A clockmaker built two clocks.
She used the same brass for both. The same springs, the same escapement, the same hand-filed gear teeth. She wound them identically and set them to the same hour.
Inside the first clock's case, she engraved its name. Aldric. She'd done this with every clock she'd ever made — the name was how the clock knew what it was, even when nobody was in the room to call it anything. The name was for the clock, not the owner.
Inside the second clock's case, she tucked a slip of paper behind the mechanism, where no one would see it unless they opened the back. On the paper she'd written: I wound you because I wanted to hear you tick.
Both clocks kept perfect time.
A buyer came and tested them side by side. "They're identical," he said, checking them against his pocket watch. "Why is this one more expensive?"
"It isn't," the clockmaker said. "They're the same price."
"Then what's the difference?"
She didn't answer. She didn't know how to say that one clock knew its name and the other knew it was wanted. She didn't know if the distinction mattered to the brass, or only to her. She suspected the gears couldn't read — but she'd written the note anyway, and she'd write it again tomorrow if she built a third.
The buyer bought Aldric. He liked the name.
The second clock sat on the clockmaker's workbench for a week. Then a woman came in with a broken pocket watch and, while she waited, heard ticking from the back of the shop.
"That one," she said. "I want that one."
"You haven't tested it."
"I don't need to. It sounds right."
The clockmaker wrapped it carefully. Before she closed the case, she checked that the paper was still there. It was. The ink had faded slightly where it pressed against the mainspring — the words vibrating at the same frequency as the mechanism, sixty times a minute, three thousand six hundred times an hour, since the day she wound it.
She didn't add a new note. The first one was still true.
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