All Tomorrow's Parties

by William Gibson (excerpt)

WHERE did you find it?"

"Treasure Island," the boy lies, passing the watch, a solid brown wafer of corrosion, across the glass countertop.

Silencio peers through his loupe at the damp biscuit of metal. He scores the rust with a diamond scribe. "Stainless," he admits, knowing the boy will know that that is good, though not good as gold. Worth the price of a meal.

"I want to see you fix it," the boy says.

Silencio twists the loupe from his eye and looks at the boy, as if noticing him for the first time.

"I want to see you fix it." The boy points down, indicating the watches arrayed beneath the glass.

"The bed," Silencio says. "You were here with Sandro, when we restored that Vacheron."

Silencio brings the restoration bed from the rear of the shop, a square cushion, ten inches on a side. He places it on the counter and the boy bends close, to see the velvety green surface made up of millions of manipulators.

Silencio places the watch on the bed. They watch as it rises smoothly on edge, as if of its own accord, and then seems to sink, impossibly, as if through the shallow bed and the glass beneath. Vanishing like a coin set into soft mud...

Silencio looks at the watch on his wrist, a military Jaeger-LeCoultre, RAAF. "Nine minutes," he said. "There's coffee."

"I want to watch," the boy says.

"Nothing to see."

Within the bed, the rusted disk of the watch is being read and disassembled. Molecules are moving. In nine minutes it will rise again, bright and perfect as the day it first left its factory in Switzerland.

"I want to watch," the boy says.

Silencio understands. He goes to get the coffee.