I don't know why this struck me
I've been reading the serialization of Cory Doctorow's Makers for a while now but decided to cheat this evening and download the full novel so I could find out what happened. I'm almost done; these lines are from the epilogue and I'm not quite sure why they struck me how they did but they rivet me.
They were like gears that had once emerged from a mill with perfectly precise teeth, gears that could mesh and spin against each other, transferring energy.
They were like gears that had been ill-used in machines, apart from each other, until their precise teeth had chipped and bent, so that they no longer meshed.
They were like gears, connected to one another and mismatched, clunking and skipping, but running still, running still.
They were like gears that had once emerged from a mill with perfectly precise teeth, gears that could mesh and spin against each other, transferring energy.
They were like gears that had been ill-used in machines, apart from each other, until their precise teeth had chipped and bent, so that they no longer meshed.
They were like gears, connected to one another and mismatched, clunking and skipping, but running still, running still.