The problem with Asterión City was that the clocks never quite matched.
It wasn't obvious. Five seconds here, three there, sometimes a whole minute. But if you walked down the central avenue when the light turned orange and stopped in front of the giant screens, you felt the tug: time had stumbled, and no one had bothered to pick it up.
Thomas noticed it one afternoon while waiting for the traffic light to change. At first he thought it was in his head. Then he realized it happened too often. He never mentioned it to anyone. In Asterión City there were things it was better not to name.
The city dealt with its irregularities with a cruel kind of elegance: it simply stopped talking about them.
No one remembered exactly when the first explorers had arrived. Or when the first crystal tower had risen, splitting the light into seven impossible colors. Or why certain neighborhoods would vanish from the maps for weeks only to reappear as if nothing had happened.
People got used to it. The city was efficient. Orderly. Almost perfect.
Too perfect.
Thomas liked to think that cities, like people, should have small lapses. A clock that runs slow. An elevator that stops on a floor that doesn't exist. A bus that opens its doors with no passengers inside.
But if you paid attention—that kind of attention that aches behind the eyes—every flaw always seemed to gather at the exact same point in the city.
Thomas still didn't know that point had a name.
Most people didn't either.
The explorers did.
They simply called it
The Impossible City.