#1: Anthropolis One: The Never Clock

“The infinite multiplied by infinity. That is the true fabric of reality.”

~ Dr. Zhou Sun

Chapter 1 - Alpha

I feel time pressing down on me with the crushing weight of an elephant resting on an ant. If there were gods in this universe, even the most demanding and wrathful tyrant would be a welcome embrace compared to the ever-present reality of the true master of my oppression. Time.

I dream I am much older than I am now. Living in a place and time I do not recognize, but I feel I am happy here. It is oddly flat, colors muted and dull, air still and lifeless. I find myself walking down the street on a warm summer day, when I happen upon a street-side cafe. I see a woman sitting alone with a coffee at a small table. She is lit by a sunbeam, impossibly bright and warm compared to the surroundings. I recognize her as my wife of many years. I approach the table. She looks up at me and it is clear she does not know me. I would know her anywhere, and I instantly remember a lifetime. My knees give way, and I barely manage to catch the seat next to her.

She looks into my eyes with the kindness she greets all strangers, and simply reaches out and holds my hand as I sit across from her, even though it’s clear she doesn’t recognize me. She is different in many small ways that I somehow know but cannot define. A lightness in her gaze suggests she has been spared the sadness of hard times we shared. I desperately wish to know how she avoided those. I feel burning jealousy for the joys she has not shared with me. She appears both younger and yet wiser to my eyes. Her warm radiance masked with hints of tarnish. I manage to stammer her name but my voice sounds muffled to my own ears. Her eyes widen and she just nods a little but says nothing. I want to say “It’s me!”, but I can’t. My mouth just hangs open, barely able to draw a breath, let alone speak. Because the elephant of time has just sat on me.

“What is it?” she asks me softly. I manage to squirm and adjust - find a tiny crevice to breathe beneath the heedless beast atop me. And I manage only, “We knew...”

But she just shakes her head, “Knew what?”

I shake my head too, shake off the foolish notion that I could possibly convince her of what I know. Instead, I ask her, “...Hhhhh... How have you been all this time?”

“All this time? Have I met you and perhaps forgotten? I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name and your face, which is not like me.”

My mind races to recall where and what she was doing those years ago when I met her. The moment is easy to recall, but the second I turn my mind to that moment, it evaporates and all I can come up with is, “Are you still... did you ever leave here like we used to talk about?”

I glance up at the familiar area of the city where we have lived. Her attention focuses, a narrowing of the eyes and the beginning of a polite smile.

Her look softens, “I am so sorry, I just don’t remember you. You don’t seem like any of the guys I used to know back then.” She glances down at her coffee for a moment, contemplates some swirl in the foam, looks back up at me.

“But times change right? It’s nice that you remember me, but you seem so sad. So hurt. Did I do this?”, waving her hand with a bashful grin, “When I was young and foolish?”

I don’t know how to answer her. How can this be? I think to myself, “where did my life go that was before this moment? What was it again? How can I have forgotten? What is hovering just on the fringe of my awareness?” And then the elephant shifts. Cracks a few ribs and grinds my shoulders down. Flattens them to wretched pancakes and spreads my mouth open in a horrid flattened contortion.

Our son. Our boy, who we shared in such joy together, and is now… well, where is he right now? His bright laugh rings in the ears of my memory, I am sure I just saw him this morning. But at this moment I am struck dumb. I don’t know where he is. Or even where he should be, and I am gripped with an instant and compulsive need to look for him. He needs us. He’s too young to be on his own. His mother, right in front of me at this moment, wouldn’t know him. Couldn’t know him. The immediate need to find him right now, this instant, is more pressing than the desire to breathe. I want to get away from her desperately. This stranger will be of no help.

But I am trapped. Locked solid to this ridiculous, flimsy, little cafe chair by time. Apparently, time is entertained by keeping me in one place, I have to submit until he decides to move. And it occurs to me that my son may not exist here at all. But I know him. His name has escaped me. And it is at this moment I can no longer breathe.

Aware that my face must convey this horrible feeling, I do my best to pull out a smile, which isn’t the most appealing sight at the best of times. The look on my lovely wife’s face confirms this. “Oh, it can’t be that bad. Look just tell me your name at least. I will remember. I promise”. She grips my hand.

“Jonah...J... Jon… Jonah,” I stammer. It sounds more like a question than a statement. I always have to repeat my name for people unless I say Jon. But never for her.

“Which is it? Jonah or John?”, She smirks, “Everyone knows a guy named John. But, I don’t think I know anyone named Jonah. I’m… really sorry.”

This doesn’t surprise me. I know she has simply never met me. At this point in time, somehow, we have never been together, never shared a common moment, never been to a concert together, or even shared popcorn at a movie. This heavy bastard sitting on me, has, in all his careless power, thrown down a wall that was as thick as the distance between the stars between my wife and I. My eyes dart around. I am desperate to move. I must have the look of a hunted criminal on the run.

In some perversely cruel intention that only complete ambivalence could design, this calm, stinking monster of an animal has decided to show me the world where that wall never existed. Knowing I can never go there. Knowing that the photons hitting my retina, originated from a place that existed long ago. The world I am seeing, and finding so fascinating, no longer exists at all.

I don’t move a muscle. The slightest adjustment causes the image to flutter, and smudge and wink in and out of existence. This stinking gray bastard, this two thousand pound colossus of time just keeps sitting on me, this beast is impossible to move, crushing me down to nothing. I awake.