The Clockmaker's Remorse

He built the machine to be perfect. Every gear was polished, every spring tensioned to the exact micro-newton. When he turned the key, the universe began its long, elegant click toward entropy. "Why don't you speak?" the tiny figures inside asked. They looked at the giant brass wheels above their heads and saw only a cold, mechanical necessity. The Clockmaker watched from behind the glass. He wanted to reach in, to adjust a pivot, to comfort a crying figure. But to do so would break the very perfection he had created. Intervention is the confession of a flaw.