An Important Clock

Part 1

I sat in the conference room, tapping my pen. I looked at the clock, knowing it would just make the meeting feel a hundred times longer. Forty-Three more minutes to go. I sighed a silent sigh and mentally queued up a bunch of things to daydream about. Mostly about what I could be doing if I weren't here.

Then I noticed the ticking of the clock. It seemed so persistent, drilling the unchanging *click* into your skull until you felt like your head was going to explode. The dimwit who "earned" his position upfront blabbing about something mundane sounded like he was talking through a blanket in a narrow cave-- muffled yet sharp. The lights were so bright.... I felt a head-splitting pain.

I cried out and fell out of my chair, clutching my head. "Ahh- OHH! AAAAHH! GOD!" Everyone in the room stared at me in surprise. The clock continued to tick. "MAKE IT STOP PLEASE STOP STOP STOP... STOP..."

The clock froze. But so did everything else. Except for me. My headache suddenly lifted, and I stood up.

"Uhh... sorry guys," I said to my colleagues. But they didn't answer-- they seemed frozen in place. "Heh, funny prank," I scoffed. I walked over to one of them and said "I guess you wouldn't mind If I took your wallet, then," I joked. But when I reached into his pocket, it wouldn't budge. Slightly worried, I walked over to the door to try and open it, but it wouldn't budge. When I turned around, no one was there. In fact, nothing was there-- it was just a whiteness as far as I could see. Nothing-- except for the clock.

When I turned back around, there was only white there, as well. I appeared to be standing on a floating carpet floor in the middle of nowhere, literally. I started breathing quickly. This was always one of my fears-- being in an empty nothingness, with nothing to see. But the good news was, there wasn't nothing to see. There was the clock.

The clock hung there in space, a stark contrast to the emptiness of everywhere else. I felt like something out of a video game, but I knew what it-- or they-- wanted me to do. I walked over there and took the clock off of the wall.

It was about a foot and a half wide and consequently wasn't very easy to carry. I set it down on the conference table that somehow or other got here (I stopped questioning it). There didn't seem to be anything interesting about it on the front apart from the TimeCo logo, but I knew there must be something to it or else I wouldn't be in this limbo.

I turned it over and saw a single knob in the middle for adjusting the time shown on the clock.

I'm sure your mind went where mine did.

I turned the knob slowly, and the white background faded out and was replaced by the conference room, filled with my colleagues. They were moving in reverse, doing tasks in reverse, and everything else in reverse. I turned the knob a bit faster. People started filing out of the door in the morning and drove back to their houses to get ready for a big day of work. I grinned, because I knew what this meant.

I just discovered a time machine.

I spun the knob to yesterday and let go of it. The blank walls came back, but, this time, I saw a door leading to the hallway. I let go of the clock to go over to the door, but before I left I had an idea. I walked over to the clock, and tried to see it as a watch. A Rolex, maybe. I looked at my wrist. It was bare.

It was a long shot anyway. I rubbed my eyes and turned to go to the door, but before I opened it, I saw I had a nice looking TimeCo watch on my wrist. I chuckled with a pleased look on my face. That was just what I needed.