He came home late, shutting the wooden door quietly. A creak sounded as he scratched back the stool in front of his desk, scraping aside screwdrivers and hammers. His dark face fell into his open calloused palms, and just as dark fine hair fell around them, hanging limp with sweat and an air of worry.

"I wish you had sat down at the kitchen table instead. Then I'd have more room to serve this." I placed the cup of chai tea before him, though it had cooled by this hour.

He turned around to me, brown eyes looking startled. "Why haven't you lay yourself down for the night?"

"I could ask the same of you." I laughed. "I thought you'd be home at eight."

I watched his body slump as a sigh escaped him. "The meeting... it ran longer than expected."

"Did the president feel the need to explain things with an anecdote taller than his own hat again?" I joked, but I soon realized that wasn't going to improve the Gadgeteer's mood in the slightest. This was beyond exhaustion. Something had happened at that meeting. Something drastic.

"We're going to war, Narsi. They want me to build weapons."

"What?" I cried out in shock. "Whatever is the reason? With whom?"

"With ourselves. The South of America refuses to release their slaves, and now the president wants me to use whatever machines the North can provide us to quiet the rebellion."

"That's... that's awful," I replied, feeling a piston release air like a sigh inside my chest, sinking deep into my abdomen.

"It is awful," he agreed dully. "It's the same thing we left our own country for, with those British wanting us to work for them, and their abusive merchants. I'm sorry Narsi, I truly thought America would be better for us, that it would be different here. But it's all the same. And I haven't even begun to speak of the worst of it." The last words came out as a chill.

"He doesn't want you to..." I couldn't bring myself to say it, but watched as his head came away from his hands as he managed to bring himself to nod.

"Yes. He doesn't want to have the country divided against each other. To have brother fight against brother. He wants me to make another, another..."

"Another thing just like me," I responded sullenly, looking down at my silver arms, able to shine through my long sleeves no matter how deep the shirt's navy shade.

"Narsi, no," he whispered, reaching out to me. "I don't want you to look at yourself like that."

But I couldn't help my face from scrunching up, tears unable to fall from my glass eyes. "But it's true. I am not alive, and will never be looked at as such. I'm a horrible replacement for the old Narsi, and now I've gone and dragged you into a war, which will only serve to have me looked at as a thing. A weapon."

"Narsi. Hush," and I hated how choked the words sounded. "You will not be going to war. I will make sure of that. I can't lose you. Not again." He stopped for a moment, looking at the cold tea beside him. Finally, he picked it up, taking a sip, which seemed to calm him, if only slightly. "Despite what you may think, you are a lot like her, you know."

I stopped for a moment, taking a seat on a thinly cushioned chair next to him. I had never heard him talk about her before. He would only claim that I was like her, or looked like her, but nothing more. From the day I had first been wound and opened my eyes, he had never spoken of his old life in India, unless it was a jab at the British or a quick mention of a food he missed. Yet... he seemed so close to opening up now. Could I truly just sit and listen?

"India was a lovely country, before the British came. The world's richest country, full of the wisest men and the most beautiful nature. Or so I was told, for I was born long after they first invaded. They came first with merchants hungry for our spices and pearls, and when we refused to trade with them for anything less than an equal bargain, they left, only to return with their navy. With gunpowder to burn our villages and swords to kill our men. They took our people by force, and made us pick their spices for them. It was no longer a bargain, it was simply theirs. Everything was."

I sat there, afraid to say anything, should it break the quiet power of the story. It seemed hard for him to get each word out, and yet, he continued, every sentence relieving him of some of the anger, some of the pain, like a muscle allowed to quell after years of tension and stress.

"I was chosen to be one of those pickers, when I was only sixteen. My education to become an engineer was replaced by hours in the scorching sun, digging up ginger roots and slicing cinnamon branches off trees, all under watch of their overseers. I dealt with each painstaking day though, because I knew that one day, one day I'd managed to escape that awful place, with my beautiful wife... and Narsi. We had met in those very fields, smiling as we caught each other's eyes through the rows of leaves. Any spare moment we got we would sit in the shade of Bael trees, sharing the moment with each other, waiting until the day we could share it with a child of our own. We spent many long years trying, hoping, praying, for our own child, until we bore a beautiful baby girl. Though it was a boy's name, we decided to call her Narsi, because her birth was a miracle. I remember promising her that once we made it to America, she would have a sibling of her very own. That we would settle here, I'd work on the newest industrial creations, and we'd be one big happy family."

"And yet-" he continued, for I didn't dare to speak a single word for fear of interrupting the tale altogether. "When we got on that boat, crowded with much too many people, we were spotted by their Navy. They had left several boats far away from the coast to watch for any trespassers." A harsh laugh escaped his throat. "Trespassers. As if we could trespass on our own land. Our own waters. But they spotted us and our boat, and when they did, their cannons fired and their men shot with their muskets. Most of the shots missed, but a few made it-" He cut himself off for a moment as tears began to form in his eyes.

"Oh goodness! Were you hurt? Did they hit you?" I asked out of concern. The minute the question left my lips, however, I knew I never should have uttered them.

"No. They missed me, they missed my wife, but they hit Narsi. Even when we were swept into the current, even as we rowed further and further away from danger, there was nothing we could do to save her. Eventually, she- she just lay there, and they made me, -they made me say goodbye... and toss her body off the side of the ship." The last part came out as a defeated whisper. It didn't take long for his emotions to pick back up again, as he seemed to recall more. "And even when we got here, my wife caught typhoid and-!"

Seeing as the man I called my father about to break down, I suddenly drew in close to him, holding him tightly even though I knew my metal arms would never be as soft and comforting as human flesh.

"I'm sorry," I spoke softly. "You never should have had to go through that. None of you."

"It's not your fault. It's those damn Brits," he responded, venom coating the very word. Then, softer, kinder, "And now the Americans want me to do it all over again. I spent years, years, making you. Trying to fix every detail and breathe a sense of life into materials that had none before. To me, you are my daughter. My miracle. Now they want me to build more, make hundreds of metal beings, just to spare human lives? Humans that treat each other as less than dirt?" His voice, though tired, still managed to maintain a cold fury.

I drew myself away from the embrace. It was very late by now, and there was neither a point in reheating the tea nor making more. I simply picked up the cup and placed it in the sink, mindful not to have a drop of its water touch the surface of my metallic skin. Slowly, I headed back to the living room. He still sat there, seeming unsure, and more fragile than myself. As I sat down again, I handed him my key, so that he could wind up the internal gears I had to keep myself running on a mechanical heart.

"Can't you just turn the president down? Then they will have to fight themselves, and it won't involve us. You're the world's only Gadgeteer. Only the two of us know my design..." But my faith fell short as I felt the key begin to turn more shakily in the slot, and saw his eyes dart away at the very mention.

"I-I already showed Lincoln my design. At the time, it was just to patent the design, so that you were you. Completely unique, and no one else could lay claim to my daughter. But now they've gone and approved for them to be sent out to factories. The meeting was to inform me that the only choice I have is to aid them to make sure the creations either come out correctly, or leave others to fail. I can't live with the idea of having failures of creations just like you, lying out in the streets to rust. My hands are tied."

I whipped around. "Surely there is some other way!" But he made no response. He only put my key back in his pocket, and looked towards the door to my bedroom.

A strange sob grinded out of my throat, as if my gears had been caught for a moment, and I fled into the escape of my own room. I hated that I landed on my soft bed with such a heavy thud. That when I lifted my face, there were no tears streaked on the goose feather pillow. I lay there, eyes closed, but it couldn't remove the images flashing through my mind. Of things like myself, rampaging through the country, slaughtering men right and left.

I would be viewed as a thing of terror, and destruction. I turned my head to look at my blue walls, covered with recipes for teas and honey cakes and other treats that I could never taste for myself all pinned in place. All I had wanted was to perfect them to my father's liking, and buy my own little place where I could serve food from the country I felt so connected to, moreso now than ever before. But people already saw me as strange. After a war, I would have no chances of ever serving others. I would never have a chance of impressing my father and achieving that one dream, all because of one man's whims.

For a golden land of opportunity, I realized things were as tarnished here as anywhere else.