The Good Lady

Berthold's hand deftly attached the last wire onto Alijah's heart and placed it carefully in the gaping hole in her pale breast. A dozen intubated brains regarded him silently from the laboratory shelves as he removed his bloody apron. Only the gurgling of the boiler interrupted the dead salience of his concentration. The pumps quickly filled her green glass tank with saline solution leaving her torso and head floating in the tangle of tubes that pumped life into it.

Was it just days ago the last time she had smiled at him in the anatomy hall?

"If the cerebral cortex controls consciousness." She had asked mischievously "Would you say then the brain is the seat of the soul and not the heart, Dr. Foxworth?" For a brief instant an elegant smile crossed her lips and their eyes had met across the dissected cranium.

Berthold smiled back as much as he dared. She blushed. Then he turned to include the rest of the class "Lady Alijah, you know very well The Church acknowledges the heart to be the seat of the soul, it is not my place to delve into theology."

The same blood flushed her cheeks then now created a sticky layer in his palm as he pulled down the power lever. The body convulsed, and the lights dimmed for an instant. Her heartbeat began once more and he reached for the headset.

"Alijah, can you hear me?" he said anxiously. The corpse's only answer was static. The humid summer air was heavy in the laboratory, and his body odor mingled with the sweet, fetid smell of her entrails. He asked again with no response.
Then, an inhuman shriek pierced his head. The torso in the tank shook and flailed clawing at the rubber tubes.

"Alijah, I am here for you, you are safe" he said.

Alijah's eyes flew open "Berthold? I can't see.... Where am I?" Her voice echoed into his mind through interphase. It came in as an eerie, evenly-spaced monotone.

"You are in my laboratory, Alijah, you were... hurt.."

The face in the tank stared blankly through the green glass.

"Berthold, what have you done to me?" her voice asked.

Berthold closed his eyes and sobbed. In his head Alija's mind screamed again for a long breathless time.

Just days before a squat, middle aged woman with saggy eyes, had sat in the dark room. The headset wires fell from her head like snakes. She spoke into the darkness and smiled, tears running over her leathery cheeks as the thoughts of her dead daughter poured into her head through the interphase.

In the adjacent room, Alijah regarded the exchange silently through the one-way mirror. Berthold eyed her nervously in search of a reaction. He wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers as he often did when she was near.

"This is amazing ..." Alijah said with caution in her voice. She looked at him full of wordless questions, then at the brains in the tanks around them.

"Yes, now there truly is life after death." His words came out a little too loud and Alijah's dress rustled as she shifted slightly away from him.

Her head veered "The Church will never approve of this!"

"There are many things the church does not approve of, Alijah, like private charity for example" he ventured.

Alijah blushed, she had believed her sympathy for the poor was completely secret. Charity was strictly Church business.
It had begun during her carriage rides to the academy which took her through the outskirts of Bottom Town. Since the first day, the soot-covered children and the old, the sick, the hungry who wandered the smoke filled streets had began to haunt her. She had started out handing out food though her windows until one day a child gave her a wilted half-flower and made her cry. After that, a routine began to take root. She would hand out clothes and medicine, ask about their wellbeing and listen to their troubles. She was already known as "the good lady", and every day more of them came to see the noblewoman who cared for the poor.

Berthold pursed his lips. Alijah was brilliant, but he might have overestimated her openness of mind.
The physician swallowed "There is more Alijah. Look closer."

Alijah looked at him and then back at the array of brains in the room. She followed the maze of wires that connected the console to the organs. From the chaotic movement of respirators and steam-spitting cogwork a pattern emerged.

"They are all connected...you are building a thinking machine out of people!" she turned on him accusingly. She quivered, and the Church's unspoken words screamed heresy out of her eyes.

Bertold shook his head "It is not mechanic, it does not violate the church's ban..."

"They are people!" She replied. Alijah stormed out of the laboratory. Berthold was left alone behind the mirror with the woman talking to her dead daughter's brain.

Her carriage buzzed and sped, rattling its way through the uneven streets. Little did she know the Holy brotherhood had learned about her little charity operation. With masks and axes and all the other tools of their trade, they waited at the edge of Bottom Town with a lesson for her. Contact with the poor was exclusively church business.

"Thank you, your grace" the old man whispered before placing a flower before the glass altar where the Good Lady floated peacefully in her white dress. Her body had been in pieces when the sooty children brought her to the doctor, they all had seen it, yet here she was, resurrected, ever merciful, ever caring. Every night dozens would come when their factory shifts ended, some to commune with their dead, some in hopes of being united with her in the eternal afterlife of her clockwork dreams.

Berthold worked on wiring the small brain of an infant into the system. Occasionally he would look at the sorry spectacle of the penitent across the mirror and sigh. Alijah would not talk with him directly, only with her beloved poor. Her collective intelligence grew with every brain he added, but she always wanted more. He no longer could guess how far it had gone. Yet he continued relentlessly to improve the machine she had become. He worried constantly. The Brotherhood asked too many questions, had too many eyes, they were ever so near.