TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 6: The Timekeeper

An artistic rendition of the Timekeeper's eye as seen in Ray's dream

I recall finding myself surrounded by nothingness and a prevalent humming was all I could hear. A tall silhouette was walking towards me twirling what looked like a fancy walking stick with sparks coming out of it in all directions. He was bald and wore a glass derby hat, a midnight blue frock coat with gold trimmings and knee-high boots. As he got closer I could see that his eyes looked like the whole universe resided in them. He waved his fancy stick and directed sparks to a specific spot in the nothingness around us. A window started to form and his dark lips broke into a smile as he spoke to me:

“Greetings, I’m the Timekeeper and this is my domain. I call it the Anteverse, a place that exists an instant before your present. I can sense your curiosity regarding the humming. All you need to know for now is that it connects closely to what lies ahead: a future without time.”

I tried to speak but no sound came out of my mouth. Through the window created by the Timekeeper I could see the sun rising behind the cityscape. The strange entity continued its monologue:

“You’re being shown a road. Follow it and you’ll discover what the future looks like. I assure you it is not what you’ve been told before. Let me present to you something intimately linked to your quest. You see the city coming alive through the window? Just a short while ago it was all energy. What you seek is all about energy.”

A distant electronic sound started to break through the humming. As it got louder I realized it was my wake-up alarm. The Timekeeper and his Anteverse went back to the dream world where they originated as I woke up in a sweat.

I remember feeling very disoriented as I went through my morning routine. The weirdness of the previous night encounter with the ‘Einstein’ intruder combined with the acid-type dream of the man with a glass derby hat and a sparky thingamajig had rattled me more than I cared to admit at the time. I decided to shake it off by walking to the office that day.

Throughout the day I found it very hard to concentrate on the Chronologix presentation. My mind kept going back to the old man’s claim that I had summoned him. I ate half a sandwich on my desk as I worked over lunch. Around 2:00 PM one of our art directors brought me a promotional piece he got during lunch. It was a small glass derby hat.

He liked the piece and was talking to me about how we could do something like that as a follow-up piece for the new business presentation. I could hardly hear what he was saying. The little glass hat had a logo that read Clear Heads and the slogan ‘Hats off to great coffee’. It instantaneously transported me back to the weird Timekeeper dream. The coincidence was too much. I took a deep breath, told the art director to work out the specifics of the follow-up piece and decided to, once again,  go for a walk to clear my mind. Something that didn’t work at all that morning but out of pure stubbornness I decided to try again.

While walking, the details of the Timekeeper’s dream came back to me. Some of the character’s claims made me wonder what, if anything, was my subconscious trying to tell me. Was it that I was on the wrong track in my research about the nature of time? What road was I being shown? And what was that ‘future without time’ claim all about? After mulling over my memories of the dream for a while, I decided that if my sub-conscious was indeed talking to me through the Timekeeper character then I would follow its advice. If it believed that what I sought was all about energy then I would redirect my research towards the relationship of time and energy.

Feeling reinvigorated I went back to the office. My plan was to do some research but as soon as I got back I was pulled into a meeting to review what was being done for the Chronologix presentation. The meeting took the rest of the afternoon. Around 6:00 PM I finally made it back to my desk and the lack of sleep caught up with me. I dozed off until 7:30 PM when the sound of the janitorial crew’s vacuum cleaner woke me up. Figured it was time to go home.

I stopped by a hamburger joint on the way and had a blue-cheese burger with bacon and a large side dish of wedge fries with ketchup. It was delicious and I really, really needed that. I chased everything down with a Belgian beer which further lowered my engine’s revolutions. I was finally ready to call it a day.

When I got home there was a new security guard on duty. I asked about Alastair and he told me it was his day off. Of course, it was Tuesday, I had lost track of time. I asked the new guy if he had any information regarding the security tapes and last night’s intruder. The young man was still wet behind the ears but what he lacked in experience he more that compensated with good disposition. He told me he would find out and get back to me.

I went up to my apartment, opened the door and there he was again…