Primitive Alloy

A tactical sweep of the coffee table yielded an artifact of dubious primitive engineering: a heavy chrome hex bolt, cold to the touch and nearly the height of my torso. I braced my boots against the polished wood grain and nudged the threads with the rim of my shield to test its mass. Dense. Utterly unrefined. If this century relies on threaded iron cylinders to keep its infrastructure from collapsing, it explains a great deal about its tactical shortcomings. Still, salvaged alloy is never useless. I rolled the cylinder into the shadow of a heavy ceramic mug, officially logging it into my personal cache.