"Of course not," rapped out the Clockwork man, "I'm only an invention."
"But you look real," objected Arthur.
The Clockwork man emitted a faint, cacophonous cackle.
"We feel real when the dream states unroll within us, or the music records. But the makers are real, and they live in the real world. No clockwork man is allowed to get back into the real world. The clock prevents us from doing that. It was because we were such a nuisance and got in the way of the makers that they invented the clock."
"But what is the real world like?" questioned Arthur.
"How can I know?" said the Clockwork man, flapping his ears in despair. "I'm fixed. I can't be anything beyond what the clock permits me to be. Only, since I've been in your world, I've had a suspicion. It's such a jolly little place. And you have women."
Arthur caught his breath. "No women?"
"No. You see, the makers kept all the women because they were more real, and they didn't want the fighting to go on, or the world that the men wanted. So the makers took the women away from us and shut us up in the clocks and gave us the world we wanted. But they left us no loophole of escape into the real world, and we can neither laugh nor cry properly."
"But you try," suggested Arthur.