In the warehouse beneath the river bridge, the air always smelled faintly of tin and old rain. Floor fans pushed the scent around in slow circles. Racks of servers blinked in patient patterns, like a thousand small lighthouses taking turns. A chalkboard leaned against a cinderblock wall, crowded with diagrams and dates, arrows curling around boxes labeled “Phase One,” “Skyclock,” and “Launch.”

On the longest workbench sat the Skyclock Mk IV, a machine the size of a small car. Its casing was a skin of brushed metal cool to the touch; its mechanical heart hummed with a steady, careful throb. Glass tubes ran along its top like ribs, each one filled with a pale blue fluid that glowed softly when the room lights were low. The Skyclock wasn’t smoke and thunder. It was neat and new and deliberate.

Mr. Midnight—who never thought of himself as “evil,” only serious—stood over an open panel in the machine, his sleeves pushed to his elbows. He checked the nine safety fuses. He checked the cooling loop. He checked the array of relays, their copper tongues clicking when he tapped them. Above him, two monitors flickered through lines of status messages.

He had tested everything three times since dawn. He had measured, re-measured, and then walked a circle to look at every cable—fiber snug, copper neat, tie-downs aligned.

But whenever he armed the sequence, the cursor blinked in place and the machine refused to pass from “Ready” to “Engage.” No error code. No polite hint. Just the quiet refusal of a device that was supposed to listen.

He whispered to the Skyclock. “We agreed,” he said, steady, almost gentle. “You do the work. I direct the weather. It turns cloudy where I say. It brightens where I point. The world slows for one hour while I talk and they hear me. That’s all.”

The machine hummed back with the same patient throb.

On another bench lay a lined notebook. Its pages held a speech with a careful spine—apologies, arguments, and a plan with numbered steps. He had sharpened the pencils the night before. He had also set up a black landline phone, because the manual said the helpline only verified calls from registered landlines. He had thought it old-fashioned yet, privately, comforting.

He tried the sequence again: switch, key, code, confirm. The cursor blinked. The soft glow of the tubes didn’t change.

From under his workbench, his robot cat—built from spare parts and affection—blinked its green eyes and padded past, tail high, paws soft on the concrete. The cat paused, glanced at the Skyclock, and then rubbed its cheek against Mr. Midnight’s trouser leg.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

He cleaned up. He wiped his tools. He aligned the screwdriver with the ruler on the bench so that the lines matched. He closed the panel gently. He straightened his tie, not because it mattered, but because he liked order, an despite himself, he was about to ask for help.

When he lifted the receiver, the weight of it filled his palm and anchored his wrist. The dial tone was a steady thread, warm at his ear. He listened to it for one breath, then another, and then he entered the numbers of the helpline sticker in his notebook.

The line picked up immediately.

“Thank you for calling Doomsday Devices: Warranty, Support, and Best Practices,” said a bright recorded voice. “Your apocalypse matters to us.”

He stood still, shoulders square, as if the machine on the other end could see him.

“For English, press 1,” the voice said. He pressed.

“If you are experiencing an urgent catastrophic failure,” the voice continued, “please press 9.”

He looked at the Skyclock. Its quiet blue ribs breathed.

He pressed 9.

A short melody played. It was soft and tidy and disgustingly cheerful. Then another recorded voice took over, lower and soothing.

“To make sure we connect you to the right expert, please choose from the following options. For devices with weather manipulation features, press 1. For time dilation or temporal pausing, press 2. For simple planetary magnets, press—”

He pressed 1. The melody came back. He could smell the cooling fans now that he’d stopped moving.

“Thank you,” the soothing voice said. “Do you have the Mk II, Mk III, or Mk IV? Press 2, 3, or 4.”

He pressed 4.

“Is the device unresponsive?” the voice asked. “Press 1 for ‘Yes, unresponsive.’ Press 2 for ‘Partially responsive.’ Press 3 for ‘Responds but with errors.’”

He pressed 1. He felt the ridges of the phone’s handle with his fingertips. The plastic was warm from his skin.

“To help our engineers help you,” the voice said kindly, “please enter your 73-digit serial number, followed by the pound key. You can find it stamped on the underside of the primary service panel. We’ll wait.”

He set the receiver gently on his shoulder, angled his head, and reached under the panel with a flashlight. The serial number was neat tiny letters, etched in a line like ants on silver. He read them aloud under his breath, counting in groups of four. The phone cord tugged at his ear as he shifted. The robot cat watched, curious, and tapped the hanging coil once, then thought better of it.

He entered the last digit and pressed pound.

“Thank you,” the voice said. “One moment while we match you with a specialist.”

The same painfully cheery hold music returned. Not a song he knew, just a bright, looping stack of notes that smiled too hard—pleasant enough to cover silence, hollow enough to make the waiting worse.

Then the voice returned, smooth and calm. “All of our operators are currently busy. Your estimated wait time is: fifteen hours.”

Mr. Midnight closed his eyes. The weight of the receiver pressed heavy against his ear. His shoulders sagged, and the sound that left him was not theatrical but deeply, painfully human—a groan pulled from somewhere between frustration and surrender. The Skyclock’s steady hum answered, indifferent.

The music resumed, gentle and insistent, as though nothing had happened.
“Please stay on the line,” the recorded voice said kindly between sections of the melody. “Your apocalypse is important to us.”