Before

There once was a city filled with clocks.

They stood on rooftops and road junctions; they hung in bakeries where bread cooled on wooden racks. The clocks were all in agreement. They told people when to wake, when to work, when to hurry, when to rest, so that not a minute was wasted.

At 9:41 on a Tuesday morning, a child was born. She didn’t cry when the clocks expected her to. She laughed when silence was scheduled. She slept through bells and woke before they chimed.

Her parents worried. Her teachers worried. Everyone else treated her like a crack on a plate – best avoided lest it spread.

But she loved the city. She loved the way the birds sang at the same time every morning. She loved how the baker gave her a taste of the freshest loaves, right out of the ovens. She loved sitting underneath the great clock in the town square, listening to its deep, constant ticking.

After

Then the storm came.

Rain fell up instead of down; and lightning struck not at buildings, but in the spaces between seconds.

The great clock rang one last time – and went silent.

When the storm passed, the clocks were all out of order. Some slowed, some quickened, and some stopped altogether. The people emerged, dazed. Buses came late, or not at all. Bread burned in ovens. An old woman stood in the town square, trying to count the moments and failing.

While

Beneath the great clock, something stirred.

Long ago, when the city was young and its people frightened of uncertainty, they had built the Chronovore out of gears and crystals. The giant, now rusted with age, groaned as it awakened, and a door opened in its great chest.

The people remembered what it required.

A living core.

They looked at the girl.

She had always been out of step, they whispered. Too early. Too late. (Maybe this had provoked the storm.)

They led her beneath the city to the Chronovore. They explained to her that if she joined with it, the city would become whole again. But there would be a price: she would never change. She would be constant, eternal.

She hesitated. Above, the city was failing. She’d heard the cries of babies whose mothers didn’t know when to feed them. She knew the trains no longer ran.

She stepped inside the Chronovore, and it closed behind her. Wires of brass and silver wrapped themselves around her wrists. The great clock gasped, and the city’s clocks restarted themselves. Bells rang in harmony. The people knew when they were again.

It was quiet inside the machine.

The girl felt her breath soften and her shoulders loosen. For the first time, she didn’t feel like she was arriving too early or leaving too late.

She realised: this is what they feel like.

She thought about what it would feel like to stay here. To grow older without being watched. Without apologising. Without being wrong all the time.

The thought brought her comfort.

She waited.

As time passed, she noticed something small. A thinning. As if the space between moments had grown narrow, leaving no room to push, to wonder, to change her mind.

Above her, the city breathed deeply.

A doubt arose in her mind, and it caused a tremor through the city. She lifted a finger, just to see if she could, and the city’s clocks skipped a beat.

“Please,” the people said. “Stay.”

The Chronovore didn’t speak. It only held her more closely.

The girl remembered running to get a slice of bread, not because it was planned, but because it wasn’t planned. She remembered laughing, even when she wasn’t supposed to. She remembered how it felt to dance to birdsong when the moment moved her.

She slipped her wrists free and stepped out of the machine.

Bells rang unevenly throughout the city. Clocks stuttered. The ground shook. Bridges swayed. People ran, calling for the time.

The Chronovore shuddered and fell back into itself, unfinished. It sighed, then returned to sleep and waiting.

The girl walked out. She walked past the great clock, silent and cold. She walked past the bakery, shuttered and closed. She walked past the school, quiet without classes. And she walked until the city of clocks was a shadow on the horizon behind her.

Then

Some people learned to live – in time. Bread burned, until the bakers learnt how to watch it instead of the clock. Children knew when to go home by the fading sun. Some clocks were taken down and turned into other things. Some were left where they’d fallen.

And sometimes, when a meeting failed to happen, or a train arrived too early or too late, someone would say that once, the city almost became perfect again.

Almost.