The Machine ruled the city.

For hundreds of years, it had monitored and controlled the citizens with its mechanical sensors and instruments. It rushed them to their mundane jobs with steam-powered trains and great gas-filled airships. The Machine ensured everything ran at maximum efficiency and no time was wasted in the city. Leisure was punishable.

But there were those who studied the Machine in secrecy, learning its weaknesses and planning a revolution.

In 1993 the great Entropy began. The springs and cogs around the city that had faithfully served the Machine for so long were rearranged, whirring and clinking in synchrony, creating soundscapes not unlike music. When the people of the city heard the fearsome Machine huffing and coughing with the steady rhythm of the revamped clockwork, they ran to the streets and broke into a fervent dance. Closing their eyes and throwing their hands up in the air, the masses welcomed every "boing", "boom" and "tschak" that the formerly silent Machine cried out.

Now, twenty years later, the whirrs and the clinks of the subdued Machine are heard as loud as ever.

And the people, oh yes, they still dance.