[ WP ] You 're sitting at a bus stop alone waiting for the last bus to arrive on your way home , a stranger appears and hands you a small metallic contraption and says `` Its your responsibility now '' ...

It was a old person, you realized, when they finally passed under a street lamp close enough for you to actually see they well, a very old person, made androgynous by countless years. The cold rain was gentle, yet its weight seemed to bend them over more than it should have; their pace heavy yet steady as they walked towards you. They took at seat across from you under the shelter of the bus stop and studied your face. 
 
 You ignored them and waited for the last bus of the night. 
 
 It pulled up in a fit of noise and light that interrupted the - quiet for you - hum of the dark city. It would be a long drive, and you hoped it would be warm. You stood and eagerly turned to step on, but they were already between you and the opening door, a smile on their face, upon which was written more than you could hope to read. They stuffed a small something in your bundled arms with a few muttered words of presumably sage wisdom; you could n't really tell. You glanced at it. 
 
 It was something, that was for sure, if you had not a clue what: something old, judging from the wear that seemed almost a part of it more than the thing itself. You flipped it over in your hands and squinted against the dim light. A motionless clock face stared solemnly up at you. It looked extremely important, if the myriad minute dials that were scattered over the battered surface were anything to go by. Whatever it was, you were going to throw it away in the soonest dumpster. 
 
 `` -your responsibility, now.'' Whoever they were, they were happy. 
 
 You glanced up just in time to see the bus - and the person - roar off, droning the name of the next town over and leaving you covered in the water of the road. You cursed verbosely and, after a moment's hesitation, pulled your cheap poncho over yourself and began the walk, the long long walk after the bus. Tomorrow - today, actually - was the day it all mattered. 
 
 You arrived, exhausted and utterly defeated, three hours later, and let yourself in to a building you told yourself was still home. An hour more, you woke again and dressed best you could, what with your clothing nearly all but ruined by the grime of that night's endless road. It does n't make a good case when your eyes are sunk, your attire is ratty, and your ex-spouse is accusing you of neglect, you realized hopelessly, and let the droning words fly through your ears, their meaning which you could barely string together despite however intently your tried to listen. The decision was already made, two weeks prior, but when you heard it, it felt like it was your fault today. You lost them all and were left standing on the courthouse with nothing, nothing really. 
 
 You did n't even notice that you still had the, the- thing until that night, back in the city, in your apartment, as you catatonically began to go through the motions of an everyday bedtime routine. You dully noticed it, at first, and could n't care less. It kept catching your eye, despite your best efforts; finally you acquiesced and actually looked at it. If it used to do anything, it was dead now, deader than the metaphorical doornail. A name was written on it - your name, oddly enough. You placed it on the shelf and it peered back at you through lifeless eyes that did not glow and a frozen face proclaiming midnight in its sleep. As you gazed at it, the gravity of the device suddenly struck you, and the weight of the responsibility placed upon your unwilling shoulders nearly overwhelmed you. You scratched your leg and determined to discover what, exactly, the device was and what your new role of custodian to it meant. First, you slept. 
 
 The next morning, you brought it to the police in lieu of any better ideas. The professional indifference they exhibited after you reminded them it was n't actually involved with any crimes was astonishingly firm; it was only for a helpful intern stopping you as you were walking out and mentioning her friend of a brother that you got the scientist's email. You sent several photos of the device and got an almost immediate response asking that it be shipped to Boston. You figured you might as well - and shipping was n't really that bad - so you did. A week later, you received two letters in the mail, one from Harvard, one from MIT, both politely demanding to purchase it off you for very steep sums of money. You declined. 
 
 You used it as an awkward flowerpot for about a month and a half and tried to forget about, then, but you could n't. Ancient mysterious devices are supposed to be instantly understood, right? So why was n't this one? You wanted to finish college anyways, so what the hell, you quit your stupid job and took up electrical engineering. Two years, the third time failing differential equations, and fifteen thousand later, you discovered that had probably been a mistake. One thing stuck with you, and after you dropped out you taught yourself to write, while trying to find answers abut the device you'd implicately sworn to understand. More than once, you tried to destroy it in a fit of frustration, but it never looked more battered for it than it already had been, which was entirely. 
 
 It was a damn good conversation piece, that was for sure. Without anybody you cared to speak of before, the friends that you started to make fell into two categories: those you found while trying to learn what the device was, and those you found you while trying to learn where the device was. There was a lot of speculation and at least one conspiracy forum that sprung up around the thing; you were famous, in the same way that Vennu Mallesh is a good songwriter. 
 
 Somewhere on your journey, you found love. It was n't like last time, where the two of you did it just for the sake of getting it done; it came slowly, It took you about four years to actually notice it had happened; you got married in two weeks to make up for it. 
 
 You forgot about it, that time, after you came back from honeymoon and immediately began to pack for a relief trip to Sudan. When you returned and began to build a home, you put it in your bedroom and ignored it. 
 
 It was over the passing of a few days that you slowly realized that, while apparently dead as ever, the clock face stared lifelessly at the world showing quarter to two. It gave you chills, and you dared question your memory before you acknowledged it was somehow moving, although you had never seen it. An enthusiastic friend offered to try and turn it on, and you reluctantly accepted. He returned a few days later with federal agents and an anti-terrorism unit; apparently it had vanished, destroyed all electronics on his concrete-jungle block with a EMP burst that woke too many sleeping governmental departments up. You got out only without any record only because they never found it. A thousand hours later, you heard a noise, looked up, and saw it looking at you from the other bench of a quiet bus stop, reading ten past seven. 
 
 You sold books and raised kids, and somehow, the thing just lost the importance it used to hold in your life. God only knows how many years it caught dust on an upper shelf while you had friends, then babysitters, then first dates, then grandchildren over; while you planned frugally budgeted trips across the continent and proposed year-long adventures like the ones you wrote of and negotiated family reunions. 
 
 The continuous if entirely imperceptible traversal of the small face by the hands which never bent, never moved, was a reassuring constant in your life; the device something you often found yourself smiling at in passing whenever you happened to notice it. You wondered about the person who gave it to you, not often, but enough to keep their memory fresh in your aging brain. 
 
 After the funeral was over - it had been sudden, a bad fall that simply broke too much to fix - you dug it out that night and impetuously went walking, you never knew where. The clock was just showing midnight when you saw whom it had been always meant for. 
 
 You handed it to the young woman sitting under a bus stop in the rain, told her what it was, and caught a taxi home. 

