Down ā a mundanity in three relatively short acts
Ā Tick, tock tock tock, tick, tock tock tock. Tick goes the clock, over and over, again and again, forever. She glances at it, an ugly brown thing on her wall. Itās only been there for a few weeks now, hasnāt had time to stop ticking yet. Not like the one in the corner. Itās been there for how long? Two weeks? No, three. Four? Yes, four weeks andā¦ what day is it? The calendar says itās Wednesday, but she hasnāt been keeping up with it for a whileā¦ Whatever, Wednesday it says, so Wednesday it must be. She bought it on a Thursday. So three weeks and six days? That feels too shortā¦ but that must be right. Three weeks, six days, she started it up at midnight on the dot, she remembers how satisfying it was to start it as the church bell rang out twelve, after it had stood on the floor for three hours, catching her nervous glances. So that means itās been three weeks, six days, five hours and ten minutes, plus a few seconds, she wouldnāt know, the clock doesnāt show them. In a way itās strange, she thinks, how she bothered to start the clock perfect to the second, even though it doesnāt show them. Actually, she has trouble believing that the clock actually is set to the second. After all, who knows what position the gears were in on the inside. And if the church tower is on point. Maybe she should take it to a perfect clock. But what clock is perfect anyway. Even digital clocks donāt get it quite right, thereās a delay in the connection. She saw it with a friend once. They were showing off their new digital clock, and it was four seconds short of her old clock, the one she tossed into the corner when it started turning too fast and ruined her precisely set time. She misses it. It was a good clock. She remembers starting it, four years ago. All day she waited to put the batteries in, until it was 12 on the dot. Lunchtime. Where could there be a perfect clock? She doesnāt know. It was a good clock that one, it was shaped after the Cheshire cat from a childrenās book she liked. Well, she liked the movie, the book was too boring to read. So many pages. And she remembers when she reached page 2 and it justā¦ repeated. It must have been a printing error of some sort, but all the pages afterwards had been offset and she hated it. She couldnāt go on after that, she felt so out of rhythm. She kept wondering how Alice could have gone down the rabbit hole and sat at the bottom at the same time. Itās not like she was some sort of Schroedingerās kid, was she? Would Schroedinger have a perfect clock? Probably not, heād probably put it in a box and say that it was both perfect and imperfect. Would the amount of possible outcomes on either side affect the ratio of time spent being perfect or imperfect? After all, it would be perfect one out of one-thousand four hundred and forty times, and imperfect one-thousand four hundred and thirty nine times, so would that even really apply? After all, even a broken clock was right twice a day, so did that make Schroedingerās clock a double broken clock? She didnāt see the point. If she was there, she would just open the box. After all, if nobody could see the clock, it couldnāt show anyone the correct time. But how did the clock know the time anyway? Well, she had to set it. And she knew it because of the big clock on the church tower in the valley. And that one had been set by the Vicar. Or whomever heād hired to do it, probably after some digital clock with a delay. And that got it from some other digital clock without a delay. Where did that get it from? Schroedinger? Probably not, he was long dead. But maybe some other scientist. Scientist. Knower, that was what it meant, right? Surely one of them must know this too. They must have a perfect clock to know it, or even be one. Maybe at NASA? They broadcast those fancy countdowns on TV back in the day, but she didnāt recall those showing the time very well. And theyād used some strange terms to tell the time, what was it, t minus? Yes, that was it, t minus something. Sounded like Math, but time had never been much a topic in Math class back in school. Oh, but physics! Physics had lots of time and Math too! So it must be a Physicist who knew. Sheād heard of some big physicist institution before, what was itā¦ scorn? She should google it. She clicked on her phone. She couldnāt stand the thing. Whenever she turned it on, it showed a huge digital clock display that was never quite right. She quickly clicked past and it was reduced to a much less noticeable display in the corner. Scorn physicsā¦ cernā¦ CERN? That seemed about right. Switzerland, tooā¦ they were good with clocks, she remembered that her grandmother had had a Swiss cuckoo clock that she bought on a visit to Germany once. Why she would do that, she had no idea, but it had always faithfully announced the time with a lot of confidence. It had broken her heart to put it away when that confidence finally led it astray, to remove this piece of her grandmother from the wall. She wondered if it had already been wrong when it told her that her time had come. She detested it a little, but that cuckoo surely meant well. Now, for a plane ticketā¦ and the trip was set in stone. One day, back and forth, a flight to Switzerland, with just a few hours to go to CERN and get the time. She looked at the ugly brown clock on her wall, and hoped it would tell her the time well so she wouldnāt miss her flight. But of course it would, she had set it herself just four weeks ago after all.
Ā Act 2 ā down the rabbithole
Ā Fourteen hours on the plane. Fourteen excruciating hours of that stupid heads-up display showing the local time wherever they were flying over and jumping every now and then randomly. Of course she knows what timezones are, but itās frustrating that a clock can jump from one second to the next and make hours not take hours. Of course thatās only for her, inside the timezone an hour is still an hour. Itās disorienting and stupid, just like how the sun always rises at a slightly different time every day. Itās frustrating because it disorients her, and stupid because it makes sense when she thinks about it logically. She opens her backpack and produces an ugly brown clock, much to the confusion of the officer in front of her and the bemusement of the tired businesswoman standing on the other side of the metal detector. The officer wants to disassemble the clock to check for illegal contents, but is finally assuaged when she shows him the tickets for the flight back in a few hours and the booked appointment for the CERN visitor center. The operator on the phone had told her she wouldnāt need it, but she knew it would be useful when she printed it out. The airport is full of clocks, digital and analog. She likes the analog clocks better. Digital clocks can be late by minutes one moment and fast by seconds the next because they donāt have their own clockwork, thatās what her teacher told her. A moment, how long is that actually? Analog clocks are better, they have consistent shift, little by little across years. Of course they also stop working at some point and stop showing the right time, but thatās alright. She remembers an old book her teacher showed her once, about a young boy with two gem stones and a camel and a horse, who knew an alchemist. Coelho he was called, she thinks. In that book, Coelho says that a horse is better than a camel because you can tell when it starts breaking down, while a camel will be fine until it suddenly isnāt. Just like analog and digital clocks, she thinks, when an analog clock stops working then it becomes irrational and you can tell, but when a digital clock is wrong, you canāt tell at all. When a clockās batteries run out, it stops, but when a digital display loses connection, it still shows the wrong time. She chooses the horse. But she has to adjust her saddle if she wants to ride off, and thatās what she wants to do. She read that CERN has a Caesium fountain clock that is perfect enough to define time. She doesnāt understand how it works, but it seems that this is where time comes from. All paths lead here. So she needs to see it, cut out the middleman, set her clock to it exactly. The visitor center is open, of course it is, so she makes a beeline for the help desk. She needs to see the clock that shows the time right, itās what she flew all the way from Seattle for. The receptionist seems surprised, but seems to have a faint recollection of a phone call a few days ago. So she makes a phone call. She doesnāt understand Swiss, but the receptionist sighs with a grin and tells her in English that someone will come and take her there. Two ladies step out of an elevator, one wearing a uniform that says security on it, and one with a lab coat slung over her shoulder. They say theyāre surprised at the purpose of the visit, that normally people come to learn about physics and science, but they are intrigued by her dedication to learning the time. So there is the clock. The display is digital, which doesnāt give her much confidence. But then, this must be the clock that all the digital clocks are set after, so it must be right. She pulls out her brown clock and sets the time. Thatās all she came for, she awkwardly thanks the two ladies who brought her here. The display shows the time down to fractions of a second, and sheās hit by the sudden realization that her clock only goes down to minutes. She would love to stay until midnight and start her clock perfectly, but she has a flight to catch and a life to return to. Such a shame, she should have planned another day and come here around lunchtime. But itās too late to gripe about it now, so she sets the clock to the best of her ability. She then dejectedly places it in her backpack. She wonders if she can get a digital watch in the gift shop after all, one that gets the time directly from this one. But that probably isnāt possible, this clock is used for research here, so it probably doesnāt command any other clocks on the outside. She really should have thought of that before she came. Well, itās too late now. She leaves the gift shop behind her with the clock in her backpack. She got what she came for. She doesnāt realize until the security officer at the gate recognizes her that the clock is analog. No, thatās not right, she always knew it was analog. So why does it matter? Sheās confused. And she sees the big analog clocks in the terminal. And it hits her. Itās analog. When she gets home, it will be wrong by several hours. She forgot about the time shift. All of this was in vain, she still has to manually change the time when she gets home. She has to add human error, reduce the perfection of the time to a mere estimation. She got the perfect time, but she canāt take it home.
Ā Act 3 ā down the stairs
Ā Good thing she didnāt do it. She shakes her head and leaves the daydream be. Sheās curious what CERN would be like. Maybe she should google it anyway. The first result is an article claiming that the Caesium clock says that a day should have 25 hours. Sheās curious. Itās horrendous, and surely it canāt be realā¦ and it isnāt, itās an April foolās joke. Thank goodness. But perhaps the time isnāt that important anyway. It just ticks away, tick, tock tock tock. She glances up at the ugly brown clock on her wall. āHey, you there?ā. Tick, tock tock tock. She looks over to the door. Tock tock tock. Knocking. āHey, you still in there? You good?ā Tock tock tock. Oh god. Heās been knocking this whole time. She didnāt even notice. āLook, if you donāt respond Iām calling an ambulance. I get you might need a little longer in there, but Iām starting to get worried. Let me know hun, okay?ā She canāt help but laugh. āIām fine, dad. Gimme a minute!ā. She glances at the mirror and rinses the soap off her hands, before unlocking the door. āGosh, you really had us worriedā, her father grins. āNow, if you donāt mind, Iāve got to take my turn too. Dinner is waiting downstairs, Iāll be right down.ā She chuckles and steps aside to let him into the washroom. Sheās starving, she thinks, itās about time for food. She wonders whatās for dinner. She could ask her fatherā¦ But she could also just go check. As she steps away, the ticking of the ugly brown clock fades away from behind the door. Who cares what time it is anyway.
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