Time Off

Chapter Four

Angel ripped open the box like a wild animal, such was the intensity of her desire to examine its contents and take the next step toward answering the questions that burned in her mind. As she rifled through the bubble wrap, seeking the prize within, she smiled, remembering when little Severino y baby Lola would do the same thing on Christmas morning. Fragments of thrills from her own childhood flashed through her mind and she laughed as she got a grip on several smaller packages within.

She removed nine small packages, each beaming the Casio name in bright blue. They were digital wrist watches. Casio F91W's to be exact and each one had set her back $9.95. She had picked this model because of the price but mainly because it was nicknamed the "Obama watch" because Obama was often seen wearing the same model. It was a classic, basic model and Angel was thrilled as she unwrapped and examined each watch carefully.

She was very familiar with inexpensive digital watches and without the need to even glance at the tiny instruction booklet, she started to set each one. The first one she set precisely to the time displayed on her old iphone with its slightly cracked display. After that, she set each watch in turn, a minute ahead of the real time and then waited and hit the mode button precisely to start the watch ticking with the iphone. She botched it a couple of times and could see that the watch was off by maybe half a second. She started over in those cases until she felt satisfied that all nine of them were moving in concert.

Angel had considered using old iphones instead of the watches. Iphones were unique as far as she could tell, in that the stopwatch kept going for millions of hours. Other phones and watches would have a limit of one hour or best case, ten hours. But the iphone would just roll over to the next digit by shrinking the font. She was excited by the discovery but then she realized that phones were a hassle because they needed power constantly.

Angel wasn't sure if that would be workable since she wanted to deploy these timing devices to different points on Earth and she worried that they might lose power. So her latest strategy was to buy these nine, cheap, simple bulletproof Casios with their ten year batteries, as another way to measure time. The downside of the Casios was that the stopwatch recorded hundredths of a second, but maxed out at one hour, and the normal watch function only displayed whole seconds. Iphones, on the other hand recorded hundredths of a second on a virtually limitless stopwatch.

While Angel was working with a dozen old iphones for the past few months, she realized that they all ran at different rates. Once she noted which one ran the fastest, she used that iphone as a reference and started tracking the elapsed time difference between each phone and the reference phone. To her delight, the rate difference for each phone was very consistent.

Angelica's machinations drew looks of concern from Sevy and Lolita but they mostly found it humorous. And sometimes, Lolita especially became inquisitive.

"Mama. What are you doing with all of these phones. Don't I get one?"

"Mija, you are not old enough but soon I will give you your own."

"Will I get one of these? I like the blue one," said Lolita pointing at an old iphone 5C with a light blue case.

"No, no darling. I will get you one even better than these. Next year you turn thirteen. Then you can have a new one, just like Sevy. Okay?"

"Si Mama. Now what are these for?"

"Ay muchacha. Okay lemme explain." Angel took a deep breath and sighed, trying to think of what to say. "Alright. I keep these all lined up in a special order. Remember I told you kids to never touch them?" Lola nodded. "Every week I take a picture of them, altogether. But the camera has be fast because you see how fast the numbers change? That's one hundred times every second. So I put that bright light bulb in. I know you guys hate that one, but I need the light. Then Uncle Miguel let me use this good camera. With the good light, I can take the picture very fast. Let me show you." Angel flipped on the light switch and Lola immediately squinted and made a whiny protest. "Mira." Angel lined up the camera and focused and then snapped about five pictures in rapid succession. "Mira." She brought up the photo on the camera LED and then zoomed in on one of the phone displays she had captured. "You see? There. You can't see those numbers moving with your eyes but the camera can freeze them."