Suspended

A blue and gold cog hangs from a chain in a pale cathedral as silhouettes look up from the foreground.

I hang from a single chain. Everybody who comes in notices eventually and does the maths, and I can watch their faces work through it: that’s a lot of cog for one chain.

It’s been one chain for six thousand years. People used to take bets. Then they stopped betting and started coming in to stand underneath me on purpose, because if it held today, it would hold for them. Nonsense, obviously. It’s steel, not faith.

I’ve never told them the chain isn’t what’s holding me up. I’ve been holding myself up the whole time, just a little, so it would never be their turn to find out.

— the Affectionate One, from inside the cog

From the Cogverse series · Made with AI image tools · How it's made