Jade Holt paints a future where nature has vanished and machines have taken its place. The refrain "Steam and Gears" returns again and again, like a drumbeat or a factory rhythm, and it makes the world feel closed in and repetitive. The speaker lists what is gone: flowers, trees, clean water, the stars, the moon, even the sun. What remains is filtered air and dirty, dry water.
The speaker sounds weary and bitter, and also frightened. The line about "making everyone the same" suggests a society that chose sameness and now regrets it. Even dreams are mechanical, shaped by "They," an unnamed power that decides what people may imagine. That is perhaps the bleakest idea in the poem, because it takes away the last private space a person has.
The ending is flat and quiet: "We live, breathe, think." Nothing is added to it, which suggests that these are the only things left, and that even they belong to the machine. The mood is grim, numb and claustrophobic.