kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"BrokenWatch.0"

words

http://www.stwa.net/scrawl/viewforum.php?f=9

If I had a quarter--but I've just got a broken watch. I can read the headlines, and I feel the pulse of the world happening around me, but it's not quite there. The cars zoom-zip five feet away, oblivious to the news in front of me.

Just a quarter and the details, the viscera, could pulse through me instead of around. Just a quarter, on my fifteen minute lunch break. See inside by looking at the world, extra-intro-spection. But the millions of imaginary dollars that pass through my hands in any other fifteen minutes of the day mean nothing to this little box of news.

I tap my watch, but it's still broken. The back is sort of like a quarter, silver, shiny, but I know it's too light to fake the sensor. Well, I figure it is anyway. I don't want to disassemble my watch, really--that's what it is. Too much is falling apart to add to the entropy.

My breathing adds to the entropy, the all-important all-consuming "heat death" of the universe. But I don't want to stop breathing. That would be falling apart, too.

"Hey, mister. Mister?"

I turn around. My gaze sweeps first above an old white man lounging in a pile of ragged blankets, then down to his face. His ragged hair is tangled and matted, and his eyes are filled with nebulae, pocked with stars. Here's the pulse of the world, outside the box. Him, and me--humanity.

"Got the time?"

I toss him my watch. He nearly drops it, but catches himself--catches it. He turns it over, tries to make out the time, in analog. Squints at it. Shakes it. He looks up at me.

"This watch broken."

I turn away.

"This watch broken, man. What time is it? What you on?"

I don't need the watch anymore.

"You okay?"

Still turned away, staring at the news, I nod my head. I'm fine. I'll be fine. The cars zoom-zip, oblivious to me. The lights have changed five times. I turn around again, but past him.

"Man, you weird."

I walk up the stairs into the building where I work. I need a new watch.