A Stopped Clock

A Stopped Clock

By Madeline Ashby (excerpt)

The next night, the traffic lights started acting up.

From their place on the corner, through the clouds of steam rising up from Jun-seo’s bubbling pans of ddukbokki, the change seemed almost organic. Green to red and back again, like the fluttering of a moth’s wings. At first Ha-eun wasn’t even sure she’d seen it. But beside her, on his fold-out stool, she felt Jun-seo’s posture change. He leaned forward. Scrubbed his glasses. Leaned even farther forward.

“We should tell someone,” Ha-eun said.

“Who would we tell?”

He had a point. She had no idea which of the city’s many departments to report it to. They all had a separate terminal online – there was no single place to report something like this, whatever it was. And the proper authorities probably knew about it, already. The traffic lights were wired into everything else, weren’t they? The traffic people – was there such a department? – probably knew about it before it even happened. She checked her watch. No alerts. No warnings. There were close to a big municipal data centre. All the employers there had the same city badge on their wrists. She saw it when they handed her cash. Sometimes the ran experiments, at night.

“Maybe it’s a test,” she said.

“Maybe.”

“This late, they could do one, and nobody would know. It’s all rides by this time of night. And the rides know what’s happening before the riders do.”

Jun-seo made a sound of deep dissatisfaction. It started down in his belly and moved up to resonate in the back of his throat. Hrrrrrrm. He usually made it for indecisive customers. Ha-eun supposed the quickly-changing traffic lights were being indecisive in their own way.

The stooped clock. Photo by Elena

“I’m walking to the end of the block.” He rose carefully to stand and pointed north. “I want to see if the lights up at the next intersection are doing the same thing.”

Ha-eun did not like this plan, but couldn’t quite say no. Not without sounding like a worried old woman, or worse, like someone who had no confidence in him. “Well, be back soon,” she said, finally. “I can’t stir my rice and your ddukbokki at the same time.”

“No one’s buying, anyway.” He re-wrapped his scarf until it covered his month. Somehow, she could still detect his smile through it. “And anyhow, I like mine a little burnt.”

She watched him set off into the night, shoulders still loose and not hunched like an old man’s, his figure shrinking against the tall edifices. She should have warned him about ice. Given him her umbrella. Not that there was an ice warning, tonight, but it was always a danger. It accumulated high up on the buildings during the winter, getting heavier and heavier, until it could no longer cling to the balconies and cladding. Then it fell, nature’s perfect weapon, impaling those unfortunate enough to still be walking the streets.

The streets were so empty, these days. The sidewalks seemed comically broad without any people on them. They’d even started moving the school inside the buildings, so some students never had to leave their buildings if they didn’t want to. Even those who lived in other buildings could come and go by train, never breathing the outside air.

Ha-eun stood and stirred her rice. There was still so much of it. She’d done everything she could to make it better – more bacon, more kimchi, shreds of cheese, lacy trimmings of garlic chives – but it didn’t matter. No one was coming. She shoved it roughly around the pan anyway. The she uncovered Jun-seo’s pans and began stirring the rice cakes. She was more delicate with his food than her own. He worked so hard to make something good – he even made his own anchovy stock, for the sauce. Picked all the guts and heads from the dried fish with his own fingers before boiling them. Not that she’d seen it; he said he did it at home so no one would know what was going into the food. And now there was no one to see the food itself.

She replaced the lids, and stared up the street. Why wasn’t he back, yet? Surely he’d been gone long enough to look at the traffic lights. She squinted. A chain of rides was approaching. Maybe Jun-seo had waited to watch them pass; they would have gone through the intersection he was so curious about. She heard a honking, and turned. Another ride was speeding up toward their intersection. Without any conscious awareness, she looked at the traffic lights.

Both sets were green.