“You did that just to get my attention?”
“I had only one chance to make a strong first impression.” Pacific darted a teasing look at Alfred. “Obviously I did. You’re here talking to me. Aren’t you?”
“So you spent time to convince me to listen. What if I’d decided to simply ignore you and go about my life?”
“The risk was there,” Pacific admitted. “Every endeavor has its own risks, my young friend. It’s true. I took a risk by offering you knowledge, and I got rewarded by sparking your curiosity.”
Alfred glanced out the window and gathered his thoughts before asking another question. “Is there a way to keep your account balance filled past your natural life span?”
“Ah, that is the mother of all questions,” Pacific said with delight. “But I won’t answer it right away. I challenge you to stretch your mind further. Think bigger than that. Much bigger. What’s better than having your account balance filled past your natural life span?”
Alfred didn’t immediately get what Pacific was hinting at. Then it dawned on him. “Is there a way to keep your account balance filled indefinitely?” he asked.
“Ah!” Pacific’s smile was so wide it nearly split his face in two. “Very good. An easy idea that comes to mind if you follow your own line of thought, isn’t it? Yes, Alfred White, you could potentially keep death at bay for as long as it pleases you.”
Alfred’s mouth had turned dry. There he was, inside a cab, heading toward an unknown destination and talking about immortality with a fellow who had the power to bend time.
The thought should have unsettled him, but after witnessing time shift a few times and seeing a person dying in front of him, the list of things that could unsettle him was shrinking rapidly.
It was a while before Alfred finally mustered the courage to ask the question that was on the top of his list. “How old are you, really?” he asked, not bothering to hide his curiosity.
Pacific leaned forward intently, smiling a mischievous smile. “Now that is a very insolent question, Alfred White.”
The cab stopped. Alfred realized it only when the driver turned toward them, waiting to be paid.
“Mr. White,” Pacific said. He got out of the cab without a second glance.
“Right,” Alfred sighed. “Credit, please.”
Once he’d stepped out of the cab, Alfred looked at the vast, imposing building that stood in front of them. It was the color of sand and was surrounded by a huge parking lot with cars moving about. An ambulance was taking off from the ambulance bay at that moment, its sirens turned on. Cars moved away from its path.
“From a graveyard to a hospital,” Alfred commented solemnly. “This is not going to get any better, is it?”
“Don’t look so grim,” Pacific said, nudging Alfred mildly with his elbow. “You have to strike while the iron is hot. Your mind is raging now. Trust me. This is the best moment for you to bathe into knowledge.”
“That, or I’m going to have a heart attack,” Alfred murmured gloomily.
Pacific moved toward a statue that stood at least ten feet tall near the main entrance of the hospital. Alfred slowed down and studied it.
It depicted a man wearing a long, red cloak. Underneath the cloak there was armor, which looked vaguely familiar to Alfred. The warrior was holding a palm leaf in his left hand, and a clock inscribed with the word Hodie in his right hand. His left foot was stepping on a crow, which had the word Cras engraved upon it.
“The patron saint of this hospital,” Pacific explained, answering Alfred’s curious look. “Do you know the story of Saint Expeditus?”
“Never heard of him,” Alfred admitted. “Is that Latin?” He pointed to the two words engraved on the statue.
Pacific nodded. “Yes, it is. Expeditus was a Roman centurion who was martyred for converting to Christianity. He is considered to be the patron saint of speedy cases and expeditious solutions, and the enemy of procrastination. The legend that surrounds his story is rather interesting. According to tradition, Expeditus became a Christian and was beheaded during Diocletian’s Persecution. The day he decided to become a Christian, the Devil took the form of a crow and told him to postpone his conversion until the next day. Expeditus stamped on the bird and killed it, declaring, ‘I’ll be a Christian today!’ You see, the word Hodie means today in Latin. Cras means tomorrow.”
“I might be wrong,” Alfred said, his expression carefully blank, “but I suspect it’s not a coincidence I’m staring at a statue with a story so related to my … What did you call it? Oh yes. My mentorship.”
“Every story has a lesson,” Pacific said, smiling his assent. He made a quick gesture toward the statue. “What do you think is the lesson to be learned from Expeditus’s story?”
Alfred crossed his arms as he looked at the statue. “Refuse Satan, I guess?”
Pacific smiled dryly. “That was a safe bet. Refusing Satan is part of the story, of course, but there is more to it. Like every story worth remembering, Saint Expeditus’s story is about choices. But this one is also about timing. There would be no statue in front of us today if Expeditus had listened to the crow and postponed his conversion. Do you see my point?”
“Not really.”
“You should. The choice you made back in the graveyard brings you closer to Expeditus’s story. You chose to walk the unknown and didn’t bend to the voices of refusal and procrastination. You willingly decided to venture into a dark forest you know nothing about for the promise of what lay at the end of it.” Pacific put both hands on Alfred’s shoulders. “By the end of this mentorship,” he continued, looking intently at Alfred, “you will be very glad you started this journey. Your understanding of my world will continue here, as we unveil another important piece of information. At this point, you know that time can be used. For a price.”
“Yes,” Alfred agreed. “Time demands time in return. If you want to use it, you need to get it first.”
“Not only that.” Pacific showed Alfred his wristwatch. “You also need a buffer to use it.”
Alfred looked at what up to that moment he had thought of as a useless piece of garbage. “So that is the source of your power?” he asked, looking perplexed. “That watch?”
“Not the source,” Pacific corrected him. “The supply. This watch holds the time I use. Bear with me. A gun remains a gun without ammunition. You just can’t fire anything with it.”
“So you are the gun, and that watch is your bullet?”
“Sort of.”
“Okay,” Alfred said, trying to follow Pacific’s explanation. “But how exactly do you harvest time?”
“With much planning.” Pacific spoke slowly, picking his words with care. “It’s not as simple as raising a flint blade and cutting off the grain. You can’t get time out of thin air. There is a process in place that makes things more difficult. There are three rules that can’t be broken when it comes to time harvesting. Rule number one: you can only get time out of people. Rule number two: the person you’re interested in must willingly give up his or her time to you. Rule number three: once the time has been transferred, it cannot be returned.”
“Who or what made these rules?”
“Who or what made the universe?”
Alfred shrugged his ignorance.
“Different people have different ideas on the subject,” Pacific said. “I’m not here to debate the color of the air with clever semantics. Remember, I’m a business owner. I just do time transactions and benefit from them. Time harvesting has its own laws, just like gravity, and free will is as unmovable as the opinion of a stubborn god. Do you understand this? I cannot possibly take time from a person without his or her consent.”
“But how do you ask people for their time?”
“You don’t ask everybody, only a select group,” Pacific explained. “It’s a tricky subject, this one. Who in their right mind would willingly give up their time? It all comes down to timing, planning, personality, and, well, blind luc
k, to be completely honest. Most people don’t know the real value of time, others underestimate it, and some others are blinded by the need of the moment and give up time easily in exchange for something valuable to them. Time buys you possibilities. People live as if they were not aware of the clock ticking. And most of them end up wishing they had a different life, in the end. Mind you, every person has a different story and is at a different stage of their life. In some stages, a few people regard time as less valuable than other things. That is the best moment for me to approach them and make an offer they can seldom refuse.”
Pacific turned his back to Saint Expeditus’s statue and walked toward the hospital’s entrance.
9
A Gem in the Dark
The inside of the hospital was warm and well lit. There were nurses bustling around and doctors busy talking, and a broad variety of people from the outside world just waiting in line or sitting and staring at big screens with numbers on them.
As Pacific and Alfred moved past reception, Alfred also noticed people dressed in long, blue robes, wearing identical pairs of white slippers. They didn’t seem to have any destination or task to accomplish. They moved around aimlessly or sat and looked at passersby with dull eyes and faces bathed in boredom.
“Have you ever spent time in a hospital?” Pacific took off his sunglasses, folded them, and put them inside his pocket.
“Once, as a child, I had a post-operation recovery,” Alfred said, shrugging. “Nothing more than that. Why are you asking?”
Pacific looked around, his eyes taking everything in. Alfred could sense a strange excitement radiating from him, as if the tall man had just stepped inside Wonderland.
“Hospitals are places unlike any other,” Pacific explained, gesturing grandly with both hands. “They are realms of shadows creeping inside a person’s mind. Worries, needs, the fear of the unknown. It’s everything here! If you spend enough time inside a hospital, you will know what I mean.”
Alfred frowned. Realms of shadows creeping inside a person’s mind? he thought, unimpressed. That was a bit melodramatic, even by Pacific’s standards.
“I’m aware hospitals are not exactly fun places,” Alfred said, “but I don’t think they are that bad.”
“Bad?” Pacific echoed him, sounding affronted. “You misunderstand me. I love hospitals! I love the jaded atmosphere that makes this place so glorious in its monotony. I love the bland walls and stark lights that tire the eyes and wreck the soul. I love the buzz of gossip and the complaints about treatments and medicines and the lack of empathy. Most of all, I love the chemical smell embedded in every room and every corridor.” Pacific half closed his eyes and sniffed the air noisily. “I love the endless possibilities of time harvesting a place like this offers. I’ve closed some of my best deals inside hospitals.”
“Deals?”
Pacific gestured around happily. “Hospitals are a great place for time harvesting if you know where to look and the timing is right,” he said. “A good eye for detail is paramount, of course. If you possess it and do your homework, you might find yourself sitting on a pot of riches.”
“You’re losing me,” Alfred said. “Why exactly is a hospital getting you so pumped up?”
“Put it into prospective,” Pacific said patiently. “A person could cross that door alive”—he gestured toward the entrance—“and never see the light of day again. It’s not difficult to find people begging for a ring buoy in the storms of their life. When a person is sick, their way of seeing the past, present, and future changes dramatically. They want a rope to rescue them from their predicament. The fear of emerging from this place weak, mutilated, or altered terrifies them. And the closer they are to death, the stronger is the fear.”
Pacific stopped in front of an elevator and called it. “Always remember,” he said while they were waiting. “A person who thinks they have all the time in the world can be inclined to give some of it to me if I’m very shrewd and play my cards right. But it won’t be a sizeable amount of time. Those small transactions are almost never worth the effort. What I really seek are desperate people with their back up to the wall, people with no choices left. Hospitals are one of those walls. One needs to look deep and hard, but the most valuable gems are buried in the dark.”
The door of the elevator opened, and they went in. Pacific pushed one of the buttons to the upper floors.
“So you don’t only consider one person’s need,” Alfred said. “You also factor in where they are.”
“That is correct,” Pacific said. “Some places put people in a mindset that I can exploit to bend their will more easily.”
“What kind of places, besides hospitals?”
“Asylums are another great example,” Pacific said. “So are nursing homes, prisons, and, believe it or not, casinos. The list goes on and on. Anywhere that imposes a time constraint on life is a potential cash cow for me.”
Alfred found himself shivering. He was all too aware they were talking nonchalantly about something very unsettling. He knew a guy at the Spear, a shrewd financial adviser who preached about how much effort he put in to ensure his client’s financial well-being. He was lying, of course. Everybody knew he was just after their money. Alfred felt as uncomfortable with Pacific in that moment as he had with that man at the Spear.
“I see,” Alfred said, not really knowing what to add. He opened his mouth then closed it. He stared ahead, wishing the door of the elevator would open soon.
“You look aghast,” Pacific commented. “I’m not sorry I’m exposing you to the truth, but I’d like to know if you are regretting your decision to move forward with the mentorship. You owe me that much.”
“No,” Alfred replied hastily. “I’m just thinking. It’s a lot to take in, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” Pacific agreed. “Do you understand now why I needed to test your resolve before proceeding? I’m exposing you to a difficult truth. I’m doing it slowly and deliberately. Yet there is no easy way to digest all the information and not be affected by it. When you swim underwater for too long, your lungs will eventually start burning, seeking oxygen. That is when you need to come up for air. We don’t want to start gasping for air, now, do we? The moment you feel that the burden of this knowledge is getting overwhelming, tell me, and we will take a deep breath. Do you understand?”
“I’m fine,” Alfred said stubbornly. “I don’t need to stop, thank you very much.”
Pacific looked at Alfred for a while, then he curled the corner of his mouth slightly. “Very well, then.” He started rummaging inside his coat. “Take this.” He handed Alfred a pack of tissues and a small bottle filled with a transparent liquid.
Alfred looked at the two objects with a puzzled expression. “What do I need these for?”
“These are remedies for tears and blood,” Pacific said carefully. “Keep them handy. We’ll need them soon enough.”
Alfred simply nodded and put them in his pocket. He wished he had the courage to ask Pacific more but found himself devoid of the urge to know.
The door of the elevator opened. Alfred was the first one out.
The upper floor was decidedly less busy than the main floor. There were only a few patients going around, and just a handful of nurses. There was a waiting area on the left of the elevator, with a bench and a couple of wilting plants. A woman wearing pink pajamas was talking on the phone, and a child was playing with toys beside her.
Alfred followed Pacific, who seemed to know where he was going. They turned left after the first corridor, then right, until they reached the middle of a very long corridor, where they found a nurses’ station with women and men busy running that part of the hospital.
Pacific looked at a big wall clock hanging above the nurses’ station.
“Nice timing,” he said. “She should be here by now.”
“Who should be here?”
“The gem in the dark.”
One of the nurses noticed them. “Can I help you?”
she asked hurriedly, writing on a clipboard.
“We’re here to visit Miss Hera Alanis,” Pacific said. “And we know where we’re going. No need to show us around.”
“Please sign here,” the nurse said, pointing to a sign-in form. Pacific scribbled something on the paper.
“Come,” Pacific said to Alfred.
As they were walking, Pacific looked at the room numbers displayed on each door and stopped in front of the room farthest from the nurses’ station.
“Well, then.” Pacific put a hand over the door handle as he winked at Alfred. “Let us continue our quest for knowledge.” He opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was small and bare. The only light came from the outside. It was muffled by a half-closed curtain.
The first thing Alfred noticed was a young girl with long, dark hair sitting beside a bed. Then he noticed another girl lying unconscious on the bed, the upper part of her head covered by bandages. A narrow tube was attached to her nose. Both of them looked young—and strikingly alike, now that Alfred thought about it. They had the same pale skin, as if the blood had been drained from their bodies, same round ears, same aquiline nose.
Even with the scarce light and the bandages that partially covered one girl’s head, it was clear the two were twins.
“Close the door,” Pacific ordered.
Alfred did it.
The tall man moved forward, his steps quick and sure. The girl who was sitting didn’t turn, or move, or do anything that suggested she was aware of them. Her eyes were open and lost, as dull as a piece of tarnished metal.
“Sophia Megan Alanis,” Pacific spoke loudly.
The girl started. She turned sharply and looked at the newcomers as if two ghosts had appeared out of thin air.
“Who are you?” she demanded. She stood up and looked at them with an expression that was a mixture of surprise and annoyance.
Lord of Time Page 9
