The stench of grease and lubricant never truly went away. Marcus had scrubbed his hands with industrial soap until his skin burned under the scalding water of the workshop's bathroom, yet, as a torrential rain violently lashed against the kitchen windows, that acrid scent of hydrocarbons and metal continued to seep from his skin. It mingled with the warm air of the room, the sweet aroma of the sauce simmering on the stove, and the sharp, sugary fragrance of the strawberries Sarah was eating on the couch.
These were the contrasts of his life, all crammed into the few square meters of an ordinary Thursday evening.
Marcus sat at the edge of the table, his laptop screen tilted to avoid reflecting the yellow light of the chandelier. On the monitor, a three-dimensional graph analyzed the torsional tolerances of a crankshaft. Red and blue lines intertwined against a black background: the mathematical representation of the breaking point of an aluminum alloy. His entire attention was locked inside those decimals and structural calculations, searching for a logical solution for a component that kept failing at four thousand RPM. To him, reality was an equation. If something didn't work, it simply meant you hadn't calculated the variables correctly.
At forty-one years old, Marcus bore the marks of someone who had spent his life tightening bolts before designing them on a computer. He was a heavily built man, with broad shoulders slightly hunched from years over workbenches, and a square jaw covered by a short, coarse, grizzled beard. His hands were large, his knuckles gnarled, and his fingertips permanently stained by that grayish shadow that motor oil leaves beneath the skin, impossible to wash away. Beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his dark sweater, robust, veined forearms showed through, scarred by old, faded welding burns.
A light, warm weight leaned against his thigh.
Sarah was curled up on the couch right beside his chair. She was seven years old, wearing a pink jumpsuit with knees stained by garden mud, her small, clean hands tightly gripping a PlayStation controller. She had inherited Marcus's exact same brown eyes—large and curious, peeking out from under a messy fringe of dark hair. Whenever she smiled, she proudly showed off a slightly chipped upper incisor, the trophy of a bicycle crash she had refused to let the dentist fix because, according to her, it made her look like a pirate.
Without breaking her gaze from the television, the little girl reached out, grabbed Marcus's left wrist, and with a firm tug, pulled her father's hand onto her head.
Marcus didn't look away from the numbers on his monitor, but his fingers opened instinctively through the girl's fruit-scented hair. He began to stroke her head slowly, an automatic, rhythmic motion he repeated whenever he was too absorbed in his work. Sarah let out a soft sigh of satisfaction, settling deeper against his leg.
A few steps away, Isabel moved between the burners. She was a slender woman, her movements quick and precise, typical of someone used to managing a hundred things at once. She wore a cream-colored, raw wool sweater that was a bit too big for her, emphasizing her slight frame. Her light brown hair was gathered into a messy ponytail, pinned with a pencil slipped through the elastic for convenience, and her clear green eyes were capable of striking Marcus dead with a single glance or calming him without a word. Her face was lined with faint wrinkles around the corners of her mouth and eyes—the invisible tracks of years spent sweating and getting dirty right alongside him to build the workshop from nothing.
She turned toward the table, wiping her hands on a dish towel. On her left wrist, she wore only a scratched steel watch and a thin wedding band that by now seemed to blend into her skin.
"If you keep clenching your teeth like that, Marcus, you're going to break them," she said, stepping closer and resting a hand on the back of his neck. Her skin carried the same sweet scent of the red berries filling the room; only in that moment did he realize he hadn't managed to help her with dinner, despite having promised he would.
Marcus looked up from the screen, relaxing his jaw muscles. "The crankshafts from the new shipment have a casting defect, Isa. If I don't find the error in the blueprint, we'll have to halt production tomorrow."
Isabel didn't answer. Instead, she leaned down and stole a quick kiss from his forehead. "Production can wait until tomorrow. Turn that brain off for now. Look at your daughter, she's about to start a new game and she needs her assistant."
On the television screen, the atmosphere shifted abruptly. The silence of the room was filled by the dull thud of hooves on mud and the creaking of a wooden cart moving through a blizzard. The landscape was desolate, dominated by dark mountains and ancient pines that looked as though they were carved from stone. On the cart sat drenched men, their hands bound by thick ropes, their faces lined with terror and cold.
To anyone unfamiliar with that world, it was just the opening of an old fantasy game. But for Marcus, that dated graphics style evoked a small fragment of memory: the nights spent awake ten years earlier, when the debts from opening the garage kept him from sleeping, and that virtual world was the only place where he could shut off his thoughts and just be himself.
The cart stopped in a gray stone outpost, a village called Helgen. A ragged prisoner tried to escape, running desperately toward the gates, but an archer's arrow struck him square in the back, sending him crashing into the mud like a sack of rags. An Imperial soldier, clad in heavy leather and crude iron armor, stepped into the frame, staring directly into the player's eyes.
"Who are you?" the TV's metallic voice asked.
The screen froze on an empty menu, waiting for a name to be entered.
Sarah gave Marcus's leg a gentle nudge with her elbow, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Daddy! Look, it stopped. It wants a name. What should we call him?"
Marcus looked at the screen with a hint of nostalgia, then looked down at his daughter. On the coffee table in front of the couch, half-buried under the green stems discarded by the little girl, lay an old WildStorm comic book, its corners worn thin. The cover depicted a mild-mannered man in a white lab coat and glasses, contrasted against a colossal, purple-muscled behemoth smashing a tank with his bare hands.
"Well," Marcus said, a genuine little smile finally smoothing the wrinkles on his forehead. "He looks a bit lost, just like that character we read about last night. Right before bed."
Sarah's eyes widened, lighting up. "Dr. Jeremy Stone!"
"Exactly. But since we have to fight monsters... why don't we call him what he goes by when he gets angry and turns into a giant to protect everyone?" Marcus gave her cheek a playful tap. "Call him Maul."
"Maul!" the girl repeated, frantically tapping the letters onto the controller with her small thumbs. "Yes! Maul is perfect. He's strong, he's an engineer like you, Daddy, and he smashes everything if anyone tries to hurt people. From now on, all my characters are going to be named Maul. Even if I make a blonde elf with pointy ears."
Isabel walked back to the table carrying a steaming ceramic tureen, setting it down on a cork trivet. The rich scent of broth expanded through the room, finally banishing the last traces of mineral spirits. She looked at the screen, then at her husband, her expression blending exhaustion with a deep, protective tenderness.
"A giant who fixes things with his fists," she commented, ladling the broth into bowls. "Seems like a fitting choice for this house. Now unplug yourself, Jeremy. Dinner's on the table."
Marcus smiled, closing his laptop screen with a sharp click. He felt the weight of the hours of work, the fatigue accumulated in his spine, but the warmth of the kitchen and the closeness of these two women filled him more than food ever could. He stood up, stretching his back muscles with a muffled groan.
Sarah dropped the controller onto the couch, kneeling on the cushions to look up at him. Her brown eyes, identical to Marcus's, locked onto his.
"Daddy?" the girl asked, a note of hope clutching at the man's chest. "After dinner... after you're done with the computers... will you play with me?"
Marcus stopped halfway between the couch and the table. He looked at his wife, who was watching him in silence, her ladle suspended over the tureen, waiting for his answer. He could feel the pull of the workshop in his mind, the numbers that kept spinning in the void, the Saturday deadline looming over him like an axe. But looking at Sarah's hopeful little face and the way she held her hands together as if in prayer, duty and work had to take a back seat.
"Yes, bug," he said, taking a deep breath. "As soon as we're done, we'll play together."