The Book of Knots - Jags

There are also those irrepressible souls who strive to find happiness
with one another within the world of the Factory: it particularly enjoys
crushing them. Finally, sometimes, a person will come, hoping to work
only a while (the money is good) and then return home (in some cases
to a higher Chessboard) and, of course, something will happen (some
regulation will be broken, some contractual loophole will be found, etc.)
that traps them and keeps them within the machine.
The Wheel
Side: Caretaker
Overview
The Wheel turns out in the vast desert called the Nonillion Planes. It is
70 stories tall above ground, and must be 70 below. It is the color of rust
and dried blood.
Its axle extends through the earth, and ends in a vacant cement building
at a joint connected to nothing. It is clear, then, that the axle does not
turn the Wheel. The Wheel turns the axle.
From a hundred miles away, it sounds like the whisper of thunder. At a
hundred yards, the earth churns, drawn up and cast back down, and it
sounds like a waterfall. To stand within its shadow is to be blinded by the
sandstorm it drives.
Every year (as near as it can be figured in
Wonderland), on each solstice and each
equinox, it stops.
And when the Wheel stops, it speaks.
One of the most remote of the Great Lords
of Wonderland, it has its own language
and its own philosophy. It has told its
scribes many things, and some of them are
probably lies, but its wisdom is considered
unparalleled in Wonderland, even if it is
(Even amongst the Lords and Ladies of
the Mad) perverse.
It has been asked “What drives you, Oh,
Great Wheel?”
And it has answered, “Self Hatred.”
It has been asked, “What is the Nature of
the Universe?”
And it has answered, “A circle for
which the centre is everywhere and the
circumference is nowhere”
65
Book of Knots - The Caretakers