Where Armen lacked flow he relied upon routine. When intuition abandoned him, he could always find a clock. As he sat in class, he found regularity in the ubiquitous dial that so dominated the front wall. It stood high in the room, peering over the teacher’s shoulder like an all-seeing eye, threatening the captive congregation like a priest’s crucifix.
Late in the day, as the second hand completed its final revolution before the bell, the floaters in Armen’s eyes slid this way and that across the wall. With a ring of the bell, the schoolroom was filled with a muffled chorus of chairs shifting on indoor/outdoor carpet. Armen watched the sunlight flare through the exit, and he watched the silhouettes of his classmates stream out into the light. He felt the sweat collect between his fingers and the edges of his books. He reached for his viola case.
The class monitor, having completed her doctrinal duties, glanced at Armen from under the clock, and he uncoiled from his desk. Keeping his eyes low, he watched the carpet sweep rhythmically beneath him as the doorway approached him. He didn’t need to look toward the door; he could track its approach from the light that poured from it. He turned into the exterior corridor, and once past the door, stalled beneath the overhead vent windows. When he heard the monitor grab her things, he resumed walking out to Monroe Drive.
The triplet divining rods of the oracular disk turned in Armen’s mind even when no clock was in sight. Each day, he was reborn and so too was his world. His daily movements, his subconscious physiology, and even his dreams were governed by the wheel, his world remade anew for another replay every time the divining rods aligned.
Still, there were yet a few events in Armen’s life that did not repeat; not, at least, on a daily basis. He did not know whether these promised to free him or whether they threatened shake the foundations of his punctual world.