How to Make a Clock Run for 10,000 Years

Summary

June 23, 2011: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, plans to sponsor a clock in a mountain in Texas that will run for 10,000 years. The founders of this project, which have organized themselves in the "Long Now Foundation", expect the clock to outlast the current civilization and inspire future generations of humans

Source

Bibliography

1. Original article

2. Project Homepage

3. Arcana Wiki Map entry

Game and Story Use

• Perhaps this is more than an attempt to tell time - perhaps this is intended to solidify time, and thus make time travel harder than it used to be.
  • Or an attempt to provide The Constant and a frame of reference for Time Travelers in the future.
• In a game set After the End, the PCs might be wandering the wastelands when they find something like this. It's clearly a valuable and special piece of long-forgotten tech from before the end of civilization, but it's not treasure in the usual portable sense.
  • Such a device might be the centerpiece of a community that grew up around it, with wasteland elders carefully divining omens and portents from the machine's inner workings or the strange pinging sounds they make.
• A sci-fi game set several thousand years from now could feature a celebration at the site as people eagerly await the cuckoo that comes out of the clock only once per millennium.