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I never truly wanted to lose that bird to the greater good. No, he was my only friend in this pallid, putrid excuse for a laboratory. At the last minute, stumbling on towards the woods with their hollow branches and the swarming nests that lie nestled in their roots—yes! For that brief moment I faltered, uncertain in my cause as I had been when I set out from the twisted, rust-born doorway and grabbed my coat in hand. Every step was another doubt that I was being swallowed into a ruse of my own making and the bird stirred, it stirred and twittered in my hands as though he knew that I was bearing him down to the grave, each rasping, mechanical scrape the dying breath he never could have had.

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The jeweled beetles came trotting up, one by one, to pick at the metal bones on the shattered husk. In the wreckage I saw tiny gears of near filigree, their faint little edges prickling at the dirt, shining beacons like pinpricks for my heart.

I watched them pull and tear, and in the end, I could not follow them for sorrow, my knees weak and my hands trembling.

I scraped up the broken gears from the dirt and clutched them to me.

I studied the decomposition. I can put them back together.