A Clock Strikes 11 Somewhere In The Darkness

Nervously, Arrow began to recall the events of that day.

“Kidney called me to his office one afternoon… ‘was hoping he had something for me to do. Hadn’t contacted me in days before that.”

He could remember how he looked then. A face he’d never made before- something like a plush without its stuffing. For the first time in history, god was crying.

“What’d he say?” Katie leaned in, interested, though… inexplicably, afraid.

“I asked him what was wrong, and… well… the rest is history. He- didn’t have any work left for me to do. I was kicked out of the Foundation’s lapdogs… and wandered here afterwards.”

“That doesn’t make sense, why’d he fire you?” Asked Frankie, her own personal image of Kidney, fleshed-out through it was, struggling against the implications. “Did you… make him angry or something?”

“No, no… I…” Joey’s words dissolved in his throat. He felt like there was a live bomb in his hands, and he was holding it under the table. His lip quivered.

“Joseph.” Miyano leaned up against him. “You’ve been too afraid to say the things that matter your whole life. I get it.” She took the kid’s worksheet from across the table and began to sketch one of her characters on it, the quiet female lead of Celestial Orchestra. He loved to watch her draw, but the crayon strokes weren’t enough to calm him. “But you’ve got something over me. You can talk, you just don’t. If there’s something you want to express, you don’t have to make a cartoon about it. You can just-“

She put her hands on his shoulder.

“Say it.”

Dr. Joseph Arrow, feeling unworthy of the affection, focused his dead eyes on the opposite end of the table and forced himself into a zombie-like trance.

“Something went wrong.”

“Hm?” Tara tried to look at him, worried about their old man. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t read past the all-encompassing despair creeping down his wrinkled face.

“The, the Genesis… on the moon. On… Kidneyworld. He told me it went wrong.”

“What went wrong?” Katie arched up in her seat, hands spread on the table. The doctor was becoming almost frustrating at this point.

“The Genesis… that Ferris wheel was thought up by Kidney to be the… the largest human construct to date. Something… so big it would top every other creation made in the pursuit of bigger, better parks…” Arrow forced his consciousness as far down into his belly as it would go just so he could get the words out. “And… with how weighty it would be, constructed almost entirely from Superheavy-class alloys… well, the guys in logistics had a few complaints when they first got the designs for it.”

“Was it gonna bury itself into the center of the moon or something…?” Frankie guessed out loud, mostly just worrying about her parents up there.

“No, it… even Kidney thought of that. It wasn’t a problem. Actually, the weight of his creation was bad because… well, this… may be difficult to imagine, but it attained its own gravitational pull. Like a second planet, the massive thing could’ve eventually broken off and hurtled into space.”

“So what did they do about it?” Genkei leaned in.

“I’m… not a ride designer, but I heard they used… cables. Unbreakable, unremovable cables. So long as it was held in place, the Genesis would… stay rooted to the moon, and that would be the end of that.”

“But… that wasn’t the end, was it?” Inquisited Tara.

Joseph held his nose.

“What aren’t you telling us? What’s going on?”

“I can’t… I can’t just…” The man sat his hand on his knee and looked off into the restaurant, his face shivering as the rest of the table desperately waited for his word.

“What could be so terrible you can’t tell us…?” Frankie looked empathetically into the man. “Me and Kate, we’ve… seen a lot, and… well… no matter what, we’ve made it out okay. It’s not always for the better, but we make it out okay. Tala and Gen… you should know how tough they are, and… Nate, I’ve only just met, but he’s a lot stronger than I ever was at that age. Do you not respect us? Do you… not respect her?” After motioning to Miyano, she scooted down her seat, trying to find that disturbed, knowing face Joseph was trying so hard to hide. “I get not having the strength to say something that’s eating up at you, but… what if we can help? What if, whatever’s happening, we can be the ones to solve it?”

Joey shook his head.

“Then what is it?” The girl flatly asked, almost cold in her stern final approach. “What is it that me, my sister, and all our friends can’t possibly do anything about?” She raised her voice, aggravated.

Then he breathed.

Sitting in silence, his body went still. The ex-doctor, relieved of his duties, spared of any future, made his case.

“The moon has been inching towards the Earth for the past several weeks.”