Time for the Lost

by Chess Desalls

  Still, I must have looked puzzled, because Edgar said to me, “Destroying a Daily Reminder doesn’t destroy the third memory, the one that’s most true.”

  “Most true?”

  “Think about it this way, Valcas.” He sipped a similar tea-like substance from a mug that had been set on the other end of the table. I tried not to imagine how bad the tea would taste at room temperature. “How many versions are there of any particular story?”

  Always the teacher. I grinned. “It depends on how many observers there are and, also, the particular bent and prejudices of the storyteller.”

  Edgar shot me a sly grin. “If only you and I tell a story, how many versions are there?”

  “Two.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Three, Valcas. Yours, mine and the truth. Sure, yours and mine will have similar aspects if the topic is particularly mundane. But, if we were at odds in recounting the story, then you would have your version. I would have mine. And then the third version would be—”

  “The unbiased truth.”

  “And which version is correct, or—should we say—the most true?”

  “Well if there were a recording, I suppose it would show the events exactly as they happened. This would likely be true even with technologies such as the zobascope,” I mused aloud, noting that captured feelings might color the perspective of the recorder, but probably wouldn’t change the scene. The recorder’s feelings would perhaps be more telling of the recorder rather than a concealer of truth. I narrowed my eyes, confident that I understood where Edgar was going with this. “So, yes, then, I would agree with you that the most factually correct version would be the truth.”

  “And so it is with Daily Reminders. Even those that have been deleted have made an impression in the worlds, no matter how much the TSTA would like everyone to believe otherwise.”

  “In other words, the TSTA’s version of the truth.”

  I grimaced as Edgar took another sip and shrugged. “The truth is captured in time for all to see. You just have to find the correct slice.”

  A SLICE in time.

  The more I thought about it, the more sense I made of Edgar’s words. If I wanted proof, all I needed was to visit a slice in time. Like the slice where I’d taken Calla, just before she’d escaped my intrusion at Folkestone Harbor. She and Romaso shouldn’t have been remembered there. Neither were part of that past. Yet, the event had been captured without a Daily Reminder. In a slice in time. Perfectly frozen, forever.

  My head spun, not because the concept was complex or mind-blowing, but because of the plan that formed. An impossible plan. One that required me to search for the truth by searching for a time in a place where I wasn’t ready to return.

  But the way she looked at me—the feelings that she felt, captured by her recordings. They were real.

  Calla’s recordings were not washed-out illusions. They were vivid representations of what she’d seen and felt at the White Tower. I’d replayed one particular recording so many times that the sights, sounds and feelings—all from her point of view—were as permanently recorded in my mind as they were in the travel glasses:

  An Estrel-Flyer purred against a din of rushing wind. A chill stung my face, something I’d never noticed while flying, not until the recorder—Calla—pointed it out. Her grip on the driver—my past-self—was strong and trusting.

  The firmament of darkness surrounded the White Tower’s painted grounds below. Dunes of red and purple were more beautiful than I’d ever noticed through my own eyes. The flight ended sooner than I would have liked.

  I watched as my past-self took my—Calla’s—hand, helped me dismount the Estrel-Flyer and escort me—her—into the Grand Entrance to the White Tower. The walls glistened around us. Each knob of the snow-white doors sparkled like diamonds through endless space and time.

  I looked up into my own face, the way it had been at a point in time before my eyes had been damaged by the travel glasses. My past-self smiled at me—at Calla. I’d never known myself to show such emotion. Her heart responded violently. Although I’d played and replayed this part of the recording in my mind, I inhaled along with the recorder at an image that left me breathless. The past version of me was faded and pale; that version of me was not real.

  “You were quiet during the flight. Is everything all right?” my past-self said.

  Calla’s lip twitched. “Yes.”

  Each time I reached this point in the recording, I felt the depth of her lie. She’d realized her time spent at the White Tower was an illusion, and that the past version of me she’d grown to know, and dare I say love, was not real.

  I wanted to find out for myself whether it was the truth—whether she had fallen in love with me, and I with her. Whether our feelings for each other were real, nonetheless, in that earlier place and time. Then, maybe, I could find a clue about the Daily Reminder that had been left in my past. But that would require me to face my past at the White Tower and my father’s death.

  I clenched Edgar’s soapstone table with my fingers.

  “Are you well?”

  “I apologize. I just—”

  “Perhaps I should warm your tea.”

  “No, thank you. Please. That won’t be necessary.”

  A beverage wouldn’t help. Neither would returning to Calla’s past, my past. Our past? Stars and spirals flickered just inches before me. A flash of light seared the space behind my eyes, the pain nearly blinding me.

  I gripped the table more tightly. Such a venture would be nothing more than a feeding of my own pining and procrastination. I needed to find Calla and bring her back. But I didn’t know how. “Edgar, there is something I must tell you.”

  “Go on.”

  “Please, forgive me for my part in this, but—” I had to tell him. There was no other way. “Someday in the future you will invent an unauthorized method of time travel by altering a pair of sunglasses. You will enable them and their wearer to travel through time and space.”

  Edgar choked on his tea (as if its flavor wasn’t ample reason enough). “I will invent such a device?”

  “Yes, but you’ll also realize the dangers and adverse effects of using that method of time travel, and you will change your mind about giving them to…me.”

  “Do I use them myself and become a famous traveler?” His eyes brightened as if he didn’t understand my warning.

  “No.” I tried to ignore the heat creeping up my neck. “I steal the glasses from you and use them myself…not always for good.”

  He frowned and dipped his head. “Ah.”

  “I’ve come to visit to tell you this because of the trouble I’ve started and must fix. I need your help.”

  He held his head in his hands, as if sharing my burden.

  “I take full responsibility,” I continued. “Do not blame yourself. I’ve misused the good that you’ve created.” Despite the lump in my throat being the size of a small world, I swallowed. “Because of it, someone dear to me is now, I suspect, lost.”

  Edgar’s teacup rattled as he struggled to grasp what I was telling him. “H—how do I help resolve this terrible situation?”

  I clenched my jaw. My next question, if answered, could have been used to save him from the unfortunate fate that he would someday endure. “How does one find the lost, Edgar?”

  He sucked in a breath, and then pointed at me, his finger trembling. “The Clock Tower. It will show you the way.”

  “Which clock tower?” I’d seen plenty of towers in my travels, many of which donned clocks. I’d hoped for a more direct way of narrowing my search.

  Edgar steadied his pale, trembling hands and placed them on the table. He leaned toward me. “Not just any clock tower, the Clock Tower. The timepiece of the Everywhere and Everywhen.”

  The bones along my spine froze. I’d come to the right person, the right place. I finally had a lead, obtained from a man I’d betrayed. I was miserable, guilty, and yet elated. “Where is this tower? What disting
uishes it from every other clock tower in all times and places?” I needed as many details as possible to form my search.

  “It’s not a clock tower in the literal sense. It’s a tower built of clocks—a different timepiece for each of the worlds in the Everywhere and Everywhen. When a World Builder employs his or her talent, the tower grows; it sprouts a new clock. How I wish I could see it someday.”

  “I should like to take you there.” He deserved that much. I’d be using his invention—the travel glasses—to travel, and he revealed where I must go. Perhaps I should have spent more time studying time travel theory. “But I can’t,” I admitted. “I’m not a Remnant Transporter.” It was impossible for me to transport him without Plaka or Calla.

  Edgar’s cheeks sagged. “I understand. I’m a past version of myself, a silhouette. The ability to transport someone, or rather something, like me is a rare talent.”

  “Yes it is. And the lost person I seek to find is one of the last two living Remnant Transporters.”

  THREE HUMANOIDS materialized in front of me.

  They crouched forward, likely bracing for the impact of their arrival. I grounded myself as well.

  It wasn’t until I felt the burning of guilt and pain, a lighter shade of the Uproar’s presence, that I realized what they were.

  Not again. While searching for Calla, I’d almost forgotten about them. I’d become distracted. After leaving Edgar and gathering momentum for travel, I’d focused on the elements for my search so I might find the Clock Tower; but my subconscious mind sought to travel to a slice in time that would show me the Daily Reminder I’d destroyed. Since I feared going back to the White Tower, I considered going back to the TSTA hearing where Calla was tried. That would have been a tricky venture, however, given all the witnesses present. Unfortunately, the weight of these thoughts had run through my mind on my way to the Clock Tower.

  I’d lost awareness of the spirals inside the white light, leaving room for the beings who invaded my travel path. Other peoples in other worlds referred to them as Cleaners, but I knew these manlike creatures as The Chars.

  The ground below us quaked and trembled, trailing fissures and crumbling pockets of rock to dust.

  Through my glasses, I caught glimpses of grins. Were they mocking me? I chuckled. Why let The Chars have all the fun?

  With a swipe of my hand, I scooped up soil and threw it at them. Char One, the being closest to me, dodged. But the one situated next to him took a face full of dirt. Char Two growled.

  Fortunately for me, they weren’t wearing travel glasses. From the sound of it, the dirt shower had stung its unprotected eyes. I squinted. The Chars’ unofficial objects, assuming they had any, were hidden; I still didn’t know how they traveled. They didn’t seem the type of beings that complied with TSTA regulations.

  If only the Uproar was after them instead of Calla. Then perhaps I could convince it that I deeply loved The Chars. Who knows what travel talents the Uproar could suck from their blood, if they had blood.

  I sucked in a breath and bolted. They were still grounded and crouched, waiting for the impact to subside.

  I caught them by surprise, landed in the middle of all three and sent them sprawling.

  As the world stilled, they sprang at me. I kicked out a leg and spun. My foot met the stomach of Char One, sending him backward. The other two were on me before I could blink. A fist caught my jaw. I grunted, and then returned the favor while Char Three twisted my left arm behind my back. I snapped a back kick, right between Char Three’s legs. He fell.

  I dodged Char Two before landing two more punches to its face. The second punch met with a crack. Two down. Char One to go. Granted, I could have run earlier and escaped with the travel glasses. But, unlike Plaka and Calla, I wasn’t about running away.

  I caught my breath, then scanned the area where I stood. It was dark, but across the horizon I could see a faint glow. The glow deepened, spreading across the sky. I lowered my travel glasses and peered over them. The light was dazzling, a fiery violet. As the light dispersed, I could see a structure bending and twisting in the distance.

  I glanced back to see whether The Chars were still down. They lay side by side, and were already starting to fade. It wouldn’t be long before they disappeared completely. One would think the TSTA would spend more if its time dealing with them instead of prosecuting time travelers. Then again, there was Plaka’s theory about the TSTA’s control over the Uproar. Perhaps the TSTA also controlled The Chars.

  Drawn to the purple sky, my feet pressed forward. The structure, a mangled tower, rose high above the heavens. I wasn’t sure where the tower ended and the sky began. I stepped closer.

  Edgar was correct. The clock tower was not a tower with a single clock. Conversely, it was a tower built of clocks.

  Upon closer inspection, it became clear why Edgar had said the tower captured all the times in the worlds, including the expansion of the Everywhere and Everywhen. Clocks of all shapes and sizes jutted out from an indeterminate structure. Different types of clocks—some I’d seen on Earth in different places and times, such as mantle clocks, digital clocks and cuckoo clocks. There were Aborealian hourglasses and calendars. Gears, electrical wires and lightbulbs peppered the mangled mess of clockwork. Large watch hands projected outward at odd angles, some bending and twisting like vines around sprockets that hung from the tower, six feet from the ground.

  At its center was a compass. Round like a crystal bowling ball, I’d never seen its equal. Inside the glass were symbols for North, South, East and West; but as I walked around the clock tower, the directions changed, as did its hands. The compass changed with each degree, capturing every direction, ways I’d never heard of or seen. It was as if dimensions beyond the third were captured in the fourth, and dimensions beyond the fourth were captured in the fifth; yet, somehow all were captured and represented there in the third dimension of space.

  Carefully, I climbed the clock, placing my feet on the times of other worlds, in order to see more along the top. Fragile materials supported my weight as if I weighed nothing—were nothing—but a breath of air in time and space. I climbed on, grabbing timepieces with my hands and pulling myself upward along the tower.

  The skin on the back of my neck prickled when I reached the topmost third of the tower. An hourglass sat perched on the tower’s tapered tip, like a golden star crowning one of Earth’s Christmas trees. The top half of the glass was mostly full. Both halves rested on a crescent moon-shaped base. The hourglass hung balanced, lightly swinging back and forth, ready to flip over when empty.

  I made my way back down the tower, wondering whether time ever ends, whether it could be eternal—how a system of worlds with World Builders could possibly have an end. My brain ached as I tried to make sense of it all, wondering where to begin searching for Calla.

  My attention turned to something bright and painful: a miniature White Tower, representing the world my parents created, the timeline of which reset when I was born.

  The White Tower replica had no clock hands. There were no digital measures of time, no sand trickling from the top of a glass. But I knew how the time was recorded and what time it was at the tower, based on the brightness of its glow. Like the sky which backlit the clock tower, the White Tower was a dazzling white. From what I’d learned as a child, the more brightly it glowed, the later its time and the closer to its end.

  I tightened my grip and groaned. “Why does every search lead back to the White Tower? Have I traveled here to the Clock Tower only to be faced with it again?” I descended a few more steps toward the base of the tower. “Is there no way to escape the past—to leave it behind me?”

  “You don’t appear to be biding time, friend.”

  I nearly fell from the tower. I glanced beneath me to see who’d spoken.

  The man who looked up at me was thin, with a nose as straight and long as his gangly limbs. He regarded me with eyes of purple ice. His hair, white like snow, was bound in a loose tail.
Friend indeed.

  I exhaled, relieved. Everything about him radiated Aborealian descent.

  I jumped the last few feet from the Clock Tower and signaled to him, the way I would have greeted anyone in my mother’s home country, Aboreal.

  His amethyst eyes met mine as he drew his lip into a thin line. He signaled back, and then frowned. “I disclaimed Aboreal long ago, but I respect the gesture.”

  “You’re from my mother’s homeland,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure.”

  The former Aborealian nodded and held out his hand.

  “Valcas Hall,” I said, clasping it.

  He grinned. “You can call me Nick.”

  I squinted. Aborealians had no last names, so I hadn’t expected one. Aborealian citizens were simply individuals of Aboreal. But the man’s first name didn’t fit the metric. Nick didn’t have the same significance to it as Ivory and Sable, shades of white and black. He should have had a name that reflected his wintry hair. Nick meant nothing in Aborealian.

  I opened my mouth to say something.

  “I’ve renamed,” he said. “When I denounced Aboreal, I changed my first name and adopted a surname of sorts.”

  “Which is?”

  “Time,” he said. “I’m now Nick, no longer of Aboreal, but of Time.”

  Nick of Time. Was this guy serious? If he noticed my cringe at the horrible pun, he didn’t show it.

  “What brings you to this part of the worlds, friend?”

  “A search.” I looked around, disturbed. “How did you get here?”

  “I’m the keeper of the Clock Tower. Welcome to my home.”

  MY HEART hammered. “I didn’t see you when I arrived. Have you been watching me climb the tower?”

  “No.” He smoothed out his coat, which hung below his knees. “I recently returned from an errand.”

  Good. He likely missed my incident with The Chars.