Seconds to go now. All or nothing, I hear them moving around outside the stone walls, the sonorous chiming of the master clock counting down the last few moments before it all starts over once again.

I am scared, will I remember her. will she remember me, will I remember the quest to turn the hands of time back to a place where my true love Agatha still remains in my heart and in my arms. Not just as a faint memory comprised of the ticks of time and the glimpses of sepia dreams etched into glass and silver.

I hear it in my bones, my own heart springs vibrate in sympathetic harmonics, if this is the end of me, turned into dust or reduced to my essential, I shall pass uttering her name from my lips one last time.

“Agatha”

The stone walls mock me with their durable nature. They never notice when the resets occur. They do not care if all our clocks are rewound at the same time, all at once, making for new lives for the duration

I wonder if this is the closest I got to stopping the unwinding.

All I can hope for is to hold on and somehow survive the reset and then, depending on how it all falls out, either start over or none of it will matter as I won’t even be the same man I was before the timing set in.

The long stone wall stretches in front of me, aching to be surmounted, like a castle or a mountain, but I have not the strength left to do so. Not near the winding left in me to make it the entire distance.

Still there is nothing else I can do but to try and keep on trying, to perservere is one of the few virtues I have still in my possession. All the others I bartered away to get this close to the center of it all. Within just  a few blocks, a few lousy hallways and then to lose it all. Just a few steps past a sad ending to my reality.

They were there in a small cluster, only like twenty or so, all half my height or less. Their little teeth filed to crude points, the rags and tatters showing the lack of concern they had with their own situation. Shame we were far enough south that it never got much below sixty above, even in the so called winter months.

I guess I could head to the far shore, hope to make a major road and perhaps find some transportation before some other gang got my scent. This being a lake, I couldn’t just go up or downstream until safety. I will have to trust in adult endurance and longer legs to see another sunrise.

Shame about these kids though, but they never had a chance, damn bureaucrats.

The suns rise overhead, dancing around one and another, casting ever changing shadows from the massive barked entities that dot this portion of the world.

Deep undergrowth dotted the patchy open spaces, the variegated light aiding in the growth during the massive amount of daylight hours.

Others pad along the side of the trail, following the softhearted creature making its way to what it hopes to be shelter from predators.

I can hear odd noises, machine noises, noises of pumps and thumping gears and fluids sloshing around in tanks and pipes. Reminds me of shows I used to watch talking about industry and water desalination factories. No idea where I am at. Someone must have taken me, but I am no one. I owe money for my house, married, kids, but barely making ends meet. Oh no I am going to be killed I know it.

Something is coming i hear it. Shuffling and snuffling just outside somewhere in the night that lies beyond my vision.

Dreams about love and loss
Poignant reminders of existence
Candid commentary vis-à-vis details of explosions
Flesh melded into transportation unlimited
Train stations of bodies warped
Skeletal engines pulling bloated corpse tankers laden with product
Marrow lubricated steel wheels drowning out the adulation of distress
Moaning whistle blown to warn of impending arrivals
Zombiefied hackers dragging boxes trailing control wires
Keyboard inputs directing the efforts
Stop motion movement conveyed in gigabit pulses
Gatekeepers stalking concrete click click click of steel claws on flooring
Masers in continual dual side-band mode relaying all data as inputs
While organics labor at the tasks
The freight train pulls away

Fire Fights erupt between rival bunkers
Conveyor lines of ammunition on a continuous feed
Belt-fed chain-guns dovetailed into perpetual fire
Swapping out weapons allowing barrels to cool
Monumental river of jacketed lead
Bunkers peeled to bare metal
The molecules excited by repeated impacts
Awaiting the first structural failure
Leading to collapse once it occurs
Still the fighting continues

The trains rumble past and into the towns
Dotting the landscape
The people watch the menagerie go by
Flat in personality and dress
Two-dimensional at best
Unable to express longings
Unknown

The distant Witch Star twinkled, the light having taken many years to reach the station.

Forty thousand years or more since the light had left the most distant sun before it reached the optics and eyes looking in that direction.

The young Calliopist, Enn, Rags, wanders near mindlessly along the steel shod roads.

Soaring buildings arch overhead to either side.

Pulling up the ‘Tick Sheet with the list of places to go, looking for new work, he wanders along mindlessly. Stopping once in a while to see where he is at, what is happening around him that might affect his pursuit. Good thing he has plenty of jink stored to carry along

The other Driftworlds pass slowly overhead in their varying orbits, cousins and other distant relatives one and all. In and out on their predictable and eccentric courses, moving to the whims at times of their overall controllers.