Sketchs from the Nursery

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"The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real."

I work, therefore, I am. The life of a mechanical toy is ruled by gears, springs, and levers.

For all purposes, the life of a mechanical toy is short. Unlike the Skin Horse, who could remain year after year in the same corner of the nursery, unmoving and slowly being worn down, a mechanical toy knows that its gears and levers come with the price of brevity. Sooner or later, its springs would snap, and it would find itself leaving the nursery by night. And, what happened after was a mystery to every toy there.

Am I real? The mechanical toys prided themselves on knowing the answer to this.  We work, therefore we are, they told the other toys. Every toy secretly wondered what happens after they broke down. The Skin Horse preached to his circle of followers that the only real thing in this world for a toy is a child's love. What antiquated nonsense, the mechanical toys said. The dolls claimed that they alone were real because they so resembled the humans they served. The mechanical toys, on the other hand, claimed not to care. Instead, unlike the other toys, they preferred instead to wonder about the here and now. Who or what placed the springs and gears that made them move and buzz? And why? But for them, realness was a matter of simple functionality. Unlike the other toys, they didn't wonder about after. They didn't believe that a nursery fairy visited discarded toys. Nonsense and superstition. They believed in the here and now.

Among all the toys in the nursery, they moved with their own internal machinery. Their insides were made of more than sawdust and stuffing, no, they were made with carefully placed gears and springs, designed to run like clockwork. And if this internal mechanism eventually broke down, well, was that so different from the invisible gears and springs controlling everything and anything in the outside world? What couldn't be reduced to mechanisms, they posited. From the clock on the nursery wall, to the tree at the window dropping leaves. Was the Boy not also a thing governed by invisible machinery that occasionally broke down when he recuperated in bed?