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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.

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.