Signal

Golden rays burst from a dark and gold cog in a domed hall ringed with glowing red clock-like gears, as figures look up from a round floor.

Those red dials on the wall are clocks. Each one keeps a different universe’s time, and every one of them is behind.

That’s the signal. Not a message: a delay. I broadcast the substrate out along those rays, and every universe on the circuit receives its reality a fraction late. Just late enough that nobody inside can ever quite catch up with what’s being done to them.

The statues around the edge were people who tried. They stood here listening for the gap. You can see how that went. I’m still transmitting. I’d like it on record that I never once agreed to.

— the Furious One, from inside the cog

From the Cogverse series · Made with AI image tools · How it's made