SCENE: BISHOP'S BREAKFAST TABLE. Bishop (to timid Curate on a visit), "Dear me, I'm afraid your egg's not good!"; Timid Curate. "Oh, yes, my Lord, really – er – some parts of it are very good." Originally published in Judy, 22 May 1895.

Someone built a railroad and said it was alive. It may have been you, but now you must build trains. Every year, a new train. You see each car you touch coupled and consider it an end.

You cannot satisfy the railroad. It picks them clean.

You double your efforts by halving time but there is only so much train you can make in six months. You understand there to be practical bounds to locomotive manufacturing. They suggest staggering lines, but you cannot buy time.

You find a graveyard of discarded trains. It might be more accurate to say you create it. You salvage the parts that work, then broken things you need. They have good bones. The maw is not satisfied, but you can continue by alloying your work to plate them.

They are beautiful. The train now spans the entire length of track from dispatch to terminus. A gilded corpse-caboose is coupled as soon as teeth pull the chain forward every day.

It is finally always arriving.

The bosses weave fishing line into nets to bargain for time because time is money.

Others drag a chain along the tracks to make repairs.

You must create obligations, so you spin straw into gold.

Calus, Herald of the Witness (Destiny 2)