Lost and wandering, I found myself in a desert.

It was eerie. I hadn’t appeared there, and I hadn’t randomly walked in. Instead, it was as if a light switch had turned on in my head, and I was suddenly self-aware, almost like I’d been sleeping for a while in contrast, but had gradually found myself coming to.

In this desert, I was alone. There were rocks and things in it, and lots of sand of course, but no other people walking around except for myself. That’s what I thought at least, until I happened to stumble upon a watch.

Just a watch. It sat there, and it told time, and it ticked. But that’s all it was. There was no indication of how long it had been there though, no sign of a watchmaker anywhere else—just a lone, single watch.

Then I wondered how far away a watchmaker could’ve been, since they were clearly nowhere near, and so I walked in order to find one.

But then something funny happened. I saw more watches, and more, and they were sort of in a line, in a way, each one getting shorter in distance from the one behind it. And as I kept walking, and I stumbled upon more and more watches, I realized that they had gradually gotten less and less complex, with fewer parts making them up. Then, after a while, they weren’t watches anymore, but instead just fragments of other watches.

And at some point, I saw them reproducing. The watches—they were reproducing other various forms of watches. But then I realized that the ones that couldn’t tell time were getting destroyed. Swiftly and violently smashed by an unknown force, but with no ability to protect themselves.

“What is my purpose?” I then screamed out. “Why am I here!”

And suddenly, out of nowhere, the skies opened up. And from them, a single voice. A lone voice. And it commanded, in a loud, booming sound, “You tell time. DO IT.”

And so I did.