Chapter 4 Watchmaker Summary

Chapter 4 takes place on the surface of the planet Mars and involves Jon as he reminisces about his life. The chapter's chronology is particularly complex as Jon's existence transcends time in the conventional notion - he lives simultaneously, more or less, in the past, future, and present. He therefore seems to inherently know what is going to happen, although his clarity of vision is sometimes distorted by certain types of sub-atomic events. In this, summary events are presented in a generally chronological order, even though Jon certainly does not remember them in the order given.

In 1945, Jon is learning how to be a watchmaker, like his father. He has taken his father's pocket watch apart and is reassembling it, when his father comes home and announces the startling news of the first atomic detonation at Hiroshima. His father concludes that watchmakers...