Page 100 of By Any Means

“Criminy,” Laurie said, and of course, that was him holding back.

August went to unplug the bottle-spider. When he returned, he sat on his wheeled stool with slumping shoulders, fingers plucking at the rubber curtain.

“So, I have fucked everything for you again, Chary. I’m sorry.”

“No!” Chary exclaimed. “What? When have you done that? No, no, no. I wasn’t killed; I lived. You were trying to help those boys, like I would’ve. I absolutely would have tried something like that. I feel ashamed I haven’t.”

“I was trying to help them and make money,” August said, with an absurd sniff. “You don’t care about that.”

“I haven’t—” He meant to say I haven’t ever found it lacking, so how could I? but he couldn’t go on. Laurie didn’t know the truth. “I don’t, no. But you do. That’s all right. Laurie?”

“Yeah?” At Chary’s pleading look, he started. “I mean, yeah. He’s—you’re—a capitalist. Born into wealth. That’s the majority opinion of you capitalists—making money is the point…” He rubbed at his neck.

August began to laugh. “He doesn’t— Oh, no. You didn’t… Oh, no. It’s all right, Chary; you should tell him.”

“August,” Chary said frantically, and August thankfully scowled and shut his mouth against whatever else he would’ve given away. “Laurie’s written a whole piece on child labor in the glassworks. Did you know? A firsthand account, the first of its kind. I-I’m sure if he mentioned the machine in some way—perhaps as a call to action, at the end?”

Laurie was not pleased to be volunteered in this way or so spontaneously. “What now? You want me to tack on an advertisement to the glassworker-boys piece?” he said, incredulous.

Chary winced. Advertisement. “Yes. For a good cause. Why not?”

“Hm. You want me to—what? Invoke the public indignation? Cap off the boys’ tragedy with a call to arms? ‘Please to solicit the Wright brothers—not those, the other ones’”—he quoted with fingers—“‘for a modern-industrial solution to the monstrous evil of boy labor’?”

“Well…” Chary began. It sounded… lesser when he put it like that. “It doesn’t have to be this machine. There are others. A man named Owens has a similar semiautomatic in production…”

Laurie shook his head. “Look, Chary. I had a call to action in the piece already. It’s voting on national compulsory public education. Child-labor legislation. You know? You read it.”

“Legislation spans years.”

“So does the production of genius inventions. This one isn’t even yours.”

Chary recoiled. “It’s partly mine. It is obliged to be. August can’t patent it under— August is legally dead.”

August himself had recoiled. “Chary…”

There was nothing truly stopping August from filing a patent under Charles Edward. But of course, then everything would come to Chary, currently embodying Charles Edward.

It was a tricky thing, straddling one identity.

Laurie said, “Then he definitely won’t want me to be disseminating it without his name on it, will he? Will you?” he asked August. “Or are you angling for investors?”

“It isn’t a new idea—I have just said there are other semiautomatics! And—and,” Chary said, “aren’t you supposedly for common ownership of the means of production?”

“Yeah,” Laurie said, clearly unconvinced. “But I still live in this society, where laws are decidedly in favor of the US Patent Office. I’ve avoided lawsuits up ’til now and don’t wanna get hit with one, even from a dead man.”

“I wouldn’t—” August tried.

“I’ve avoided writing advertisements, too, for that matter. No, Chary. Sorry, but no. This is a rich man’s solution.”

“I want Chary to have the patent,” August said, louder, “under his name. Every piece of it. Is that enough common ownership, socialist?”

Under his name. He didn’t mean Charles Wright, Jr.

“One rich man to another.” Laurie shrugged. “Nothing common about that.”

Chary said, “August, no. You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to. You’ve done enough. Why can’t I give it to you? I’ll sign it over right here, in front of Tulley.”