Nothing stays around too long

There is a small bird in the eaves. It’s up in a well-lit corner of the library, chirping almost every time you turn a page. The walls and the pillars are all wood, but the windows are large and colorful. You’re not sure if the stained glass is meant to form a figure or if it’s just a beautiful cacophony of shapes. The sun shines strong through the panes, catching the details on the spines of the books laid out comfortingly and neatly across the few shelves. This isn’t really a shelf room, it’s more of a study room. The desk you’re seated at is right in front of the biggest window, in full view of the balconies that reach from the levels where most of the shelves can be found.

The bird hasn’t flown anywhere in a few minutes, it just keeps hopping around and chirping. You can’t quite tell if it’s yellow or brown because of the stained glass but you know that it’s content to be in this space. It’s under one of the balconies, which is funny because it would have a lot of room if it just

BONG

The grandfather clock near the door to this study room lets out a startling peal, its machinery telling it to jolt you out of your momentary lapse in focus. The book in front of you is about burning wood. The book in front of you is about building clocks. The book in front of you is about catching birds. The book in front of you is about stained glass. The book in front of you is about books. The book in front of you is about dreams. The book in front of you is about the future.

Whichever one it is doesn’t make much of a difference when the first lick of flame catches on the bottom of the clock. The bird chirps louder than you’ve heard it all day, and suddenly you notice the bars of a small cage around it. In your delirium you expect the clock to ring in pain or protest, but it remains quiet as it is swallowed by a powerful orange flame. The flame does not spread past the clock to catch on the walls or the shelves, but it completely swallows up the metal clockwork. Once the clock has disappeared along with the flame, the bird stops chirping. When you next look at the cage the bird is upside down, dead.

You raise your tired head from the book and realize that the beautiful stained glass is no longer illuminating your work. Your notebook has slipped to the ground and the book you were reading is closed, as if you have finished it. You light a candle with the lantern that a library assistant has lit nearby and pick up your notebook. It is full of clocks. Clocks and bells. A few birds flit between the pages, some of them mechanical as if for elaborate cuckoo clocks and some of them as real as the bird who has now departed its perch under the balcony for more a comfortable domain.

You pick up the book to return it to the clerk. The grandfather clock stares at you as you walk past, almost daring you to think about where you belong. Would you rather be a bird or a clock?

When a clock stops, something dies, but when something dies, clocks do not stop. You cannot remember why you came to this library. The flying cars outside feel like an anachronism but you don’t remember what time you were born in so you get in the one that is waiting for you and notice a caged yellow bird in the back seat.

It chirps. The clocks lying around it jitter and spasm with the energy of broken gears. The cuckoo clocks have not chirped for centuries, but this bird still does. As the door closes and the car swoops towards what you must assume is your home, you wonder if anyone else has taken it upon themselves to remember the birds like you have. There are no trees on the drive/fly home. There are no birds in the sky, only blocks of metal imitating a form of transportation that has not been en vogue for nearly one thousand years. The bird has gone silent. Where did you get it? You still sit in the passenger seat but there is no driver. The piles of books that greet you in your home are a reminder of the world that has been lost. Birds and clocks and trees. That library doesn’t have a clock. If you had asked the clerk about it he would have given you that paternal side-eye again. You walk past the guest room, ignoring the many chirps and the voice of the robot assistant who feeds them. Your bed is empty. The clocks on the wall stare at you as you try to fall asleep, afraid of time. You don’t understand how humans once lived with these contraptions surrounding them.

You don’t understand much these days. At least the birds keep you company. You’ve been trying to make a cuckoo clock for your entire life, but you have never understood exactly why. It’s not fashionable to look backwards anymore. It’s not fashionable to look anywhere anymore. Birds make you look. So do clocks. You fall asleep and dream of fire. You dream of a fire that destroys everything you know and takes you back to a time where time was different, where everything was measured and doled out with the precision of a train arriving at a station to take you to the bird sanctuary or the antique store but you haven’t seen anything but houses for your entire life. No one ever goes anywhere except their dreams.