The peculiar day that all the clocks stopped

Thursday October 17th

At dawn on Friday a giant basalt obelisk appeared in the sky and shortly after all the clocks stopped. I’m not sure who was there to see it - but I’ve been hearing that it appeared and was calm for just a moment - and in that moment the first breach of sunrise sparkled off its polished surface.

I woke up to the sound. Or the aftermath of the sound. I sort of don’t quite remember it - I was in that half-dreaming and half-remembering state that you get as you wake and then I was sat vertical and my window blind was clattering and some half-scrawled letters fell off my desk. I remember the soft patter of them landing on the floor. And everything was quiet. But the sound before - whatever started this whole thing - the memory seems so far away now - I just can’t track the words to capture it. It was the sound of a bottled thunderclap - or a cannonball - or a cracking mountain - or a bullseye. It passed in a precise moment and for the rest of the day throngs of confused people gathered outside in muddles. They called it an electromagnetic pulse. 

At first, I’d assumed we’d had a grid outage. So, when I walked out of my bedroom and the lights weren’t working, I went to check on the eggs that I had left in the fridge because our dorm management was stingy and had therefore most likely skimped out on a backup generator. The eggs would last - I figured - but something felt particularly out of sync. I didn’t feel physically weird - I doubt my body was harmed - but I did feel very aware of all the feelings in my gut and my fingers and my gums as though I hadn’t really noticed them before. I suppose alien spaceships arriving unannounced and blasting us with techno-magic pointed my attention to the whole mortality-body-thing. Maybe it was a sort of fear or instinct to remain as alive as possible in that moment. But then again, I sort of had quite a nice day in the end - so maybe not. But I suppose that reflection only came to me later - once I’d seen the obelisk - which was at least late enough in the day that I was hungry. Because when I’d woken up and seen that all the wifi was down and my phone was out of juice I had slumped backward into bed. These sort of things tended to sort themselves out and really weren’t my responsibility beyond paying my board fees, which I presume covers utilities. 

When I finally left my room I had to take the tiresome route downstairs - the one where you are forced to march back and forth across the hallways - because the main staircase with the polished steps was in the dark and despite all the architectural awards it had received for visual design it was not visual enough in the outage to be seen at all. I ventured outside because I was hungry and that means it would have been around time for breakfast or brunch or even late lunch because it was a Friday and because I would have been just the right degree of hungover where my stomach felt like it could taste food without sending it back.

The next peculiar sight was the big old clockface that hangs over the side entrance to my dorm with its delicately gilded floral golden patterns because its hands were frozen at 6:00am and some sort of arthritic clunking noise seemed to be coming from the mechanism behind. All the streetlights were fizzled but the sun was up and you could tell that the birds had slowed down on their chirping and so it was probably around early afternoon. I figured I’d skip my lecture on account of all the excitement and I saw a small crowd gathering muttering things about global conflict and another two figures in a scuffle and a young woman walking her dog. The dog, whose tongue lolled low beneath him, seemed to be having a grand old time. There was also a wrinkly naked man standing in the square next to the bus station on a blue milk crate with a fortunately-long beard barking about absolution and how the rapture was amongst us and he also had a contactless card reader at his feet with a little cardboard sign reading Please Help.

I ambled across the park - the green - the sort of grassy area - whatever you call it - towards a sizeable crowd gathered in a clearing between the two two-hundred-year-old oak trees that form a sort of gate at the end of the path and these people were all looking up and pointing and then I saw with my own eyes the giant basalt obelisk that had appeared in the sky. 

And a few small birds swung in a clustered flight across the low horizon and I felt rather hungry.

I noted that my new-ish leather shoes were beginning to break in with the way they flexed comfortably around my toes while there was a commotion around the old clocktower at the end of the green and what must have been fifteen sweating red and golden uniformed marching band members pushing something large and brass. Of course - I realised it was the bell itself - the one that I passed daily - that had somehow flung itself out of the clocktower and cracked into the ground at just 6:00am when the marching band had been playing their morning salute and of course, it had landed perfectly on top of their trumpeter at just the angle so that he was not crushed but rather trapped beneath the large metal dome. The percussionists didn’t make much progress trying to lift the giant brass bell and as they gave up you could hear a faint little toot of the trumpeter inside the bell playing a note of defeat. I knew that the time wasn’t working just right because the shadows were very short around the buildings by this time and because the hour hand was still all the way south from the minute. 

I gravitated over to my favourite local Italian sandwich shop and I saw that the sandwiches were all made and placed atop the glass case thing with all the sliced meats in it and that the owner was standing outside with his left hand on his hip and a small rolled cigarette curled in his other. He pressed it to his lips and inhaled deftly through his nose - the tip of the cigarette glowed shyly in the daylight - and then he exhaled a tight plume of smoke from his mouth. I’d normally ask for a slice of pear in my caprese with prosciutto on account of how the flavours just seem to meld but I figured I wouldn’t bother the deli guy because all the fridges needed fixing and the soft cheeses were at risk of going off and because people were panicking that aliens were taking over and I sort of wanted to help mellow out that feeling. 

My sandwich and I sat on the bridge on the river and I set my feet dangling over the balustrade until the sandwich was gone and until I couldn’t count any more leaves on the trees that were blowing either side of the flowing water and a troop of cartoonishly cubish tank-like vehicles with catterpillar tracks trundled by with some fellows in green hats who seemed rather flustered and a small child bravely chased a goose by the river and some crowds swelled and diminished and the shadows grew long again and my eyes grew a little heavy and the sky went purplier and the sun went down and the giant basalt obelisk disappeared. I didn’t see exactly when it happened but I think it was around bedtime.

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