The workshop is yours now. One machine works — you just don't know which.

Your uncle's workshop smells of machine oil, burnt sugar, and — inexplicably — wet dog, though there isn't a dog in sight. Twenty-three inventions stand crowded between the workbenches, each with a name scrawled on a cardboard tag and not one instruction anywhere: The Potato Whisperer. The Self-Ironing Necktie. Something labelled only "Careful, Klaus."

On the desk lies a letter in your uncle's handwriting, thin and shaky toward the end, as though he'd written it lying down. The workshop is yours now, it says, and then: one of the machines works. You'll know it when it matters.

Underneath, on a stack of unopened post, sits an envelope stamped red on top. FINAL NOTICE. Due tomorrow, noon, a sum you have to read twice to believe. Below it, in small print: failure to pay means the workshop is seized, contents included.

"So you're the nephew!" Pauli, your uncle's apprentice, pops up between two shelves, safety goggles crooked on his nose, soot on his cheek. "I already started testing while you were on your way. Number seven caught fire briefly, but only a little."

Behind him a cloud of pink smoke hangs in the air, and somewhere something that smells like caramel is dripping slowly from the ceiling.

"How many have you tried?"

"Four. None of them was it. But I've got a good feeling about number eleven."

You do the maths in your head: nineteen machines left, one day, a sum due tomorrow at noon.

You gently steer Pauli away from the machines — "hold off on eleven" — and turn your uncle's letter to the light. On the back, almost invisible where the ink pressed through, there's a second line you couldn't read on the front: It ticks when it's satisfied.

Ticks. You walk the row of machines, as quietly as the workshop's general clatter allows, pausing briefly at each. The Potato Whisperer only hums. The Self-Ironing Necktie hangs limp and offended in the corner, apparently having already disappointed Pauli once today.

Behind you, a bang, followed by Pauli's voice: "That wasn't me!" Pink confetti rains from a pipe in the ceiling, directly over the crate that, according to its label, holds your uncle's bookkeeping — now thoroughly buried.

You keep going, machine by machine, until you reach one with no name, only a number: 19. Smaller than the rest, dark wood, a clock face with no hands. You rest your palm on the casing.

A quiet, even ticking. Not like a clock — slower, almost like a pulse.

"This one," you say.

Pauli is beside you instantly, confetti still in his hair. "Nobody's ever touched that one. Uncle Bruno always said it wasn't finished."

From outside, muffled through the windows, you hear a carriage pull up in front of the workshop — a full day early, if the notice is right.

You take your hand off machine 19 and go to the door, just in time to see a woman in a grey coat step down from the carriage, a briefcase under one arm, a clipboard in the other. She glances at the clipboard, then at the sign above the workshop door, then back at the clipboard, as though confirming she's arrived at the right disaster.

"Frau Bandholz," Pauli says behind you, quiet, in the voice of someone announcing bad news. "From the credit office. She never comes before the scheduled date."

"I thought the notice said tomorrow."

"It did. She likes to check in advance whether there's anything left in the workshop worth seizing at all."

Frau Bandholz walks in without knocking, and her gaze travels across the twenty-three machines with the expression of someone who has seen many workshops like this one and found every single one of them worthless.

"Your uncle," she says, "owed my office a considerable sum. I'm here to determine whether any of these—" she gestures at the row with the clipboard, "—constructions represent equivalent value. According to my records, you have until tomorrow noon to demonstrate that."

Her gaze catches on machine 19, the only one without a name tag, and for a moment, barely visible, one eyebrow lifts.

"What does this one do?" she asks.

Behind her, you hold your breath. You have absolutely no idea.

"This," you say, with a confidence that surprises even you, "is my uncle's most important invention. He kept it secret to the very end."

Frau Bandholz's eyebrow rises further this time, and her gaze travels once over the whole machine, from the wooden base to the handless clock face.

"Secret. From whom?"

"From—" You hesitate a tenth of a second too long. "From competitors."

Behind Frau Bandholz, out of her line of sight, Pauli silently mouths: What are you saying. You ignore him.

"And what does it do?" Frau Bandholz asks, clipboard already raised, pen ready, with the patience of someone who has heard a great many claims like this one before.

For a split second you hear the quiet ticking inside the casing get louder, as though the machine had been listening. Pauli, behind Frau Bandholz, widens his eyes and points frantically at the handless clock face — where a moment ago there was nothing, something is now moving.

"It—" you begin, and at that exact moment a small hatch on the side of the casing pops open with a click all three of you hear.

Frau Bandholz doesn't lower her pen. Pauli has audibly stopped breathing. Something comes out of the hatch that you have never heard before, and you have no idea whether it's the sound of rescue or of something about to explode — only that all three of you are about to find out.