Unlikely Tales

The Measured Passage of Time

Dillon's watch was the latest model; a Timekeeper Galaxy, the most sophisticated time-keeping device yet created. It displayed the correct time and date no matter where Dillon was in the world. It could triangulate his position by communicating with satellites and updated these calculations every second, so Dillon always knew the precise time at his location. His inherent need for order, and the timekeeping abilities of his watch ensured that every second of Dillon's day was planned to maximize efficiency and improve the effectiveness of his every action. His obsession with time had manifested itself early in his life. 

As a child he was soothed by the reassuring regularity of the kitchen clock. Every night he was lulled to sleep by the 'tick-tock' of the analog clock in his bedroom, and every morning he was awoken by the precisely timed 'briiiing' of his alarm clock. As the years went by in the Earth's constant cycle around the sun, Dillon's need for the measured constancy of time grew into an obsession. Every birthday was heralded by the gift of a new watch, bestowed by Dillon's slightly bemused parents; and attempts to give him gifts more befitting of a boy his age, such as toys and computer games, were summarily dismissed. 

Now, at seventeen, Dillon had graduated from high school, and rather than indulging in the time-wasting revelries of Schoolies, he was heading to his first job interview. As he stood waiting to board a city bus - which had arrived precisely eleven point three seconds late - he was hit from the side by a small, hard body. Startled, he spun around to see an unkempt youth sprinting away. Unnerved by this reminder of humanity's apparent disregard of reason and regularity, Dillon glanced at his watch to reassure himself of its continued abeyance of the natural order. His wrist was bare; his watch was gone. 

Appalled, Dillon staggered back, away from the bus. Seeing no more passengers waiting to board, the driver closed the doors and joined the traffic streaming by. At the bus stop Dillon sagged against the shelter, staring incredulously at the untanned band of skin which had been occupied by a watch for the last twelve years of his life. He felt bereft, adrift in a raging sea of chaos and disorder. He had no measure of time, no sense of its ordered passage; seconds seemed to slip through his fingers like sand through a cracked hourglass. Desperately he caught the arm of a passing woman, demanding the time. Frightened, she wrenched her arm from his grasp and disappeared into the swirling mass of people traversing the city streets. Dillon stumbled through the crowd, begging for the time, but the desperate entreaty on his face repulsed people and he was roughly buffeted back to the dubious shelter of the bus stop. 

Abruptly cognisant of the significance of his surroundings, Dillon sought out the list of bus times on the side of the shelter, only to see the digital screen cracked and blank. He was lost, without time, unsure even of the time of arrival of the next bus; possibly already late for his job interview. He sank onto the seat, time seeming to distort around him. The babble of the passing crowd alternately roared in his ears and receded into silence. The regular cadence of time was lost to him, and there was a silence in his mind which had previously been filled by time's regular beat. His world was falling apart; all that was familiar and ordered was gone, and he fell into a black pit of despair. 

What might have been seconds or an eternity later, Dillon became aware of his surroundings. He was still hunched on the bus shelter seat, but he no longer knew why he had been compelled to assume that position. There was a lightness in his heart, which had never previously resided there; and an unfamiliar sense of freedom was welling up within him. He looked at his wrist and the absence of his watch no longer distressed him. Instead he felt a strong sense of liberty; as if he had been labouring under a heavy burden all of his life. In a sudden rush of insight he understood what it meant to be free of time. Freed of its restrictions, Dillon knew that he could never return to his former dry lifestyle, dictated by numbers. His new freedom burst fully upon him, drawing him to his feet and releasing a startled laugh from a throat unused to such exercise. A bus pulled up beside him and he stepped onto it with a light heart; he didn't care where it took him, his job interview at McDonald's no longer appealed to him. Now he was free to seek out his true destiny.