by John Hulme
“Where the heck is this thing already?” Tony spat on the ground and took a swig of much needed Diet Inspiration from his thermos. “I thought you guys said it was gonna be here like snap, crackle, and pop!”
Tony was speaking to the gaggle of Time Flies who had helped him construct the Containment Field on the banks of the brook. The ten-foot-square box of glass was finally complete, with a semipermeable membrane on the roof to allow the Split Second in (but not out), and Firsts and Thirds scattered on a floor of freshly mown grass. It had taken a lot of work, however, and as the crew lowered their shovels and glass cutters, they were caked with perspiration and dirt.
“Patience, brudda,” said the dreadlocked foreman of the crew in his lilting accent. “The watched pot never boil.”
“Yeah, but The World’s gonna roast like my mom’s braciola if this Split Second don’t come marchin’ through the door!”
“Man makes his plan,” responded the foreman with a toothy grin. “And the Plan laughs . . .”
A chorus of “iries” went up among the work crew, and someone turned up the thick reggae coming over their portable radio. Like all the construction workers, affectionately known as “Time Flies,” this bunch had been raised on the Islands in the Stream, where the perfect sunsets, tasty waves, and offshore breezes contributed to a decidedly mellow mind-set. They were also practically immune to the Essence of Time (probably because Time Flies were always having fun) and thus were solely responsible for mining First, Seconds, and Thirds from the three indigenous Time Zones in The Seems.
“Are you sure this astroturf ain’t screwin’ things up?” Tony pointed to the floor of the Containment Field, which had been made from the vanilla grass that grew on the edge of the Brook. “Maybe we shoulda used dirt instead.”
“Trus’ me, Tony Plumba mon. We do dis every day.” The foreman pulled a First from one of the wheelbarrows. “Whenever we got one dat be cracked or damaged, we wrap dem in da grass so we don’ get no runoff. In da mud or dirt da Essence jus’ seep tru.”
Tony tried to take their word for it, but the farther the sun set behind the mountains, the more his stomach drifted in the opposite direction. Part of that was probably due to the meatball parm he’d inhaled before starting the Containment Field, but the other part was no doubt related to something wrong in The Seems. Something very, very—
Honk! Honk! Honk!
Tony and the Flies turned to see a white golf cart bouncing up the dirt road that led to their work site. It was Permin Neverlåethe, who looked nearly as pale as his vehicle.
“What’s the word, Permee?” asked Tony, as the vehicle pulled to a halt.
“I checked the log sheets, just as I promised,” replied the Administrator, his voice shaking. “And it seems there was one Minuteman who didn’t show up for work today.”
“Who’s that?”
“Ahem . . . his name is Ben Lum.”
“Big Ben?” A murmur shot through the Time Flies . . . but not a happy one. “Dat boy crazy!”
“Not ta mention eight feet tall,” blurted out another.
Tony the Plumber dropped one hand to his Receiver and raised the other to rub the back of his sunburned neck. Fixer #22 knew the feeling of a Mission coming together . . . but this one felt more like a Mission falling apart.
“Yo, Brief! How we doin’ in there?”
The In-Between
“Chillin’ like a villain,” shouted Harold “C-Note” Carmichael over the roar of the In-Between. But if he had to be honest, “chillin’ ” didn’t quite apply to how the Briefer felt right now. “Barely hanging on” was probably more like it.
C-Note was currently standing atop one of the countless Tubes that transported Goods & Services between The World and The Seems. Goggles shielded his eyes from the frost and glare, while his feet were lined with both Rubber Soles™ (to keep him from being singed by the electrostatic energy) and Concrete Galoshes™ (to keep him from drifting off into the infinite blue).
“My Blinker says that Essence just smoked an island off the Moldavian coast.” Tony the Plumber’s voice squawked over the Briefer’s Receiver. “You got a handle on where it’s comin’ from?”
“Yeah, T. I’m lookin’ right at it!”
The Briefer had been deployed to the In-Between to track down the pathway by which runoff from the Split Second was spilling into the World. Using his 7th Sense like a homing beacon, he’d field-tested thirty-six of the Tubes before hitting pay-dirt on the one set aside for Animal Affairs.23
“I just got off the horn with Administrator Hoofe and she says it’s business as usual up there. It’s gotta be slipping in from another source!” C-Note watched a bundle of zebra stripes pass below his feet. “You want me to keep lookin’?”
“Negatory. Get that Q-Turn™ on ASAP!”
C-Note reached into his Briefcase and pulled out the heavy, Q-shaped Tool. Anything that entered the mouth would automatically be looped around 390 degrees and sent directly out “the squiggly,” but it was normally used for redirecting Creative Juices. Tony’s hunch was that if his Briefer installed the Q-turn in the middle of the Tube, any future bursts of Essence could be diverted before ever hitting The World.
“I don’t know, T. Essence might turn this Q into an R!”
It wasn’t that C-Note was afraid to get his hands dirty. In addition to his job as a Briefer, he worked two other part-time gigs to put himself through med school: pizza delivery man and car detailer at Slick Willie’s, the hottest polish house in LA. But tricking out the rims on a Bugatti Roadster was a whole different ballgame than finessing the Essence of Time.
“Got any suggestions?”
“Yeah, I got a good one.”
C-Note could almost hear the devilish grin on Tony’s face.
“Use your imagination!”
Meanwhile, The Seems
Shan Mei-Lin rushed to Mr. Chiappa’s aid and quickly began to untie the straps that bound his arms and legs to the chair. The restraints had left deep welts in the English teacher’s wrists, and his face and body looked like he’d been severely beaten.
“Who did this to you, sir?”
“Who do you think?” coughed Fixer #12, spitting the gag from his mouth. “The same scioccos who planted the Bomb in the first place.”
Even though Mr. Chiappa was as bruised as he was angry, Shan was amazed to see that he showed no visible signs of aging. Everyone else in the radius of the initial blast had been turned to dust.
“How is this possible, sir? We all thought you were dead.”
“So did I.” Lucien Chiappa rubbed his sore arms and eked out a smile. “When the Split Second exploded through the Frozen Moments, instead of being aged, I was somehow taken along for the ride.”
Shan offered her Fixer a bottle of Inspiration from her Briefcase, and the Corsican polished off the whole thing in one thirsty gulp.
“It yanked me through dozens of Moments—maybe even hundreds—I don’t know, it was all a blur of color and sound until I splashed down at the bottom of some kind of waterfall . . .”
“That’s how I got here too.” The Briefer quickly recounted the tale of what happened after she and Fixer Drane had ventured into the Frozen Moment pool. Shan surmised it was Chiappa’s footsteps she had followed into the heart of Meanwhile, but how he ended up bound and gagged was a wholly different tale.
“Now we know why The Tide has been so impossible to locate,” said Fixer #12, sitting back down on the chair. “They’re using places like Meanwhile for their HQs.”
In addition to the Containment Field, equipment, weapons, and Canned Heat were scattered all over the place. There were also blueprints from the Department of Time tacked up to a corkboard, right beside employee schedules, minutes from a meeting of Time Managers, and even the design for the original Time Bomb constructed by Mr. Chiappa and Permin Neverlåethe. But what Shan couldn’t see amid all the clutter was any kind of door in or out.
“How did they find this place?” she asked
.
“Looks like John Booby’s at it again.” Chiappa pointed to a schematic of what was clearly a Skeleton Key—except with a few extra notches added to the end. “Who knows where our friends can get into now . . .”
Shan knew Chiappa was referring to the Tide cell who had carved a home for itself in this shadowy hole. “How many of them are there, sir?”
“ I’ve seen five so far, and I think there’s a sixth running operations from a remote location. And let me tell you, we don’t want to be here when they get back.” Chiappa approached the glass of the Containment Field. “But first, we’ve got to figure out what to do with this Split Second.”
“Split Second?” asked Shan, eyes reflecting the light that pulsed from within. “I don’t see a Split Second in there.”
“That’s because it’s moving too fast.”
Chiappa reached into his pocket and pulled out a broken pair of what looked like wire-rimmed bifocals.
“They took my Toolkit.” He winked and handed the bent frames over to the Briefer. “But they didn’t know these were my Hour Glasses™.”
During beta testing for The World, Hour Glasses had been used by Reality Checkers to help calibrate the rate at which Time should travel. They allowed the wearer to adjust the speed of everything they saw, but once the decision was made that “things should move at their own pace,” the Tool became obsolete. Now they only endured as charming trinkets and reminders of the Days of Yore.24
Shan taped the broken pieces together, placed them on her nose as instructed by Fixer #12, then set the speed to “Crawl.” As soon as the lenses reconfigured, it became abundantly clear what was causing the pulsing yellow light that had drawn the Briefer from the darkness like a moth to the flame.
“Wuh de mah.”
Bouncing off the walls of the Containment Field was what looked like half of an egg, except this egg was metallic and the size of a volleyball. Where the yolk should be was some kind of liquid goo that propelled the strange object in a random pattern off the walls, ceiling, and floor. Every time it hit the ground, it would leave a droplet or two behind.
“I think the Essence of Time is slowly beginning to escape the field,” said Chiappa, watching the goo seep into the mud. “Have there been reports of Sectors in the World beginning to age?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve been out of commission since I lost contact with Fixer Drane.”
“Permin and I were convinced that dirt would be enough to keep a Split Second contained, but we were wrong.” Chiappa’s rage had become a slowly boiling stew. “And now The Tide is too.”
“But look, sir.” Shan whipped out the other half of the “egg,” which she had carried ever so vigilantly after she and Becker had found the wreckage of the Bomb. “Maybe we can put it back together?”
Chiappa smiled, admiring his Briefer’s tenacity. “It’s a nice thought. But not even a Time Fly could withstand that much raw Essence.”
“We have to try, sir! The fate of The World is at stake.”
Fixer Chiappa looked at Shan again, and for the first time he saw a passion for something other than herself shining on her face.
“All right, Shan Mei-Lin. If you’re game for this, then so am I.”
But before they could hatch a plan, a circle of blue light— just big enough for a body to slip through—began to draw itself on the ground: the telltale sign of a Skeleton Key in action . . .
“It’s them!” Chiappa turned white with fear, then scooped the ropes and gag off the floor. “Quick—tie me back up!”
Heart thudding, Shan bound the man from the isle of Corsica back to the chair, then slipped into the shadows behind the corkboard. Just in time too, for as soon as the blue circle was complete, it popped open like a porthole door, and five figures crawled out. They wore black bodysuits with their faces obscured by masks and began to gather their supplies with a great sense of purpose. But if the Briefer held out hope that they would be leaving just as quickly as they came, it was dashed when the burliest member of the group grabbed Mr. Chiappa by the throat and lifted him off the floor, chair and all.
“Time to take a ride, old man.”
274 West 12 Street, New York, NY
Apartment #5 of 274 West 12th was a five-story walk-up, but despite the seemingly endless parade of stairs, it was well worth the trip. This quirky penthouse had wood floors and white plaster walls that stretched across the entire top floor of the building. Fresh flowers were placed intermittently in shelves and alcoves, the light was pale and perfect, and due to its height above most of the other buildings nearby, street noise was replaced by the chirping of birds.
“You boys make yourself at home,” called out the silver-haired woman from the kitchen. “I’ll be right with you.”
Becker and Sully sank into the velvet cushions of the living room couch. On the exposed brick wall across from them sat an original Topher Dawson photograph that depicted the Manhattan skyline at dusk, silhouettes of archaic wooden water towers looming on top of buildings.
“Is that the Department of Weather?” asked Sully, no doubt recognizing the signature design of the tank that held all The World’s rain.
“They’ve been using those things in the city for a hundred years,” Becker explained. “Lots of Big Ideas in The Seems find their way into The World.”
“Is that why Machu Picchu looks like the Big Building?”
“Actually, the Big Building was more influential on the Tower of Babel,” again the voice carried back from the kitchen, along with the clanking of dishes. “Although there are some elements from the executive conference room that did leak their way into Inca culture.”
Becker nervously glanced at his traveling companion, then down at his Time Piece. He wasn’t here to make a social call, and part of him was still concerned that this wasn’t the Time Being at all. Maybe the woman who looked so much like the former Second in Command was just an out-of-work actress or eccentric bag lady—both of which were in greater supply in Manhattan than transplants from The Seems.
“The Plan got us this far . . .” Sully noticed that Becker’s leg was jittering like someone afflicted with RLS.25 “. . . the Plan will provide.”
The Fixer was in the process of rolling his eyes—because there was a fine line between believing in the Plan and sitting on your couch all day doing nothing—when the person they’d been looking for finally reappeared.
“Sorry that took so long, but you simply must try these cupcakes.”
Sophie Temporale, aka “the Time Being,” laid down a plate with an assortment of vanilla-, chocolate-, and pink-frosted cupcakes that looked out of this World and then fell into a wicker recliner. Even though Becker estimated her age at seventy-something (and knew that she was at least a million years older) she had a brightness in her eyes and a lightness in her step that reminded him more of the students in his father’s classes than his grandma Ethel.
As Becker helped himself to a chocolate on chocolate, his anxiety was eased by the sight of a brass gear painted on the face of the serving dish. When they had first approached the woman on the stoop, she had responded to the somewhat awkward query, “Um, excuse me, ma’am, but do you happen to be the Time Being by any chance?” with a bizarrely casual, “Of course I am,” then apologized for being late to their meeting. The Fixer obviously hadn’t scheduled any such meeting, but she promised to fill them in on all the details upstairs.
“It’s quite a good cupcake, Madame Temporale,” admitted Sully, who had eaten the bottom first and saved the frosting for last. “And even more of an honor to meet you.”
“Oh, please call me Sophie, and yes, I’m totally addicted to them.” She polished off the one with the red-hot candies on the top, then turned to Becker. “What about you, young man?”
“Excuse me?”
“How do you like your cupcake?”
Despite his years of Training (and respect for his elders), Becker couldn’t take it anymore.
“Enough about the cup
cakes!”
There was a long, painful silence and Sully just shrugged as if to say, “I don’t know this kid. He’s just some runaway who’s been following me around all day!” But the Time Being herself was completely unfazed, and smiled at the Fixer sympathetically.
“Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I just don’t have the time for small talk right now.”
“Of course you don’t.” The Time Being poured some hot tea into a cup and gingerly took a sip. “You need me to come back to The Seems with you and repair that Split Second.”
A flood of relief poured over the Fixer.
“Thank the Plan I found you,” said Becker, already looking for a spot in the wall to insert his Skeleton Key and open a pathway back to where Tony the Plumber had hopefully collected the missing half of the Split Second. “With any L.U.C.K., we can put this Mission to bed and be at Flip’s in time for the Procrastinators’26 second set.”
The Time Being nodded, got up from the table, and opened a window to let in a warm breeze. As the sounds of the city gently rushed in, she closed her eyes, as if listening to the same soundtrack of life that Sully had fallen in love with.
“I haven’t been to The Seems in over fifty years. And having lived in this apartment for the last thirty, my feelings about The World are even stronger now than when I was first helping to bring it to fruition.”
“I understand what you mean,” said Sully, covertly swiping a second cupcake. “Just being here the last hour or so has totally reinspired my work in History.”
The Time Being did not respond or even open her eyes, which started to worry the young Fixer.
“Anything you need, ma’am—I mean, Sophie—Tools, a place to stay, whatever, it’s yours. And believe me, if you’re concerned about your anonymity or the paparazzi, no one even has to know you were there . . .”