Day 617

The museum's model village had been set up perfectly - a place for everything and everything in its place. It's main marvel was the thousands of tiny 00 Gauge Figures painted with precise, minute details and arranged in all manner of conversations and everyday occurrences.

It mimicked one of the neighbouring villages perfectly, the figures almost seeming to match the events there but one day behind. So if you ever wanted to know who did what yesterday you'd only have to check the model railway in the natural history museum. Lives have been saved this way - nobody can ever go missing in the area when their tiny duplicate is on the model and doing just what they were.

Murders have even been solved this way - it's now police procedure to check the diorama before commencing any kind of investigation. The diorama is classed as eyewitness testimony and indisputable proof. Nobody questions it.

Lately though, it's been less behind local events. Sometimes you can even see the people moving about ever so slowly but just as the people they represent move.

Some reckon they're eventually going to show us the future, show us who will die and when and by whom. They think a disaster is coming and want to burn the whole museum down. Of course there's an opposing side who want to see their futures, see who they'll marry and how many children they'll have. They're starting to worship the damned thing.

Just last week the tension between these groups came to a climax when the Anti-Burners (as they call themselves) built a chain fence around the museum and tied themselves to it. The Pro-Burners tried to get the police involved only to find the chief was chained there as well - of his own free will of course.

And as for me and where I fit into this?

I'm the one that's been moving the figures all these years.

Seeing everything and showing them all. Hiding underneath the museum floorboards when anyone comes in - I have trapdoors all over the place, leading deep into the countryside and three neighbouring towns. The second they turn their backs I move my little friends about with tiny magnets and motors and now that I've caught up to the present I can make them do whatever I want.

I have a village full of puppets too busy fighting each other to look down.