166 - The Fractal Watch

Artifact: The Fractal Watch

Power: Significant

Description: A slick analogue wristwatch in burnished chrome. It’s face appears marked with the standard twelve hourly divisions but closer inspection reveals they’re part of a larger, infinitely recursive, pattern which goes as far down as inspection allows (hitting it with an electron microscope is probably good for an Unnatural check). It’s missing an hour hand and the minute hand is perpetually stuck at the 42 minute mark. If wound (there’s no battery, despite it’s modern appearance), it jerks forward before slipping back constantly as though the workings are damaged. There is an extra button on the side.

Effect: The product of a chronophage’s obsession with the paradox of Zeno’s arrow, the fractal watch marks the passage of an event that can never end. Almost mimicking the formula spell “How About We Try That Again?”, clicking the button while focusing on a target in sight ensures they can never quite finish the thing they are currently doing. At the halfway point the remaining effort stretches out to take twice the length of time the first half did, then half of that and so on endlessly. No matter how far through what they are doing the target gets they are always as far away from finishing as when they started. Trapped in time like a fly in amber.

The effect is easy enough to break. Change your mind. Giving up on the targeted action releases the target from their time-prison, snapping them back into our normal schedule. To anyone observing it’s as though nothing happened, depending on how far their perception was stretched the target may have a breakdown. More likely they'll find a way to rationalise it away. Every time the watch is used the hand progresses by one minute, whether this means anything hasn't been discovered.