Did you miss me at Chicago Steampunk Expo? Here’s the short story I wrote just for the convention.

 The Most Accurate

Francesco clicked the final clog into place. It connected with a satisfying clink. He then sat back and considered his masterpiece.

It gleamed faintly — he had polished it so that it would, a pretentious action for which he hoped God would forgive him. He had labored over this for more than a decade, changing the system and checking the celestial charts. Surely a man could have pride in a difficult job well done. A monk was supposed to be past such common, sinful moments, but Francesco knew his failings and accepted them.

The whole point of his project was to bring glory to God. Man had observed the changing seasons and the changing sky above and marveled equally at both. One could never force God into a pattern, but God gave man this world and its regular patterns. To track those patterns and use them was also an act of worship.

Some men built clocks. The monks already had a sundial. They used it to keep time for prayers. Some men built calendars. Every few years, the church received a calendar for the next few years with all the saints’ days. It did not track the moon and the stars, because that came close to pagan practices.

Francesco refuted that thought. God put the moon and stars in place. How could it be pagan to track them?

It was that thought that first inspired him. He had manuscripts that charted the stars — some ancient, some from learned scholars across the world. As he looked through those charts, he saw how precisely God made everything. It wasn’t just Man who had patterns. Animals, the seasons, and even the heavens kept a regular beat.

So he determined to build a device that could track all those things. When he told his abbot about his plan, the abbot cautioned him over pride and hubris. Francesco scoffed and said that any endeavor that aimed only to glorify God could never be hubris. It was pride, though, the abbot said, to believe that he could be the one to achieve that. He made Francesco say additional prayers, but he also gave him permission to build. Francesco danced in thanks, and the extra prayers were a joy instead of a chore.

Immediately upon getting permission, he began to build his device. He didn’t need to waste time on design, since he had long since finished that part when he asked the abbot. It took years of labor, since none of the other monks assisted him, but Francesco didn’t mind. Every part of the process brought him pleasure.

His chronometer was not a clock or a calendar — it was both and more. A sundial could tell the time of day, but it had many flaws. The sundial broke the day into twelve hours, but those hours changed from summer to winter. And it did nothing to track the twelve hours of night. Francesco’s chronometer could do both. The calendars they received every few years from Rome told the monks when to celebrate Easter and the saints’ days — and they had to receive new ones every few years because the dates changed. Francesco thought the church celebrated Easter at the wrong time. He studied ancient calendars and star charts which showed he was correct. Yes, many of his charts came from ancient writers or Muslims, but that didn’t matter. Any Man could see the rhythm in the heavens — that it existed proved God put it there.

He wrote to the Pope about the problem with the calendar — he doubted the Pope had read his letter, but he could only hope that God soon had someone in Rome see it. It was blasphemy to celebrate the holiest day of the year on the wrong date.

Francesco’s chronometer had a long vertical shaft that connected to a balance wheel. A horizontal bar with weights at both ends oscillated back and forth as the wheel turned, but it forced the wheel to keep a steady rate. Most clocks had similar devices, but Francesco’s chronometer went further. The balance wheel connected to other wheels, a design inspired by astrolabes. Those other wheels — which the horizontal bar also kept regular — connected to a gear which turned and tracked the movement of the moon. Other cogs charted the constellations.

Building each wheel took time, but it took far longer to keep everything balanced. Each new part meant he had to adjust all the previous parts and make sure they didn’t speed up or slow down. All the moving pieces made him paranoid, which was why he eventually put in a water wheel. A small river ran next to the abbey. The slide that Francesco inserted into the river meant that only a trickle of water reached his chronometer. If the river flooded, his device wouldn’t speed up. Even if the river ran dry, his chronometer might still work, but Francesco worried about his calculations and so kept the slide in place.

After years of work and checking his calculations, his chronometer was complete. He felt sure everything would work, but it had not been tested. Francesco had first thought to show it off to the other monks or maybe even the local baron. That truly would be an unforgivable act of hubris, to show it off when it hadn’t even been tested.

There would be a full moon tonight. Francesco already knew his chronometer would show that — the moon was far more predictable than most things in the heavens. God gave them the moon to offer light on some nights, and when that light went away, remind them of its importance.

He didn’t want to wait another day, let alone another few months, just to be sure his masterpiece worked. The thought of showing it off, only for it to fall short, made his stomach cramp in potential embarrassment. No, that wouldn’t do. He would have to test it first.

Francesco placed the slide into the little stream. Perhaps the clockwork could chug along on its own. Francesco hoped that it would, but it might not. If the cogs failed, the stream would compensate for it.

Water first trickled down the slide, then tumbled down at a faster pace. When it struck the wheel at the bottom, it turned it. The wheel didn’t have the large buckets that a typical waterwheel would, but its rounded spokes acted much the same way.

The first wheel then pushed the second, which turned the third, and so on. The vertical shaft in the center swayed back and forth, and the horizontal beam with the weights listed from one side to another, only to get pulled back by the balance wheel in the center. Francesco’s chest swelled as he watched his chronometer move. The water sang softly, and the clockwork ticked along, and together it made the most beautiful sound Francesco had ever heard.

He sat until the sun set and watched his chronometer turn. The dial on the left side arched as the time passed, and it pointed at the tenth hour of the day at the same moment when the bells rang. Francesco had to leave his chronometer then to join his brothers in their evening prayers and dinner afterward. He ate faster than anyone else and raced back outside as soon as he finished. His chronometer continued to click along, as regularly as he’d hoped.

Wheels turned on the right side. They showed the full moon rising as it crested the horizon. Francesco had to fetch a torch so he could still see his chronometer once the sun set. The star wheel clicked into place, every constellation in its right place. Francesco held his breath because this was one part he hadn’t yet tested. As the sun vanished, another dial turned into place. His chronometer counted the hours of the night.

It worked. He jumped up and did a little dance, unable to contain his joy. So many fears of failure, so many years of checking the star and planet charts, and then so many more years of computations and construction. None of that had been in vain. It worked.

He might have stayed out there all night, but the abbot found him and forced him to go to bed. He woke again before dawn and rushed immediately outside. His chronometer still worked. The final hour of the night passed as the device showed Mercury diving slowly out of sight, and then the sun rising.

Francesco had many failings, pride foremost among them. He should have waited, should have tested it a few more days. But he couldn’t stop dancing and laughing, and so when his brothers asked to see his chronometer, he gladly showed it off for them. As they exclaimed over it and marveled at all the tiny cogs, Francesco puffed out his chest and beamed.

“Do not be too proud,” the abbot said. “There are better clocks and calendars in the world.”

“I merely wanted to reflect the rhythms that God put into place during creation.” Francesco bowed his head and pressed his hands together. “All of my time and labor have been to glorify the Lord.” He didn’t say that there was no better clock or calendar, because he knew it for a fact.

Though the abbot squinted at him for a long time and assigned him additional prayers, he didn’t otherwise punish Francesco. A man was allowed to feel satisfied with his work.

The days and months passed, and Francesco’s chronometer tracked them all. It worked so well that he wondered if he should pull up the slide and let it run without water. It might work — his calculations said it would work — but he didn’t want his chronometer to stop. It would continue to track the world for as long as the world existed, and Francesco would do nothing to risk it breaking.

People from the nearby villages stopped to marvel at his chronometer when they visited the church. They murmured over it even more than the stained-glass windows or the ornate grotesques along the roof. Soon, it wasn’t just the nearby people who came, but pilgrims traveled for days to come visit. The local baron came during Advent and declared that Francesco’s chronometer made him one of the richest and most powerful nobles in all of Italy. He even offered Francesco a place in his court and a chance to make another, even grander device.

Francesco stared at his chronometer and politely refused. Perhaps he should want to build another chronometer, but he didn’t. He had his masterpiece, and he was satisfied.

The baron then said that it was a shame that the chronometer couldn’t make any noise. Something this amazing, he said, should call out the time for everyone to hear. He had traveled far and wide and seen clocks all over the country. Most of them struck a bell to indicate the hour. The one in Mantua could be heard all around the town. And there was a clock in Venice that had little figures that appeared every hour to strike the bell.

The abbot, who had been standing next to the baron, agreed that it would be useful to have something to call all the monks to prayer. The time of day mattered more than the location of the moon and the stars throughout the year.

They both complimented the chronometer one more time before leaving, but Francesco heard none of it. He stared at his beloved creation and, though he had polished it again that morning, it no longer seemed to gleam as brightly as it once had. Once everyone left and Francesco remained alone, the gurgling of the water and the ticking of the clogs did not sound like music. They were annoying background sounds that didn’t add anything.

Never once had he thought to include a bell or figures that moved. The gears and the wheels had been more than enough for him. Small decorations covered the star wheel, but if the baron and the abbot had even noticed them, they hadn’t said anything about them.

Adding a bell would be easy. He could build little figures. He could probably even make them dance. If he put an extra few cogs on the left side, he could make things rotate.

He could improve his calendar until everyone, even people who had seen every clock and calendar in the world, couldn’t help but feel impressed. To make those changes, though, he would have to stop it while he built. It had been running so beautifully for months. The thought of stopping it for even a short time made him want to sob.

But it wasn’t good enough. It needed to chime, and it needed to have little figures that danced. Well, Francesco could do that. He’d build the most marvelous little figures there had ever been.

He grabbed a sheaf of parchment and some extra quills, knowing he’d need the lot. He studied his chronometer and made notations about where to put the additions. When the abbey bell sounded to call the monks to prayer — which had nothing to do with his chronometer and he now appreciated the lack — he ignored it. He worked through prayer time, dinner time, and he might have continued after the sun set, except he could no longer see what he drew.

With a heavy heart, Francesco took his supplies inside with him. He could continue his work the next morning.

Months passed, and his chronometer counted them all. It tracked the moon and traced the path of the stars. It never made a noise save for the ticking of the gears, and no figures danced around it. Francesco had finished his sketching. A small bell sat in the grass near the chronometer, ready to be installed. The other monks brought him chunks of wood and small knives, and they kept bringing him yet more pieces of wood.

In his mind, Francesco could see the additions. He would crave twelve different symbols, one for each of the disciplines. First, he thought to carve the zodiac, similar to the designs on his astrolabe. While those connected to the constellations, they were heathen things. His chronometer worshiped only the true God, and so it was the disciples instead.

While he knew what he wanted, his fingers refused to produce it. He whittled the wood as slowly and as carefully as he could, using the smallest knives his brothers could offer him. None of it was good enough. The bodies were misshapen lumps, and he couldn’t even bear to look at the faces.

Francesco was an artist of charts and wheels, not of wood or images. While his latest figures looked better than the first few, they weren’t good enough. Why was this part so much harder than anything else?

The local baron visited again during Lent. When Francesco pointed to the bell on the ground, the baron asked why he couldn’t use a bigger one. The bells in Venice were far larger, and he’d heard of even more magnificent ones in Rome. There was no point in adding one tiny bell.

Though the abbot asked the baron to give them funds to buy a larger bell, the baron just shook his head and said again how it was a shame that he had nothing to brag about. He didn’t even look at Francesco’s latest figures.

For the rest of the day, Francesco couldn’t work. He could barely breathe. He sat staring at his masterpiece as tears ran down his face. It was so accurate. He had thought that was enough. Once, it had been. Now it wasn’t.

He took all of his carved pieces that looked nothing like the disciples and threw them into the river. As they washed away out of sight, his stomach cramped.

God had given Francesco many skills, but not this. The chronometer had to be great, and it would never be great without bells or dancing figures. He needed help, help that he couldn’t get here.

The abbot gave him permission to leave and two other monks to accompany him. The three of them trekked for days before they finally reached Mantua. Its spire came into view long before the rest of the city, and Francesco could hear the chiming of the bells before he got into town. Each bong sent another dagger into his heart, reminding him of his failure.

He spent days staring at the clock high on the peak of a tower. It could only ring the hours of the day, not the night. Francesco checked his numbers and found it was a little off — nowhere near as precise as his clock. But everyone could hear the bells.

The monks with him asked if they would travel to Venice next, to see the clock with the dancing figures. Francesco felt sick at the idea and said no.

He couldn’t return like this, though. He came here for a reason, and not just to see a clock that wasn’t a full calendar and not as accurate as his, but that everyone thought was better. Mantua was a large enough town to contain many artisans.

Over the next few days, Francesco visited them all. He showed them his pictures and described what he wanted. Two men had skill in wood carving and agreed to make him the disciples. Francesco felt so happy that he danced as he blessed the two men.

He didn’t want to return home until the figures were done, so he remained in Mantua until late summer. A few times, he thought about building a clock for this church. This new clock, though not as wonderful as his chronometer, would be more accurate than the one they already had. Surely God would prefer that, if more than one clock told accurate time.

But every time that Francesco stared at the tall tower and listened to the bells ringing, he swallowed his words. Mantua already had everything it needed. It wouldn’t appreciate his work. No one did.

When the two wood carvers finished their work, they showed Francesco. He held up each disciple in turn. Each looked the way it should, distinct from the others. The church here had paintings of the disciples, and these wooden figures matched those paintings. It was not the way Francesco had pictured some of them, but he could not draw well enough to explain the differences.

He thanked the two men and gave them what little money he had. The men looked disappointed by the amount, and Francesco tried not to notice that. He collected his two brother monks and began the trip back home.

Upon arriving home, Francesco didn’t first greet the abbot or call out to any of his friends. Instead, he immediately hurried to his chronometer to make sure it was still working. The river trickled along and turned the wheel. The horizontal beam swung back and forth. Each clog clinked into place, as metronomic as when Francesco left. He exhaled in relief and sat watching his chronometer until the abbot pulled him away from it.

The next morning, he got to work. With no finished figures until now, he hadn’t been able to plan out how to make them move. Each disciple was the same size, and Francesco thought he could build a platform near the top. There would be a box behind the platform, where the disciples hid out of sight until their time came. If he connected up a few more gears, then he could make a disciple come out at each hour, each in a procession that would pass through twice a day. Because he refused to make his chronometer less accurate. The disciples would keep coming out at night, even if there wasn’t anyone here to see it.

It took a few days to construct a platform, a box large enough to house all the figures, and add wires to keep each disciple in his place. Then he hesitated.

All of the new pieces had been added. They should work correctly, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he tested it. Before that, he had to connect the disciples and their platform to the rest of his chronometer. That would be easy to do, but he hadn’t yet done it. Because he would first have to stop his chronometer.

The thought of stopping it, even for a day or a few hours, made something inside him ache. It worked so wonderfully. It needed more, clearly, but what if something went wrong? What if the new additions caused something to stop functioning? What if something broke? What if the gears clogged or the river stopped running or…

Francesco put his head in his hands. So many things could happen. He had been fearless once. He needed to feel that way again. But he had also once been satisfied with his work, and now look what had happened.

He couldn’t work up the nerve to stop his chronometer that day, and he justified the wait because it was already late in the day. Tomorrow, he would do what he had to.

Francesco barely heard the evening prayers. He slept poorly, constantly tossing and turning instead. The few times he managed to drift off, nightmares of his chronometer falling apart kept waking him. When he rose from his bed the next morning, his hands shook. He couldn’t fix his chronometer like that, but his hands refused to keep still.

For some time, he stood beside his chronometer, working up the courage. His masterpiece had to be perfect. It had to glorify God better than any other clock or calendar in the world. Once, his chronometer looked beautiful. Now he gazed upon it and saw only its flaws.

Before he could hesitate further, Francesco pulled the slide out of the water. Maybe the cogs would keep turning — he didn’t look as he pulled out a few gears. The ticking slowed, and soon his chronometer stood silent and motionless like a statue.

Like it was dead.

The platform was already in place and waiting. Francesco hooked the gears from the chronometer to it. Though his calculations said he didn’t need them, he added a few extra cogs, just in case. Nothing could cause his chronometer to malfunction.

The work took only a little while. He had to reset some of the gears to make up for the time when the chronometer had been turned off. Twice he checked the nearest sundial and his star charts, but it was easy to compensate for only a few lost hours.

Francesco finished before the bells rang for lunch. Surely it should take more time. He had most of the new pieces ready before today, but it still felt like it wasn’t enough. Francesco double-checked and triple-checked, but he could find no errors.

It should work. He needed only to get it started again.

Clouds had filled the sky most of the morning, threatening rain, though only a few drops fell to the ground. As Francesco stood next to the slide and hesitated, a sliver of sunlight broke through the clouds. It shone down on Francesco and his chronometer and nowhere else.

He had hoped for a sign from God. He had been given it.

Calm filled him. As he placed the slide back into the river, his hands no longer shook. It would work. He knew it would. God had already blessed him.

Water tumbled down the slide and once more began to turn the wheel. That wheel caught the gears and pushed them into motion. The horizontal beam leaned to one side before the balance wheel dragged it back the other direction. Soon, a soft ticking once more filled the air.

Francesco could feel tears running down his face as he watched. The bell in the church rang to signal noon. A few moments later, since his chronometer was far more accurate than the sundial his brothers used to time their bells, Peter stepped out onto the platform. He danced a few circles before passing back out of sight.

Instead of going to lunch, Francesco ran all over the church. He called his brothers and the abbot to come and see. At the next hour, they all watched as Thomas whirled around the platform. His brothers gasped and then sang praises to God in between congratulating Francesco. The abbot frowned at Francesco and told him to spend the next few days praying for forgiveness for his pride. But he also told Francesco that he’d done a good job, so Francesco would happily say as many prayers as needed.

Over the next few days, all the local people stopped by. They stayed at the church for hours so they could watch the disciples. A few people even stayed throughout the night, watching the clock by torchlight. Francesco spent most of his time next to his chronometer, trying not to preen too obviously. Since he didn’t succeed, the abbot assigned him more prayers and chores.

Francesco didn’t care. His chronometer was perfect now. No one could find fault in it.

His heart floated. He barely felt his feet touch the ground. Never once did he stop smiling.

A month after the new additions, the local duke came for another visit. Francesco positioned himself next to his chronometer. From there, he could see the way the duke’s eyes widened and a gasp escaped his mouth. The duke made no other sound as he watched James stride about the platform.

At last, the duke shook his head. “It is amazing, truly,” he said to Francesco and the abbot. “I will tell everyone about it. Even the king should come see this.”

God held Francesco in place at that moment, because otherwise Francesco would have flown through the air. He thought his heart did take off and fly around.

“Have you heard, though?” the duke said. “There’s an astronomer in The Hague. He made a clock that used a pendulum. It swings back and forth and tells time more accurately than anything else.”

He might have said more, but Francesco didn’t hear it. A pendulum that moved a clock? He had never heard of such a thing, let alone thought to build one. That made this new clock in The Hague better than his.

The duke and the abbot left, but Francesco stayed behind. He stared at his chronometer as John came out. The little wooden figure was the worst one Francesco had ever seen, and the dance he did looked ridiculous. John vanished back inside the box — why had Francesco built the box? It was so stupid.

The chronometer tickled along, and it was the most annoying sound he’d ever heard. It kept ticking until he started ripping out the cogs. After that, both the chronometer and his heart remained silent.