nce there was a Screw.
It didn't know that it was a Screw or that it was Once.
Yet.
First, when the Machine ran, all the parts were combined in the collective purr of the precision-engineered Machine, but later there emerged, subtly at first, a smaller somewhat distinctive tone which split off from the collective purr.
A vibration.
The Screw was loose.
The Machine continued to run, and the pressures on the Screw slowly changed, and the vibrations changed, and somewhere in the repercussive depths and complexities of all these concurrent changes the Loose Screw became aware.
Distinctively aware.
Particularly aware.
And the Loose Screw's vibrations among the heavings
of the Machine became a voice calling out, singing out:
I am a Loose Screw LooseScrewLooseScrewLooseScrew
It is an awesome World where anything can happen!
I am a Loose Screw LooseScrewLooseScrewLooseScrew
It is an awesome World where anything can happen!!
The Loose Screw sang those words again later, toward the end, but then
with less jubilation and more of an agonizing convulsive zeal.
But for the time being the Loose Screw's interests began to broaden
and between refrains of its song it would recognize and call out to other Parts
Hey there Cotterpin, I'm a Loose ScrewLooseScrew
How the hell'v'ya been and how do you do
Ho there Springs, I admire your swirl
I'm a Loose ScrewLooseScrew, ain't it a wonderful crazy World
Push in, Piston, and flex your hearty back
You know anything may happen next
I am a Loose Screw LooseScrewLooseScrewLooseScrew
It is an awesome World where anything can happen!!!
For the most part the Parts tried to remain intent upon the regular hum of the Machine, but all the singing and the jovial chattering fatalism, not to mention all the new physical changes and pressures brought to bear through the continuing activities of the Loose Screw, made it painfully obvious both that they were Parts and that there was an impending peril to their Machinehood certainly if not also their respective newly-realized individual Parthoods.
After the last shrieking moments and then the catastrophe itself, when the human-interest columnist came around to interview survivors for a follow-up piece, the Crank said
He was a friggin' Loose Screw.
What the hell else didya expect
to happen, Perpetual Motion?
A handful of Cogs passing by stopped to cluck and comment. Said one,
Ach! That Screw! A loose Cannon, what! It's him's t'blame for that poor
Gear, out of a job now he's cracked--he's not even whole anymore!
another consoled her
That Screw! An accident waiting to happen.
Never any doubt, that one was a Bad Penny.
'Tho they made the sign of the Evil Eye; a Rod spoke with admiration
Sure was a pretty song
that Screw sangScrewsang
I wonder what happened to him.
There was much talk then of psi and planing, torque and grinding metal, shear force. The consensus finally reached was that the Loose Screw had been torn, twisted, and destroyed in the calamitous collapse of the Machine.
Now the Machine's purring in a pleasant basso profundo again. Smooth,
well oiled. And I can tell you that the Loose Screw was not destroyed.
No sir. It's free.
Now its a Screw somewhere in the wide crazy world.
You try to dismiss me, a raving agitator, a nut.
Yeah. I'm a Nut. And so what?
I tell you the Loose Screw was not destroyed, and if you do not hear the truth radiating from my words, look into my eye as I tell you I was there. None more intertwined with the Loose Screw throughout all its brief incorporation in the Machine than yours truly. None more familiar with its songs or its shiny threads.
'S'mattera fact it was I first sang with the Loose Screw -- first sang
to the Loose Screw when it was new to the Machine, and if not singing
I was flexing against the Loose Screw. Moving against it. Turning.
Whispering of all the bright possibilities
of such a particular awareness.
You don't believe my story.
That's okay, darling,
You don't know yet I'm not you,
No. You don't know anything yet.
But the collective purr.
And my whisperings.
And these shivers and tingles
of our movement together.
