Ellipsograph: a trammel of Archimedes
The do-nothing machine sits in all its potential, in pieces that can and will do nothing. The maid changes all that the moment she jigsaws the sliders and the lever.
She is no engineer. And the plywood has not been so much sawed as separated into squares of dimensions just right for clamping and gluing.
Perhaps not so much clamping and gluing as being a circle of Scotties rotating around a water dish to chase each other.
In this particular case their normal path is interrupted by the ups and downs of the sliders; cause & effect is reversed. How can she believe her own lying eyes?
The maid picks up a pen, pushes it in the hole designed for it, and turns the crank until an ellipsis materializes. It’s a template for a Grand Prix she can follow even as it leads back to the beginning.
In her mind she tosses her lost beauty around, and galivanting without a care, she trashes the road under her red Camaro at 90 miles per hour. The do-nothing machine is finally doing something.
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