It was his gift on the day he was born. Perhaps he was the only baby in the world to receive a wall clock as a present. But it was a gift from his grandfather, and it would always be something special to him. And indeed, it was not just an ordinary wall clock. If you looked closely, it was a small house, inside which lived a bird. A cuckoo. The cuckoo would come out every now and then and announce the time. Cuckoo at twelve. Cuckoo at one. Easy job. Or so you think. But this was no ordinary cuckoo. It was a cuckoo that knew how to count. Not only time, minutes, and seconds. It knew how to count people. To understand their thoughts, to see their lives, to watch them wake up, leave, return, talk, study, rest. And it knew when to come out of its house.