‘Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock goes my clock,’ he heard buzzing in his head.
The opening lines of a children’s song, heard somewhere during his travels, had accompanied him since the moment he sat here in sweet anticipation.
And for sure his clock had been ticking!
Ever since his conception the timepiece had played a major role in Leonard’s life, but back then, the pocket watch only reminded him that he was a slave, who had no control over his destiny and who walked a set path to infinity. But Leonard had left this path a long time ago. The decisive moment when he began to become alienated from the habitat in which he had been created and realised that his life seemed to spin in circles had been his salvation: Leonard had managed to recognise the eternally passing timeline.
He still remembered his original timeline, although he preferred to think about it as little as possible. In his humble beginnings, Leonard had been a nameless white rabbit. A rabbit who was mostly in a hurry and always driven by the fear of being late. A young girl; still a child, had seen him running in a rural environment. The child gave chase and had even followed him, after he had entered a dark den. The girl had asked him questions, which he answered incorrectly, because in his haste he thought he was dealing with someone else. Next, in fact in his house, the girl found it necessary to grow to truly gigantic proportions, justly trapping her in far too small an environment. After he was relieved of her shenanigans for a time, the two met again at a royal criminal trial, where the white rabbit held the position of herald.
All this took place in a habitat with its own rules, devoid of any logic, and of which the white rabbit itself was still one of the least strange parts. The average inhabitant of this habitat lived in his own, very limited world, making communication between them extremely difficult and chaos the natural result. Add to this a queen who wanted to rob many a person of his or her head and one gets an idea, in what madness Leonard was expected to spend his time forever. At yet another onset of the cycle which was recognised by Leonard, he saw to his horror that his body suddenly ran ahead of him, as if it had left the spirit behind, to disappear independently into the dark lair. Not much later, the girl followed, who did not seem to notice him and, entirely according to protocol, also disappeared into the den. For a long time, he had stood trembling at the spot where the separation had taken place, looking ahead in bewilderment. But after becoming more and more aware of his new body, the body that had just left his own, yet different body, Leonard, for he had known from this very beginning that this was his name, could conclude nothing else, that this renewment was an improvement. After all, he still had a body; a perfect copy of the original, which already felt stronger and, unlike that other body, he was free to go wherever he wanted.
And soon Leonard found out that his own habitat had boundaries. These boundaries were never visited by the habitat dwellers because Protocol prevented them from doing so. But those, like him, who had the freedom to turn around and walk in the other direction, found that the world then simply stopped. An infinitely high wall of darkness, which promised little good, bordered the habitat and, again, it had been Leonard who had discovered that this wall was permeable.
After spending some time in the border area of his habitat, he had finally found the courage to walk through the wall, which consisted of a grim nothingness. Only seconds later, the rabbit had already arrived in a habitat that was not his own, and of which he would visit many others. And so he discovered that The Empire consisted of a infinite number of habitats and that each individual area possessed its own unique timeline and its own unique Protocol.
The question of why all this had happened to him had hung like a viper on his chest for a long time, as if this uncertainty could take away his newfound freedom at any moment. But the longer Leonard tasted that freedom, the less he worried about losing it. The question itself, however, had never left him.
He had, after his escape from his original confines, come to ever-changing conclusions, but these had eventually been supplanted by the final conclusion, that there was most likely no specific reason behind his privilege.
The inhabitants of The Empire functioned according to strict rules, a limitation of which they were not aware. But The Empire itself enjoyed unprecedented freedom, in which literally anything was possible, as Leonard had seen with his own eyes on his travels. Who could tell him, that his awareness, his separation and his escape, were not three of the many idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies, of which The Empire largely consisted?
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock goes my clock….