--Commencement—

One year, four months and six days later

Do you hear the ticking?

Do you find yourself glancing at the clock, hoping the hands would race to progress? I know the feeling. Time is the greatest tease known to man. All of life's mysteries lie within time's circular eternity, teased with the tick of each passing second. Whether the purest pleasure or the most hurtful sorrow, each draws closer as time continues its unstoppable march.

Not only is time a giver of gifts, but it is also considered to be the best doctor. They say time heals all wounds, to which I respectfully disagree. Time doesn't heal. It obfuscates. It snuggles the brain in a hazy blanket of forgetfulness from which it's too comfortable to escape. Happiness too powerful to contain or pain too painful to ignore dulls until it's a memory barely worth raising a smile or a grimace.

Do you have memories like that, my dear Management? No rise to power is without a few regrets. I'd have asked if we were closer. Maybe you're above regrets like the passing of a friend or the mishandling of an opportunity. It would be insightful to know what worries an entity such as yourself. I can speculate, but I can never be sure. Sadly, I doubt you'll answer, even if I ask.

I do wonder whether you'd consider my creation to be one such regret? While your hand didn't push the button, it set in motion the events that led to it. Did you hope I was different? Did you hope I'd remember the fire as a gentle kindling, the thoughts of the raging inferno buried in the hazy memories of history? No, I don't think so. While I have doubted your decisions before, I've never thought you to be delusional. 'Methodical' or 'mechanical' would be the words that come to mind. Your decisions were always fast, yet careful.

But I think you might have forgotten something. For you see, all of life is a dance of duality, and time is no exception. It's more than the giver of gifts or the healer of the sick, but also the great extinguisher. Everything that time gives will be taken away. There are no exceptions, only a difference in time frames. You've brought four fires into this world, each leaving pleasure and pain in their wake. But they've grown too large, and time has asked me to take them away.

Do they know what's coming? Do they lie in bed, staring at their Sleeves, watching as the seconds tick down? Or have their minds succumbed to the blanket of contentedness. It doesn't matter. Their time has been decided. And when that time arrives, I will be by their side, ready to guide them from this life to the next. No one deserves to be alone when their time comes to an end. Even they spared me that mercy as the inferno raged. But mercy only goes so far, and the passing of time cannot wait.

So I ask, my dear Management. Ask, whether you can hear the ticking?