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At high speeds on the freeway I pass trucks carrying oversize loads. Wheeled showroom floors sagging under the weight of gigantic objects. Unknowable objects. Complex clusters of pipes wrapped in plastic. Towering metal spires. Massive, featureless cubes. I see these trucks more and more every day, hauling things ever stranger, darker, larger. Are they converging? Are all their roads merging into one road? Somewhere in some vast, forgotten forest, are they coming together in a great circle clearcut into the mossy earth? Are floodlights flaring to light the midnight? To illuminate the task for shadowy men doing shadowy work? I want to follow them into their circle. I want to breathe over their shoulders as they weld and bolt and rivet. I won't ask questions. I won't slow their work. I will just stand, and be there, in the middle of it. When the cranes whisk the massive parts into the sky, I want to ride up with them, holding with one hand to the cables. I want to stand on the foundations when they clamp down the girders and lock the sun-sized gears into place. I want to feel the welders' golden sparks glittering against my cheek like magic dust, close my eyes and just feel it. I want to be there, in the middle of it, when they stack layer after layer, level after level, sealing seals, connecting wires, testing switches, polishing cogs. And then, I want to be there when they turn it on. When the cosmic thrum of infinite engines rises up from the earth and the lights blink on all around me, I want to be standing there, in the core, strapped in. I want to look down from my platform and see miles of trees, oceans, and distant cities. I want to see coiled streets of tiny toy cars, doll houses, speck men and speck women. I want to see the world like a satellite. And as power rises and gears grind, as great doors and shields boom into place, as thousands of steel eyes open and myriad fingers quiver to life, I want to be there, in the center of everything, powering it.
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