The hands of your wrist watch turn at different speeds, traveling through time—that is, if you have one of those ancient timepieces from a more practical era. Sometimes those old watches slow down as time passes over them, just as the rest of life eventually slows. They need to be wound up again.

When you take hold of the tiny winding crown, force flows from the very tips of your fingers and moves through that miniscule turning piece into all that delicate clockwork, into the spring. Each turn tightens the spring a little more. Many watches had a stopper inside to prevent too much winding—to keep the spring from snapping loose. But the oldest timepieces didn’t have this safety mechanism, or tinkering watchmakers removed them, if they did. If you weren’t careful with these ancient devices, you’d pop the delicate clockwork to pieces.

Time moves in the same, slow, smooth, delicate way as clockwork. It turns, revolves, slides into and out of place, needs to stay wound tight. But not too tight. However, time didn’t flow like it should have for Panoply Diggery as she scampered down the sidewalk at the edge of a busy, breezy, Detroit skyway. In her case, time was just a turn too tight. Ready to pop it’s clockwork at the least expected moment.

Panoply, or Pip as she preferred to be called, rushed down the narrow, concrete walk on her way to school. Rain drizzled down around her, splishing and sploshing under foot. Her elderly neighbor, Amanda, called after her from the door of their rundown apartment complex, waving. The old woman had just gone to get her mail, and Pip had held the lobby door for her before rushing out herself.

Panoply hated her name because the word meant a ‘collection or array’ of things. She felt it just didn’t fit her, since there was and had only ever been one of her. And she was the only one left of her whole family. She held back a wince when Amanda called her by her proper name. But Amanda couldn’t have known it irritated Pip, because Pip had never told her. So she couldn’t be mad at the sweet old lady, not even a little bit.

She threw an affectionate wave back over her shoulder. Then she adjusted her slipping backpack straps and hurried on toward the sky tram station. The concrete under her clumpy work boots was only six inches thick, hanging from the side of the apartments and houses that sat sandwiched together in the 32nd Tier of the city. That left six inches of concrete between her and thirty-one levels of open air. Plenty of other people jostled and crammed themselves together, moving up and down the walk, heading for access stairs, tram stations, air taxi stops, or just continuing to walk wherever they were going. Most were cramming themselves as far from that long drop as possible. But Pip didn’t mind the drop. She usually took advantage of the sliver of empty space at the curb to get where she needed to go faster than everyone else. And she always loved the dizzying effect of staring straight down the sky at the almost invisible ground below. Wafts of smog usually shrouded the lowest levels and whatever lay below them.

Today she didn’t have time for dizzy pleasure though. Her only thought was about her exam. “Today is my last test before graduation. I’m going to pass with flying colors and go on to Machinist Academy. I’m going to work on Detroit’s beautiful suspension and all, for the rest of my life!”

Pip clomped up behind tram station 602. The stations on Tier 32 were all little squat three-walled huts with leaky roofs. Each station was just big enough for ten people, or twelve if they squeezed, which they almost always did. The stations were situated right at the edge of the curb. People had to grab ahold of the side of the terminal and swing themselves nervously around the sidewall to get in. But Pip didn’t mind that either. She was itching to swing herself over the edge of high tiers, down onto girders and struts, and tip-toe around on the city’s undertiers like a monkey in the zoo. Top Tiers would be the most fun to work on, since she’d heard the streets were glass and waterfalls poured down from tier to tier. She’d be able to watch all Detroit’s uber rich go about their business from below their feet or above their heads, and play in all that cool fresh water. It was even rumored that there were real trees up at the highest levels.

Pip swung around the station wall, and plopped herself down in the very last space left on the dirty bench, backpack swinging down into her lap with a thump. She felt bolted to the dry wooden plank between the grimy wall and the other grimy station inhabitants. Being unable to move much made her squirmy. Her toes wiggled in her boots as she kicked her feet over the precipice in front of her. She looked down the bench. The other people were mostly normal rain-stained folks—business-people types, laborers, a couple students from other Tier 32 schools—squeezed into the station building. Several tatty umbrellas stuck out into the rain because they wouldn’t fit inside. But she really had to try not to stare at a little boy squished in beside her who was just sticking a huge wad of pink gum to the bottom of the seat. His mother obliviously sandwiched him between herself and Pip, while reading a newspaper. A smell of dried pee that was reviving in the drizzle came up from under the bench.

I forgot how nasty tram stations can be. Oh, well. She sighed, realizing she had only forgotten because she was so focused on her final exam. She suddenly felt foolish. She used tram stations almost daily. And she had thought she’d never ever forget how bad they were, even in the paradise of the Machinist Academy.

She wondered if people in far off, foreign places like Lansing had these problems. She had never been outside Detroit, or even off this tier before, and everywhere else in the world seemed hundreds of lightyears away. But soon she’d be hundreds of lightyears away from all that and all her problems. The Machinist Academy would shield her from them all. No more smelly people. No more smelly streets. No more gum benches. No more dumpy apartments. Most of all, no more being alone in the throng of the city. She would have amazing metal machines; wonderful oily, greasy machine smells; clean, fresh dorms; and only people like her, who would understand her and care about her as she was.

I suppose I’ll miss Amanda, though. She’s always been nice to me, since mom and dad—But she didn’t want to think that thought yet. It was too painful. Amanda has her niece, Trin, to take care of her. So, I know she’ll be alright without me. And I’ll be sure to say goodbye before I leave for good.

Just then, the tram horn blared, blowing her train of thought off its tracks. She resisted the urge to jump to her feet, since there wasn’t anything in front of her to stand on. The tram lumbered up to the curb and came to a stop, extending a boarding walk from the side of its hull, and the side door slid open. Pip stuck her arms through her backpack straps, clutching her bag to her chest and got aboard the tram. Air tram thieves were experts at getting into bags that were out of sight of the owners. Leaving a zipper bag behind her back would just be inviting someone to sneak something out of the pockets on the ride to school.

As a bunch of grizzled passengers got on and off the tram around her, she was glad to see that gum-bench-boy and his mother had stayed at the station. I guess this isn’t their tram. Phew.

The tram doors closed again. In a more expensive transport, there might have been hologram ads on the windows or news reels running around the edges of the ceiling. But this was one of the lower tiers. The trams here just had crude paper posters glued up over the windows. The driver would change the posters occasionally, pasting up a new set over the older ones. Pip was squeezed into a space near a window covered with a giant kitten with huge sad eyes. The text below the kitten said, “Donate to Lost Kittens Fund: 100 Imperial Dollars a Day Can Save My Life”.

Most posters like that were scams, and most people knew it. Some were gullible enough to fall for them. But they just got laughed at by others, including the police, when they realized they had wasted the cash. “A lesson learned” was all that was ever said anymore. Pip smirked at the poster. But inside, she felt a little sorry for the kitten as well. The photographer had probably found a lost kitten that nobody cared about and stepped on its poor little paws in order to collect the most pathetic image he could. I know just how the kitten must feel.

As she stared at the kitten, Pip caught a view of outside from around the edge of the poster out the corner of her eye. The buildings were different than she remembered. She had taken the same route to school for six years. The same buildings always crept by outside the tram. Now new buildings were speeding by. Flying up past the tram. That’s odd—

Suddenly, the tram lurched to the side. Pip banged into another passenger beside her. She grabbed for the rail under the kitten poster, holding on for dear life. The smashing of glass came from the windows across the tram. Pip glanced over her shoulder to see three or four people fly out the side windows. One of the airborne passengers hit the edge of a sidewalk as the sky tram scudded past Tier 18. The tram skewed onto its side, spinning wildly in the air.

Pip looked back at the kitten. For a second she wondered if its pathetic mouth was far enough open to be making the shriek of fear she was sure was coming out of it. But then she realized she was the one screaming, not the kitten on the poster. She hugged the rail with both arms, feeling her legs and body swing toward the ceiling. The tram hit the face of a stack of restaurants on Tier 14, throwing her against the wall, and spun back into the skyway. Other passengers were being tossed into her. Someone hurtled by over her head and crashed through the lost kitten, flying out into thin air.

Pip saw the Tier 4 station sign roll by. They were very close to the ground now. She shut her eyes tight. The tram slammed into the side of another restaurant on Tier 2 and ricocheted away from the curb again. Pip felt weightless for a moment, and then her whole body hit the bench under her, knocking the breath out of her. Her head hit the window ledge under the kitten’s tattered paws, and everything went dark.