Blinx: Before the Time Sweeper

Chapter 1: "Time is like a treasure"

Time Factory - Hallway

December 12th, XXXX

16:03pm (TF Timezone) - Present Day

700 years without major time-energy incident.

Great - flunked another exam.

Just when things were looking brighter, and I actually started to pay attention in class: I just had to doze off like a couple hours past my bed-time 'cause I HAD to fall for the old black and white grin from yours truly again (and that tacky rich people's purple, zipped jacket with the black jorts he's always wearing that doesn't fit his black and white pelt in the first place: thanks for making me a phony fashion critic, Catherine), and now I'm stuck here waiting for the queue to pass. Still, I did probably perform better than I would have if I arrived! Right? Maybe things are looking brighter, after all! I can maybe even schedule a retry, and act like the past gazillion years never happened, and I can finally move up from geese to G's instead! Yeah, that sounds great! Totally gonna happen like the past 9 times it did...

Never really payed much attention to the place, but now that I do the walls are looking a lot more crunch than usual, like they're about to chew me up for breakfast without the courtesy of adding a little milk to liven up the flavor, or liven up my spicy coated flavor for the matter.

The whole navy blue really didn't add much in the long-term: nobody here really wants to be reminded of the many hours spent crawling in underwater caves, and the littler... littler? Is that a word? My lack of sleep says so apparently, and I'm not in the mood to argue... probably 'cause of the lack of sleep – I'm just repeating myself, what was I saying? Oh, yeah – the CEO has a nice mustache – that isn't it... stop thinking, Blinx! You're gonna hurt yourself! Or start thinking like all the hall-monitors say, and the monitors after those, and those... you're about to arrive like an hour late to class, and everybody is gonna look at you like you just arrived earlier than the 1 and a half hours you usually do, and you're gonna need an escape route pronto! Maybe the desk this time? Nah, still got the scratches from last time... Oh, I got it! The window! Maybe I can try my luck, and see if these hot rods can land on their feet just right, or I can use one of my 9 lives! Then again – I think I wasted most of them worrying hanging with Picaro, and worrying about this kinda stuff - retries are always an option? Nah, I can barely scrounge enough cash for a good smoothie never-mind giving me heart into my work like the magnificent machismo of mustachioed elegance himself always said, or that other guy who I barely know his name anymore (I think I called him... Dad?) and I think it just had about had enough of breaking today...

If I could maybe think for just a second, then whatever message my mind is probably trying to send to me is being blown to the back burner by all this noise (most of it probably being Picaro himself); the rustling of Sweepers, and the ringing of bells doesn't exactly make for a good lullaby, but in the state I'm in: even the teacher's daily tantrum seemed like a mother's loving song whisking through the night.

The usual hubbub did distract me from what cruel fate likely awaited in the volcano of a mouth that was gonna run off on me depending on the colour of lamp the teacher had: he always wanted us to call him Aniki, and I know he really wanted my success at heart. Why would he go through all the effort of extra hours tutoring, if he thought I was just some low-life who mostly hung out in the cafeteria corner, with the finest home-made catnip and tin of milk (when the machines were busted: the glass cost that much extra according to good 'ole mother) Well, I was, but at least he maybe didn't think so, and that was good enough for me.

But life went on as usual: the cogs of the large clock-face looming over everybody was cogging along as usual, and the back-and-forth of pods holding impatient workers as they inevitably head towards whatever bathroom that Picaro clogged up probably. The shifting gates of world's marked with whatever translation system they used to make those names of numbers and garbage opened to even more Sweepers either returning from their sweeps, or using them as an excuse for a quiet little vacation, whilst we were all here making sure the universe didn't explode any second. But at least the orange pipes and circuits running across the ceiling were a nice colour companion to the boring blue of Aniki's work that was the Matrix blue of the high-tech walls they made to impress everybody like me that just called it tech and nothing more. Hanging around Catherine did make you notice the little details, and Aniki was every bit as much of a technician as he was a teacher of P.E, and neither was very good for these sagging sticks of mine.