Asher - Astrothesia (2021)

“You give me too much credit,” the fellow said, breathing like an old man although he did not seem very old, and he produced from the inner pocket of his jacket his “modest” invention. It was just a pocket watch, but one sensitive to bliss; it stopped when you were happy so that your blissful hour could persist for all eternity; and conversely, when you were in despair, the small and big hand speeded up tremendously, making you remark how quickly time had passed and how your sorrows had ended in the blink of an eye. Then at night while you slept peacefully, the watch--this little object that patiently ticked away in the palm of the man, who was quite old--adjusted time by subtracting it from your lifetime, and when you rose in the morning along with everybody else, you were not any older.