The doomsday device would display the amount of time you had to get back to your hive and enter the Medium before the forest was destroyed.
At the time, it wouldn't occur to you to wonder whether the device was directly responsible for the apocalypse, or merely served as its precisely calibrated harbinger. And it certainly wouldn't occur to you to cast doubt on any perceived difference between those two things.
It wouldn't until later, when you better understood the game you were about to play.
Hey check it out. Every week we'll be revealing some new troll characters from Hiveswap until Act 2 is out. Follow the Troll Call here, and meet the first two here. Expect a few more surprises like this to drop in coming weeks.