"The Old Ticker"

[RearAdm Goran 0]

The ticking of the clock was the only sound in the room. It wasn't extremely old, built perhaps in the middle part of the twenty-third century. It's value, like so many things, was sentimental. The device that sat on his shelf had been given by his mentor several decades earlier. The occasion had been the individual's retirement from Starfleet. Over the course of his career, it had been slightly burned and dinted. Given to him shortly after his assignment to the U.S.S. Tecumseh in 2358, the first mark had been during the Battle of Tui, one of the last of the Federation-Cardassian War. The device had traveled with him when he had become the Executive Officer aboard the U.S.S. Thomas Paine in 2361. Captain Rixx, the individual who had been master of the New Orleans Class vessel for over twenty years, had labeled the clock "The Old Ticker." Slightly burned, it had even survived the Battle of Wolf 359 in wreckage of his former ship. From his posting as Captain of the Hornet to the Magellan, to even his assignment as the Commander of Task Force 12 after the Dominion War, "The Old Ticker" had remained.

 

Yet in recent days, Iruam had a noticed a change in the device. Opening it up, he had discovered one of the gears malfunctioning and the clock loosing time. The Cordian smirked at the error and wondered if it was an indication of a greater problem. "The Old Ticker" was slowing...it's life coming to an end.

 

Such was the nature progression of things. Nothing lasted forever but Iruam had made a personal decision to allow the clock to function until it could no more. Somehow, changing it after all these years might damage the device's ability to be known as "The Old Ticker." Time was a funny thing. It was a humanoid concept that while real, also wasn't. Something designed to track events, the very concept was controversial among many. But within their plane of existence anyway, time only moved forward. What was shocking is how much could pass before one would notice.

 

Time was moving on.