The Slow-Ticking Moon - Part 2 by Owen Townend

 

Chaos rushed in with gleeful violence and pillaging. Cults arose like The Lunacy Markers, all demanding air time to shout down the overtired experts. Each night the Moon Clock went backwards and forwards to random times, with no discernible sequence. A probe was sent out to the satellite’s surface to hopefully disrupt any illusion or confirm a baffling truth.

          Then one Monday midnight five and a half weeks later, the Moon Clock returned to twelve o’clock. Order restored, for one night at least. The Lunacy Markers insisted that this was the beginning of a new sequence, 'hitherto undreamt of'. Of course, they were obliquely announcing the end of the world. All the other cults fell in line, rushing to confirm the end times according to the Moon Clock. And yet, if you asked any one of these zealots, they couldn’t give clear justification of their doomsaying. The fact remained that no-one on Earth could comprehend the strange times they had witnessed.

By this point the probe had landed on the moon and confirmed that there was no hologram in place. Some entity had created a massive clock face in the brief period Earth wasn’t looking. The probe circulated the satellite in search of the being responsible but there were no detectable signs of life. It was almost as if the moon itself had shed its old surface to count down to something. Of course, the experts would never agree to such an idea. There had to be a rational explanation.

The following night was dense with cloud again. The world waited with bated breath. During daylight hours, the tide became entirely unpredictable. Wolves howled at odd hours. Monthly cycles could no longer be charted. Chaos, the Lunacy Markers declared. Entropy. The very idea of measurable time was collapsing.

When the clouds cleared though, the Moon Clock was gone. Some wondered in jest, if the analogue had finally moved to digital, but there was nothing like that in the moon’s surface. The structure had changed again but, otherwise, there were no further signs of a timepiece of any kind.

However, the tides and cycles remained out of sequence. After a while, experts advised that humanity settle into the new pattern. Whatever the moon had gone through was now passed, and there was little else to do but live with the changes.

The Lunacy Markers fell silent and soon disbanded with bewildered disappointment. Other cults and movements whimpered out similarly but a new one emerged. The Snooze Continuum. It was their belief that the Moon Clock was portending Armageddon but then a benevolent entity stopped the clock, hitting a hypothetical ‘snooze’ button. The Moon Clock might return one day to conclude its countdown but, until then, humanity will keep a weathered eye on the heavens at night. Clock-watching.