The Last Clock: A Fable for the Time, Such as It Is of Man
IN A COUNTRY the other side of tomorrow, an ogre who had eaten a clock and had fallen into the habit of eating clocks was eating a clock in the clockroom of his castle when his ogress and their ilk knocked down the locked door and shook their hairy heads at him.
“Wulsa malla?” gurgled the ogre, for too much clock oil had turned all his “t”s to “l”s.
“Just look at this room!” exclaimed the ogress, and they all looked at the room, the ogre with eyes as fogged as the headlights of an ancient limousine. The stone floor of the room was littered with fragments of dials, oily coils and springs, broken clock hands, and pieces of pendulums. “I’ve brought a doctor to look at you,” the ogress said.
The doctor wore a black beard, carried a black bag, and gave the ogre a black look. “This case is clearly not in my area,” he said.
The ogre struck three, and the doctor flushed.
“This is a case for a clockman,” the doctor said, “for the problem is not what clocks have done to the ogre but what the ogre has done to clocks.”
“Wulsa malla?” the ogre gurgled again.
“Eating clocks has turned all his ‘t’s to ‘l’s,” the ogress said. “That’s what clocks have done to him.”
“Then your clockman may have to call in consultation a semanticist or a dictionist or an etymologist or a syntaxman,” the non-clock doctor said, and he bowed stiffly and left the room.
The next morning, the ogress brought into the clockroom a beardless man with a box of tools under his arm. “I’ve brought a clockman to see you,” she told the ogre.
“No, no, no,” said the beardless man with a box of tools under his arm. “I’m not a clockman. I thought you said clogman. I’m a clogman. I cannot ethically depart from my area, which is clogged drains and gutters. I get mice out of pipes, and bugs out of tubes, and moles out of tiles, and there my area ends.” The clogman bowed and went away.
“Wuld wuzzle?” the ogre wanted to know. He hiccuped, and something went spong! “That was an area man, but the wrong area,” the ogress explained. “I’ll get a general practitioner.” And she went away and came back with a general practitioner.
“This is a waste of time,” he said. “As a general practitioner, modern style, I treat only generals. This patient is not even a private. He sounds to me like a public place—a clock tower, perhaps, or a belfry.”
“What should I do?” asked the ogress. “Send for a tower man, or a belfry man?”
“I shall not venture an opinion,” said the general practitioner. “I am a specialist in generals, one of whom has just lost command of his army and of all his faculties, and doesn’t know what time it is. Good day.” And the general practitioner went away.
The ogre cracked a small clock, as if it were a large walnut, and began eating it. “Wulsy wul?” the ogre asked.
The ogress, who could now talk clocktalk fluently, even oilily, but wouldn’t, left the room to look up specialists in an enormous volume entitled Who’s Who in Areas. She soon became lost in a list of titles: clockmaker, clocksmith, clock-wright, clockmonger, clockician, clockometrist, clockologist, and a hundred others dealing with clockness, clockism, clockship, clockdom, clockation, clockition, and clockhood.
The ogress decided to call on an old inspirationalist who had once advised her father not to worry about a giant he was worrying about. The inspirationalist had said to the ogress’s father, “Don’t pay any attention to it, and it will go away.” And the ogress’s father had paid no attention to it, and it had gone away, taking him with it, and this had pleased the ogress. The inspirationalist was now a very old man whose inspirationalism had become a jumble of mumble. “The final experience should not be mummum,” he mumbled.
The ogress said, “But what is mummum?”
“Mummum,” said the inspirationalist, “is what the final experience should not be.” And he mumbled to a couch, lay down upon it, and fell asleep.
As the days went on, the ogre ate all the clocks in the town—mantel clocks, grandfather clocks, traveling clocks, stationary clocks, alarm clocks, eight-day clocks, steeple clocks, and tower clocks—sprinkling them with watches, as if the watches were salt and pepper, until there were no more watches. People overslept, and failed to go to work, or to church, or anyplace else where they had to be on time. Factories closed down, shopkeepers shut up their shops, schools did not open, trains no longer ran, and people stayed at home. The town council held an emergency meeting and its members arrived at all hours, and some did not show up at all.
A psychronologist was called to the witness stand to testify as to what should be done. “This would appear to be a clear case of clock-eating, but we should not jump easily to conclusions,” he said. “We have no scientific data whatever on clock-eating, and hence no controlled observation. All things, as we know, are impossible in this most impossible of all impossible worlds. That being the case, no such thing as we think has happened could have happened. Thus the situation does not fall within the frame of my discipline. Good day, gentlemen.” The psychronologist glanced at where his wristwatch should have been and, not finding it there, was disturbed. “I have less than no time at all,” he said, “which means that I am late for my next appointment.” And he hurriedly left the council room.
The Lord Mayor of the town, arriving late to preside over the council meeting, called a clockonomist to the stand. “What we have here,” said the clockonomist, “appears on the surface to be a clockonomic crisis. It is the direct opposite of what is known, in my field, as a glut of clocks. That is, instead of there being more clocks than the consumer needs, so that the price of clocks would decrease, the consumer has consumed all the clocks. This should send up the cost of clocks sharply, but we are faced with the unique fact that there are no clocks. Now, as a clockonomist, my concern is the economy of clocks, but where there are no clocks there can be no such economy. The area, in short, has disappeared.”
“What do you suggest, then?” demanded the Lord Mayor.
“I suggest,” said the clockonomist, “that it is now high time I go into some other line of endeavor, or transfer my clockonomy to a town which has clocks. Good day, gentlemen.” And the clockonomist left the council room. A clockosopher next took the witness stand. “If it is high time,” he said, “then there is still time. The question is: How high is high time? It means, if it means anything, which I doubt, that it is time to act. I am not an actor, gentlemen, but a clockosopher, whose osophy is based upon clocks, not necessarily upon their physical existence, but upon clocks as a concept. We still have clocks as a concept, but this meeting is concerned chiefly with clocks as objects. Thus its deliberations fall well outside my range of interest, and I am simply wasting time here, or would be if there were time to waste. Good day, gentlemen.” And the clockosopher left the council room.
The clockmakers of the town, who had been subpoenaed, were then enjoined, in a body, from making more clocks. “You have been supplying the ogre with clocks,” the Lord Mayor said severely, “whether intentionally or willy-nilly is irrelevant. You have been working hand in glove, or clock in hand, with the ogre.” The clockmakers left, to look for other work.
“I should like to solve this case,” the Lord Mayor said, “but, as a container of clocks, he would have to be exported, not deported. Unfortunately, the law is clear on this point: clocks may not be exported in any save regulation containers, and the human body falls outside that legal definition.”
Three weeks to the day after the ogre had eaten the last clock, he fell ill and took to his bed, and the ogress sent for the chief diagnostician of the Medical Academy, a diagnostician familiar with so many areas that totality itself had become to him only a part of wholeness. “The trouble is,” said the chief diagnostician, “we don’t know what the trouble is. Nobody has ever eaten all the clocks before, so it is impossible to tell whether the patient has clockitis, clockosis, clockoma, or clocktheria. We are also faced with the possibility that there may be no such diseases. The patient may have one of the minor clock ailments, if there are any, such as clockets, clockles, clocking cough, ticking pox, or clumps. We shall have to develop area men who will find out about such areas, if such areas exist, which, until we find out that they do, we must assume do not.”
“What if he dies?” demanded the ogress eagerly.
“Then,” said the chief diagnostician, “we shall bury him.” And the chief diagnostician left the ogre’s room and the castle.
The case of the town’s clocklessness was carried to the Supreme Council, presided over by the Supreme Magistrate. “Who is prosecuting whom?” the Supreme Magistrate demanded. The Supreme Prosecutor stood up. “Let somebody say something, and I will object,” he said. “We have to start somewhere, even if we start nowhere.”
A housewife took the witness stand. “Without a clock,” she said, “I cannot even boil a three-minute egg.”
“Objection,” said the Supreme Prosecutor. “One does not have to boil a three-minute egg. A three-minute egg, by definition, has already been boiled for three minutes, or it wouldn’t be a three-minute egg.”
“Objection sustained,” droned the Supreme Magistrate.
The Leader of the Opposition then took the stand. “The party in power has caused the mess in the ogre’s castle,” he said.
“Objection,” said the Supreme Prosecutor. “There isn’t any party in power. The ogre was the party in power, but he no longer has any power. Furthermore, the mess caused by the party cleaning up the mess caused by the party in power, which is no longer in power, would be worse than the mess left by the party that was in power.”
“Objection sustained,” droned the Supreme Magistrate.
The Secretary of Status Quo was the next man to take the stand. “We are not getting anywhere,” he said, “and therefore we should call a summit conference without agenda. A summit conference without agenda is destined to get even less than nowhere, but its deliberations will impress those who are impressed by deliberations that get less than nowhere. This has unworked in the past, and it will unwork now. If we get less than nowhere fast enough, we shall more than hold our own, for everything is circular and cyclical, and where there are no clocks, clockwise and counterclockwise are the same.”
“Objection,” said the Supreme Prosecutor. “We are dealing here with a purely internal matter, caused by the consumer’s having consumed all the clocks.”
“Objection sustained,” droned the Supreme Magistrate.
The Man in the Street now took the stand. “Why don’t we use sundials?” he demanded.
“I challenge the existence of the witness,” said the Supreme Prosecutor. “He says he is the Man in the Street, but he is, in fact, the Man in the Supreme Council Room. Furthermore, sundials work only when the sun is shining, and nobody cares what time it is when the sun is shining.”
The Man in the Street left the witness chair, and nobody noticed his going, since the Supreme Prosecutor had established the fact that he had not been there. There was a long silence in the Supreme Council Room, a silence so deep one could have heard a pin drop, if a pin had been dropped, but nobody dropped a pin. What everybody in the council room heard, in the long, deep silence, was the slow tick-tock of a clock, a wall clock, the clock on the wall behind the Supreme Magistrate’s bench. The officials and the witnesses and the spectators had grown so used to not hearing clocks it wasn’t until the clock struck the hour that they realized there was a wall clock on the wall.
The Supreme Magistrate was the first to speak. “Unless I am mightily mistaken, and I usually am, we have here the solution to all our problems,” he said, “namely, a clock. Unless there is an objection and I sustain the objection, which I do not think I shall, we will place this clock in the clock tower of the town, where it can be seen by one and all. Then we shall once again know what time it is. The situation will be cleared up, and the case dismissed.”
“One minute,” said the Supreme Prosecutor, and everybody waited a minute until he spoke again. “What is to prevent the ogre from eating the clock in the clock tower?”
“If you are asking me,” said the Supreme Magistrate, “I do not know, but I do not have to confess my ignorance, since affirmations of this sort do not fall within my jurisdiction.”
A bailiff stepped to the bench and handed the Supreme Magistrate a folded note. The Magistrate glanced at it, took off his glasses, and addressed all those present. “The ogre is dead,” he announced.
“Objection,” said the Supreme Prosecutor.
“Objection overruled,” said the Magistrate, “if you are objecting to the fact of the ogre’s death.”
“I accept the ogre’s death as a fact,” said the Prosecutor, “but we are moving too fast, and I should like to call a specialist to the stand.” And he called a specialist to the stand.
“I am a collector,” said the specialist. “The clock on the wall is the only clock there is. This makes it not, in fact, a clock but a collector’s item, or museum piece. As such, it must be placed in the town museum. One does not spend the coins in a museum. The wineglasses in a museum do not hold wine. The suits of armor in a museum do not contain knights. The clocks in a museum do not tell time. This clock, the last clock there is, must therefore be allowed to run down, and then placed in the museum with proper ceremonies, addresses, and the like.”
“I move that this be done,” the Prosecutor said.
“I should like to continue to know, as much as everybody else, what time it is,” pronounced the Supreme Magistrate. “Under the circumstances, however, there is but one thing I can do in conformity with the rule which establishes the inalienable fact that the last clock is a collector’s item, or museum piece. I therefore decree that the last clock, the clock here on the wall, be allowed to run down, and then placed in the town museum, with proper ceremonies, addresses, and the like.”
The next day, at nine minutes of twelve o’clock noon, the last clock ran down and stopped. It was then placed in the town museum as a collector’s item, or museum piece, with proper ceremonies, addresses, and the like. Among those who spoke were the Lord Mayor, the Secretary of Status Quo, and the Supreme Magistrate. They all chose the same subjects, without verbs or predicates, and the subjects were these: glorious past, unlimited opportunity, challenging futures, dedication, inspired leadership, enlightened followership, rededication, moral fiber, spiritual values, outer space, inner man, higher ideals, lower taxes, unflagging enthusiasm, unswerving devotion, coordinated efforts, dedicated rededication, and rededicated dedication.
After that, nobody in town ever knew what time is was. Factories and schools remained closed, church bells no longer rang because the bell ringers no longer knew when to ring them, and dates and engagements were no longer made because nobody knew when to keep them. Trains no longer ran, so nobody left town and no strangers arrived in town to tell the people what time it was. Eventually, the sands of a nearby desert moved slowly and inexorably toward the timeless town, and in the end it was buried.
Eras, epochs, and eons passed before a party of explorers from another planet began digging in the sands above the buried town. They were descendants of people from Earth who had reached Venus a thousand years before and intermarried with Venusians. Among them were a young man and a young woman, and it was their fortune to be the first to come upon the ancient library of the old inspirationalist. Among some papers still preserved upon his desk were the last things he had written—bits of poetry from the grand Old Masters and the minor poets. One of these fragments read, “How goes the night, boy? The moomoon is down. I have not heard the clock.” And the very last words his wavery pen had put on paper:
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us,
Mummum in the sands of time.
“What is mummum?” the young woman asked.
“I don’t know,” the young man said, “but something tells me we shall find a lot of it.” They went on digging, and, in the end, came upon the last clock in the town museum, so clogged with sand they could not tell what it had once been used for, and so they marked it “Antique mechanism. Function uncertain. Possibly known to ancients as mummum.” And they took it back to Venus, in a cargo rocket ship, with other mysterious relics of the Time of Man on Earth.