Onni Hotakainen liked machines, as a rule; and if he didn’t actively like them, he usually didn’t dislike them. It was very unusual for Onni to actively dislike a machine, and even more rare for him to hate one.
Onni hated this machine.
The roots of this hatred sprang from the first moment Onni had laid eyes on it as Tuuri had proudly presented it to him this morning. “Just think—it’ll make your life soooooooo much easier, Onni!” she’d gushed at him, all unknowing of the antipathy crackling through the air between her brother and the machine.
For a Finn, and especially for a Finn mage, spirits were everywhere, and in everything. Some were helpful, some were indifferent, and some were actively hostile. No one could predict how any given spirit might react to any other, as any frazzled personnel director from the Old Times might have told them. In this instance, Onni had felt a burning, passionate hatred erupt between his spirit and the machine’s within a single instant.
The real problem was that the machine was a gift, and from Tuuri at that, so Onni had had to smile and nod and pretend he was so very pleased to receive his mortal enemy. It was only much later, after Tuuri had made her self-satisfied way back to her own dwelling, that Onni had realized that he’d missed hearing exactly what the machine was actually supposed to do, but that mattered less than one would expect, as Onni knew that whatever the machine had been built to do would be done poorly or not at all unless Tuuri was there to stand witness.
Well, the first thing for Onni was to determine whether the machine was supposed to be for indoor or outdoor use, which proved to be much more difficult than that sounded. It was a squat round thing with strange protrusions and hoses sprouting out of it in various places, but they all looked both rugged enough for outdoor work and fine enough to be used inside, so that was no help. The castors on its base were good enough to roll it across ground that wasn’t too broken, but the area around Onni’s rooms wasn’t particularly ill-kept, so no help there either.
There was a cable about as thick as Onni’s littlest finger wound around two protrusions obviously designed to hold it, and it ended in a standard electrical plug; obviously, this was how the machine was powered. Keuruu had electricity, though not much, and so its civilian use had only been allowed fairly recently; Onni’s stretch of housing had been one of the first to be electrified. Maybe the length of the cable would indicate whether it was supposed to stay inside or not?
So it was that Onni attempted to unwind the cable, which proved to be his first mistake. An hour later, the welts on his forehead had gone down considerably, he had finally managed to disentangle himself from the cable, and the plug had been firmly connected to the outlet.
Onni hated the machine.
Plugging the machine in proved to be Onni’s second mistake. With a horrible series of rattles and clangs that abruptly gave way to a loud, high-pitched whine that hurt Onni’s sensitive ears, the machine went wild, bouncing up and down and spinning around as the hoses flailed convulsively.
Fortunately, the convulsions ceased when Onni pulled the plug free—until Onni was poised directly above its cylindrical body, having approached it with a great deal of trepidation. When Onni opened his eyes again, he was flat on his back. With a groan, Onni got to his feet and poised himself above the machine once more.
Onni hated the machine.
So, there only seemed to be one control on the machine: a knob with three positions, labeled ON, OFF and REV. The knob was set to ON, so Onni set it to OFF before doing anything else.
It took a very long time for Onni to get up the nerve to put the plug back into the socket. Fortunately, nothing happened when he did.
A meow alerted Onni to the fact that he now had an audience: five Grade A cats had gathered at what they considered to be a safe distance and were watching him with an almost Lalli-like intensity.
Onni examined the machine again. One of the hoses led into a solid tube with a complicated handle that looked like it ought to detach from the main body. When Onni tried it, it worked, and the handle unfolded to expose a new set of controls, none of which worked when Onni tried them.
Obviously, Onni would have to set the main switch either to ON or to REV in order for the machine to do anything; but which should it be? Onni set it back to ON and stepped back hastily, but none of the earlier rattles and groans happened, though the whine returned.
Well, maybe pressing some of the controls on the handle would make something happen.
An hour later, Onni had finally wrested his cloak back from the nozzle, the horrible dust cloud had dispersed, the Grade A cats had come down from the rafters, and Onni’s nose had stopped bleeding.
Onni hated the machine.
Onni sighed and wiped his nose again, admitting defeat. Obviously, he would have to wait for Tuuri to get back…
