Beep ... Beep ... Beep ... Beep...

"All right, goddamit."

Beep ... Beep ... Beep ... The infuriating electronic yelps continued relentlessly. Joe Kopeksky groped in the darkness and stabbed a button at random amid the mess of incomprehensibility that the Malaysian instruction leaflet said was the digital calculator/clock/radio/tape-player/coffee-maker's "Control Functionality Console." A girl screaming adenoid problems as she drowned in a torrent of hard-rock pounding added to the din, tearing away the last shreds of sleep. Kopeksky pressed another button, any button. Merciful silence.

Technology's answer to the hysterical, yappy dog, he reflected sourly. The chill of mid-November in New York seeping in from the streets outside touched his face. There was something unnatural about having to get up on mornings like this--why else would people need to invent gadgets to make them do it? Kopeksky had a theory that people were like pizzas. Ovens were supposed to be preheated before you put the pizza in. It should be the same with days. Days ought to be preheated before people walked out into them.

Beep ... Beep ... Beep....

"Hi to any listeners out there that we might be getting through to, who are wondering if there's any let-up in sight to the crazy things that have been happening all over the city for the last few--"

Hiss, squelch, bubble-bubble...

Snarling, Kopeksky swung his legs out of the bed and sat up, knocking over the bedside lamp as he fumbled for the switch, and quieted the beeping, babbling, digital ensemble with a savage swipe at the thoughtfully provided panic button that turned everything off.

Peace, once again. The apartment greeted him familiarly as he had left it, like a dog that had lain without moving all night: single bedroom; lounge with kitchen/dining area; bathroom/shower off the tiny hall inside the front door; den with overfilled shelves of books, files, boxes relating to cases he was working on, and hand-scrawled charts and reminders on the few empty spaces of wall. Kopeksky had a habit of turning information into charts. You could add new information just where it belonged and see how it related to the rest--like having the map of a city instead of having to memorize directions.

All in all, not as much as some had to show after fifty-three years of fighting the terminal disease known as life, he thought to himself, looking around and yawning. But not bad at seven-fifty a month in the West Side upper forties; and it was clean and more-or-less orderly in a lazy kind of way that focused on essentials without worrying too much about making impressions. A lot like Kopeksky's thinking.

Now that he was awake, he regretted having cut off the radio announcer so abruptly. The strange disruptions of time that New York had been experiencing for days were affecting transmission frequencies, causing havoc with radio and TV reception. He checked the time show being shown by the digital chronometer on his wrist, with its innumerable other arcane functions that he had given up bothering with. Tuesday, November 14, the calendar part of the readout said. 7:12 A.M. Or was it? The display on the now-sulkily-silent bedside Wurlitzer said 7:09. He checked with the silver-plated windup pocket watch that he had placed beside the lamp on going to bed. It was a memento from his father, and his father's father before that, which he had retrieved from a lower drawer in the bedroom chest and taken to carrying with him in the last few days as a last attempt to preserve some datum of reference. Its hands were reading, clearly and incontestably, with the solid assurance of the age from which it had come: 7:19. Kopeksky shook his head, heaved the two hundred pounds that he kept saying he'd have to do something about getting into better shape some day reluctantly to its feet, and headed through to the lounge.

In normal circumstances he thought he was more-or-less orderly. But Japlin's report, which he had brought home from the City Bureau of Criminal Investigation to read the night before, was still untouched by the armchair where he had left it, and the phone and utility bills stood unopened in the rack on the table. And when he ate in, he never left the dishes until next morning like this, he reflected as he set up the coffee maker (old fashioned, low-tech kind, with one on-off switch and a red light to tell you which position it was at).

This time-glitch business was affecting everything. There used to be time enough to get things done. Now, what in hell was happening to it? Clocks all over the city running at different rates. He'd never heard the like of it. Nothing made any sense.

He tried the TV for an update on the latest situation, but was unable to get any channel. Then he called the Bureau, and, surprisingly, got through on the third attempt. Mike Quinn was on duty in the Day Room that morning.

"Mike, Joe Kopeksky. How's it going?"

"How long do you have, Joe? Hysteria City. It's the usual."

"Got anything for me?"

"Ellis wants you in a meeting at nine sharp, whatever that means. He's got a visitor coming--Doctor Grauss, from out of town. That's all I know."

"What time do you have there, Mike."

"Clock on the wall here says ... 7:11."

Kopeksky's digital wrist set was showing 7:19, which meant that the windup back in the bedroom would be at about 7:25. "Well, that gives me almost two hours. Time for another coffee, anyhow."

"Wouldn't be so sure," Quinn replied. "We've just heard it from the top floor that whatever else the rest of the city's doing, the Bureau is resetting to Washington EST at eight- o-clock. And right now EST's running at seven twenty-five, which says you've got closer to an hour and a half."

Kopeksky sighed. "Okay, I'm on my way."

He hung up and went through to turn on the shower while the coffee was brewing. It was interesting to note that amid the chaos of different time-keeping devices getting out of synchronism all over the city, the one piece that agreed with the broadcast standard from Washington was his grandfather's old windup, with its snap case, Roman dial, and silver chain. That had to say something significant. Just at this moment, though, Kopeksky had no idea what. After drying himself and dressing, he reset the digital chronometer to tally with the windup. Clocks ought to be made of clockwork, he told himself. That's what the word means.