LLQ-1 The Broken Clock

ENTRY LLQ-1 — “The Broken Clock”
Location: Lamplock Quarter (Private Workshop, Rookhook Lane)
Filed By: Head Archivist Keyra Thorne
Curio Match: Brasswork Lockets (LQG-010-A-1; LQG-010-A-2)

Abstract:
Personal account reconstructed from Zarina Ilyevna’s return to her late father’s workshop. Subject involved the retrieval of inventor’s belongings and an unexpected reactivation of a clockwork device, previously recorded as nonfunctional. The event coincided with the spontaneous opening of a sealed locket, believed to have been crafted or altered by the deceased.

Researcher Notes:
→ Locket contains a photo presumed to be of Zarina and her father; item not listed in previous workshop inventories
→ Suggest research study into “sentimental resonance” of various inventions within LLQ Zone
→ Working theory: symbolic devices may gain functionality in response to emotional stimuli

Approved for general archive access 

Narrative follows.

Zarina hadn’t walked these streets in years.

The Lamplock Quarter still wore the same grey coat: all soot and sputtering smoke, heavy with the scent of rust and machine oil. The smog curled along her coat hem, like it remembered her. Like it had waited.

The district had once been the pulse of invention. That’s what the history logs said, anyway. Innovation. Archive towers. Spires of gilded time. But none of that lived in Zarina’s memory. By the time she was old enough to notice the world around her, Lamplock was already coughing into disrepair; the brass dulling, the clockwork drifting.

She had left for better things. A life of sharper tools and newer ideas. She had asked her father to come with her too, convinced he could make a life of inventing in a place that would actually welcome him.

He refused.

There was always one more device to fix, one more schematic to unspool. He clung to Lamplock, like all the other old stubborn machinists and metallurgists.

Now he was gone, and Zarina was back.

His lab hadn’t changed much. Still cramped. Still poorly ventilated. Still cluttered with copper-wire dreams that had never quite sparked to life. She moved like a clockmaker herself, methodical and unsentimental. Tools first. Schematics next. She told herself she wasn’t here for the memories, only the salvageable pieces.

The essentials: a set of metalworking tools, well-loved but properly maintained. A few notebooks with scribbled notes and sketches. Some wiring spools he’d kept sealed in wax paper. There was a locket she found in a drawer too, a beautiful and delicately wrought piece that seemed out of place in Dad’s lab of brass pipes and metal gears. It stayed stubbornly closed, despite Zarina’s attempts at opening it. She decided to bring it home, to look and prod at with her own, more delicate tools.

As the sun dipped below the soot-streaked skyline, the lab darkened in patches. The magitric sconces outside flickered on with unreliable currents, casting shadows that danced across long-dead devices. Zarina’s boxes sat by the door, mostly full. Her hands smelled of oxidised copper and dust.

Zarina looked around the lab one last time. There was nothing left to take,  or at least nothing more she was willing to. The rest was clutter, sentimental debris. Failed ideas. Old ghosts.

Then the clock on the far wall let out a soft, mechanical cough.

Zarina turned. The clock hadn’t worked properly in all her memory. Her father had built it when she was a child, and it had never once chimed the correct hour.

She used to complain. He used to grin in reply and say, “It’s just ahead of its time.”

The gears shuddered, then clicked. A low, resonant chime echoed through the lab. Smooth, deep, and startlingly clear.

Seven chimes. The correct time.

Zarina froze.

Something in her coat shifted. The locket.

It had warmed slightly in her pocket. Not hot,  just enough to notice. The latch, so stubborn before, now gave a tiny “click” as it unlatched beneath her thumb.

Inside: a tiny photograph, slightly faded.

Her. Maybe eight years old, hair askew, eyes bright with the spark of invention. And her father beside her, arms around her shoulders, grease smudged on both of them. She didn’t remember this photo being taken. But she remembered the day. They had tried — and failed — to build a voice recorder together. She had cried in frustration when it wouldn’t playback her singing. He had laughed and said, “That’s how we know it’s working. The machine has taste.”

She sat down hard on the nearest stool.

The clock ticked, slow and steady. It had never ticked right before. Not once. And now, it wasn’t just moving. It was keeping time.

And somehow, that felt like the final thing he had left for her. Not a message. Not an invention. Just… a moment. A syncopated memory. A machine that had finally done what it was meant to do.

Zarina leaned back, the locket still open in her palm. The photo stared up at her like it had waited, too.

She let out a soft laugh, barely a breath.

“Stupid old man,” she murmured. “You fixed it for me, didn’t you?”

The clock ticked on, steady and smug.

Close-up of vintage Kodak film negatives on a light table, showcasing nostalgic photographic captures.

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