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Birth Of Mr. Clocktime
Sometimes you reach just the edge of darkness, only to run away in fear. Some other times, you become the darkness itself. Whatever fears you once had, feel minor in comparison. Your chosen life. In the heart of truest darkness, there lay beyond a certain kind of light. When everything fades away, one can say goodnight. Goodnight to all the ills of the life, goodnight to life itself. Goodnight to the wind, in its calm cooling embrace. The shadows keep one company, under the glow of the starry night. The fireflies that are born and die glitter under the glow of the "Meadow Of Gold".
It had many months since Nadine had made the first step to true goodness, one only speculates what one's future may hold. There are some things under the stars, that makes grown men and women cry. Before they die slow and painful deaths, longing for the secrets of a better life. She had been dating Millie for the last few months, the AI that manifested into the real world. At first Ellen was resentful of the new girl, yet over time she began to accept that Nadine had become to absorbed into the world of fantasy. Where the skull-fairies still wander in the darkness. Ellen could hear the sounds of their bones cracking, which made her want to vomit. But for Nadine, this did not phase her one bit. She had simply seen to much in the game world, and over time she began to further and further neglect herself. At nights Ellen stays besides Nadine as she games, staying beside her as she plays other's games. The relationship between Millie and Ellen continued to blossom, although to this day Ellen feels that she is trying to live up to her new girlfriend's grace and harmony.
But in this world where children die to young, there is a faint glimmer of hope. Not the false hope given by the glow of the meadow of gold, but another kind. The hope that others will never grow up like they did. It is an uncertain hope, but you can make the future. The future of the alley cat. And in this world where children dance to the dance of death, there is the sound of distant thunder.
The sound of the night.
Mr. Clocktime, about six foot nine, carried around a large black cane. His top hat covered a bald head. Nobody knows whether he really has eyes, or if beyond those glasses is the heart of man. He had a certain kind of desire for Nadine. She could ensure that he could exist forever. Thus he pushed his hat backward, tapped his black cane, and went into the night. And a few months later, Vella was born.
Vella, the new half breed of god and messiah.
Come to the night.
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Mr. Clocktime Goes Out To Eat
It was an old Chinese restaurant, called Taste Of Chicken. More accurately, it should have been called Taste Of Fish. You could go through the isles all day, and only find one dish that involved chicken. The food was to sweet, and yet that was not as overbearing as the taste of the sea. The waitress was cute enough, but soon it was time to leave. 'I've never been to a Chinese place like that.' said Mr. Clocktime, and with a tip of his hat, flew into the sky.
And then landed on the porch steps of Vella's–or rather–Nadine's apartment in the potato district. It had been many months sense Nadine had inadvertently created a new universe out of the dust of the dream-cataclysm. She stared at him through the window with a glare, and then pushed aside her long flowing red hair. Then walked to the door, with a pepper spray canon held behind her back. But because Mr. Clocktime was all knowing, he would make sure to be especially nice today. For he had grave news to tell indeed. Indeed! Vella had lost her noble steed, her motor bike in the city-scape she called her Stallion. He grinned as he had a sweet taste of scallions. Nadine opened the door.
Mr. Clocktime, is that you?' said Nadine.
Mr. Clocktime wanted to barf out his spleen. 'You are looking particularly unclean today.' said he to Nadine.
'Why are you here?' said Nadine.
'I was on an incredible adventure, exploring lost civilizations, ruins among various times and places.' Mr. Clocktime said, creating the illusion for and of himself that of many faces from different eras. For he could change shape at will, although for this Nadine treated him like a shill.
'Why are you really here?' said Nadine.
'Vella is in the hospital, I took a visit to check on our daughter.' Nadine had to barf from him calling her that, for he had never been attentive until recently. Although in retrospect this was by design. For someone who was divine, could not take care of mortals or half and half. That would for him, be like taking care of calf for the slaughter. But Vella was certainly his daughter. He cackled with a hyena's laughter.
'Mr. Clocktime!' said Nadine.
'It is who I am my dear.' he said, with a cane flourish. And then flew back into the sky, not to come until the next night.
Nadine rode her motor bike to the hospital, and her clogs almost slipped on the slippery pavement of the metropolis. This made her feel the need to piss, thus she as a ms. rushed inside to take a whiz. Then rushed into the room, knocking over various janitors cans, and then in her mind as she went to visit Vella: yes I can, yes I can, yes I can. And thus with shuffling shirt, she entered the room under the glow of the fading city lights.
'Vella, you didn't tell me.' said Nadine.
'Well I was unconscious in the hospital.' said Vella.
'No no, about Mr. Clocktime.'
'Priorities, priorities.'
Vella relationship with Nadine had gradually began to dissolve. Nadine never really intended this to happen. Certainly Nadine never wished to be like her mother, who was a smarmy politician that had reached a kind of pseudo NSA status in the potato district. 'I care about you Vella.' Nadine said.
'Then act like it.' said Vella.
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Mr. Clocktime Sees Hope In Vella
Though the whispers are only barely there, the sounds of rats remain in the sewers within the crawlspace below the city. Cries of the angels call out to one, and yet no creature is stirring. Whispers, nothing more. Mr. Clocktime exists in a kind of in between state; he is always watching you as he is everywhere, and yet exists nowhere on this Earth. Scarcely does anyone mention him by name, he is simply there under the glow of the Arsonist's flame. His riddles are felt everywhere he goes, and yet as far as most hear no words are spoken. For he is the Grim Reaper, that other than Nadine, only those who are young may see. Vella had returned home to her parent's apartment flat. It a run down joint no much larger than studio, yet the rent was always cheap due to the area they lived in. She wondered if the box was still under the couch where she had left it. Everything seemed to be back to normal; all of her friends parents were back in their homes. Vella was never one for sentimentality, and yet felt such to finally have a normal life again.
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At night she would still have those nightmares, of a bald man in a black trench coat and black top hat. And yet as her special kind of insanity drew nearer by the night, she would follow various lessons plans from the man that she would recently only see in her dreams. It was a wonder to her if any of her friends remembered him after things went back to normal. After all, with a simple snap of his fingers anything could change in an instance. Only the memories remain with her, who had birthed the man to begin to with in the darkest reaches of her minds third eye. Whenever she would visit him, he would take her to various galaxies and universes that would have never dreamed to visit before. Most of which are uninhabitable to man, her existing in a kind of non time bubble. This would protect him from the powerful radiations from stars of various galaxies that would melt off her skin. Then she pops back into her own reality, and everything is back to normal again. And then down, down, down into the blankets she goes. And wakes up with only a faint memory of the past. She sails among the universe's seas, avast! She would hear his voice calling, singing:
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Am I the one that Seeth's day,A man who is born from disarray.Am I the one that comes to roost,Or the broomstick with a cook.I shall go home to roost.
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And thus that is how most days would close. For most people there would be a feeling of the utmost urgency, and yet for her there was none. He was not demonic, she shall never consult a nun. Instead, at least she thought at the time, all she had to do was steal her mother's gun. Yet no matter the ill thoughts she may have while she is awake, she is always at peace in that sense of timelessness. For the man had this way with world that ended all fear. And yet he could easily overwhelm her with fear if he wanted to. He was simply to kind. Whenever she was in a bind, he would always be there. And he would offer to snap his fingers, and toss her bullies into the forth dimension. Yet Vella, despite her troubles with other girls her age, was as well always simply to kind. Because she knew that having someone guide her was power, and force not to be messed with. She go hop out of time in an instant, and hop right behind them. And toss a cosmic abomination at them, and then sweep them both out of time with a broom. Zoom, zoom, zoom out of time they went. Their frames crushing from explosion lit by flint.
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Then the nightmares came again, and yet they felt especially real. Instead of the appearance of people, her friends and everyone she knew slowly become indescribable things–though not always completely. For some of them would have bat like wings, and elephant noses. Other would be long and wiggly, like big giant water hoses. These would be the snotty little kids she always knew, she always wanted to kick with her boots. Yet Mr. Clocktime had has catches, and she would be stuck within her witch's boots. He knew that the more she used her outfit, the more this outfit would completely consume her, all of her life force and will. Everything about her would never be the same. So like the good father he is, always warned her not to use this outfit. Though he was not without faults, after all he amused himself by the thought of her being consumed by it. Watching her pop the bullies out of time, while dancing around like a music box girl doing the splits.
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Thus as she woke up for the next coming morning, she waved goodbye in her usual way she always did.
And waited for father to come home.
For the midnight rooster to roost to the moonlight.
Closing of the night's sonata.
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She rode on her hover cycle down the broken down bridge to her apartment flat. In her backpack were various CDs with various Linux Distributions. The speed limit was only fifty five, and she went ninety. Zip, zip, zip down the roadway she went past various roads of corn fields outside of the larger city complex just down a few blocks. The merging of centuries has had lasting effects. The untainted forest of unknown creatures of the night made their homes in the same world as the world of prosthetic arm and eye enhancements and virtual reality. They would occasionally visit her neighbors, who would always be complaining about dark things in the night. She hung up her wooden clogs on the door, and went home to the fireplace and sat on the couch waiting for the evening's dinner.
When she did not drive to school, she would ride various carts along the dirt roads when her little sister, and she would always had to reminds them to dust and wipe their clogs before going inside. She hopped off with them from the horse cart, and then tip her little black bowed straw hat and stare at the edges of the sunlight in the sky. It was a local field trip organized by their pastor, who was not wild about the current advances in technology. Indeed, ordinarily these technologies would only occur after the next one hundred years. Vella's cousin Gella took out her phone, and text her pen pals that she had arrived.
Eventually the group was split up from the pastor. And thus they were lost within the corn maze. Until eventually Mr. Clocktime appear in the corn field, and offered to lead them in the direction of the pastor. He tap his cane gently into the mud, and finally they popped back to where the pastor was. 'Girls, girls! Where have you been? Now I have wrinkles on my chin.' said the pastor, and thus this ended their field this section of the field trip.
Mr. Clocktime was bored with mostly spending time in the city. After all the local fare of seafood was only so much to bare. The occasionally gourmet pizza he would buy from various restaurants were always nice, yet even these would gradually become old for him. Thus it was the following night that he would see Vella again, and thus would be another adventure, though he had to resist the fact that it was in fact training for something else later that would determine her own ability to survive the collapse of the universe. After all, all it would take would be a wish from Vella that can restore humanity's place on the planet, and thus restore Mr. Clocktime's ability to be entertained.
His humor was rather profane, he had a shit load of giggles from watching Volcano's explode, and watching ancient buildings from begone eras fall down and implode. Why watch explosion on film, when you can be right there and watch the events unfold at any time of history you want. It was a cold night, and he regretted the thinness of his leather trench coat. And he felt that the color was simply to dark for the occasion, though his black sunglasses and top hat would be just fine. But so much black he wore, and the night was never so dark. In fact the night time was just dark enough to hallucinate vile things in the night.
That evening he visited Vella in a dream. In this dream he gave he one wish to fulfill, for he could only only cause mischief with an ill informed wish. But this was some deeper attachment to her. For she was different from the other adventurers that had he met before in his eons of life. Vella looked just like Nadine, who had defeated Dantino twenty years before. Nadine was of the old guard in a reality that only we may know. She was the cause of the birth of the duality of centuries, and thus also born him. Despite his nature for mischief, he was always a kind of secret adulterous affair from Ellen and Millie.
Vella made he wish against all other wishes.
And thus all the adults were gone, except him.
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Vella arrived at school, and noted that while all her friends were there at the door, there were no adults to be found. This would spin their sense all around, and make them hop gigs if they could hope gigs. Tap dancing on one of their friends was big enough to carry an entire dog pounds. They would roll along the playground, and grind with their Tennis shoes on the monkey bar railings, and then hop back on the boy and continue rolling up the mountain. But Vella herself had grown concerned by the absence of their parents, despite the others good time. Thus she hop off the boy, and ran to Mr. Clocktime carefully avoiding being ran over, because by comparison she was much shorter than all the rest. At her friends behest, "I don't wish to be away from my mom, I want all the adults to be home again."
"Indeed Vella, a good daughter you are." said Mr. Clocktime. And with a snap of his cane on to the parking lot road, sent time backwards. Until eventually Vella was back in bed, and all the adults were back in the world again.
Then he hopped out of time.
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Mr. Clocktime Entertains
He tipped his hat forward, to step out of the rain. Then tapped his cane on the door, in order to close it. Mr. Clocktime had come to visit Vella after she got off from school. He had carefully let Nadine know in advance that he would be arriving. He saw Vella's two little wooden shoes by the door, letting him know that she was home. – Vella, it's your father.
– I'm doing homework!
– Is that the real reason?
– Why brings you here? I thought mom didn't want to see you anymore?
Mr. Clocktime had been scant over the last few months, as she didn't want either Millie or Dantino knowing that she had been impregnated by the the god himself. He came as if from a dream, from the fourth dimension, and could cross any points in time he wanted, viewing each time line as if it were a face on a hypercube. With the tip of his cane, he fly those that upset him into the fourth dimension, thereby crushing them into an infinite singularity. But for tonight, he was here to see Vella. – Every weekend I get to entertain you, unlike you mother. And why should it matter? You hardly talk to her yourself?
Vella had always been taught to distrust men that came in the shadows. For they always come with bad omens. – Is it my top hat? I suppose I could take it off.
Part of Father Clocktime freaked her out, as it reminded her of the fragility of her own existence. That could pop out of time at any point, and only some part remains that her mother Nadine would have to bury. Clocktime was that god that was just about Hemato, and in this respect that made him a threat to her power. And yet for the most they never had tried to meet until recently. In a sense, he had existed before the creation of the world by the Decentralized Super-Sentient Meta-Human Hemato herself, so often she had avoided encountering him for the most part. He was that embedded firmware bug that had always existed.
There were parts of him that even Hemato-Tomato could not understand, some bit of persistent data that had always been around. His personality had been fragmentary, yet had always been that nagging sensational that allowed Hemato to hold onto that last bit of humanity, even as he personality began to fragment. That bits of intelligence that kept he holding on.
– I'll be taking you to school.
– Why do I have to go to school?
– Nadine's orders.
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Final Part
Vella thought she had a rival, then she realized it was just a computer. No matter how much data you filled it, it was always the same; it would never come out with anything creative. It might be able to fake it by using your words, in a psychopathic manner, against you. But it was still the flow of pixels in the screen. She fed all the data from her old friends different tests, hoping the computer to generate something consistent. But there was a part of her than on some level, she knew she couldn't fool her sensei. She wasn't sure why her mother continued to insist on programming her own stuff, as computers seem to do just about everything these days, from cooking to chopping your head off. Any irregularities was simply the standard unevenness in the automated manufacturing process. – Would you stop playing video games, if an AI could play better than yourself?
This was something that her mother would always ask. Vella never knew, as she had never been one to play video games, and only recently got into simple rogue likes. What she knew is she didn't merely spit out data that was fed to her, but came up with her own conclusions. Her computer would sometimes conclude that was she Hitler, despite her own input data explicitly saying she wasn't. – You're Hitler, you can't convince me otherwise, don't give me those sweet lies.
It was not the classical world of American cherry pies, or key lime or that matter. Only a world of petty corruption, and machine generated criminal justice. For predatory capitalists, justice was a water chestnut at a Chinese restaurant, and just about as tasty. As long as they could appear tough on crime. Everyone else covered in grime, from the old cars they cleaned. And the occasional crook they ripped out the spleen from.
Not a world of soft melodies.
But a faint buzzing hum.
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Midnight was like doing the robot at the guillotine. All those old dance moves gone to waste, all those metal parts on the floor. Eyeballs flickering like disco lights.
Vella would sneak out after dark to go to rave parties. Her friends were the girls that could repair themselves with screwdriver if the need rose, while she herself couldn't stretch to touch her toes. Resistance to pain was something that she always seemed to lack, yet until recently this never seemed to hold her back. Because life was a mixture of prerecorded lines in machine learning algorithm, or a dance on a rave floor. But many hours of constant puking galore.It was many a night before, when Mr. Clocktime came to her door, and he brought whither in his wake. And the very ground under his fine black dress shoes with crumble and decay. But his footsteps were always as if he were walking on eggshells, as if the ground itself was so weak that it could not handle his very presence. In defiance of the Earth, in defiance of the universe. His very black trench coats set the land ablaze. Thus he came only in the midnight hours, careful to turn back the clock. – What's up clock, how's it going?
He tossed a coin in the air, and it landed on an old poppers scalp, going pock. – What's the coin man! Only drop wooden nickels! Then Clocktime rewound the clock.
All in a days work, after a taste of ordinary Chinese food at midnight galore. In a city of robots dancing on a guillotine floor, constantly repairing their metallic limbs. The street lights rusting and in disrepair. Decay and death everywhere. Nothing but the finest dust, in your hair. Everything in this world should come to an end, but Mr. Clocktime had other things in store for Vella, without the world coming to an end.
– Perhaps I'll see this world again, someday soon. He hoped all the way to the moon.
And the moon winked.
Vella remembered the stories Nadine would tell her about her teen years. How it was almost to an epidemic proportion how many of her peers had at least some variation of post traumatic stress disorder; the symptoms were distributed in lots of different ways. The main factor were the two civil conflicts that split the once United States, one of which was the various miniature revolutions that finally separated America from the rest of the French neo-colonial power. It used to be, about 110 years ago, that people wore rubber and plastic shoes. Yet the richest among the proletarian wore wooden shoes. In a sense, in some ways it seemed like society had went backwards.
The poorest among them were even worse off, often little more than spare parts for various mutations of cyborg disorder. She couldn't recall a time when things were different. But Nadine would tell her how when she was growing up, it was relatively rare to actually be a cyborg: in fact you were the freak in a crowed of engineered normalcy. When she grow up surviving various cult groups, no matter how superficially good it seemed you have it, it was a time bomb waiting to happen when you finally have nothing; Nadine grew up being used to having it all. She came from the city in the sky. She came from a world of flying school buses. Yet the entire world in which they lived was engineered by a vampire, locked inside of a super computer; an amalgamation of different incarnations of her own organic brain and countless brain chips merged into the same machine learning framework. This isn't the story of a top class computer hacker. Or the story of a cyberspace cowboy, but the story of fallen goddess.It begins when Vella had entrusted her livelihood part time to Mr. Clocktime, who appeared to her as a guardian angel in the darkness. And with his top hat tipped backwards, and tapping the ground with his cane, he treated the world like Novocaine for his cosmic arthritis. -- Vella, have you ever been to the fourth dimension?
-- Didn't you see my friends parents there?
-- Well I brought them back didn't I?
-- That's not the point.
-- So then you must know then. It wasn't designed for the existence of mortals.
-- I don't completely understand what you're telling me. It's all going a little bit to fast. And I still have my own world to process.
Mr. Clocktime almost dropped his hat:
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There is no rush,
For the world of metallic bushes.
No shush, wired appendage of life.
And be the fourth dimension's wife.
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-- Will you stop that, it's your way of speaking that freaks me out.
-- You don't like poetry?
-- It's not that, it's your whole being.
-- You'll love it in time.
Nadine would visit her occasionally to take her to the park, with her holographic tattoos flipping like sparks. But Mr. Clocktime would always be watching. With security cameras, they were not always accurate. But he was something beyond a machine, it was a very different feeling even from the creator of The Potato District, in all its trashy glory.
His life was not a human story.
Or anything on this Earth.
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