There was a planet of machines, each constructed perfectly and with untainted iron fresh from the sun. In their plated delight, these constructions indulged: they wrote books as long as the orbits of their moons, they painted their four-thousand shimmering stars. No machine, though, performed labour for another machine, for labour was expensive on the planet due to a century of inflation.

But, being machine and mechanical, there was something they could not do and it brought great shame. No matter how the machines swung, or bent, or tilted, not one could dance. Being machines, they had considered reconstructing themselves for dance, perhaps add three more elbows or another leg. But the price of their own labour was too high.

The machines owned a wonder of devices, for as complex machines, they could create contraptions of almost equal complexion. One device they owned was a civilization teleporter. Shaped like a doughnut, the CivTel-500 had one button that, when held, moved an entire planet’s worth of people. Though fantastic in its design, the machines never used it, for they were a peaceful civilization of the arts.

It so happened that four light-years from the planet of the machines was a planet of technosurgeons. They had twelve arms to a torso and a heavy belt adorned with tools. Their planet was an ancient relic – a ship abandoned – and as they had evolved on it, they became as adept at bolting and folding steel plates as they were at breathing their methane air.

They were prosperous, the technosurgeons, but they would tinker on their home no more. A wry machine, in a state of desperate shame, held the button of its CivTel-500. Perhaps this machine can be forgiven, for it had just returned from a trip across the stars, where it had been betrothed to a beautiful angelic nebula – how turquoise and blue were its gaseous folds! – but this nebula requested a dance which the machine could not do.

The technosugeons, all one-billion of them, materialized on the planet of the machines. It was clear they could solve the machine’s troubles, but at what price? The technosurgeons replied in their currency, which when the machines converted to their own, realized that the labour was of negative cost! Quickly, they hired the technosurgeons. Their arms grew, their necks could swing, and their hips gyrated like a pulsar aflame.

The machines danced for a joyous year. But the technosurgeons were maltreated, for their wages left them nothing and they were stranded. They could not afford food, they slept in dark corners of the city, their roofs an aluminium sky. And that same year, the technosurgeons completely died off. That year was long enough, too, for the machine’s culture to evolve: no longer did they want to dance, for anyone could dance. The machines now wished to sing, and they asked the technosurgeons for voiceboxes with a vibrato above three-hundred decibels. But when they looked around – and they looked well – not a technosurgeon could be found.