A legendary clockmaker rebuilt the dead Earth as a world of gears. A thousand years later, mechanically obsessed schoolboy Naoto receives a mysterious box containing the automaton RyuZU. Meeting her and the brilliant young clockmaker Marie draws him into problems affecting far more than a single machine.
Repair has an unusually large meaning when the planet itself is clockwork. Naoto’s fascination becomes relevant to systems on which whole communities depend. His new companions bring different kinds of technical knowledge and agency to a situation too large for solitary tinkering.
Naoto’s headphones give his absorption in sound and machinery a visible everyday form. RyuZU’s human appearance offers a different way into the same mechanical world. Their encounter makes an interest in how things work inseparable from questions about the people and artificial beings living among them.