Times and Seasons

It was a crisp, early World Day morning on Times Square, and the chilled crowds around the world waited with hushed anticipation beside the statue of the celebrated clockbaker, who for reasons unknown to the modern world, beheld a spade in one hand. It was almost time for the random clock idea generator to mark the year's passage by unveiling its latest timepiece creation. The spectacle had long-since ursurped the position of the ball drop, although exactly when that happened was anybody's guess, since the adoption of the new calendar had made all of the date conversions rather complex.

No one knew exactly what kept the ancient masterpiece running. It was said that the it ran on french pastries and custard which tinted your teeth blue somehow. Often imitated, but never beaten because nobody could understand the physics behind it, the thousand-year old windup idea machine would crank out new and inventive ways of measuring time, faithfully every month. At some point in history, the people had begun to start marking time by the date of the unveiling, instead of using the machine's creations themselves--an ancient oddity of the culture that began, curiously enough, quite unintentionally. Ironically, surrounded by exquisite timepieces of every type imaginable created by the machine, no one had the foggiest idea how to tell time on them anymore. In a cruel twist of fate, they had forgotten that, even while the creator of the clock idea machine was still alive.

Needless to say, they held the idea machine and its creator in high very regard. There was even a proposal on the books to reform the calendar date to the new BRC (Before Random Clock), and AS (In the year of the Swede). But it wasn't always so...

According to legend surrounding the manuscripts of the ancients, the creator of the clock idea machine would invent a new clock seemingly every week, 'like clockwork,' they would say, all for which he was regularly praised. The precise regularity of the event eventually registered with a few, and according to legend, the clockmaker was destined, or some say doomed, to his own success, for now all were telling the time according to his actions, and not according to his creations.

And time marched on. The clockmaker was turning old and gray. Needing a way out of his predicament that would spare the populace, the clockmaker spent his last real creative effort on the idea generation masterpiece, shortly before his death. What's odd about the legend is the cold reception the crowd had apparently given to it, because of the rumored forbidden elements used in its creation. "Belgian Bluetooth Nanite Custard!" the demonstrators would scream outside of his clock shop.

And now, the yearly BOONNNNGGG was heard. It was time for the next unveiling...