I am Bjørn. People call me Heart of Glass. People pity me. Or they are fearful. Or disgusted. A few show curiosity tinged with admiration.
“How does it feel,” they ask, “to be part man, part machine? Do you have feelings? Do you hate your employer for what he has done to you? Do you seek revenge? But then, do you have powers and skills the rest of us lack? Is it glorious to become part machine?”
So the questions go on, and I am grateful to the enquirers. They are better than the ones who simply shudder and turn away, shaking their heads.
Let me tell you the story – my story – from the start.
I encountered Doctor Kopp when he saved my life. I was a boiler-man on an icebreaker in the Northern seas. For long, long shifts I shovelled coal into the great, ravenous furnace that powered the ship. The owners worked me hard and my body – always thin and long and rather weak – was close to breaking point.
This day I was shovelling, then there was blackness and the next thing I knew was the Doctor bending over me anxiously, pushing up and down on my chest and giving a triumphant cry of “Ja!” as I blearily looked up at him.
It seemed I’d lost consciousness. The chief stoker had run onto the deck and asked if there was a doctor amongst the passengers. Doctor Kopp had rushed to my aid. He tells me that without his intervention, I would have died then and there.
They wanted to put me back to work, but the good Doctor insisted I was to be allowed to rest for some days, until he pronounced me fit to work. He had my meagre possessions moved to his cabin from my hammock in the engine room. He cared for me, fed me and mixed potions to strengthen my body.
Soon I began to feel better, but still he would not let me return to work.
“Your heart, my boy!” he would exclaim. “It is sickly. It is not fitted for zis verk. Leave zis ship. I vill give you verk. You vill be mein assistant! You vill say yes!”
I did say yes. Of course I did. I had the chance to stop shovelling coal into that great gaping hell hole of a furnace; to become assistant to an eminent doctor. I owed this man my life, and now he was offering me the opportunity to work with him. Maybe I could learn from him, study hard, gain qualifications… I could not express my gratitude and delight.
So when the ship docked at Newcastle, I left beside the doctor and travelled with him to his laboratory.
My jobs were menial, it’s true. I cleaned his equipment, ran errands, acted as receptionist for his patients. All this I did without complaint. Also I saw the amazing work he did – creating mechanical limbs, weapons that were grafted onto the very bodies of their operators, even clockwork mechanisms to regulate irregular hearts. The man was a genius! Also I occasionally glimpsed the work he did in his private study after dark – the alchemy from that ancient grimoire, but this he tried to hide from me.
Ah! But now I must stop! The Doctor has retired to bed. I have no need of sleep. I too have secret work to do at night, so excuse me now. I will continue my story soon.
Bjørn is available at the Steampunk Dolls’House, along with many other figures and items from these stories.
Steampunk Dolls House online Etsy shop
Finally the day arrived! My dear guardian, Uncle Razzy as I call him, has allowed us to celebrate our wedding in his glorious cliff-top mansion. Not only that; he gave us two wonderful presents, both invented and built by himself.
He knows I’ve always loved the stars and planets, so he made us a clockwork orrery, encased in a glass dome. He also knew that my dear husband (how strange it feels to use that word!) is fascinated by the idea of remote communication, so his second gift to us was a telephonic device – also clockwork, naturally – that will enable us to speak to him from anywhere in the world. My Beloved insists that this is just the start and one day everyone will have one of these devices and be able to talk together from all corners of the earth.
I dare say you’re longing to see our wedding finery, so here’ is a picture of us about to enjoy a goblet of Uncle Razzy’s finest wine after the ceremony.
When I looked, I simply couldn’t believe my eyes! The most beautiful airship you can imagine was coming closer and closer. At first I simply thought it was a happy coincidence that the pilot should choose that very moment to fly past our window. But no! My wonderful husband assured me that we were due to embark on this exquisite vessel and fly off together into the sunset. This was the honeymoon surprise he had been teasing me with over the past few weeks.
I rather regret my – um – outburst now. I confess I hadn’t realised the amount of work that goes into sewing a tailcoat – especially at 1/12 scale. The seamstress grew quite angry. She showed me the number of darts (never knew darts were used in sewing) and the intricacies of lining the tails and collar, and all with those huge clumsy fingers of hers. I was anxious, though. 
Only three days to the wedding, and there I was in my shirtsleeves, waving my watch at her and demanding that she finish the jacket quickly. After all, she still had my hat and goggles to make.
Oh yes, I’ve been tinkering around in airships since I was a boy. Had an uncle, don’t you know, who owned one and allowed me to go along on some of his journeys. Goodness me, they were rough old machines in those days! I remember having to move the rudder by manhandling a length of wire. Cut your hands to ribbons, that did. So I fixed up a little device that linked directly to the compass and the anemometer. Far better. The old boy saw what I’d done and was pretty impressed; kept me on as crew.
I thoroughly enjoy tinkering with the machinery even now. Just take a look at my clockwork air-pressure measurement device here. Dashed proud of that, if I say it myself.
I commissioned that woman – Mrs Steampunkle, or whatever she calls herself these days – to make me a new leather coat and helmet. Made a dashed fine job of it in my opinion. Good and thick with the fleece collar. It can be bitter when you’re flying over Cape Horn, don’t y’know.
Vell I ask you, if you were to come into possession of an ancient grimoire vhich contained (along wiz ze normal recipes for creating ze philosophers’ stone und cures for varts) a spell entitled ‘How to Traverse Time’, vouldn’t you be a little intrigued? Vouldn’t you give up a successful career to explore ze secrets it offers?
I had a huge laboratory, back in zose days. Mechanical construction vas my bread-und-butter. Alvays zer ver young men vanting automatons, adjustments to zer contraptions and votnots. Fraulein Vorzington, my young assistant, vas quite excellent at such sings. I left her to it. For me, reading ancient texts vas far more important. I had zis strong feeling zat vun day, I vould discover zat for vich I searched. Und here it is – ein dusty old volume, standing on my small table in my tiny, dark garret. Viz zis book, I vill conquer time itself!
Then, of course, there is the doctor himself, with his plasma- and aether-sensitive binocular eyepiece, not to mention the infamous grimoire. 
The Case of the Alchemist’s Study will be on display on my stall at the Glastonbury Craft and Vintage Fair on Saturday 29th April, 2017. Other Steampunk – Shrunk figures, rooms and accessories are available at Rune Smith of Glastonbury, at 1 Monarch Way, off Glastonbury High Street and online at t
Good day, Sir and Madam.
I have to say, I’m delighted with my small emporium. Don’t you just love the medicine cabinet? It was a generous gift from my dear friend Lady Grace and is ideally suited to my storage and display needs. Oh, pray do not touch the scales, Madam. They are most carefully balanced with a potion I was preparing for her ladyship when you arrived.
I’m very pleased, too, with my counter, which I put together myself from some iron and wood my cousin Amelia had left over from building a steam engine.
“Steampunked?” snorted the gentleman. “What kind of word is that? I don’t like the sound of it one little bit. Nor does my good lady wife or our maidservant, either. We are respectable people, I’ll have you know. ”
Their gasps as they saw his glass buttoned cotton lawn shirt and brocade waistcoat suggested that I might be winning the argument. They noticed the gold watch chain and stared in amazement as I pulled his fob watch from the satin-trimmed waistcoat pocket. Next I took the brass binoculars from his neck for them to examine and emptied the contents of his inch long leather shoulder bag on to the table. 
There was a folded, rather battered set of engineering plans, the pipe Isambard can never bear to be without and a tiny leather pouch containing tobacco (made from shredded leather).
Hi, I’m Ruby. They’ve asked me to explain to you what steampunk is, because loads of people are like, ‘What’s that?’
Those old stories I was talking about, yeah? Well they had all sorts of terrifying monsters and stuff that the heroes had to battle against with their amazing steam-powered weapons, so steampunk is into that, too. Loads of the guys go and buy nerf guns and do them up so they’re metallic and look really awesome, to protect themselves against all the evil stuff. I know – bit weird – but boys and their toys, y’know?
I got into it when I read Northern Lights. That’s by Philip Pullman and it’s what The Golden Compass film is based on, but I liked the book better. And now there are loads of good steampunk writers about and we have conventions and festivals and balls and everything. You might want to try reading stories by Nimue Brown or Phoebe Darqueling or go to some blogs like 
Finally my furnace was burning away merrily and Inferna the Twisted Firestarter was safely ensconced in her cage (with a large DO NOT FEED sign in case anyone felt tempted to give in to her endless wheedling and eyelash fluttering).
I must confess that much to my chagrin, I am reduced to relying on the kind lady’s charity, since my own – not inconsiderable – fortune remains locked in my own time. Even if I had managed to bring some with me on my time-travelling adventure, it would doubtless have suffered the same fate as myself and been reduced to one twelfth of its natural size, rendering it quite useless in my present surroundings. The dear lady is quite phlegmatic about the expenses, however. She insists that the total cost of building my engine room has been less than five pounds. That seems quite a large sum to me, but she insists it is a paltry amount in her age.
I began work at once. Within a few hours my engine was chugging merrily and the machinery was in perfect working order.
I recall that last time I penned an episode of my adventures as a one-twelfth scale explorer, inadvertently lodged in the year 2017, my normal sized assistant and myself were pondering a method of combustion for the steam engine we were building, to allow me to power up my Machine and escape to my own dimension – in every sense of that word.
“What manner of creature is it?” I enquired.
Steampunk - Shrunk! 