It felt like years; but could it have been? David Clinton didn't know. He had no way to know. However long it had been, here was he, still imprisoned, his time equipment confiscated. They allowed him other tools, allowed him to build them weapons and repair their clocks, but they never let him set them. He just fixed them, he wasn't allowed to know the time. He wasn't allowed. It was terribly, terribly unjust. He couldn't imagine a single thing he had done to deserve this fate, in particular.

Years, perhaps. Perhaps years he had been here. Sometimes he heard about familiar names on the radio that played faintly from the other room, and sometimes he hoped. He would be remembered, perhaps, even rescued. He shouldn't be here at all -- no, not at all. He wasn't from this time period, and he worried about the affect his very presence there had.

"Terribly, terribly unfair," he whispered to himself, "Just dreadful, here. Absolutely dreadful. Enid, my dear, perhaps you were right all along. Only a loser would wind up in this predicament, wouldn't he? Any day now. Any day, certainly."

He waited, talking to himself in hopes that one day someone would invade the facility, that they'd hear him and let him out. It hadn't happened so far.