Who Has Time Anyway?

"We're running out of time." Terrence Callaghan stated, a sense of wonder and awe in his voice. "That's marvelous. I didn't think that was possible."

Despite the joy in his voice, the situation around him and his crew was less than satisfactory. Some might even say that it was downright catastrophic. Callaghan, however, was not one of those who would. In fact, he’d simply call it a wonder of reality, a mystery of tangibility, or a⸺

“Dr. Callaghan, I understand your interest in this—this anomaly, but I really do recommend that we leave at once.” Ah, right. His crew. That very anxious voice belonged to his colleague; the young Dr. Renard Faucher. Callaghan had been working with the man for nearly fifteen years and, together, they’d made breakthroughs in the fields of time and space. Of course, these breakthroughs weren’t without their own trials and tribulations, yet Callaghan figured now wasn’t exactly the most fitting moment to dive down memory lane.

“Ah, Dr. Faucher,” Callaghan greeted his partner jovially, as if there wasn’t a screaming hole centered in the middle of their testing chamber that was quite literally sucking the time out of the room as they spoke. “While I understand your urgency, I don’t necessarily agree!”

Faucher paused. He stood in front of the open doorway at the end of the room, their other co-workers flooding past him in fear and anxiety. White lab-coats waved in the rushing wind, being nipped at as if the nature of the anomalous hole in time was attempting to drag them back into it. Callaghan presumed that that was just about what it was doing, in fact.

“You ‘don’t agree’?” Faucher uttered slowly; in disbelief, if Callaghan was reading him correctly. “Callaghan, this is neither the time, nor the place for you to simply disagree when our lives are on the line!”

Callaghan hummed in thought, tapping his chin with the eraser of a No. 2 pencil.

“Well, that’s just the thing, isn’t it, Renard? I’m not quite sure our lives are on the line!” Callaghan refuted, spreading his arms wide. “And if they were on the line, then I don’t believe there’s much of anything we can do about it, my friend.”

Faucher paused, considering his colleague’s words with a furrowed brow. Absent-mindedly, he scratched at the stubble on his chin. Callaghan raised an eyebrow, but said nothing further.

“What are you talking about, Terrance? This was a freak accident, we—we tore a hole when we were trying to poke one, I—” He looked up at Callaghan again, his fingers stilling as his eyes went wide. “Don’t tell me that you planned this?!”

“No, no, my dear friend, perish the thought!” Callaghan defended, putting a hand to his chest in mock offense. “I’ve just come to a conclusion sooner than the rest of you, is all.”

He turned about face, looking back toward the growing, bulging hole in the middle of the lab. Truthfully, it was difficult to look at; as if the colors and the form of whatever it was he was seeing simply weren’t supposed to be seen by human eyes. Nonetheless, he made an attempt.

There was a simple podium in the middle of the room, on its own it was nothing special. It was surrounded, however, both on the floor and the ceiling by a black and white grid that was then further encased in several layers of thick, protective polycarbonate sheets. Or at least, it used to be encased. The arms of a now broken machine lay on the ground, still sparking as the false life was continually sucked out of it. Callaghan watched, in fact, as those sparks were sucked upward, toward the growing hole above the podium, and then the metal of the arm corroded before his eyes before turning to dust and following suit. He smiled, in awe at the sight.

Above the podium was their anomaly. Much like Faucher had said, they had simply used a very specialized tool to vibrate through and, essentially, try to poke a hole in time, simply to monitor its effects. Of course, it had clearly gone wrong, if the slowly decaying laboratory around them was anything to go by, but Callaghan still considered parts of the experiment to be somewhat of a success. They’d proven it could be done, after all!

Then again, they also proved that maybe it shouldn’t be done, so...to each their own.

The anomaly itself was strange. What had started off as a small black spot, floating in the air and ignoring all laws of physics after their successful ‘poke’, very quickly grew larger and began to distort the space around it in waves, obscure shapes, and even forms that the scientists had no words for. Wherever something touched it—be that something man-made, like the arm of their needle, or something natural, like the oxygen in the air around it—it would fire off sparks in a flood of colors, some of which Callaghan was sure there weren’t even words for, the space around it would warp, and the hole would suddenly look either much bigger or much smaller. He hadn’t quite worked out what would increase or decrease its size yet, but he was sure he would figure it out sooner rather than later.

“What I mean is that if this anomaly of ours is as dangerous to us as it is to this room, then running will do us no good.” Callaghan stated. He deftly reached over and grabbed a chair by the back, pulling it over to where he stood and promptly falling onto it. It creaked under his weight in response.

“I mean, look at it! It’s a marvel of time, of space, of reality! It operates on systems and norms beyond us and in ways that we truly don’t understand!” As if in response, he picked his arm up again, showing off the pencil he’d been holding onto. Except it was no longer a pencil. For some reason, explainable or otherwise, he instead held materials in his hand. A twig of cedar wood, piles of graphite, wax, and clay, with what Faucher assumed must’ve been the bonding agent inside the pencil dripping off of Callaghan’s palm.

“Much like this pencil—what used to be a pencil or what will eventually become a pencil—we have no idea how this tear may be affecting us, either!” Callaghan dropped the raw materials on the floor, where the cedar twig immediately began to grow and sprout branches, yet the clay seemed to melt further before growing hard and dusty. “Is it reverting our cell structure backward? Or maybe it’s rapidly aging us! I’m certain you did not have that beard when you came in this morning, Renard.”

Faucher jumped in surprise, his hands shooting up to his face to feel that he had, in fact, suddenly grown a beard over the last couple of minutes they had been talking. It was coarse, and grew irregularly in strange places. There was a bald spot underneath his chin. This was why he shaved regularly.

Faucher sighed, shaking his head in exasperation.

“All the more reason we should leave sooner rather than later, Terrance!” He objected. The colleague moved to leave the room before Callaghan clapped loudly, stopping him in his tracks.

“That’s just the thing, Renard,” Callaghan droned, looking up at his colleague with a wide smile. “We no longer know what ‘sooner’ or ‘later’ mean in this context. Time is no longer a reality we can observe and understand. It has become a force of change that we cannot stop. Even now...”

He trailed off. Faucher took a step forward toward his colleague, only for Callaghan to put a hand up, halting him. Shakely, he raised his other hand, only for the both of them to see that the umbre skin on it had turned dull and gray. The two of them watched as it darkened further, then began to chip away as dust before flowing back toward the anomaly in the center of the lab. Callaghan nodded assuredly, as if he’d expected this. Faucher took a step back, fear apparent on his face. His normally brown hair had begun to show strands of gray that were quickly growing more numerous.

“I told you, my dear friend. We’ve already run out of time. I thought it impossible, but considering we poked a hole in it...” Callaghan hummed, chuckling humorlessly. “...well, we always did do the impossible, didn’t we?”

Faucher neglected to answer; instead staring on in shock as more and more of Dr. Callaghan turned gray and lifeless before flooding away, toward the anomaly.

“So, you’re saying...” Faucher finally spoke, though it wasn’t the least bit confident. “You’re—you’re saying that there’s nothing we can do? That—that our days, our minutes, are already numbered?”

Callaghan didn’t respond for what felt like ages. Though, in truth, maybe it was because time truly meant nothing anymore. Eventually, he nodded, and smiled.

“Exactly so. Though I wouldn’t say it so depressingly as you have. It’s not death, per se. I mean, truthfully, I don’t know what it is.” Callaghan hummed, the fingers on his one remaining hand twitching, as if longing to write something. “In the simplest terms; the anomaly has already affected us. Everyone that was in this room the moment the hole was poked has already been grazed by its...well, anomalous nature.”

The man shrugged, and Faucher watched as he reached up to take off the round glasses he wore, only for them to immediately crumble to metal grindings and sand in his hand and rush toward the anomaly.

“I imagine some of them have done the same as I am beginning to already, and that it’ll only be a matter of time before the rest follow suit.” He looked up at Faucher and smiled once more, though it was decidedly less excited about the prospect than his previous Cheshire grins. “Well, as much a matter of time as it can be. Come, sit with me, Renard.”

Thoroughly disturbed, Faucher took him up on that offer. He returned to the center of the room, grabbing another chair and pulling it over. He fell into it limply, only for the chair to splinter and break underneath him before rapidly turning to dust. Callaghan let out a hearty guffaw of a laugh, whereas Faucher himself only groaned and decided that the floor was his home now.

The two sat in silence for what could have been seconds, minutes, or maybe even hours. Neither of them would know, and it seemed that they had both stopped caring at the same time. Finally, it was Faucher that broke the silence.

“Terrance. Do you...do you think this thing will end the world?” His voice shook; nerves apparent. Callaghan, on the other hand, hummed thoughtfully before responding.

“I believe it has the ability to, Renard. I simply have to hope that it won’t.” The smile in his voice was clear, and it made Faucher sit up and look at his colleague, confusion on his face.

“How can you be so calm? We’re dying for all you know!” He shouted. Callaghan simply chuckled in response, turning to the anomaly with a confident expression.

“Because it’s out of my control, Renard.” He turned to his friend, smiling all the while. Both his arms were dust by now. “What use is panic when there’s nothing I can do about the situation? Should I scream my regrets into the ether of time, hoping they will be answered? Should I bellow my despair in hopes that it will change something?”

Callaghan shook his head and Faucher was reminded of just how brilliant a man he truly was at times.

“No, I don’t think so. I would much rather walk into the unknown as best I can, with my head held high and my heart intact. That way, when I reach the other side of mystery, I’ll still be enough of myself to put the pieces back together and solve it.” Callaghan paused, then chuckled breathlessly. “That was pretty good, I think! I sounded like a philosopher, right, Renard?”

He looked back to his colleague, only to see the last remnants of bones turning to dust and floating away, toward the anomaly. His smile dipped for but a moment before Dr. Callaghan hung his head in acceptance.

“Ah, of course. So eager to ask questions before me, as always.” Terrance chuckled to himself before turning back to the anomaly. His gaze was sad, but calculating all the while. “Don’t worry, dear friend. I’ll catch up, as I always do. Then we can solve this thing together.”

Whether it was seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months later, Dr. Callaghan followed after his colleague, just as eager, if not more so, to solve the anomaly of time they had on their hands.

They were colleagues, after all. They would tackle this mystery together, as they always had, and as they always will. Should time permit them, of course.