A Totally Very Normal Job

A sequel to Stock Markets: The Things That Crashed:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/811181/episodes/14453149

Long story short, mysteriously appearing clocks are a thing. They're such a thing that entire industries are built on the back of such a fact. 

We take it a step further. Industries are built of people, people who do work. What is this work? What kind of life can be made from clocks which materialize out of thin air? 

A very cool, absolutely not weird one. That's for sure.

Transcript

So… 

So you want a job. I got it. We all got it. You've got to get it somewhere, and you’ve tried doing things like working at the pizza joint in your town, and that just stinks, right? Bad hours, the smell lingers on your clothing, the management’s on a complete power trip even though they’re only making like 30k a year or something, and…

And it all just feels terrible in an all encompassing way, right? So there’s no way you’re going back there. Or anywhere else like that. Sure, sure. You’ll admit to yourself that you’d go back if you’re starving, or if you can’t pay the rent, or a whole list of other embarrassing things. But not now. You’ve got a bit of self respect in you, so what do you do? You find me. You find us. You find your doom.

And they’ll say you brought your doom upon yourself, you know? Never seemed right to me. Most bad things will find victims one way or the other. Is it the victim’s fault that they were in the way?

But whatever, whatever. You’re going to be cursed and all that, but you don’t believe in curses. Not really. You might say that you think ghosts are real, or something to that effect, but this is on a whole other level. But you won’t believe anything I say, or what anyone says, for that matter. You see the price tag of the job and think that you could accept getting an arm chopped off for it, or something stupid like that. 

Well, your arm won’t fall off, that’s for sure. You better thank your lucky stars for that. And the pay is good. Very good. Depending on how well you do, you’re looking at over 60k, enough to support an entire family if you don’t live in some fancy place like Manhattan or wherever. All that for a forty hour a week job that pays for your personal lodging, quarterly trips back home (or just vacation if you don’t have one), first class medical benefits, and, best part of it all, an extremely low barrier to entry. It’s what I did for twelve years, until I felt I had enough cash to scurry away into the countryside and fulfill my dream of farming like my grandfather. But that’s another thing entirely. Doesn’t pay nearly as good, no benefits, and, well… much higher bar to entry. Much higher. And by definition it’s not something you can do in the city, so…

So sometimes in life it’s best to take the more expedient route. I know I probably threw you off with the ‘curse’ talk. The curses are ‘real’ in some sense. But they’re not curses. Not in any sense that I’d know a curse. Your teeth won’t rot, your firstborn kid won’t die, you won’t find an early grave. Heck, Mr. Harrison is still trucking around in his sixties, and he’s the center of this whole thing. Don’t you think that if there was any real negative impact to the job, it’d all be concentrated around him? 

So take it. Take the job. Work a year or two, or three, or four, or any number of years until the old man croaks of heart failure, ‘cause everything will collapse around then for sure. But until then…

You’re going to learn how to disassemble a clock. Or should I say, a clock. 

I brought one here for demonstration purposes. Look at the thing. Isn’t she beautiful? Not only is she a fascinating piece of technology, a thing of metal wrapped around an artificial abstraction, a palace of glass and steel, but she’s also your ticket to a moderately acceptable life.

This thing? We don’t need it. Not really. I mean, everyone probably wants a clock or two in their house. Cellphones are such that even though they’ve got the time forever ticking in the corner, the horrible mind prison they lock you in is so debilitating that it can take upwards of five tries for you to looking at those tiny numbers and actually comprehend what they mean. You think I’m exaggerating? Take out your phone. Look at the time. Can you tell me what numbers you saw? I mean, probably, because you’re stuck listening to me instead of scrolling. But what about other times when you’ve tried to check it? You know what I’m talking about. So it behooves the modern person to keep one or two timepieces around them in their house, just so that embarrassing moment doesn’t happen as much. That, and clocks kind of look pretty. They beam an aura of sophistication into the air somehow, even with their recent proliferation. Many old things do, after all. And the clock, being the most prolific and useful or anachronistic appliances, is the cheapest of them all. 

And that’s it. That’s the case for and against clocks. I mean, really, what did you expect? They’re a boring old physical object, like a flute or a slab of igneous rock. Maybe you can be the type of person who obsesses over the mundane details of an item that does naught but serve a little utility, but I for my part cannot. To me, a clock is a clock. Those words, this object. It will not wound me in the slightest to be its doom.

If you’re still feeling sentimental about murdering timepieces, just remember: nobody actually took the time to make this. Not one single soul. Well, I mean, maybe somebody did. But seems to me that its a million times more likely that some alien or spirit just clicked these into existence to screw with us. I mean, that’s the perspective of Mr. Harrison, anyways, and I tend to stick by his thinking. I mean, it helps. Helps when you have to destroy so many of these wondrous things.

It is a miracle. Perhaps it is a gift from God himself. Our manna from heaven. Do we do ourselves ill by besmirching his gift? By refusing the perfection of his creation? Well, think about it like this: if this is God’s gift, then the rest of existence is God’s gift, too. And we’re screwing that up bad. Burning down rainforests, killing our fellow man… how much worse can it really be to blaspheme on the more immediately miraculous when we ourselves are complicit in tragedy after tragedy in the less immediately miraculous?

Huh? You’re not following? Well. Just think about it like this; if you’re worried about whether what we’re doing here is good or evil, remember that by destroying these little miracles we prevent the ground being split open for mines. Mines that poison the world around them, that, depending on where they are, exploit labor, and just, you know, reduce the supply of minerals we can easily reach on the planet, and…

No. No. We’re still being too sophisticated. We’re making too much sense. Let’s just say that by becoming a clock disassembler, you’re saving a starving African child from having to work in the coal mines, or whatever. Now what that kid is going to do for work otherwise I don’t know, ‘cause of course they’re still going to have to work even as a baby, but… but you saved them from those mines, dammit! You’re a good person! Tell that to yourself! You’re doing a goody by lining your own pockets, okay? Okay.

NOW. FINALLY. WE GET TO IT.

Sorry. You get a lot of harassment in this line of work, unfortunately. Lots of people get scared when you mention the clocks, or remind them that the circuitry in their cars was probably salvaged from our same said timepieces. The masses think that we’re playing with fire, when literally none of us can even see the blaze, no matter where we look. There’s just a bit of heat and light. And there always has been. But you get all these judgements like this all the time, so I addressed them. I put them to bed. No, I put them in the grave. Gone. Dead. Just like your debts are soon to be once you start on this career path.

And watch out for the Eye of God. They’re the worst ones. They won’t do anything about you in public, ‘cause they know the law’s on our side. But just don’t let them know who you, or what you do. They do all kinds of harassment. Keying your car, cyberbullying your kids, even threats of actual violence. Crazy bastards. Like, come on. You believe a guy died and rose from the dead, you believe that the Nile River just like turned into blood one day because the Egyptians were mean to the Jews, and some clocks are what cause you to flip out?

NOW. FOR REAL THIS TIME.

Now this clock is, like I’ve referenced previously, one of those created by mystery. By all recordings, this guy and all its compatriots just literally pop out of thin air whenever the legendary Mr. Harrison takes a nap. Now, they’ve built a whole empire on this thing, on these clocks; Mr. Harrison takes a whole bunch of micro-naps everyday in order to get whatever the heck it is doing this to do whatever the heck it does and bring these timekeepers into existence. Which is where we come in. You get the best pay and most available hours if you live near Fresno yourself, because, of course, that’s where they’ve got the core of the operation set up. They’ve got the collectors, scrubbers, and inspectors, but those jobs all stink. Where it’s really at is disassembly. And it’s mostly ‘at’ there because we disassemblers don’t have to pick up our stuff and move to the west coast, which is real good if you’ve got kids, close friends, rental properties, relatives in town… you know, a whole lot of stuff. You just put in your orders online, and ship the materials out through the post when you’re done. Super convenient. You just have to pay a few fees, which, in aggregate, can be a bit annoying, but usually not as annoying as uprooting your entire life for your job.

Now. You’ve got the clocks in the mail. When you first register for contract employment with Harrison Ltd., they’ll offer you three possible packages for your first batch. I recommend the twelve pack. It’s most efficient in terms of the shipping costs, and its not too many, either, it’ll let you get a feel of whether this kind of work can suit you or not. 

So, as you can see here, I’ve got a package of twelve here. Eleven, in this case, since I’ve already sliced it open to get this beauty ready for presentation. It bears mentioning that you want to be careful when handling these packages; they’re supposed to wrap them at the distribution center, but, as you no doubt know, there’s a LOT of people out there who really don’t care about their work, and I’ve opened I think eight or so bundles that had no protection whatsoever. You drop any boxes like that, you’re losing a bunch of your own money, and you’ll have to contend with broken glass and possible demonic infestation too, so, you know, it’s a bad idea. Lay the thing down softly on a table, countertop, desk, right near wherever you intend to work. And open it with a small knife, mind. Not like a gigantic machete or something. That can make things bad, too. 

And don’t look at me like I’m treating you as a stupid person. I don’t know you. You might be extremely sharp. But there are people who aren’t, and we all mess up from time to time, even when we have the best of intentions. I run over all this basic stuff to counteract that, you understand? It’s not a dig at you.

Here we are. One clock. Standard model. Thing is, we like to call these ‘poison pills’ on the forums because it’s easy to get complacent with them, and you wind up with a clock that’s got abnormalities wriggling around inside. So you’ve got to be cautious at all times. You see these gloves? These goggles? You better get some of your own. You probably won’t need it, but then again, you ‘probably’ don’t need the airbags in your car. So get your safety equipment. Nothing too fancy or flashy, despite all the talk of weirdness. Because, once again, we’re not dealing with anything all too complex.

First off; we flip the thing around. What’s holding the backing in place? Usually, it’s just a Phillips head screw. You’ve got a screwdriver lying around, right? That’ll serve you well.

However, as you may have noticed, the back plate on this particular specimen does not have any screws whatsoever. Instead, you see this little black marking? It kind of looks like it’s been burnt into the steel with a blowtorch or something. This is what we call a Parker’s seal, just because Parker was the guy who figured out how to get this thing open. How? Well, you can ask him. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how he sorted this out, besides being under the influence of a whole lot of drugs.

So, instead of using a physical tool here, we’ve got to use our hands and memory. At this stage you can bring in a microscope or a really powerful magnifying glass, and that’ll give you a basic idea of how we’re supposed to start. See, whatever side of the marking has more… fronds, I guess, that’s the direction we wanna start. So, if there’s more of them going counterclockwise, we start by spinning the thing counterclockwise three times around. Likewise, if there’s more fronds on the right, the clockwise, we turn it counterclockwise twice over. 

Please don’t be confused already. This is just the beginning. SO we’ve turned the thing, eh? Now we flip it ninety degrees, so the front of the clock is exposed to direct sunlight. Yes, you want to do this all in one motion, so you’ll want to have your windows opened already. Then you’ll… oof, this is where I always forget it, too. See, this really does require training. Now you… yes. Now you whisper to it something that you think you’ll do in the future. Doesn’t have to be grandiose. You don’t have to tell this clock version thing all your hopes and dreams. But it does need to be something you genuinely believe you will do in the future. Say, if you drink coffee in the morning, tell the clock that. “I’ll be drinking a pot of coffee in the morning.” See? That’s it. Now the thing’s clicked off, and we’ve got a crack in the face that we can wedge our fingers into.

Yeah, a lot of these things are going to be like that. Fortunately, that was the most common one. There’s some worse ones, like the seahorse marker, that make it so you have to go and tap on the windshield of one of your neighbors’ cars. And this is where I tell you that you’re absolutely, one hundred percent not going to figure these things out on your own. You’re not crazy or stupid enough to luck into these solutions except by random chance, and I don’t have enough time in this video to go over every single permutation of factors and abnormalities that you’ll be able to dissect every clock every single time. So you do what you have to, and go online, right? Specifically destroytheclock.com, the best, most in depth guides are there. But we got one of the most basic strangenesses out of the way, and you’re here because just seeing my fingers scamper over the clock will do you a world of good when it’s your hands that have to be put to the task, so…

So be careful when removing the backer plate. Despite the weirdness of the whole situation, that’s real, genuine steel. And it had better be, if we’re putting in the effort to take it apart. Move your fingers gently along the edge, pushing outward from below the ridge. Like a can opener, see? Now, pry the thing loose, and set it aside. That steel is real, real quality stuff. By itself it will sell for a couple of bucks, which doesn’t seem like much, but we’re just getting started.

Alright, so we’ve busted open the shell. This is the point of no return. You might have seen some of it from the edge of the camera view; I was trying to be careful to keep you from seeing it, but…

But that’s not the regular innards of a clock, now is it? A clock is composed of springs and gears, and a battery, and… what is all of this? 

Good news? It doesn’t matter. Nothing here, at least in this specimen, is toxic or dangerous to you or me. Now, if this little metal piece had been shaped like a star… 

You drop the clock in that case. Drop and leave the room and don’t return for at least a day. The piece will be gone at that point, slithered away to someplace, sometime, some life that none of us can recognize, some existence that none of us may besmirch.

You don’t want to get in its way.

But see! No star piece. In fact, the majority of the shapes… they seem quite boring, don’t they? Or they would if not for their strangely mottled colors and flashing lights. You’ll want to tug at the three pronged one, first. That’s the power conduit. You’ll (huff) want to be judicious with how you pull. Not not fast, not too strong. Just gentle like, you know? ‘Cause you can damage the piece itself, and this is by far the most valuable thing in there. 

See? We’ve plucked it clean. Now all the lights should shimmer out. Annnnddd they are. Good. We’ve got a perfect practice piece here. This thing… this power conduit, it doesn’t fit with any other tech we’ve got, nor have we really devised anything that it can pair with. Most circuits fry when they’re tied to it. Yes, even circuits in heavy machinery. But, but! When tossed into a pool of metal rich water, the pool itself forms this kind of ambient battery that can be hooked up to normal power networks. Crazy, right? Just three of these guys is enough to power an entire city block, and we’ve no idea how long they last. Seems real long, whatever the period is. So these? They fetch fifty apiece, if you get one about this size. Smaller ones will get you twenty or thirty. Not too much, not too little. And you see how little work we did.

Once that’s removed, you want to get the little spinning plate out from behind it. Again, no idea what this does, but its made of chromium. Be careful with the two little grooves on the side; they’ll prick you if you’re not careful. And then…

And then you see this? Toss it aside. Preferably in the garbage disposal. YOu don’t want them roaming about your house, now do you?

Oh, what are those? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Do you want to know? Does anyone? I think it’s better that every time we see them, we just agree with ourselves that we saw nothing, we handled nothing, and that we are safe. We are okay. It was not there. It’s a normal thing that we’re doing. Yes, very normal. Very profitable. Only twenty odd minutes in and we’ve already made sixty bucks, minus shipping and handling.

Yes, ignore that. Ignore the residue they leave behind, too. And the echoes of the screams they make as they go down the garbage disposal. They’re not real. They can’t hurt you. And, more importantly, you aren’t hurting anyone. This isn’t cursed. This is normal. We are contributing economical value to the world. We are doing what is right and just. Yes. 

Then the wires… this whole nest of them twists and turns like crazy, right? Turns out they’re just made of copper. Weird, right? I was talking about how the battery itself fries standard circuits, and here we have standard circuits? Well, I think that spinning thing in the middle sort of moderates the electrical current in someway to make it tolerable for regularly circuitry. Or something. I am nowhere near an electrical engineer. 

But, as you start unspooling them, you’ll notice that this is a LOT of wire. Like a whole ton. Very much more than you could ever expect to fit in so small a space. Dang. I mean, look at that! And it doesn’t seem that the wire itself is damaged from being spooled so tightly together. And why would you need so much wire for a clock anyways? For our part, we don’t know, we don’t care. That’s like twelve feet of electrical grade copper, or about ten bucks for our part. That puts at… drumroll please, seventy dollars. Seventy. Dollars. And you see how long this whole process was? My gosh, easiest job of my life, or your life, or anyone’s life.

But that’s just the typical guy. Those are the kinds of clocks you want to receive in the mail. Now, when you’re just starting off they’re likely to treat you kind of gently at Harrison Ltd., and mostly send you these types for about your first month or so. That’s just ‘cause they want to sweeten the deal, right? Good rate of return, not too spooky work, save for the… well, we’re not talking about those things. I mean, good lord, you had to see them, and that’s more than enough already. But there wasn’t anything dangerous there, not really. Just toss the husk of the thing in the trash, and there we go.

But we’re not done. I see I’ve got a few more minutes running on my stopwatch. And that’s a normal stopwatch, by the way; I had it loooonng before this mysterious clock business. So I’ll give you a treat. I’ll bring out the big guns.

Boom. No, stop quivering in your seat. We’re real men and women here, we’ve got to put some fire in our veins. Oh, you’re not actually scared? Well, that’s because you’re an idiot.

As you can see, this is not an analog clock. Indeed, this is the kind of clock you’ve probably got sitting around in your home nowadays, where it mostly serves as your wakeup alarm. Just a box with some glowing numbers on it. In fact, this guy probably seems more quaint for just how commonplace it is. 

BUT IT IS NOT. If you get multiple of these in a pack, then you know someone at the facility has it out for you. Because, you see if you tilt this to the back…

No, I don’t get it, either. Ignore it. Ignore it. Don’t think about it. Don’t read anything that’s there. It won’t do you any good. You can’t do anything to change any of it. What will happen will happen. What is done is done. Life is merely a glimmer of light passing through a pane of glass. Here it is, wondrous, beautiful, gone. You will die. We will all die. Do not think that you can save them. In trying to save them, you will kill them. It happens every time, every time, every…

Bleh. Bleh. Bleh. That never gets easier. And that’s just the beginning. You’ll rant just like me if you hold this in your hands. Just get ahold of yourself. Shake the madness out. But you’ve got to listen to your ramblings. Don’t. Read. Any of it. None. Not one single word. It’s easier if you know a language other than English. Just forget that you know what these letters mean in junction with each other, lest your mind force you to read unprovoked. Do not read. Do not follow what it says. Instead, you might want to just close your eyes and fumble around like this…

And there’s the groove. Upper right corner this time, although there’s really no rhyme or reason to it. There’s some speculation that the notch will be in on the side your fingers fumble for last just as a way to spite you, so you can kind of do a reverse psychology game to go where your fingers wish you to not, but then maybe the clock expects that you’re trying to outsmart it, and…

Your fingers will find it eventually. Trust in them, in the flesh that has brought you from the cradle to the spot you are now. Have you not trusted it every day of your waking life? Do you not believe that your lungs will inhale and exhale when it is time to take a breath? Or that your eyes will blink when they get dry? 

What if they don’t? What if they won’t? What if you see your death coming before you die? What greater misery can exist than that? To see this thing, this person that you spent all your effort and time cultivating, reduced to nothing more than a stack of unfeeling meat? 

And I think you can already see why we in the community absolutely despise these guys. We’ve barely broken its shell and I’ve already had two public existential crises. Think you’ll do better? Absolutely not. Not one single soul has been able to avoid the influence of these guys, but if you become the first, then you better let us know. Everything. Because these little bastards keep showing up, and Harrison Ltd. has their policy so screwed up that they can’t just shove them back in the ground. Honestly, I don’t know how they haven’t been sued into the ground distributing stuff like this.

Anyways, so we got the back plating off, right? Now we’ve got another plate. Yes, another one. Kinda looks like gold, right? Well, unfortunately, it’s not. That’s just pyrite coated in some weird futuristic gel. See, at the start of the endeavor, the gel was actually worth something. It’s really good at insulation, for one thing. But the guys at the lab already have all the sample they could ever need, so now it’s only worth pawning off on the secondary market for like computer circuitry or somesuch. Harrison Ltd. won’t even take this plate in their return box, so unless you’re really good at holding junk for ebay, into the trash this goes.

Easy, right? No panic attacks were had there. Now…


Now is the only time. The past and future have never existed, and never will. All that is… an infinitesimally small sliver of time. That which is. We are built from what was, but the past is now and forever gone. Entirely. Vanished. And the future is always there on the horizon, ephemeral, evaporating, never allowed to keep its form.

Huh. That wasn’t so bad. See, I got lucky there. Usually at this junction you’d get another attack like the last two. Instead we just got bad poetry. Now, what do we have here? Gears? So the analog clocks didn’t have gears, but this digital facing one does? Weird, huh? Well, good news is, all these various gears are worth something. Not a lot, though. Apparently they can be smelt down and used as ammunition in most modern rifles. So, I guess by working here, by taking apart these clocks, you are indirectly aiding the slaughter of your fellow man.

Dang it. I’m really not sure if that thought was my own, or if it came from the clock. You see this? This is why a whole lot of people leave the profession. It’s why they’re paying me to onboard newbies, right?

Oh, what did you think? I was doing this purely out of generosity? Come on. What I’ve said, all of it - or at least most of it - is true. The job’s good. It’s got great pay. The other effects, the ones people tend to obsess over, they’re not so bad. What’s bad is the feeling. You have to be strong to do this work, more strong than most people realize. And this is strength that goes in a different direction. Sure, sure, some muscles are good when you’re removing these cogs, but you must have courage in the face of your own mind. You must know who you are, what you are, and what you should be. If not, the clocks will make you stare down your unconfronted realities, and then…

And then that’s why so many people leave, I think. Most, because they break. They realized their old work, their old jobs, they weren’t so bad. Not in comparison, anyways. Accounting? Boring as sin. Food service? Stressful as all hell. Road work? Breaks your spine. But at least in most other work the trauma is an external thing. You have something to set yourself against, an enemy you can despise and work to change. Your enemy here? Yourself. And maybe the thing which has made these clocks appear in our reality. But can you tell yourself anything about that entity? Can you hate a shadow you cast on the wall? 

Some people succeed at that. I’m one of them. I was always good at shadow puppets, anyways. I have a vision of the thing that I’ve crafted, stereotypically alien, bizarre, and cruel. Something reptilian with an untold number of arms, scraping against every surface that it sees. I can hate that. In doing this job, I feel like I break a bit of its influence from the world. I am a soldier. The things that it invokes into my mind are just challenges I must break through. And I do, again, and again, and again. And I make a heck of a lot of money from doing it.

The others? Some that leave find something greater inside of themselves. Something greater than me. Most people who listen to what the gears tell us shrink, flee, scream. But some… and I do mean some, become much better, well rounded people. Do not think that you’ll be one of those folks, though; it’s one in a thousand. You are probably not that one. 

You’re here to do a job. That’s what we’re all here for, at the end of the day, right? Money? Living? And, uh… 

Well, I guess you can do that with this. So, um… yeah. Really, really don’t know how to end this now. 

So, bye… I guess.