© 1993 by James F. Howard

There was just over an hour until midnight. I was going to my attic to retrieve the clock key. The door I approached began to swell and warp. I thought I must be having a flashback from my earlier years, and if I were to just ride it out for a second or two my sense of space-time would fall back into a safe and sober perspective. But the warping did not cease. A strobing blue glow was piercing the seams of the portal.

Instantly paranoid, I deduced that this was one of two things. This was either the beginning of something bad, or the end of all things good. I am afraid I am not much of an optimist.

The swelling and warping stopped as soon as it had begun. The light diminished as the normal black calligraphy that was drawn upon the doors edges once again became reality. As I reached for the knob, slowly and cautiously, the door burst open, as if the fabled wolf was blowing my house down. There was no time in which to be startled. The door bounced closed. My heads vision slowly cleared from the unexpected blow of the indifferent hatch.

A man in a timeless suit had emerged from my storage space. He was a tall, plasticine-skinned man who looked as if he were somebody’s father home from a long day of work. His first words were not what I was expecting, though I honestly don’t know what I could have possibly expected to hear.

“You will do.”

I will do? For what? I was wondering if there was some sort of protocol for this kind of divine weirdness. I decided for the time being to let it flow, though I somehow doubted that my decision had anything to do with the ebb and flow of how events were now transpiring.

“I think you know me. If so, that will make what I have to say a lot easier.”

I had no memory of ever seeing this person before, and felt sure that I had not a clue to his identity, yet there was something oddly familiar about him.

“Let me enlighten you.”

I mentally assigned the symbol-string to this strange beings value of “Traveler”. The traveler took one hand from his pocket and touched me upon the forehead. For a second I thought this was a form of blessing or some other such ritualistic motion. Then, instantaneously I found myself in a spiraling vortex of euphoria, clutching at the tail of this man’s finely tailored coat in fear and wonderment.

I had read about voyages through time, space and dimension through the power of the mind, but had never really bought into the whole neo/religious/Zen/hippie/new-age/metaphysical/yuppie type thing. Some say I’m kind of cynical. They are right. Being a man of science, I’m kind of that which I distrust. I’m me.

Articulation can’t even begin to depict the experience. How does one explain an experience from which there can be no common point of reference? I will say that it was one wild roller coaster ride that no form of brainwashing could ever hope to eradicate from my now permanently etched frontal lobes. Not without taking a scalpel to them.

I was coming to the unpleasant realization that this was all really happening. It was too clear, too linear to be an hallucination. I began to miss the paranoid feelings that I might be losing my mind, or that I had unknowingly been drugged. I was uncomfortable with the idea of being led. I had never been much of a follower; I liked to be in control.

“Hold on,” ordered the traveler. “I’m going to speed us up. I would hate for you to miss this.”

“Miss what?” I asked, trying to keep calm, which was pretty much impossible. We were obviously accelerating to a speed beyond the comprehension of the greatest living quantum physicists. By every law of motion I was aware of, my body should have imploded by now. The sensation of traveling so quickly brought me to feel as if I had lost my stomach on a hill. I was queasy. My throat was dry. “What is it you want me to see?”

The traveler did not give me a straight answer. He was not just leading me, he was leading me blind. I hated that. I think he somehow knew this. I don’t think he cared.

“Not too long ago, God created a universe in another plane of existence. Much the same way as God created the universe you would normally inhabit. Only this time, something went wrong. The divine machine’s program failed. There is a world where, and this is the strange part, God has no control over the manipulation of time, matter or energy. He is barely aware of it’s existence. It’s almost unique. If only it lasts.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” spoke my mental voice, echoing unto itself. The traveler answered.

“This world is inhabited with a superior race, a race of radically advanced super creatures more intelligent than the great computer. They have a thriving little world that has the Big Being a little concerned. The problem is, they have a suicidal streak in them.”

It all sounded a little strange, especially with the hint of sarcasm dripping rankly thick like bat guano in some long forgotten belfry.

“Where I come from, people have a similar fascination with death,” I spoke verbally this time. “They run from it but end up running to it.”

The traveler didn’t even hear me. He went on and on with his relentless spiel on this “superior” world.

“…they have become so technologically and philosophically advan…Oh! Prepare yourself, were almost there.”

In an instant we were on the surface of an immense dark orb. It was dim and very cold. The sky was a hazy gray, and the air was stale like the air in a welder’s metal shop or foundry. There were numerous large poles sticking out of the ground that stretched upward and onward into the stratosphere at a sleight angle. They were yellow on the low side and pure white on the high side. I marveled at these poles that seemed to be threads to the tapestry of this universe. I felt very small here. It was eerily quiet. This place was anything but thriving. In fact, this place was completely dead.

“Are we in the right place? Are we in the right dimension?” I asked in a kind of a half-laugh, sure that the traveler had over shot what he was aiming for in his haste. The traveler was just standing there. He looked nervous and confused, as I must have also. An awkward, thundering silence had fallen between us, like the tree in the forrest with no one around to hear it. His look of confusion seemed to adopt a sadness. I thought I saw a tear fall from his chin, then onto his coat. I must have been mistaken because out of invisible clouds tiny drops of rain made their way softly from the heavens of this derilict world to the surface. His eyes met mine for a brief second. He looked as if he was going to ask me a question, but he didn’t. His mouth fell a bit, then shut into a newly-intensified jaw line and a deep skin creasing frown.

He suddenly dropped to his knees directly in front of me. This being I called the traveler began to dig with his hands, stirring gray soot like matter into the air and onto his finely tailored white suit. I remember thinking to myself that such a soil would not wash out. The oily, smudging dirt of this world would not wash out of any man’s garment. I hated to see fabric like his stained; such a beautiful coat ruined.

“What are you doing?” I ventured to ask with a nervous smile on my lips.

The traveler said nothing. He just kept on digging as though possessed. He was looking for something, but what? He had not dug more than a foot when he stopped without warning and fell back several feet upon his ass, further staining his once pure ensemble. Something had frightened him. He had seen something in the void of earth he’d created, and he did not like it. I felt fear in him, and in myself. I did not want to look in the hole, but, being a man of science, I was powerless to overcome my curiosity. I peeked down into the hole he had dug at my feet, and saw a reflective surface. I knelt and began to brush the grimy dust and debris of what seemed like bone fragments away. This planet was one gigantic mirror covered with a moldy soil of dust and bone. This discovery chilled me to the core of my being. I was scared, though I knew not why. My fear became self perpetuating. What I was witnessing affected me like a horrible omen, but an omen of what?

I looked towards the traveler in questioning despair and utter confusion, praying he would tell me what to name my fear. The traveler said nothing. He knew my look, but would not hear my prayer. This being who had brought me to this most foreign land of waste and desolation had abandoned me. It was as though he was not there at all. He had risen, and was just standing there with his back to me, scanning the ground with his twin soul windows. He had seen something. Something had put him in his own little universe, and he did not care to share it with me. I hated being kept in the dark. I was afraid of the dark. He didn’t care.

“Why have you forsaken me!!!” I screamed from my innermost soul, clenching my fists in fear and anger at his strange behavior.

The traveler did not turn to face me, but he did peel back the sleeve on his right arm to expose what looked like some kind of time piece. Backwards was something definitely here.

“When does one in your world add an hour to his clock?”

I had never heard such a ridiculous question in all my existence. What the hell did this have to do with anything? What the hell does Daylight Savings Time have to do with any of this? Sure, the spring forward/fall back thing had always confused me, making me a little crazy, but this traveler had lost his damned mind! I’d had enough. It was time to take charge. Control would be mine.

“What the fu—“ I started.

“Answer me!” blasted the traveler, who spun and darted towards me, growing in size with every angry, widening stride.

In no time at all he had closed the short gap between where he had been and where I then stood. He had mutated into a hulking madman some twenty-three feet tall. This monstrous creature had clutched me about the shoulders and was dangling me several feet above the ground quite effortlessly.

Shocked, no, horrified, I gazed at this creature and trembled like a frightened child in its father’s arms; awaiting condemnation to severe punishment for a crime I did not understand, but had unknowingly committed.

“Answer me!” His thunderous voice echoed through the void of space around me. The ground was shaking. The increasing pressure of this titan’s hands upon my now dwarfed frame became agony. Bolts of electricity shot across the sky like enraged serpents in sets of three. It was not until the sixth bolt that I registered the true color of this wasteland world. It was a crimson red, and this crusting color was all over the face, hands and coat of this powerful thing which held my life in giant hands.

I could feel myself slipping into a blackout from the intensity of the pain and the utter mental overload of it all. I was tired, so tired, and now welcomed darkness. I wanted out, a release. I wanted to sleep. I wanted…death.

As my head slumped to my chest I saw the bizarre time piece on his left arm in the reflection of the hole he had created. There were no hands on this watch nor any numbers. There were only Greek letters for Alpha and Omega. Yet, they were twisted, reversed in the reflection of this world.

“Oh God!” I gasped, in what I expected to be my last words before the shrilling of my primal summons of death.

There was a sudden silence. The pain in my body seemed to reduced to the normal levels of awaking expectation. I had no longer felt the grip of a monster on me but the hands of the traveler, as I had first encountered him, resting lightly on my shoulders. My feet were once again on the long charred crust of this strange world. The surface had returned to the grayish muck it had been before. I lifted my head up slowly, still fearful. Still tired.

“Your race has no concept of time. Men draw lines with themselves at the center and say, ‘We are man. We are here, at the center of eternity, at the center of the universe, at the core of all things.’ They do this because they are lost, but have too much pride to admit it. Pride is the flaw of your kind, and prideful vanity is the eternal downfall of all things.”

I stood there, completely stupefied by this creature in front of me. This thing which I called the traveler was now a shape-shifter assuming a different form every second. Just as I thought I recognized one form it would polymorph into another. It became a strange creature with a squid like head, a man-like being with the head of a dog, an old man in robes, a fat crouched figure, a woman in veils with many arms, a scaled multi-headed beast, a horned man in a cape, a kingly figure with an orant, a wide-hipped pregnant woman, a man in a toga with sparking hands, a machine being with monitors for eyes, a body of water, a globe of light and heat, a body of air filled with stars…

As he shifted he continued to speak.

“Your kind seek a picture of what I am. You assign forms to me just as every other race does. Your kind will meet its end soon, like the creatures I brought you here to see. They finally found the image that pleased them. It did not please me! This is the result, a world without life. You want to see God as they did? You can. You will. This is how they saw God! ”

He stopped shifting and became a flat object that had a dull shine to it. I recognized it with horror. It was a mirror. My reflection stood there, talking to me, looking at me with a cold stare of pure disgust.

“Your kind have an answer for everything, in an existence that was not meant for reason. You forgot to set your clock forward, but were going to persist in winding it. I also miscalculated the time, and we could not witness the shallow glory of this world. It was my mistake. I must remember this past.”

I was standing before my attic door, not sure why I was there. I had the clock key in my hand, and remembered that I had just wound the clock. Or was I going to wind it? I opened the attic door and saw a mirror running full-length in front of me. I was wearing a timeless white suit. My reflection stood there staring at me with a cold look of total disgust. Pictures, sharp as knives, fell, slicing my mind to create a linear memory. An echoing voice from deep inside me said I must remember, and I did.

I remembered everything as my fist plowed into the thick tempered glass. The watch on my arm was slowly being covered with my trickling blood, and I remembered. Frantically, I wiped it away, trying not to let blood fall onto my sleeve, but it was too late. I remembered. I remembered everything.

The shattering of the mirror had thrown a million tiny dead worlds onto me. Worlds I had forgotten, but now, I had remembered them all. The blood had already forever set into my once perfect white coat. I was once proud of how brilliant and immaculate my coat was. No longer was I proud of it. I was no longer proud of anything.

I grew enraged that I had stained my coat. Even more enraged that I had broken my mirror. My anger fed upon itself, snake on tail, and became uncontrollable. I wanted a storm to match my anger; I saw great strobing flashes in sets of three out my two soul windows as commanded, and remembered.

There was no controlling myself or that which I set to life, nor was there ever. I remembered where my center of the universe was, and that there is no common point of reference in the eternally infinite. I would wind the clock no more.

As they had met Alpha Omega, the clock struck eleven, but I knew that it was twelve.