This was a useful machine, this engine. Another reminder that progress wasn’t all bad. Machetes replaced obsidian or stone knives. Motors replaced paddles. Except one day, that march of progress had turned him into the thing that was no longer needed. Progress was a wave. It first caught you in it and carried you, but the moment you slipped off the crest, you went crashing into the surf and maybe never came back up. Progress had no use for men who didn’t ask questions. But…if he was being honest with himself, such questions had always—at least in part—driven him. He, the man who had brought a
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