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Time
Have
you ever noticed how quickly a day passes? Or a
week? Or a whole year? I mean, one minute it is
your birthday, the next it is Christmas, and
before you know it, it is your birthday again. A
day’s work – it is not even really worth
going to work, if you get down to it. You take
ages getting there, make a coffee – and it is
lunchtime already. You have just finished eating
your lunch and – hey presto – time to go
home. My theory is that it takes longer to get
to and from work than you actually spend
working. Weeks pass in the blink of an eye.
Months blur into years – you catch my drift.
However, do you remember how slowly time passed
when you were a kid? One class at school could
last forever. Lives could be destroyed in just
those forty minutes. Also, and mercifully, the
summer holidays would last a lifetime. Do you
remember all those things you did during your
summer hols? I remember every one of them. Well,
almost every one, from the age of five onwards.
The reason I do is because they seemed to last
just about forever. I mean, they make movies
about children’s summer holidays, for crying
out loud. They can do that because such a lot
happens during that time.
Or so I thought.
This observation is, of course, based on my own
experience. I had no reason to doubt that my
perception was correct. Little did I know that I
was totally, dangerously wrong. Until one day...
"I haven’t got time for that, Mum,”
Sebastian, my ten-year-old said. He was sitting
on the floor in the lounge, sorting some papers
for school, conversing with my wife who was in
another room, far enough away so that I could
not hear her reply. She did reply, however, and
my son heard her. He sighed. “Mum, really,
there isn’t enough time! It’s not even worth
going to school, really, by the time I get there
it is time to go home.”
I stopped reading my paper and folded down the
top third, which allowed me to peer over the top
of it at my son. He paid no attention to me and
continued to rummage through his papers.
“Shit,” he said when he obviously could not
find what he was looking for.
I took my pipe out of my mouth and balanced it
in the ashtray. “What did you say?” I asked.
He moaned. “Sorry, Dad, bad word. I didn’t
mean to say it, it just came out.” “What?”
I said, slightly confused. Sebastian looked at
me strangely. “Never mind that, now,” I
said, and Sebastian managed to look relieved and
concerned at the same time. “I mean, what did
you say to your mother?”
Sebastian looked guilty, like he was racking his
brain to check if he had been cheeky to his
mother. When he found no evidence of that, he
expanded on what he had said to her. “Mum
wants me to take up those stupi... those
recorder lessons again, but I can only do it at
playtime, and there just isn’t enough time!”
Gillian, my wife had come up behind him and
ruffled his hair. “The lessons are not stupid.
They have cost us a lot of money, and we want
you to go again,” she said while he was
straightening out his hair.
“Never mind that now,” I said to her,
sounding slightly exasperated. Both of them
looked at me.
Gillian frowned and put her hands on her hips.
“Then what, may I ask, should I mind? Is your
son’s education not worth minding?”
I cut her off with a wave of my hand. I had
leaned forwards and studied my son. “What did
you say about the time?” I said, but it was
little more than a whisper.
Sebastian looked close to tears. “That there
isn’t enough of it?” he suggested unhappily.
I leaned back. Such a lot of wisdom from a
ten-year-old, especially wisdom he should not
normally gather until he is at least 25. “How
do you know that?” I asked him. Sebastian
shrugged. “What’s to know?” he said.
“Isn’t it obvious that there is never enough
time to do anything?”
I supposed it was – when you were a grownup.
Of course, Sebastian was only repeating my own
observations. But I cast my mind back. When I
had been ten years old, time had moved slowly. I
had assumed that time moved quicker the older
you got, probably something to do with getting
closer to death and having less time to do all
the things you want to do. What do I know?
Einstein’s theory of relativity came to mind.
Did time really move faster or slower at all, or
was it all a matter of perception? So, why was
my ten-year-old son of the opinion that time
moved too quickly?
There was more evidence of that which I had
never paid attention to before but which became
apparent to me at that moment. Aren’t all
children prone to say, “Just five more
minutes,” when they don’t want to go to bed?
Mine had frequently been heard quoting, “Only
half an hour to bedtime, not worth starting a
game now!” Or a friend would phone and he
would say, “No point me coming 'round now, I
will have to be home for dinner in an hour.”
I was in deep thought and only distantly heard
Sebastian ask his mother if I was all right. She
spoke to him quietly and ushered him out of the
room. When she closed the door she turned around
to me.
“What is the matter with you?” she asked. I
looked at her. “Have you ever noticed how
quickly time is moving these days?” I asked
her. She sat down opposite me and studied me
closely. “What are you talking about?” she
asked. I got comfortable in my chair and
explained my theory to her. “You are nuts,”
she said when I was finished. I was
disappointed. “No, not at all,” I began to
defend my theory, but she tutted and walked out
of the room. Okay, suit yourself.
I appeared to be the only one to notice that the
Emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes – to say
that there was something seriously wrong with
time. I thought the reason that nobody else
noticed probably lay in the fact that time as a
concept was so fundamental to our existence that
people just accepted it as it was. But I had
noticed. And I was watching out.
I started watching time. Clocks, for example. I
sat for ages watching the big hand go round and
round. And every so often it would skip. It
would be, say seven minutes past three in the
morning. And instead of steadily moving from
seven minutes to eight minutes past, the big
hand would move straight to ten minutes past,
skipping two whole minutes in one go. You could
say that probably my clock was broken, and
naturally that was what I assumed at first. But
I bought a new clock, and then another one to be
absolutely sure. All seventy-five clocks I
bought recently did the same. All my watches,
alarm clock, video recorder timers – they all
skipped whole minutes in the course of a day.
And then I noticed something else: The little
black spots that are all around us. At first I
thought they were a figment of my imagination.
Maybe staying up too late at night watching my
clocks had made my eyes weary. But after a while
I realized that the little black spots were
really there. And not only that, they seemed to
have a purpose, a direction, a mind of their
own. They ate time.
That’s right. I’m surprised you have never
noticed them. They are everywhere. Most of the
time they don’t seem to be doing much. But if
you watch them closely, you can see what they
are up to. They eat time. You watch them really
closely and, suddenly, they jump, all together.
The world goes black, and when everything is
back to normal, a couple of minutes will have
passed. They eat time.
Of course, I could not keep such important
information to myself. I don’t know where the
time-eaters came from, but I sure know what they
want: They are after us. By stealing our time
they are getting bigger and bigger, and we have
less and less time, until one day, we have no
time left. I don’t know what will happen then,
but I figured I'd leave it to the scientists to
work that one out.
At first I didn’t know who to tell. Gillian
didn’t understand me. Sebastian was too young.
I decided on the Government. After all, they
were supposed to be in charge. To my utter
dismay, they never answered my letters. But we
were running out of time – literally. I
approached local and national newspapers,
television stations and NASA. I explained my
observations in detail. I drew diagrams. I
recorded the time-eaters on video. Everybody was
blind to what I had to show them. They were in
with the time-eaters.
There was only one way. I broke into the BBC’s
offices one night and broadcast my video to the
nation. Now everybody knew. It didn’t matter
that the police came and took me away. I had
done my duty. What the people did with the
information was up to them. I kept asking the
policemen if they saw my video. They said no. I
showed them the time-eaters around us. They were
quite big by now, I mean, everybody could see
them. The policemen said no.
The doctor who came to see me wasn’t like a
real doctor. I mean, he had no stethoscope or
anything. He just asked me lots of things. I
kept telling him, we haven’t got time for 20
questions, we must stop the time-eaters. He said
that the Government had everything under
control. I was relieved. I asked him if the
Prime Minister had seen my video. He said yes.
Gillian came to visit me yesterday. She cried,
but I told her everything was all right now, and
I was going to be home soon. After all, how long
could they keep me? I had saved the world from
the time-eaters. I was a hero. Any day now I
will get a medal or something. I can wait. I
seem to have a lot of time in here.
© Copyright 2001 Verena Garrod
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