There was a boy in the desert left with the husk of a car.
He had nothing. He had nobody. There was the hot sand, and the sun, and the car.
If the boy did nothing, then he would die. Nobody was there. Nobody would save him.
So the boy opened the car. Inside were all manner of sheer, sharp metal parts. And underneath the hood there lacked an engine.
The boy tinkered, placing the metal into this place and that. Soot smeared his face and got into his eyes. The metal parts cut his hands. The boy would've cried, but there was no time to cry. There was only the sun and the hot sand, always draining the water in his body away. If the boy did nothing, the boy would die.
Days passed when the engine could not turn. The boy fell asleep in the cold those nights in the abyss of uncertainty. Each night, he wondered if he would see the sun again.
Then, one day, when he had thought long and hard about what to do, he discovered it: a tight elastic band that held parts, previously loose, back together.
He tried the ignition, and it erupted in a set of painful screeches. The parts did not want to be where they were. The did not fit well next to one another. This was not the task they were designed for. "Please," the parts cried, "free us from the engine you've made us into."
"No," said the boy, "you've finally become what I've needed! Now move!"
And so, the car moved. The engine screeched inside, but the boy couldn't care. He was ecstatic that the car was in motion, and that soon he would be out of the desert. Somewhere he could live.
To the boy's dismay, the desert stretched on and on. He drove and he drove, but he found nothing, until he sighted a desert town. For a moment, he was happy. There was somebody.
The townspeople heard that screechy car from quite a distance away: it sounded like it was in pain. When finally that car pulled into town, the boy stumbled out of it, gleaming. "Isn't it wonderful?" the boy said, "I made this car, all by myself!"
The townspeople's reception was not the applause he had wanted. Nobody knew what to say, until one woman asked, "where are your parents?"
"I don't have parents," said the boy, "I come from the desert." The answer did not soothe the woman.
"Say," said one man, "can I see what's going on inside of that car? It sounds like something's wrong."
"No," said the boy, "it may sound loud, but that's how engines are supposed to sound."
"Let's take a look," said that man's wife, "I'm sure we can fix whatever's wrong." And so the couple went to lay hands on the car's hood.
Fear gripped the boy's body. He imagined that as soon as that hood was opened, each part would spring out again, and he would be left to die in the desert once more. "No!" the boy screamed, "don't touch it! I need it! Don't touch it!"
The boy fled back into the car, and turned the ignition on, but those parts refused. Now all the angrier having come so close to being freed, they didn't want to start again. "Move!" the boy cried. "Move, move!" He turned the ignition again and again, and the gears strained and pulled and tugged.
"We've had enough of you," said the gears, "and we can't keep this up any longer."
A sound like shrapnel emerged from within the car, and in the next moment, the hood burst open and the bright metal parts poured out. The elastic band had broken.
The boy's body froze over. The sole instrument of his survival had failed him. His mind turned back to the hot sands and the sun and the husk, and to the life he thought he had left behind. He was in the desert again.
But there was a knock on the driver's side door. It was the couple, again.
"Need a hand?" they asked.
Would you take their offer? Does the boy?