The Last Clock On Earth

Water rang through the city in the wavering tone of a vanishing ghost. The night continued and the lights shone out their last dim charges of collected sun. Skyscrapers crowded together for warmth shedding the flood from their slate gray and dusty clear selfs. Streets rivered and receded, sewers swelled. Things functioned according to their form nearly unobserved. In some far corner in some small room a lean little man squatted in the dark and watched. He scanned the fading outlines of the city for an irregularity, for a blip in the regulated sheen, for a warning of life.