Arthur was a horologist obsessed with timekeeping perfection. He didn't build clocks that told time; he built clocks that sought to capture it, to contain its endless, slipping nature. His latest invention was a magnificent, impossibly complex clock of brass and crystal that required no winding. It ran on the subtle kinetic energy of the universe itself.
It was designed to run forever. And it did.
The clock sat in the center of Arthur’s workshop, ticking with rhythmic precision. Arthur grew old. He watched empires rise and fall through the window, but the clock remained constant, its mechanisms gleaming.
Decades became centuries. Arthur had long passed away, but his invention continued. It became a curiosity, then a landmark, then a myth. People built a museum around the clock, revering it as a miracle of engineering. It was the only constant thing in an ever-changing world.
But one cold evening, a young museum night watchman noticed something strange. The clock wasn't just ticking; it was slowing time in the room around it. The dust motes in the air hung almost suspended. The guard felt a sudden, profound calm, an absence of worry about tomorrow or yesterday.
The clock had achieved its purpose, not by tracking time accurately, but by subtly altering the flow of time itself in its immediate vicinity. It created a pocket of eternity.
Word spread of the 'Still Room.' People began making pilgrimages there, not to see the clock, but to sit in the stillness it created. In a world that rushed faster and faster, Arthur's clock offered the greatest gift of all: a moment of perpetual present tense, a place where time didn't demand anything from anyone.
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