Life in Inuvik, Northwest Territories

Last night, a fire alarm resounded throughout the apartment building.

By coincidence, (maybe they are related, I don’t know) a power outage had also shorted all my clocks to flash 12:00.

I exited the building — wearing slippers, standing in 24-hour sunlight — and realized: “I have no idea what time it is.”

Was it 2am? Was I late for work, had I slept in because of the alarm? I could hear birds. What did that mean? How long had I slept?

I later listened to the radio and discovered it was 6:50am.