarged until there was no kindness left in it.
She put that collar in the scrap tub.
At the counter, a woman who repaired washhouse pumps asked what had happened to her price.
“Less sorting time,” Berrit said.
The woman counted her coins again. Then she added two collars to her order.
“I can do the upstairs pump as well.”
She left smiling. Iva knew the washhouse. Its customers had been carrying wet laundry down a narrow stair for weeks.
There was nothing wrong with that woman being happy.
Iva disliked her until she was out of sight.
By noon, Iva's hands had stopped tingling. Usually this was the hour she began dropping the smallest pieces.
Len brought her tea. She lifted the cup without using both hands.
“Look,” he said.
“I can see.”
He sat on a salvage tub.
“You could get your hands back.”
“And buy what with them?”
He looked at his own cup.
Berrit laid the new hours beside them. The operator would load trays, clear stoppages, pack orders and bring doubtful pieces to him. He would sign off the repairs. The lease covered servicing, not mistakes made in the shop.
“Same rate for either of us?” Iva asked.
He said the number.
“That isn't my rate.”
“It isn't your old job.”
“It's my drawings inside it.”
“I paid for the copies.”
“I know. I paid the coal man.”
Len stood up too quickly. His tea struck the floor.
“I don't want her job.”
Berrit got a rag.
“I don't have her job to give you.”
Iva watched him kneel. He was older than she was, and worse at hiding what kneeling cost. Last month he had sold the small press to pay two overdue accounts. She knew because she had helped move it. The machine hadn't created every trouble in the room.
It had arrived with an excellent solution to some of them.
“Let him start beside me,” she said. “Like we arranged.”
“For what work?”
“The work he hasn't learned.”
Berrit wrung tea into a bucket.
“I can pay one person to run this. I can't pay another to make it take longer.”
From outside came the rattle of a cart bringing more salvage. The shop had orders. That was the worst part. There was no empty counter they could all stand around blaming.
Len helped unload. He worked too hard, carrying two tubs where one would have been enough, smiling at Berrit as though the smile had been caught on his face and he couldn't get it loose.
Iva went out back.
Her bench was under a sheet of roofing felt. Berrit had covered it properly. Her stool stood beside it, one leg shorter than the others. She had learned to balance on it without noticing.
Len found her there.
“Tell him you don't want it,” she said.
He put down the tub.
The words stayed between them after she had finished wanting to say them.
“All right,” he said.
He didn't ask what they would eat. He didn't mention the three other shops that had sent him away, or the certificate above the stove. She had been ready for those arguments. His agreement left her nowhere useful to put her anger.
“No,” she said.
“Ma.”
“Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
“Be good at me.”
He sat on the stool. It tipped. He caught himself, furious, and for a moment he was nine again and she could almost fix the afternoon by feeding him.
Then he pulled the measuring fork from his pocket.
“Should I give this back?”
She took it and checked the prongs against the light. One had bent slightly in his pocket. A machine would have caught that at once.
“Never keep it loose with your keys.”
“I don't have keys.”
“You will.”
She straightened the prong against the bench, slowly. He watched her hands.
Inside, Berrit was asking the machine why it had stopped. It showed him the full red tray. He emptied the tray. It began again.
Len laughed once, unwillingly.
Iva handed him the fork.
“Ask for the number he wrote down. Not less because you're new.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. Go before I improve it.”
She stayed beside the covered bench while he went inside.
When she returned, Berrit had given him a key. There would be one paid trial shift, then the three-day position if he could manage it. No promise beyond that. Len held the key flat in his palm, away from the measuring fork.
Berrit asked Iva whether she could show him the old packing marks before she left.
“For how long?”
“An hour?”
“At my rate.”
He nodded.
She sat beside her son. The padded rest was wide enough for one pair of wrists. Len moved his hands to make room.
“Keep them there,” she said. “You'll need them tomorrow.”
She reached for the first collar.
Under the bench, Len's lunch was still wrapped in the cloth she had packed that morning, when they were going to have two wages.