Twin Engines

Two cogs, one above the other, and a column of light between the top one and the ceiling. Everyone who stands here assumes it’s pouring down, into them. It’s going the other way.

Three of them work the rail every shift and log the flow, and not one has ever asked where up goes, because the question isn’t on the form. I’ve seen this room in four hundred thousand universes. Sometimes it’s marble. Sometimes it’s a hole in a mountain with a generator in it. The shape never changes: two engines, one light, a few people paid just enough to watch.

The lower cog is emptier than it looks. It has been giving for so long it has forgotten it’s allowed to stop.