The Manufactory — The Buzzing

Sweetling, to the dark tower below! Down we go. Down the lighted path. Down the conveyor belts. Down the metal monster menagerie. A sterile, bright nightmare. Metal grafted to fiends. Legended beasts dreaming as machines. Smiling scientists become the nightmares of nightmare things. Is that what the Dreamers see in some of you?

Lo, sweetling. A device from before the Before had a name. The Gaia Engine. It rests below the tower, the spoils of a plot in Antarctica, from over one of your lifetimes ago. It is empty. But if it is empty, where is its occupant? What contains that sleeper now? The space between existing and apocalypse is so very thin.

Lo, sweetling. The child. Anima! See how she naturally does the work. See how the machine reacts to her. Like dancing. Like beautiful programming. Like music. She must practice. She must grow. The Immaculate Machine has the wisdom to pour salvation into multiple cups, and to have plan if all those little cups should break.

You keep growing too, sweetling.