Stop the Clock - picture #96

[tehexile]

Title: Stop the Clock

Fandom: original work

Author: tehexile

Rating: G/Gen

Characters: OCs

Words: 333

Tags: sci-fi, interplanetary administration, post - the last fic I wrote in this world

Summary: The System Clock department had a flair for the dramatic - they'd enjoy this!

Pictures: 96

Upon discovering that they'd added even more unnecessary antiquarian-style clock faces and gears around their overly massive oak and iron door, set in an archway with flagstones wrought from thousands of declined planetary civilisations, the Director rolled her eyes. Of every department, the System Clock people had the biggest flair for histrionics - and that was coming from the Game Over Screen, who had a steam train, of all things, running all over the galaxy to and from their central office building, which was in the exact origin point of the map in the middle of a stable black hole.

Oh, they were going to LOVE this request. It would almost make up for the fact that they were, in all honesty, mediators for an interplanetary control system that never, ever asked them to do anything, or even had new information to report, incapable of change as it was, but only went 'beep' occasionally to remind them of their eternal duty to let everyone else know what the system clock time was in their local region of space.

But now Game Over, one of the few facilities that overruled the System Clock in the hierarchy, wanted change. In fact, it wanted the countdown clock for the Universal Endgame Instance stopped. Not reset; stopped.

Of course, they'd ask why a department such as, say, the people monitoring Endings hadn't requested this, and the Director was going to have to explain what a colossal administrative panic there was among the departments that actually did things, and reassure them that everything was okay and nobody had unleashed a horrible cataclysm onto the Universe any more than usual, and that it was probably best that the System Clock people just hid in the background where they couldn't be blamed or given more work to do, and think themselves lucky they were one of the few departments in a position to do so.

Most importantly, don't ask why the Sound Test department was looking so lively these days.