RE: The Gravity Escapement (TWS)
05-03-2016, 02:14 AM
The curtains are drawn, the lights are out. Only the lamp on your desk emits any light, and the oval pool of illumination shines on one of your many notebooks. It is supposedly night, but you know that behind the thick curtains lies the full force of the Arctic sunshine.
The patterns on the pendulum seem to twist and writhe in your memory. You only got a glimpse, but both times the eye seemed to slip away among the lines and swerves, leaving nothing behind in the mind. All that remains is conviction - that the patterns in the book and the patterns on the pendulum were one and the same.
Still, you try. It comes out to a complex squiggle of loops and whorls, roughly approximating a trefoil knot. Oddly enough, you can't seem to trace your finger along the lines you yourself just drew.
It must be tiredness. As if on cue, your eyelids grow heavy, and you are barely able to stifle a yawn. The soft bed awaits you, and it's been a long day. You're out before you hit the pillow...
---
Your father is hoeing the back garden, trying to coax tomatoes out of the cracked, dry soil. Suddenly, a sprout comes forth from between a pair of stones, and shoots improbably up into the air. As you look up to watch its progress, you realise that instead of bearing red tomatoes, gears are falling from the sky, and the plant is flowering into the twinkling Glass Gear. The plant is the mainshaft, which warbles out an operatic epic out of key.
---
You awaken from troubled and confusing dreams to the sound of birdsong. You fumble on the bedside table and check your cheap pocketwatch, ticking merrily away: it's six in the morning, give or take a few minutes. Far too early to head down to the Hall, you'd arranged to meet McCloud at noon. Still, you could head in early and have a look at the archives. Or you could wander the town and do some interviews for the story, like that Henry fellow Lleu mentioned.
The patterns on the pendulum seem to twist and writhe in your memory. You only got a glimpse, but both times the eye seemed to slip away among the lines and swerves, leaving nothing behind in the mind. All that remains is conviction - that the patterns in the book and the patterns on the pendulum were one and the same.
Still, you try. It comes out to a complex squiggle of loops and whorls, roughly approximating a trefoil knot. Oddly enough, you can't seem to trace your finger along the lines you yourself just drew.
It must be tiredness. As if on cue, your eyelids grow heavy, and you are barely able to stifle a yawn. The soft bed awaits you, and it's been a long day. You're out before you hit the pillow...
---
Your father is hoeing the back garden, trying to coax tomatoes out of the cracked, dry soil. Suddenly, a sprout comes forth from between a pair of stones, and shoots improbably up into the air. As you look up to watch its progress, you realise that instead of bearing red tomatoes, gears are falling from the sky, and the plant is flowering into the twinkling Glass Gear. The plant is the mainshaft, which warbles out an operatic epic out of key.
---
You awaken from troubled and confusing dreams to the sound of birdsong. You fumble on the bedside table and check your cheap pocketwatch, ticking merrily away: it's six in the morning, give or take a few minutes. Far too early to head down to the Hall, you'd arranged to meet McCloud at noon. Still, you could head in early and have a look at the archives. Or you could wander the town and do some interviews for the story, like that Henry fellow Lleu mentioned.
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So very British / But then again | People are machines Machines are people | Oh hai there | There's no time
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Superhero 1920s noir | Multigenre Half-Life | Changing the future | Command line interface
Tu ventire felix? | Clockwork for eternity | Explosions in spacetime