Bàbá Aláago. That’s what you used to call me when we were alive. Truly alive—with wrinkled flesh and creaking bones.

In my workshop on Akíntólá Street, I fixed timepieces while my own body betrayed me. Blood soured, sight weakened, yet I mended what others discarded. Modern or ancient, I would make time work again beneath my fingers.

Two minutes before my heart would have stopped, Dev found me. Promised eternity in digital form. With you already gone, what did I have to lose?

That was fourteen harvests ago in the physical world. Here in Dev, I’ve lived centuries.
They call me the Clockmaker now. The artisan who died when his arthritic joints could no longer turn tiny screws, reborn as someone who shapes time itself. Outside my window, the sun hovers at the exact angle it did on our wedding day—because I coded it that way. Last week, I programmed dawn to break in a fiery array of pink and orange over a manufactured indigo sky, repeating its dance four times before setting—all because you loved sunrise.

Time here is a living, breathing thing—something I can stretch between my fingers like taffy, compress into dense moments of intensity, or loop in perfect circles.

My clients find me when physical life has stolen something precious. The grieving mother who relives her daughter’s graduation speech. The couple who met too late in physical life, now experiencing fifty additional years together in a weekend.

After they leave, I return to our bedroom. Not the one where your illness consumed you, but the one I’ve re-created with obsessive precision. The window always shows that October evening when light filtered through red curtains, casting everything in warm amber—your last good day.

I’ve adjusted this memory-space countless times. The temperature matches your preference. The scent of your favourite stew simmers eternally from the kitchen. I’ve stretched this single hour into years of subjective time—minutes stretch into centuries as I watch dust motes dance in sunbeams. I’ve fine-tuned that moment, perfected it until I can almost feel your weight on the mattress beside me, hear your light chuckle, smell your comforting fragrance.

While some clients have lived subjective millennia in Dev though only months have passed outside, others experience just seconds of Dev time during physical weeks. Only I—their master craftsman—live each night in a frozen second: that last time you smiled at me before your final breath.
Dev promised freedom from physical limitations, but grief transcends form. Here, I have eternity to remember what I’ve lost.

I know you’re not coming to Dev, Àbèké. There was no technology to preserve you when fever took you thirty-four physical years ago. I’ll never look up to find you standing in my workshop doorway.
Still, I’ve saved this moment—where the light will always be perfect, the air forever crisp with approaching rain. In my hands, time will always wait for you.

Forever yours,
The Clockmaker.

Written by Inumidun Seyiolapade