The Spoked Shield

The repair workshop of a copper mine in Japan on a cold grey spring morning, on a wooden workbench an induction motor forty-five centimetres high in glossy dark brown cast iron, at its front a large end shield with four broad spokes, a bright shaft from the hub, a second spoked ring at the rear, between them the laminated stack and copper winding, hexagon nuts at the rims, four thin twisted wires to a wooden terminal board, every surface plain and unmarked, a rolled blank drawing under a hammer, through a dusty window a bare grey-brown hillside and a smoking chimney, a hand in a coarse cotton sleeve on the shaft.