Perfect symmetrical clockwork city, perpetually moving forward and backward in time.
Until one decides to break, to sin, to stop. Perhaps it’s something from his past, a birthright, a destiny, a prophecy previously unknown, the fruit of intoxication or poisoning, or a spin of fortune’s wheel.
Whatever the cause, stop he does, and the men around him stare. They watch him stop, and suddenly they slow their work as they consider what his actions mean.
Angel guardians appear, compelled to smite. Yet something stays the dread avenger’s hand. What? Is it design, part of a greater plan, a weakness of the creator, or creation? Is it mercy, preserving his life, while knowing what devastation must follow?
Because the angel passes him over, his folly continues. The onlookers soon are converted to his cause, and begin to sin. Day becomes night, and now the city has ground to a halt. And then the sinner’s mates arrive.
They come to scold and nag their wayward mates, to return to them to their work. Instead they screw and spawn legions of sinful seed. They draw their sustenance from the ground; the land blackens and rots.
The sickness spreads throughout the land, drawing notice of the universe. A silver cylinder descends from above, snatching a handful at the wretches, including the Original. They are captured, packed into the cylinder, and then are gone.
The Original and his spawn are brought before the throne and inspected from every angle under blinding white light. Judges determine that he and his are a disease, and must be eradicated.
The Original defends himself. “Do I not have a right to live?”
“Fool!” The judges shout. “You know neither your true power nor your role in creation. You and all your spawn must be destroyed if the universe can live.”
The once verdant and harmonious city is now an oozing sore of degradation and chaos. Gigantic blades descend from above and scrape the city from the surface, scorching with flames the surface so that nothing can grow again. Then the air itself catches fire, an unimaginable heat melts the ground where the city was. Poisons flood the world, so that any escaped spawn would die. Every living being suffers and dies to a degree.
But the beating heart of universe continues on.
Melodramatic Physician 