Here's a little story I wrote.
I had just fought my way through a blizzard, on the request of a friend who invited me over to witness the completion of a recent project. I hung my snow-covered coat on something that, by the look of it, might very well have been a time machine. A silhouetted shape across the dark room, invites me to make my way through the unlit workshop and join them.
Whirring and clicking, a second arm emerged. Plucking a gear out from its own ticking body, the clasp gently swung across and over itself to lay the cog down into a velveted box at its side.
For each ascending counter-weight descended a ballet of tiny articulated ratchets spun at the end of rotating arms. Little hammers knocked screws off, pulleys pried pins out of their holes, each equally occupied at the business of their own dismantlement. Screws, nuts, bolts, shims, and soon the fingers and the ratchet themselves, joined the rest of the hardware in the cushioned cut holes where each and every bit of the machine was expected to land.
A single weight swayed, balanced at the end of the last tin rod, every other thing already thrown in their place to rest. All but these two components rested in the box, the equilibrium broke, the rod tilted toward the box; both fell exhausted in their designated shapes.
"So, what do you think?"
/ The idea originally came from a discussion with Voidshaper, many years ago. I always liked the idea of a machine that undoes itself perfectly.
@neauoire domino machines -- machines responsible for their own disassembly! love this.
@neauoire Exhume your reasons for finding it interesting to render the essence and all its forms ~
Hm could it be to do with recyclability. A machine that dissassembles itself is guaranteed 100% recyclable, and this is also a rare and special quality for any object to have, and it's equivalent to the ability to losslessly transform
@faun yeah, it's rare that I hear about things that don't leave a trace I suppose. In a way, it's easy to make things that last, it's hard to make things ephemeral.
@neauoire it's got me curious as to whether that's possible. I suppose it depends on what "undoes itself" and "perfectly" mean
A machine that allows its own undoing seems more in line with the naturally occurring. Our body decomposes once our systems stop resisting the entropy of hungry microbes and fungus
@dualhammers I'm not sure, perfectly could mean return the metal of the brass bolts back to the earth, in this case it's limited to going back in the box. I think going back to the box should be possible 🤔
@neauoire Definitely a Phd. thesis worthy problem to solve
@neauoire Trurl Meets A Deconstructor
@whtrbt haha, nice. <3
@neauoire well written! Curious that you wrote a story and posted it directly here instead of your website. A new style for you?
@dualhammers it's on my website too, but it's so short that I could fit it in a few toots without having to send people offsite.
@neauoire Nice, makes me think of Locus Solus
@neauoire The anti-quine.
@neauoire you can sing it note for note
Arched over a heap of what I first perceived to be a exposed innards of some camera-like mechanism, my friend held a minuscule weight above an equally small machined brass hand. After allowing only ever the briefest of time to settle myself before the inscrutable contraption, they carefully lowered a pea-sized weight onto the machine's opened palm.