Bratton's Idea

Old Bratton has spent decades tending the furnaces of a great building, but his true ambition lies elsewhere. He has become convinced that electricity can create life, and in the basement boiler room he has built an apparatus to prove it. When a ventriloquist's dummy called Tom-Tom falls into his hands, Bratton sees his opportunity. If his machine can infuse this rag-and-wood body with true animation, he will have achieved what the greatest minds of science have failed to do. The experiment succeeds. But what Bratton creates may not be the companion he envisioned. This strange, darkly comic tale from the golden age of science fiction explores obsession, loneliness, and the terrible responsibility of playing god with things that never asked to be alive.