The Soft Machine of Versailles spins its gears, grinding Louis XVI’s indecision into a fine powder. Royal blood seeps through cracks in the palace floors, mingling with the sweat and rage of the hungry masses. Time fractures, spilling centuries of aristocratic rule onto cobblestone streets.

Revolution crawls from the gutters, a mutant creature born of oppression and philosophy. It devours the old order, regurgitating a new republic in convulsive spasms. The king’s head rolls, a rotten fruit separated from its withered tree.

France writhes in the throes of metamorphosis. Monarchy’s corpse twitches, its death rattle echoing through history. From its decaying flesh springs the First Republic, a political chimera stitched together from Enlightenment dreams and Terror’s nightmares.

The guillotine’s blade falls like a metronome, keeping time as a new era claws its way into existence. Louis’ crown melts in the crucible of change, reshaped into the tools of democracy – fragile, experimental, volatile.

Cut-up fragments of the old regime scatter in the wind, reassembling into unfamiliar patterns. The body politic convulses, purging itself of royal parasites. A new France emerges, raw and blinking, into the harsh light of modernity.