A tiny kitten, or other such small, defenseless animal,
A mouse or vole, a little bird or snail,
It is hard to tell, it is so small and frail.
It is trapped in a vast machine,
Caught between valves and gears, hydraulic pistons, pneumatic pumps,
It knows not the names of all the parts
It has been there for some time,
Lost, deep in the mechanism.
It knows not what the machine manufactures,
All it sees are conveyors and servos
And engines and chains and wires and circuits,
Capacitors, resistors, transducers, transistors
Discharging, vibrating, processing, consuming
The creature is lost, it cries and it whimpers.
Through greasy cracks, it crawls and it slithers.
Perhaps one day, I shall find the exit?
Escape to the meadows of which I dream?
But when it wakes it is locked in the darkness,
Poisonous fumes and suffocating smoke.
The tiny creature is pressed and crushed
Under constant, unrelenting force,
An incomprehensible, absolute command.
Failure to succumb, failure to perform, failure to succeed,
Will be met with immediate sanctions, expulsion from the cycle,
Into the nothing between the components, into the void where the creature now struggles, feebly attempts to fill its tiny lungs with the acrid air
Yet still it searches, perhaps in vain.
It shall soon falter and cry no more.
For this machine has no end,
There is no escape,
Because it is the whole world