there were biscuit tins full of dismantled unknowables , some bits quietly humming , others smashed to pieces by the engineer 's hammer standing on its scratched metal head in the centre of the bench , daring these various innards to defy its solemn authority and make riotous assembly , fusing and connecting and joining and sparking and co-ordinating and downloading , pulsing coded messages to electric organs and mechanical appendages , waiting for the hammer to doze that together they might bind their overseer in brightly coloured wire and suspend it like spider booty from a rafter , dropping thereafter to the crowded floor of the shed-womb and sneaking out into the cool fresh night disguised as a young boy , but in reality a machine with a mission .