He wanted to know why the clock hadn’t chimed when the hour needle had struck twelve.  His grandmother stepped off the bed, shuffled to the clock cabinet, jiggled in it a bit and said, Sshhh now, like you the clock’s lost its voice.  Just like that, he felt in himself the vibrational suffering of that tall standing clock’s struggle to speak.  It surprised him then when the minute needle suddenly clicked forward:  the clock had lost its voice but was still working?!  He snapped up in bed without in the least intending to.  Keep your rest, his grandmother warned, and yet he was filled with energy to run up and down long fields.  He hopped off his grandmother’s bed, out the bedroom, halfway down the stairs before he knew he would stumble if he didn’t in that instant sit down.  He did, — and then helped his grandmother help him get up the stairs and back into bed.  The minute needle had by now moved seven more spaces.  He caught his grandmother’s eye watching him, and watched then each word — Don’t Compare Yourself To A Machine — get formed by her lips.  He felt his empathy for the clock fade away and dissolve, though the visual memory of those words on his grandmother’s lips continued to live on in him, to visit him whenever he worked himself to the bone, and always, he one day realized, upon first hearing in him a chime.