character :: Benjamin Fletcher
To say that Benjamin Fletcher is intelligent would be an understatement. Brilliant, perhaps, but intelligence is another matter: it’s one thing to simply be smart. Benjamin used “smart” as if it were a tool, something tangible that he could manipulate on a whim. At first, his trinkets were all in good fun – he was an introverted child in a family of extroverts, a quiet and curious boy in a rambunctious crowd. Unlike his parents and two brothers, a boisterous gaggle of people (mostly belly and quite the shape!) Benjamin would rather spend his afternoons locked away in his room playing with bits of this or that rather than gathered around the fireplace to exchange tales of exaggerated glory.
His brothers and father were ‘professional gamblers’ by trade in Benjamin’s opinion, as the tree of them dabbled in the Metals trade at the market. It was a family business, and somewhat lucrative. Most people with any kind of wealth in the Bronze Region were expert traders: and the small-time international export and import that belonged to the Fletcher family was no exception. It was boring to Benjamin from the beginning: slight increases and decreases in the values of trash metals seemed to force his impulsive family to make large purchasing decisions: of course they always made a profit, and a couple hundred more or less Flake per transaction seemed to be what marked a good deal from a bad one. It always ended up the same way at the dinner table each night: his oldest brother would begin to spin a tale, his middle brother adding in details in an animated fashion, and his father’s booming voice eventually overtook the both of them as he hijacked the story. By the end of the night, Benjamin would get an invite to go to Market the next day to learn the ropes, to which he always rejects. The same song and dance, a different night!
So, Benjamin rotted away in his room, every lackluster attempt at finding something worthwhile in the Bronze met with lethargy every time. Finding a job was a chore that his family insisted on, going to school was no longer an option, and finding a wife seemed arbitrary. It bored him to tears. Even the gears and springs and metal skeletons in his room did little to lift his spirits: it was clear that the Bronze had given all she had to offer to the youngest Fletcher.
mother of invention -
Without an apology, Benjamin announced one afternoon that he’d be boarding the next pleasure ship to the Gold Region, a place with very little external trade and very likely no prospect of visitation from his family in the future. To his surprise, his mother was the one angry for once and his father seemed worried sick. The Fletchers had never travelled, and certainly not weeks away by ship. Their fortune lay with the Bronze, his father insisted. There’s no way the Golds could do a thing for him that the Bronze couldn’t do! But Benjamin had made up his mind: as terrible of a person as it made him, his family was a burden. Benjamin secretly hoped that his mother would reveal that he’d been adopted the day of his departure.
The trip across the ocean felt miserable to him, a karmatic repayment for the torture he put his family through all those long years. He landed in the Gold Region thirteen days later, and six pounds lighter…and yet nothing could stop his heart from soaring. He’d made it at long last: a place where the Fletcher name meant nothing! He was, for once, a free man.
The Gold Region was a bustling metropolis like he’d never seen before, but in a totally different way than in the Bronze. There were far more people, but a clear definitive line looked to be drawn in the sand between the haves and have-nots. Most of what he saw in the villages were have-nots, dirty men and women who slaved away at the mines. The mines were owned by one singular family in the coastal portion of the Gold Region, and it seemed as if all of the wealth went to their estate. Trade wasn’t very popular here, rather, the Gold Region seemed to take care of itself. Which was perfect for Benjamin: an inventor and hopeful shopkeep who wanted his special trinkets to stay nearby.
And so, Benjamin got to work. For the first time in his life, his scrawny body found the motivation to hold a steady job with the hopes of opening a shop. And, as luck would have it, junk happened to be the only thing available in spades in the Gold Region. The whole society had a mindset that tossing perfectly good scrap metal was better practice than holding on to it – Benjamin spent the first few years of his life in the Gold Region as a professional dumpster diver.
It was during this time that Benjamin found another Refuse Specialist, a dirty man with bedraggled hair and a chipped-tooth grin. Under the thick layer of grime (and thicker accent), Benjamin met his first friend in the Gold Region: Zachary. He too had travelled to the Gold Region in search of something greater, and he had a knack for finding the best scrap. The parts Zachary found made Benjamin quite jealous, and before long, the two friends opened a line of something Benjamin hated so dearly: a lucrative trade. Flakes for parts. Zachary loved Benjamin’s work, finding child-like joy in his wind-up and steam operated toys. In winter, Benjamin crafted a special trinket just for his friend who often found himself in dangerous underground caverns: a small bird to pin to his shirt that would sing to alert him of dangerous gasses.
Benjamin found himself swept into his work, and over the years he found himself in the presence of many types of people. Zachary found himself a little woman with a loud mouth by the name of Abigail, and Benjamin enjoyed the way she scratched her head over his inventions. The low class couple had somehow found themselves in the good graces of the mine owners of the coastal region: the Shaffers. As it turned out, Vincent Shaffer (the son in line for the throne) had married a Bronze woman that Benjamin remembered vaguely from finishing school. Amelia and Benjamin seemed to have a romance brewing despite her betrothment to the young Shaffer: but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, Benjamin turned his attentions to his work, even though he took great pleasure in antagonizing Vincent with his closeness to his soon-to-be wife.
All the women that Benjamin courted throughout his youth didn’t seem to interest him a bit, he realized one rainy afternoon. He’d finally acquired enough money to open a small shop near the mines, struggling but happier than ever. Women were boring and vain, and even Amelia had her drawbacks. It was the dark enticement of forbidden love that drew Benjamin in one day, after stumbling upon a young thing living on the streets near the mine. Benjamin had heard about Rusts in the past: untouchables of the lowest class that shouldn’t be talked to. But, when Benjamin hastily bent over to pick the young woman off the ground, her eyes did not have the look of someone untouchable to him. In fact, he wanted just the opposite.
the father -
It took many weeks, but for the first time Benjamin had a challenge. Most things came to him easily, trade in his blood and the need for invention consuming his time. He made money easily for the most part, and loneliness never seemed to bother the reclusive man with friends he never asked for. But over time, many gifts later, she finally spoke: her name was Elizabeth. And Benjamin was in love.
Over the months, Elizabeth came to live in Benjamin’s shop in secrecy. He could be thrown in prison for talking to her, the child of parents who committed high treason. But none of that mattered to Benjamin who had always detested bureaucracy; she was a woman in need of care, and it was a damn shame she’d been abused all this time as beautiful and intelligent as she was.
She cleaned up beautifully, Benjamin came to realize. She finally came to talk to him often, but she smiled very rarely. It was easy to see that her anger bubbled just under the surface, but it seemed a fair state of being after the injustice she’d lived for most of her life. She was mad, and Benjamin wanted to give her a place to express that hatred. Eventually, the young Rust amassed friend through her friend Benjamin, and it didn’t take long for things to go south.
Hatred has a funny way of changing one’s outlook on life, and Elizabeth hated the Shaffers. They were to blame for her status, and any person who held the Shaffers in high regard were secretly on Elizabeth’s kill list. Every conversation slowly turned into reasons why she hated the Shaffers, and it consumed her. Benjamin tried his best to keep the mood light, promising to find her papers that allowed her status above the Rust class. He wanted a normal life with Elizabeth, his hopes for courting Amelia dashed. He finally proposed to her and made his intent clear, but she rejected him on principal: she wanted things to change. Benjamin slowly came around, watching his best friend and his little wife suffer just as much…and a dangerous plot began to unfold.
Elizabeth had no problem convincing the young inventor that a revolution was inevitable. After all, Benjamin had always detested constraints put on society. And so, the two of them slowly turned the tides with their closest friends: even the young Shaffer couple who had been born at the top of the system. As much as Elizabeth detested Vincent with all of her heart, Benjamin rejoiced that his beloved woman would work with them in order to peacefully change their world.
Benjamin woke up one morning to realize how wrong he’d been. The tides turned violently and the revolution turned bloody…fast. It tortured him to see the walls of the region he’d come to love so much crumble, but it destroyed him to see his best friend killed.
He stood between the ivory pillars of the Shaffer estate, blood on his hands and on the hands of the woman he loved. She’d gone mad. All of the goodness and love that had once existed had to still be locked away within her…but if it were, it had been buried deep. The world detested the Fletcher name - and Benjamin fell into a deep despondence. His confidence had been shattered by his own hands, and the recluse went into hiding. In a retched show of stolen wealth, Elizabeth insisted that Benjamin marry her publicly – two children named Evan and Ella to follow. Twins. Even after the birth of her children, Elizabeth remained cold and unyielding: she wasn’t the woman Benjamin had loved. She wasn’t the Rust any longer with expressive eyes and a chip on her shoulder: she was cruel. And Benjamin is a coward.
So, for all the years that followed the Gold revolution, Benjamin remains in hiding in the Shaffer estate. He mingles with other royalty when Elizabeth requires it, but other than that, he is left to his own devices. He creates new things, both big and small, and gives them to his children: more of a nuisance than a pleasure to raise. It seemed that anything a man could do, marriage, business or offspring…Benjamin did incorrectly and without emotion.
Now, Benjamin’s children are out of control under the thumb of their mother, and all the old inventor could possibly want to do is be left alone in his study. Luckily (or unluckily?) for him, he gets his wish most days. If a storm is brewing, Benjamin stays well away from the rain – he hasn’t a care for another living being on this planet. All he could wish for is a quiet and soon enough death, his detested name taken with him to the grave.
