Chapter 1 - The Timekeeper

A Chapter by lepetitprince

was very nervous when I was facing Him. He looked so infallible and at the same time, scarily human. It wasn't very easy facing Him. I had to do very hard and insurmountable tasks one shouldn't accomplish in his lifetime. But I was able to do it. All of them. As such, all hard work has a price. Which He is about to give me now: one powerful, but irreversible wish. They all say that you should be very careful in dealing with the Man On the Moon. He is said to be kindhearted, but very tricky. Eyeing Him sitting on His Throne, I wondered what is it that most men crave and want to have more of, but simply can’t. Then it struck me.

“I want to have power over Time.” I declared

“Are you sure Spencer? There will be no turning back.” He said with a twinkling eye.

“I am sure, Man On the Moon. It is my final wish.”

He just shrugged, looking bored of my request. Many people chose strength, or flight, but I thought I could outsmart them all by choosing Time. But, it seems, fate outsmarted me. With a wave of his white scepter, grey white sand rose from my feet and enveloped me gradually, until my ankles were gone. It was inching its way up. While this was happening, He spoke with His booming voice.

“Spencer of the Pratt family, due to his unwavering bravery and courage, will be declared as a Timekeeper. As one, he is to maintain peace throughout the land by using powers given to him for good. With great power comes great responsibility. He could relinquish his powers by free will, and can be transferred to any person he deems fit to be a Timekeeper.

“So be it.” He said finally, then stamped on the ground.

Everything went black.

I could still feel myself breathing. Am I in a dream chasm? Perhaps I have, I hope not, died?

I slowly opened my eyes and oriented myself in what place I was.

When I rose from the bed, gently kneading my head because of a throbbing pain, I looked around and saw that I was still in my old room. Was everything a dream? The chase, the order, the Man On the Moon, the Wish? I hope not.

I went downstairs to get some pills for my bloody headache that seems to split my head in two. Drinking it, I settled on the modern club stool then thought of it. Should it be true, how can I be a Timekeeper? As I was thinking, my hands traveled all over my body as if it’s searching for something. Then, it did. As my hands were roaming my neck, I felt a necklace. Nothing weird, it’s just that I normally don’t wear a necklace. It was a circular medium-sized pendant, with a round ruby in the middle. I rubbed the ruby a bit with my thumb. It felt warm to the touch. Suddenly, the ruby glowed and I was brought into a red, eerily warm chasm with big rectangular prisms with marked time above them. I thought this must be a Time Chamber, where Timekeepers go when travelling between period of time.

Oddly, I’m the only person in the place. Never minding that little fact, I walked in a general forward direction to better know the Time Chamber. These rectangular prisms were showing people moving, but with no sound. Each had a year above them. I saw one that is marked “1521”. I stepped into it. I thought it would show me people, but it only showed me more rectangular prisms, each marked by a certain event, supposedly important in human history. Not knowing what Time Prism (as I now call it) it was, I naively stepped into it, until another person pulled me out of it, with a bamboo spear flying barely above my head.

“You don’t do that. Unless you want to get killed.” He said with a friendly smile. “I’m Joshua Woods, a fellow Timekeeper.” He extended a hand. I shook it firmly.

“Thank you very much Josh for saving my life. I’m Spencer Pratt, by the way. Would you mind telling me how a Timekeeper moves and uses his powers?”

He just scoffed. “Sure. Very easy, even a three-year old can do it. Here, come!” he dragged me into a portal that just came and we flung ourselves at it.

The next thing I know, we’re at a side street café in Manhattan, sitting on a plush outdoor chair. I guess I looked bewildered because I heard him chuckling. “You’re gonna get used to it. Now, where’s your TM?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You know, TM : Time Machine. It’s the starter for a Timekeeper to visit the Time Chamber.”

I produced my necklace. “Where’s yours?” I asked confusedly. He just pointed at his wrist. There I saw a silver chain with a circular ruby at the top. “Oh. Well, how do I use this thing?”

“Ah, well, let’s see. If you want to visit a specific time period, you just rub the gem until it glows. When you want to stop or pause the time, you just press it. Here, let me try.” He pressed his own ruby hard. His and my ruby glowed at the same time.

Instantaneously, people around us stopped. I saw people mid-walk, some on a phone with their mouths still open, some eating a sandwich, with the dropping sauce frozen in mid-air. Joshua continued, “See, that’s the cool thing. Only Timekeepers get to move in a paused time continuum. But there’s a catch: you can’t move things. It’s as if they’re superglued or something.” Seeing the confusion in my face, he demonstrated.

He stood up then yanked the flower vase in front of us. And right before my very eyes, it won’t budge. “That’s what I’m talking about. So Timekeepers can’t use this to steal. Although, some steal first then escapes, by pausing time.” He finished.

“Is there anything else?” I curiously asked.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” He pressed the ruby one more time, and everything went back to normal.

“You could fast forward the time, reverse it, and even alter it. But here’s the thing: when you alter things in history, it’s gonna change dramatically. One time, there’s this Timekeeper who killed Adolf Hitler when he was a baby. When he TM’ed to the future, there was chaos everywhere. Turned out Hitler had a brother after he died, so he took the place of Adolf, and he was worse than him, so more human annihilation.” He concluded.

“So don’t just do things that can alter human history. That guy went kaput from the Timekeeper record. Only those that remember him know him. Otherwise, he is non-existent.

“Of course, there’s also the mysterious Future. You can visit it, but it always changes, even of the minute of things. But the closer it is to the current time, the more stable it gets. For example…” he motioned towards my ruby. I rubbed it until it got red then entered the Time Chamber. “In here,” he started, “we could see the year “2050”. Current time is “2013”. Could you see it? Sure, but look at it.”

He opened the prism but didn’t enter it. He parted the prism like that of a curtain. When he did, cold air blew out rapidly and hit us in the face. I saw large amount of building of what I perceive to be the future Manhattan. But there’s something wrong. The building’s height were constantly fluttering, and the size of the trees in Central Park were vibrating, as if it’s a giant balloon being pushed air in and out fast. The people were all walking in non-straight directions and moving erratically. Now I know what Joshua meant by it not being “stable”.

We went back to the side café. I asked him a thing that intrigued me earlier. “Why is it that you didn’t step into the prism earlier?”

He almost choked on his cappuccino. “Do you want me to get stuck there for 24 hours?”

“You see, when a Timekeeper goes in a Time Prism, he uses almost all the energy of his ruby since it’s very hard in entering one. When he is in it, he has to recuperate the lost energy by sleeping, eating, drinking and the like.”

“So, if the energy runs out, you can’t time travel?” I asked

“Oh, no,” he immediately corrected. “When you lose all the ruby’s energy at one go, you’re gonna die as a Timekeeper and live your life out as mortal, again, with no memory of you being at Timekeeper.”

“If so, how can I know if I have energy still left?”

He pointed at my pendant. “You see that ruby? Whenever you rub it or press it, it glows. That shows how much energy you have left. When you have about 10% left, it goes yellow. 5%, it turns orange. 1% is blue, and black is..”

“Game over.” I continued. But there’s one thing nagging behind my back. “Can it be that one Timekeeper transfers his energy to another? In case I need it.”

Joshua paused for a moment and reconsiders my question, but eventually nodded.

“Yeah, theoretically. A Timekeeper friend of mine once said that you have to connect the rubies, but I don’t really know how it works.”

“Oh. Well, how many Timekeepers do you know?”

He pondered for a while then came up with a number. “13. There are twelve Timekeepers, with you being the 12^th and the Man On the Moon as the 13^th.”

“So, what number are you?”

“9^th. And that’s a long time ago.”

It struck me odd. “Don’t Timekeepers age?”

“Nope, you don’t. Unless you want to. As for how to do that, I don’t know. But I do know that the 3^rd Timekeeper is very old, but still alive.”

“So, we’re immortal?”

“Yes, just as long as you’re a Timekeeper. But you still get to act normal like any other human being. It’s just that you never die. Age, maybe, but not die.”

I pondered this for a moment, waiting for all of this information to sink in. Then suddenly, I have the urge to proclaim that I am the twelfth Timekeeper, one of the most powerful position one could ever hope for. And yet here I am without any friends.

What should I do next?

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