Originally shared as a comment
for the prompt
provided by Ghost .

She sits on a bench in a frozen world, where a man is getting out of a Tesla Ultima.

They warned the 2999 transition might startle clocks, especially with all the hullabaloo that (didn't) happen in 1999.

But she hadn't anticipated the clockwork would freeze altogether.

Still, she knows time must pass somewhere; she can count the breezes that come and go to prove it.

One autumn.

Four autumns.

Thirteen autumns, dancing through the one lock of hair that still moves...

She likes to think, someday, alien children will land on Earth, on a museum tour of the superintelligently technological planet—the civilization that let time take them too far.

"Here is a clock-obsessed culture," the green-skinned art history intern would say. "They lived in the wheeling drumbeat of nine-to-five jobs for six generations. Then they fought to keep their slavery to the clock, long after robots could take labor over."

"But why?" one of the children would ask.

Sitting on a park bench, semi-frozen, this is what the woman asks her trembling lock of hair now.

♦️

First draft: October 18
Word count: 194 (without A/N)
Inspiration: Fast & Ghosty Prompt #4, which was based off a creepy gif, located here:
https://my.w.tt/rZDnzKoWVQ