This work gathers a series of fragments that parallels fictions of labour with notions of the self. Investigating links between technological advancements and the development of work, it circles around personal anecdotes relating to aspects of language and memory set against a post-industrial backdrop. The piece surveys how the implementation of Scientific Management aided the engineering of subjects desirable for automated production in the late 19th century, and how this process has carried on throughout the abstraction of labour. The fragmentation of the body and self is performed in the very literary configuration of the text, giving evidence of how labour and technology operate to establish modes of interaction and horizons of meaning. The appliance of mechanical instruments in areas of artistic production, and their presence as figures in popular culture, furthers notions of the symbiotic relationship between technology and the cultural imagination. As magic and myth are generally placed in opposition to fields of scientific inquiry, it examines how art is employed to define, promote and reinforce narratives of progress in late-capitalist societies.