In an abandoned glass factory in East London, 24 carousels are spinning at different speeds. Their wooden skeletons are covered with vines, and stained glass reflects strange spots of light in the dusk. This forgotten playground is a secret garden built by retired mechanic Edwin Howard over forty years.
The first Trojan horse was born on Christmas Eve in 1978. Edwin, then an apprentice watchmaker, had an idea while repairing an antique music box. He combined clockwork gears with oak carvings to create a miniature Trojan horse that can rise and fall with music. As the first unicorn was spinning on the table carrying glass snowflakes, he saw the embroidery patterns on his late mother's apron flowing among the horse's mane.
From then on, he would build a new Trojan horse every year on his birthday. The 1983 Leo Trojan was equipped with real manes that made a low neigh when rotated; the 1995 jellyfish Trojan was cast of transparent resin and flowed with liquid silver light inside; the 2008 space Trojan was equipped with a miniature ion thruster, which can be suspended in the air for three minutes. Each Trojan horse contains memory fragments from a specific year-newspaper ink from the return of Hong Kong in 1997, steel slag from the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, and window sill dew during the 2020 epidemic lockdown.
The most mysterious one is the No. 13 Trojan Horse "Cocoon of Time." This device, made of brass and quartz, houses Edwin's pocket watch from his youth. When moonlight penetrates through the cracks in the dome, the dial will project images parallel to time and space: myself in steampunk costumes repairing a flying boat in another world, or my white-haired self reunited with a young lover under the cherry blossom tree.
"They are not toys," Edwin said to the wandering painter who accidentally broke in."They are 24 cracks in time. "The old man's oil-covered fingers brushed across the wings of the No. 7 Trojan Horse, the Laurel Goddess, and the gold-plated feathers suddenly trembled, shaking off the snow grains from Birmingham in 1985.
As the bulldozers of urban transformation approached, a group of artists calling themselves "memory topology" discovered it. They used a 3D scanner to record the curvature of each wood grain and reconstruct a breathing digital Trojan horse in virtual space. When the 24th Trojan horse "Ring of End" was completed, all machinery beeped at the same time, and 24 beams of light intertwined in the dome to form a Mobius Ring.
"Look at this! "The young statistician screamed and pointed to the holographic projection. In the quantum computer simulation, 24 Trojan horses are rotating backwards along the Timeline: the 2023 Cyberg Trojan broke down into a 2005 steampunk version, the 1999 Millennium Trojan faded away from the LED strips, and finally all machinery returned to the original heart of 1978-the brass gears embedded in the music box.
The night the demolition order was issued, Edwin turned on all the wooden horses. 24 kinds of mechanical music from different eras symphoned in the ruins, shocking the jackdaws perched on the beams. When the first brick wall collapsed, the No. 12 Trojan "Memory Whale" suddenly spewed out a rainbow-colored data stream, sealing the entire space in a transparent force field bubble.
Three years later, in the center of the newly completed Cross-dimensional Art Museum, 24 constantly reorganized merry-go-round suspended. Visitors can experience memory resonances in a specific year by wearing a nerve connection headband. Some people saw the 1989 Berlin Wall collapse between the saddles of wooden horses, and others smelled the smell of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami wrapped around the stirrups.
The real miracle happens at midnight. When all electronic devices enter sleep mode, the 24-seat Trojan will regain its original mechanical kinetic energy. In moments unseen, they carry invisible passengers through the rift in time-girls in floral skirts riding a gilded 1953 Trojan horse chasing late trolleys, soldiers wearing gas masks sitting on the backs of 1918 war horses waiting for the truce, and the AI consciousness of future cities huddled in the 2147 anti-gravity Trojan horse to learn how to dream.
Edwin's ashes were placed in position 0-inside the original heart-shaped gear. Whenever the moon phase is complete, the gears will vibrate like a heartbeat, and the 24-seat Trojan horse will adjust its rotation frequency accordingly. Archaeologists found in the wreckage a hundred years later that the wear trajectory of these machines completely matched the wave curve of human collective memory.
Nowadays, whenever unknown spots of light flash across the city's night sky, people always claim to see 24 rotating halos looming among the clouds. Maybe it was just the aurora, or maybe it was some stubborn old soul who finally repaired the revolving door to eternity.
