Make Do: Deep End

The same job as Make Do, seen from the inside. The apprentice stands on the workshop floor in front of the Slopwright’s bench, small enough that every floorboard is a block, and digs down for a sardine-tin submarine: through the boards, the fluff, four rows of drawers, the back of a stockroom and a cellar of brick and Slop, to the bottom of the tin.

The bag, the notes, the picks, the tealight stove and every recipe are Make Do’s own; only the world has a third dimension. It is dark under the floor, and a carried candle is most of the light. A bot builds the submarine in every generated world before anyone plays it.

The world has three regions besides the workshop, laid out afresh each day: a sardine tin full of oil sunk in the floor down one side, with the lighthouse in it; a walnut buried down the other side with the theatre inside; and the stockroom proper behind the bench. The lamp on the bench wants oil, a wick and a glass, one from each, as in the story of the lamp; making them is an errand on top of the submarine, which is still the job. Sardines, a tin eel, can crabs, curtain moths, dust bunnies and trolleys live there, and none of them hurt you. The apprentice wears the same outfits from the shop as in Make Do: in first person, a sleeve.