The Hidden Blueprint of Alaric’s Workshop

The workshop sits in suspended labor, every tool where it was last used. The blueprint dominates the space, showing intricate plans for a mechanical device that was never finished. Chairs remain pulled out, pencils balanced on sketches, scraps of paper with measurements strewn across the floor.

The room’s silence is punctuated only by the faint echo of imagined hammering.

Measures and Motions

This space was the domain of Alaric Fournier, master cabinetmaker and inventor (b. 1876, Lyon), who specialized in precision cabinetry and mechanical contraptions. His life is hinted at by small objects: a folded letter from his mother reminding him of family obligations, a pair of protective leather gloves worn at the fingertips, and a scale model of a folding desk left mid-assembly. His routine was rigorous—early starts, meticulous measurement, and careful documentation in ledgers and notebooks. He had a reputation for perfection, which slowly became a burden.

Interrupted Designs

On the table, a partially completed mechanical lock rests beside the blueprint. Pencil notes are scattered, lines crossed out and retraced. Smudges of graphite suggest repeated rethinking. Some sketches are rolled and tied, others half pinned to the wall. Tools lie haphazardly as though dropped mid-motion. Dust patterns reveal hurried movement; the room suggests a sudden halt in work, rather than gradual decline.

Signs of Collapse

Alaric’s decline stemmed from financial stress and the frustration of an impossible commission. His careful notes in the blueprint reveal multiple corrections and abandoned calculations. Pieces of a mechanical hinge are left half-assembled. A small drawer remains open, its contents of screws and gears spilling onto the floor. He vanished suddenly, leaving no note, no farewell. The precision that once defined his life turned into obsessive incompletion.

The blueprint remains open and unmarked beyond the final penciled line.

No successor continued his work. No explanation for Alaric’s disappearance survives.

The workshop remains abandoned, its plans, tools, and blueprint a silent testimony to halted labor, sudden absence, and an unresolved fate that lingers in the air of sawdust and oil.