Time Travel Tales

2. Captive of Time

It’s six in the morning and the alarm clock doesn’t make a sound, in fact it hasn’t made a sound for the last few months. That was largely due to the fact that any sort of attempt at waking me would have been pointless, thus the alarm had been switched off as an obsolete mechanism. But now, today, it should have been switched on and it hadn’t been. Consequently I woke up at nine.

 Despite the fact I know I’m late for work I stay in the bed, staring at my ceiling for a quarter of an hour, a luxury I can no longer afford.

 Finally I get up and head for the toilet. After I empty my bladder I contemplate whether to take a shower or a bath, a man in my position, that is to say someone who is late, should take a shower.

 But there’s no obligation there, in fact I could do whatever I wanted, go to work unwashed, not go to work, go to work with tooth paste smeared on my face, the possibilities are endless. I wonder whether these freedoms made me happy before or whether I just took them for granted, I honestly can’t remember.

 But now, despite all the freedom, I feel trapped, captured by what I was free of until yesterday, time.

 The Egg as I’d christened it, was a small egg shaped object that had landed in my back garden, I’m still not sure what it is, an alien artefact? Technology kept secret from us by the government? I don’t know now, I didn’t know then and I certainly didn’t care.

 As soon as I pressed the glowing button at The Egg’s centre, it had opened the world to me, showed me what I could do, what I could be!

 I went everywhere and every when, explored times before and after men, the adventures I had had!

 I’ve turned my room upside down, emptied every pocket, looked everywhere! But I still can’t find it.

 Oh how I miss it, the journeys. The feeling of exhilaration, flight and amazing, magnificent power!

 But The Egg’s gone, taking with it all the power, confidence and that feeling of flying and diving and…and…now I’m a lowly prisoner of time, bound by the shackles that bind everyone else on this miserable planet.

 After my shower I sit on my bed, slowly putting on my clothes while staring at my bedside clock, looking at the minutes passing, chronologically, minute after dull minute. A tear comes to my eye and so I stop and look out of the window, I live on the eighth floor and consequently have quite a nice view. But even the view, that would have lifted my spirits before fails to cheer me up, but merely makes me wonder why no one else feels this bond, why no one can see the prison.

 I stand up and take a step to the window, maybe there’s a way to feel that flying sensation again.