About the work

He left the mask there when they moved the assembly line to Malaysia. It wasn't worth crating up, just a spare, even then. The lab took over, gutting most of the old equipment, but the workbench stayed, too heavy to shift easily. Someone must have set the mask down, a momentary thing, thinking to move it later. Now the steel glints around it, sterile and precise, and the mask's scratches hold the ghost of sparks that haven’t flown for years. How many hands, belonging to how many different men, built things while seeing the world through that same clouded pane?