Time Running

This bit that I'm about to tell you is true, completely true, no matter what anyone else tells you, no matter what you see on your own clock.

I've been off the grid illegally for over ten years now. I don't know how many others there are and I don't know how they survive. It's not easy. There are satellites and cameras and trackers everywhere. About 13 years ago - which is 46 standard annum years - I took my tracking chip out. It wasn't deep, so I guess I was lucky. If you've ever had surgery, your chip is much deeper. I carried mine with me for 3 years afterwards because I didn't know what to do. I thought that once it was out, so was I. It wasn't that easy. I didn't know where to go, how to build a home, grow food, generate electricity. And that was the hardest thing, the electricity, but that's what I needed most. That's how I kept my clocks running. That's how I learned about the end of the world.

This is what I think happened: in the early 20th century, scientists discovered that the sun's gravity was pulling Earth into itself as it was collapsing. Earth's rotation around the sun became faster and faster as it spiraled in, making our days shorter, and by the time it was noticeable, the Global Order of Democracy had already been established. One central, unified government. Everything was connected back to a single source; information, economy, and even time.

See, all clocks everywhere are relative to a single clock at Capital City, and as the days get shorter, they adjust that clock.

I suppose at first, people started to feel like there wasn't enough time in a day. Maybe they thought that modern medicine was keeping them alive longer. Not true. The human body only lasts for so many years, we just changed our unit of measurement.

Before I escaped, I tried telling this to people. Pointless, really. They always asked me what benefit the government would have for tricking everyone. The obvious answer is that they wanted to keep order right until the end. Of course, most people just said that if the world really was coming to an end - which, by my calculations, is in 70 or so standard annum years - why waste that time struggling to survive on your own?

I would ask them, "Don't you want to know what it feels like to be free?"

I said it poetically, romantically. Never with conviction. Free or not, the world is ending. I have the same fate as everyone. I'm not free, I'm alone.

Today is - by government records - March 20, 2489, which is 376 S.A. years later than it really is. Only 70 more to go.