A Lease on Wonderland

Tick-tock to the Observastory

He had not quite finished his tea when he was sent for, and he felt just about as befuddled about it as a tea kettle being sent for at a beachfront ice cream stand. What made this notion even more absurd was the fact that a tea kettle might just as well be befuddled about being sent for tea, for it surely would be befuddled at being able to be befuddled at all. Either way, it must be said that Mr. Matthias Haddler was not a doctor or a professor however proficient he was with his hands.

He was little more than a toymaker, really, though a highly sought after one in the sense that he could make just about anything if it had gears, windups, or any sort of clockwork. He could just as well gut the most masterful clock in the city and put it back together more perfectly than before better than a doctor could claim such a thing if a person could be taken apart and put back together in such a way.

Haddler often fancied that if the mind had been made up of clockwork it would surely be far easier to fix a loose gear here and there. A mind may be fairly better off in this fashion. He then would have been the first to sign up for such a task. He knew at least of a fair amount of people with loose screws— he included. Without a fair amount of gears to change to, despite the saying, no wonder it was near impossible for a psychiatric expert to properly put a broken mind back together.

But this was all just fancy.

Successful as he was in his own way, he did not consider a man of his position to take such luxury as fancy when he had little time for it. He had to be reminded by the shadow of a bridge as he came into the inner sphere of Heartland. He was not a quick thinker by nature— or perhaps it would better be stated that he was a very quick thinker but in such a way that he always seemed to take the long way round. He believed that was one of the reasons he liked clockwork. Every inward groove gave way to an outward groove of gear with every second's tick changing its world a little further for every tock in a million side roads.

He blinked from the empty glare of sunlight through the window of his cab as the bridge passed him by.

The station was coming up. As the train slowed, the station caught up to make up for lost time before such time could be found again. No one had time to waste, after all— not in a city like Heartland. Every heart beat with every tick of the clock.

And that clock was the sphere of the great clock tower, the capital structure of Heartland. Two great arches with hearts atop stood on either side of this sphere. Beneath them rules were made to be kept and if rules were broken, they would be fixed up right sure enough by removing the butter, so to speak, from the works.

But as the station heaved in relief that time was made now quite on time as much to squish it flat, he came to an artery of the central clock known as the Observastory. "Every story had something to observe and every observation had a story" as it was said. Matthias Haddler had never had the pleasure of entering the clockwork of the gold and silver Observastory Clock. It was just below the station. Most everyone who stepped off the train with him went on their business to other places as they were not worthy to so much as look upon it. He hardly felt worth himself, but as he was invited he was too straightforward not to keep looking.

An elevator brightened to life as he stepped upon its platform, giving it the pressure of needed feet to cause its gentle click-clacking motion in a gentle downwards curve like that of a bicycle's crank arm. Down it went and Haddler stepped off with the tick of a tock onto a platform that hung open in the empty air. But for a pair of hooks the platform would have fallen. Haddler hardly noticed. Hardly had he left the carriage of the elevator, and it curled back up to position behind him.

He held his hat to behold the doors, not so much to keep it from falling, but to initiate his own mechanical system of putting a magnifying glass or binocular glass from the massive crown which held all the clockwork and gave Haddler his strong neck for having to hold up such a thing. The binocular glass fell gently over one eye and he examined the elaborate doorbell system, shined, oiled, and clean pristine just like he would expect at a place like the Observastory.