The Keeper of Time

A different slant on Nine-Eleven.

The Keeper of Time

       Charles Altimeter laughed, but it was a horrible laugh, an inward wrenching that held no trace of mirth. He was trapped, and it was his own doing, trapped and watching his minutes run out, like sand pouring through an errant hourglass, only the hourglass was a thin blue mist lightly attached to his forehead. He was a freak, always had been, and how had this helped him? Obviously, not at all. There was one comforting aspect to his impending doom. His daughter had taken his advice and not gone to work.

As he watched the workers around him holding cell phones to their ears, assuring family members that they would be rescued and moving out of the building as soon as the stairs were clear, he, alone, knew the truth. None of them would ever leave this building again. Every one of them, including himself, had variations of the same number hovering ominously in front of their face, thirty-five, and he knew that they had exactly that many minutes left in their span of years, thirty-five, no, thirty-four small minutes until the end.

It was not unchangeable and they were not without hope. A little while ago he’d seen all of the numbers change to differing figures, forty-five years for one young lady, six days for the man on her left, but then, in an instant, they returned to sameness. Whatever event had been promising was not going to save them. He considered calling his daughter but changed his mind. He didn’t want her last words from him to remind her that he was here because of their conversation earlier this morning.

“Don’t go to work this morning,” he'd pleaded.

“Dad, your silly premonitions again? Of course I have to go to work! I have final reports to finish and three clients to see. Don’t worry about me! I’ll be fine!” When he’d arrived at her office a little while ago, determined to talk her outside, he'd found that she had reconsidered and called in sick. Moments later they had felt an impact and before he could leave he was trapped with the others, watching the smoldering of what was left of a huge plane wedged into the building beneath them. None of them were going anywhere unless a helicopter appeared on the roof to rescue them, and according to the running meters on the foreheads around him, it was not going to happen.

He tried to remember the first time he had seen the meter running on someone’s forehead, but he couldn’t. They had always been there, even before he knew what the numbers were. He’d assumed that everyone saw them, until he was old enough to mention it to someone.

“Mom. Did you see Granddaddy’s head? It’s different!”

“Different?’ She looked up and then over to her Dad, who looked just like he always had to her. “Dad. Did you get a haircut?”

“Hmmph.” She supposed that meant no.

“Nothing’s different, Hon.” But Charles didn’t quit.

“His number. It was big and now it's little.” He wasn’t quite old enough to read the numbers yet but he knew they were numbers and he knew they were different. “Can’t you see it? On his head. “

“What’s on his head?” She walked over and ran her hand through her father's hair, then patted his shoulder affectionately. "Nothing is on his head.” Charles didn’t say anything else that day but for the first time he realized that his own forehead number changed frequently, too. The first time he ever saw a human without his numbers was the next week when he attended his Grandfather’s funeral. As he looked into the casket, he realized that they were gone. The motionless man’s forehead was pale and smooth, and the blue numbers were gone.

After several visits to different therapists and treatment with a couple of different drugs, he learned not to talk about them. No one else saw them, no one at all, but him. He was twelve before he realized their significance. A schoolmate’s number changed from a large number beginning with seventy-two to a small number starting with twenty, and then began growing smaller rapidly.

The boy went to the coat closet and got his jacket, as the number changed to three, fourteen. He stepped outside, approached the curb and then stepped out onto the street as a car came careening around the bend, smashing into the young man and then coming to a screeching halt. As the police pulled the drunk driver out of his car and the ambulance approached, sirens wailing, Charles watched as the kid’s blue number ticked down to one, then the faint blue numerals disappeared forever.

Charles ran shrieking into the school, and was in therapy again for six months until the school and his parents decided he had recovered from the shock, but nothing was ever the same again. His math skills enhanced by his constant processing of the numbers around him in his head, he was proclaimed a “prodigy” and made a career as a “human calculator.” He never again shared his secret with anyone.

At first when he'd seen a number change from one that could represent years to one that represented possible days, or minutes, he'd tried to figure out how he could rescue the person, but it happened too often, and was too hard to explain. He was able to credit a certain amount of his ability to predict disasters to “premonitions,” which never seemed to be wrong. Somehow he'd never been able to prevent the end result, so he'd stopped trying. Until today.

This morning he had watched as his daughter’s number changed from 52:04:16:05:15:13 (52 years, 4 months, 16 days, 5 hours, 15 minutes, 13 seconds to 02:15:36 (2 hours, 15 minutes, thirty-six seconds) and he'd begged her to stay home with him. And now, for the first time, he would save a life.

Save a life and lose a life. He felt a profound sadness as he looked at the workers around him, suppressing panic in the way that humans always do. The woman on the left side of his daughter’s desk, where he waited quietly, rearranged the papers in her out box, trying to stay busy. Three workers sat in a circle next to her, and there was a crowd by the window watching as random parts of the carcass of the destroyed jet dropped into the street below. They all had one thing in common. The blue numbers on their foreheads all read varying seconds, but only two minutes remaining.

He read the woman’s brow as she straightened, 02:46. He could feel heat from the floor underneath, and there was a groan from the walls and the room trembled. A frightened gasp moved through the room, and the time bar read 01:41 above the woman’s face. She looked at him with horror in her eyes and for an instant he wondered whether she could see his number, whether he’d been validated at last, but he knew it wasn’t so. She was afraid, and that was what fear looked like.

Groping in his daughter’s desk drawer he found her compact mirror, and read the numbers on his own brow. Fourteen, thirteen, twelve … Beyond fear, he counted down as a horrible crashing rumble deafened him, he felt his body sliding into a void and everything went black.

By Mari Sloan

Copyright 11-2009

Author's Note

We never know when the end will come--or can we?

Reviews

[ettorney]

Wow. This is amazing. What a fantastic concept and what a wonderfully sad place and time to put this likable and sympathetic person. A different slant on 9-11 is an understatement. This writing presents the most unique point of view on that tragedy as I have ever read.

It's so simple. Of course we all have a blue number on our heads. We just can't see them. Could you imagine a society where everybody could see each others number? (Perhaps you could : ) There might be a taboo against speaking about it. Everyone can see each other's number but no one ever mentions it because that would be bad form. Insulting even. It would be hard to hide your emotions when you see the person you are talking to suddenly tick down. Wow, what a great premise you have.

Very nice write.

[Samuel Dickens]

Four years later, I read and enjoy this story again. Knowing the exact time of our departure is best only applied to buses and airplanes. A great and frightening little tale.

[Samuel Dickens]

I'm with Claire! An excellent sci-fi short, extremely well written.

[Mari Sloan]

Thank you, ettorney and Claire. :-)

[Claire Twinn]

An interesting idea, on balance I think it's better not to know! I like story shifts as he back tracks through his life then counts down to the end. A great story!

[Fabian G. Franklin]

Well, when your numbers up..." I remember an old war movie line, this guy said, "I figure if your number's up, your number's up and if it ain't, why worry about it?" Great and strangely eerie write.