The great machine spins its rusty cogwheels. Flecks of rust and dirt crumble into the air and float down into the fine layer of detritus that surrounds the solid base. The springs are rusted, providing no stability. Yet still the mechanical energy grinds along, for if it stops who can start it again?
The engineer is far too old. His hardhat is cracked and stained with oil. His machine has out-evolved him, a paradoxical mashup of ancient history, modern technology, and future prototypes. He cannot hope to understand how it works now. He can only bang its exposed parts with a wrench or tighten a loose bolt. The knowledge he had once made this gleaming steel juggernaut hum with efficiency. Now it is rusty and patchy, chugging along at half capacity at best, but with the continued assurance of "perpetual motion" that only the men in the research lab are faithful in. Amalgam of technology, built on the past yet crosswired and reprogrammed for a future that does not seem bright to the old man dutifully pressing buttons he is told to. Once he could take this machine apart, tell you what each part did, then reassemble it and run it at 110%. Now the sickly green glow from the beast's center dizzies him, and the extraneous lasers that shine out of rusty screw holes do not belong there.
The engineer does not know what his job is anymore.
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