T-035 Still Watch
Threshold Institute · Case file T-035
- Number
- T-035 in the catalogue
- Kind
- Object
- Class
- Class I: harmless while it is left alone
- Found
- Year 34, month 9, day 2
- Where found
- The shifting land (T-017), on the stair of a building it had carried a kilometre since the run's last visit
- Status
- Contained
- Now
- At the lab and in the rift
Containment procedures
Section titled “Containment procedures”The Still Watch is held unwound, in a sealed object cell kept empty of food. It is wound only for a use or a test, by the run's leader or by one named technician, and never twice within two minutes. Food carried on a run with the watch is packed apart from it, and the run carries one day's more rations than its route needs for each winding it may use. Every winding is logged.
Description
Section titled “Description”A brass pocket watch with a steel chain and a cracked glass. It runs, and loses an hour every minute. Wound, it slows everything within about six tiles of its bearer to a crawl for about five seconds: people, creatures, thrown things and the rounds in flight, the ones fired at the bearer too. The bearer alone keeps pace, and walks and fires and reloads as fast as anywhere. Then the world runs on, and the watch will not wind again for about two minutes. It is never used up.
The cost is in the pack. The time the watch takes from the world it seems to give to whatever its bearer carries: food carried with it comes out a day older after every winding.
Discovery
Section titled “Discovery”The run went to the shifting land to see what the land had moved since its last visit. On the stair of a building that had stood a kilometre west a month before, surveyor Lina Dahl found the watch running and wound it to see whether it would keep time. A stalker (T-002) had blinked onto the stair below her. It hung in the air in the middle of its blink, and the rounds the run fired at it crawled through the air like the rounds in a slow bubble (T-019). Dahl walked down the stair past it at her own pace, and when the world ran on again the stalker struck the step where she had stood. That evening the bread in her pack had gone stale, though it had been baked the morning they left.
Addenda
Section titled “Addenda”Addendum T-035-A
Section titled “Addendum T-035-A”Interview
Lina Dahl, interviewed by Tomas Rehn, Year 34, month 9, day 4.
Rehn: It was like a slow bubble.
Dahl: It was not. In the bubble you crawl with everything else. With the watch everything else crawls, and you do not.
Rehn: Did you feel anything?
Dahl: Nothing. Five seconds is five seconds. It is the stalker that lost them, not me.
Rehn: And the bread?
Dahl: The bread lost a day. I think it paid for my five seconds.
Addendum T-035-B
Section titled “Addendum T-035-B”Test log, summary
Year 34, month 10. Twelve windings on the sealed level, two minutes apart at the least, with a technician as bearer and a ration pack in her coat. Rounds fired from the range's far end at a target beside her crawled while she walked out of their line. Each winding aged the pack by a day, and only the pack she carried; a pack set down beside her did not age. The watch would not wind sooner than two minutes after the last winding, however it was turned. Rehn set it beside the slow bubble's file (T-019) and wrote: the bubble holds time still in a place, the watch holds it still around a person, and someone pays for it either way.
In the file
Section titled “In the file”- People: Tomas Rehn and Lina Dahl.
- Places: The sealed level, The cells and The land beyond the rift.
In the game
Section titled “In the game”The note you find in the game:
Year 34, month 9, day 2. Found by a run sent to see what the shifting land had moved since its last visit, running on the stair of a building that had stood a kilometre west a month before. The surveyor Lina Dahl wound it to see whether it kept time, and a rift stalker that had blinked onto the stair below her hung in the air in the middle of its blink while she walked down past it.
A brass pocket watch that loses an hour every minute. Wound, it slows everything around its bearer to a crawl for a few seconds, bullets in flight included; the bearer alone keeps pace. The time it takes from the world it seems to give to the bearer's pack: food carried with it comes out a day older after every winding.
Held in a sealed cell, unwound. Status: contained.
Today it is found at the lab and in the rift.
It is an item you can carry: Still Watch.
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