Obsession is apt. The story is is a personal history – an horological link bildungsroman if you will – of the growth of one man's obsession with mechanical watches, which, says Gibson, are link lovable because, like the love-them-or-they-die digital pets called tamagotchi, they need attention and care. He wrote, of watches, "They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're comforting precisely because link they require tending."