AS INTENDED: A SHORT STORY

He always had an interest in machines that did something but achieved nothing.  Making such a machine himself would be entertaining for him, he felt.  He would make it like an automobile engine that had no drive train, or a clock with no hands.  It would just sit there and spin.

Yet to maintain his interest, he decided that it would need to do something more than simply do something and achieve nothing.  It then occurred to him that with all its gears, belts, levers and switches, he could make it an object of contemplation.  He would have it represent the universe as a whole which also did somethng, did lots of things, and achieved nothing, or so it appeared. 

If he believed in a higher power, the question changed, naturally.  What did this higher power intend with this universe, assuming that this higher power created it?  (It may not have, but the odds were that it did.)  The answer to what it intended he could not know, of course, at least not until he joined the higher power somehow.

But how could he join the higher power?  He would have to take up religion, it looked like, as the higher power intended.  So much for his machine.