Counters' Hall

from Notes from the Space and Time Museum


". . . . There were many counters at work as I passed through. Some were counting real-time events on their clickers and seemed busy but calm. Others were frantically trying to count particle motion events and going crazy. One was being carried out babbling past me even as a replacement was being hurried in.

"In one corner a morose teen was counting happy times and appeared bored to tears, not knowing what to do. He hadn't clicked his clicker once, not once. I guessed he had forgotten. The only thing for him was time, I thought. One day he would snap to and remember everything. Then he would hope and dream again, and wish for all things, and then he would have something to click about. But he sure couldn't see that at the time. Man, what a sad sack he was, probably about fourteen or fifteen. Another year or two, I smiled to myself.

"I think the saddest group I passed, though, were the old men counting their money, because they kept stealing it from each other's piles before any of them could get an accurate total, and they couldn't leave till they did. It was really ridiculous; they couldn't buy anything with it in Counters' Hall anyway, at least not anything they needed.

"The only happy group I passed were the young mothers, counting their diaper changes, meals, spills, cleanups, rockings, pickups, and all the other tibulations of motherhood. Their fingers fairly flew over the clickers without a moment's rest. Yet they were laughing and alive and glowing with joy, for they also were permitted to count their love and care for their babes, and their hopes and pride in them, and these more than offset all the tribulations and trials.

"I was gazing at one who, nursing contentedly, looked up at me with a smile as I peered down at the most beautiful child and moved by. I was about to utter a compliment--and then I was out. Whiteness closed over the Hall of the Counters like a shroud where the exitway had been, and outside only historians continued to click inhumane acts, frustrated by having to rely on the fading, incomplete recollections of others. . . ."

Whiteness closed over the Hall of the Counters like a shroud where the exitway had been.