Bo felt the sweat drip down his face as he gripped onto the rope. His ears were bombarded by the sound of grinding gears, his heart heavy.
He just had to go and decide he didn't need his climbing equipment today, didn't he?
It was his job, if you could call it that, to tend to the grinding gears. Though many thought the sound foreboding or otherwise unpleasant, Bo spent his years listening to them. Each gear spoke its own tale, spinning its own legend of toil and taking chances, no matter what it meant for its future.
It was what came with the job, to know what the Clockwork said. Like how a computer-specialist could read binary, except that clockwork had its own little ways of doing it.
And at the moment, it seemed, the clockwork was telling their attendant that he was very, very stupid.
Bo agreed.
Mustering energy he didn't think he had, Bo swung his legs to have his feet bend into the rings of woven hemp that served as lifelines for their caretaker. In a moment of bravery, he pushed off the third-largest gear with one palm, using his full body to lean into the force's swing. His other hand leaned out and grabbed the rope tightly, as it anticipated the force of gravity about to enact itself upon him.
His sigh of relief was brief, as a voice called out above him.
"Allo?" Called the masculine, slightly foreign alto. "Is Bo busy?"
"Not at all, sir!" Bo chirped as he made the climb up the rope to his caller. "Just got to get up there!"
A murmuring of positive assessment made its way to Bo's ear, and his shoulders habitually relaxed. letting his hands go numb to the rough hemp, he made quick work of climbing and was soon standing before his friend.
"What brings you here, Sir?" Bo asked the principal as he tested the rope gently, humming happily as he let it go.
He huffed good-naturedly. "I insist you say Alvaro."
"Sir Alvaro," Bo chuckled. "Has a nice ring to it. Anyways..." Bo made a questioning motion at the faltering sunlight. "What brings you at this time of day?"
"I want you to know that we have problem with the clock in the fourth first-grade classroom," He announced, checking something written hastily on a sticky note. "And the teacher of classroom desires it be functional tomorrow for class, as they are doing time-based science experiments." He scoffed. "Silly girl doesn't know kids prefer doing interesting things."
"Let me guess," Bo said, scratching his chin. "Either she's brewed up a new failure or she's doing the solutes one again. I found that one rather boring."
"You guess correctly," he replied. "Something about sugar, though none get to taste it."
Bo and the principal shared a brief moment of agreement over how effective that would be. Then, with a curt nod, Bo said, "I will see to it that the clock works." A few self-explanatory glances later, the principal was off the school roof and Bo was back inside the Tower, working on a worn-out string that was causing the clock to stand still.
"It worries me that teaching nowdays seems to consist of things that are meant to be boring and boring things that are in no way as interesting as teachers seem to think they are," Bo considered as he oiled a complaining joint. "Woodwork and Firework would be far more interesting, and far more useful." He twisted it gently, pleased it worked once more, and gripped a few strings to monkey his way up to the indent that, to anyone outside of the tower, looked for all the world like the space made for a heating system.
Bo looked into his small home in the Tower. The school was his city, the Tower his neighborhood, the small indent his house. It felt like home, and that was enough for him. A blanket and a collection of pillows were strewn across a floor barely six times his size, and it occurred to him that it would be more spacious with a higher roof. Most of the walls were lined with small shelves he sneaked in over the years, but one lay clear. Sort of.
Pictures of all sizes and shapes lined this wall, reminding him of a life before the Tower. A small boy, barely older than three, playing among dark Spruces and Firs. The same boy, gripping a white, ghostly hand tightly, as if fearing something. The picture of a small, forgotten, ragged toy, sitting in a toybox without any purpose. Pictures haunted him, but it also eased him. Someone, once, had cared, and had given him freedom within the school, friendship with the principal. He was okay with secrets, because all secrets had reasons for being so.
He lay down on the blankets, looking up a pictures which lay constantly in his memory. His world faded, and he began to dream.
Rain pattered down on the rooftop, each dripping tap a drop in the bucket - but together, they made a thunderous clapping of rain upon pavement that none except the deaf could ignore. The city spread out in many directions, like an infinite train set had been given to an enthusiastic child, and the neon glow of the utopian society rose like an aura of light that emanated from the town, as if it were trying to touch the clouds with its glowing lances of energy.
Upon the darkest rooftop, staring out at the scene before him, was a man. This man was tall, over six feet tall, and his shadow stretched out across most of the roof. The man was strong, too - Bo could see visible bulges of muscle that stretched from the man's shoulders and calves.
"Pa?" Bo asked, hoping beyond hope that this was who he was looking for.
"Never been one," the man replied, turning to face the small, helpless child that stood on the rooftop with him. "but if you want, I can be."
The man stepped forth. "I think I know where a little lost lad like yourself needs to go," he commented, hefting the child up onto a shoulder with one arm. "But first, kid, take a look. A real good look." The man strode to the edge of the railings that lined the rooftop and sat the boy down to look.
Ahead was a large building. Tall and imposing, it would have been far more menacing than it already was if its lights had been off. The man next to Bo pointed to a slightly larger window that looked out from near the very top.
Bo looked.
Inside, looking into the window, he saw a man. Not any ordinary man, but one he saw in newspapers, one he knew as he was spoken of in the murmurings of gossip.
"Don't be like that," The man told Bo. "Be someone who you would admire. You should just be someone that you would be happy to be. He isn't happy; he has to deal with press and being famous, and that's just the tip of the iceberg." He chuckled. "No, I prefer being exactly who I am. I'm happy traveling the rooftops and doing my day job in a factory. Others want more; I'm happy as I am. Learn what you need, do what you love, and you'll have everything you could effectively want."
Ringing hit his ears like a ton of bricks. He panicked for a moment, remembering the clock he was supposed to fix, then let his shoulders relax as he remembered that he had indeed fixed them before he'd gone to sleep. He stretched, letting the crook in his back settle itself, and he swung up to the bell at the top of the tower.
The Tower was the school pride, and it was something that, while not very visible from the outside, was vital to the building. It was a clock tower, and in that sense, the main pillar holding up the rest of the building, what the place was built around. Its gears ran every clock in the school, creaking away day after day after day to keep up.
Bo was proud of those clocks. He had made those himself.
The only view of the tower an outsider could see was the bell. The Clock Tower bell, that was famous. It rang without fail upon every hour and half-hour, and Bo worked tirelessly to keep it moving. Being who he was, nobody knew, but he was proud nonetheless.
Bo considered his situation for a few minutes as he checked each gear on his way up. He was invisible, unknown to most of the school, though rumours were spread of there being a mysterious being hidden deep within the clock tower.
Not far off the mark, but still a little out there.
Rescued from a life on the streets by a kindly professor, he was taken to this school and let roam within the clock tower. The professor eventually became the principal, but otherwise life moved on and Bo took what he could get. He liked life in the clock tower, and he would appreciate it staying that way.
He heard the familiar voice worm its way down the tower. "Bo! Please be haste!"
Bo hurried his pace to reach Alvaro quickly and made a show of leaping onto the roof next to the tower's bell with practiced skill. He looked up and met Alvaro's gaze.
"Bo, it is time of year again when new students arrive," Alvaro cautioned. "If you behave like student you can be visible for day." Bo's smile spoke volumes about what this thought meant to him.
As much as he loved his clock tower, sometimes a guy longed for gleaming sunshine.