Tolu and Riley hurried as quickly as they could to reach the portal, but in the end it was all for nought. They stop at a steep cliff, contemplating the futility of their quest when they meet a man who claims to have been stuck in this place for 37 years!
All hope of returning to the life they knew may be lost.
“Thirty Seven years?!” Tolu Alade’s hands were on his head as he contemplated the possibilities. “We could be here for thirty seven freaking years?!”
Tolu realised he would never see his parents again. He realised this place had always existed, for at least thirty seven years, and at least one person had been trapped here in all that time. He realised that he was in more trouble than he knew. He turned to Riley. “But the boy—“
“I swear, when I get my hands on that blasted ankle-biter…” Let’s just say she had choice words to describe how she would dismember him.
The man shook his head. “So you’ve met the boy too? It figures.”
“For a moment I thought maybe you were the boy,” Tolu said.
“I’d rather lick the toilet. That kid has been a pain in my behind all these years.”
“37 years?!”
He humphed. “I remember when I was just like you. How afraid you must have felt when you saw the world changing around you. The exhilaration you felt at the possibility of beating the odds to get to that portal and back to the world you knew. That little glimmer that, if you tried harder, somehow you would get back to the way things used to be.” He shook his head. “But that portal, that light beam, just stands there to mock you. To make you think this could actually end, until reality dashes them here. It’s a fever dream, this business of … hope.” He spat that last word.
“You’re really not helping.” Riley’s voice broke, on the verge of tears.
“I never offered you help. If you’re looking for comfort, kiss my asphalt. There is no comfort, or hope, or light anywhere around here. Take it from me. There’s nothing I haven’t tried. You will all come back to where I am. You’ll see that nothing really matters. In the end, all of this, all of life is futile.”
Tolu was arms akimbo, staring out at the expanse beyond the precipice. There really was nothing beyond this point. “So this is it. The actual Edge of Time.” He thought about how long he had lived his life not knowing there was anything beyond the mundane. How much time he had wasted weighed on him, especially now that he realised that time was limited. Nothing in all his life had prepared him for this. He had barely eaten in all this time but he didn’t even feel hungry.
“Why us?” he asked. “What did we do to deserve this?”
The man shrugged. “Kid, you’re going to go the rest of your life wondering the same thing. ‘Why me?’ I used to think I missed a portal into the next year, but that’s just absurd. The calendar is man-made and not an existential absolute. Theoretically, there should be such waves every 24 hours, nothing special. But on what basis do we get left out? Morality? Whose standard of morality? Body chemistry? Mental acuity? This unforgiving universe doesn’t offer much answers, does it?”
Tolu turned to Riley, but she was majorly fuming and muttering to herself. He was actually concerned now. “Now would be the perfect time for your boy to show up.”
The man chuckled, but with disgust. “Oh, the irony. Turning up now is so like him.” He took a breath. “He’s right behind you.”
As one they turned and saw the boy standing, with his arms behind his back. He grinned sheepishly and waved. “Hi everyone,” he said.
“Why you little…” Riley hurried to her feet and charged at him, swinging a fist in his face. But the boy wasn’t there anymore.
“I’m so sorry I’ve annoyed you to no end,” the boy said, now seated on the park bench beside the man. “Oh hello, Frank, my dear old friend.”
Tolu blinked. “He does talk in rhyme.” The fact that his translocation was the least amusing fact now wasn’t lost on him. The world had been all kinds of crazy already.
“It’s getting him to shut up that’s the trick,” Frank muttered.
Riley’s hand was still in a fist. “You tricked me. You made me think I was getting out of here.”
The boy was actually smiling. He was actually having fun at their misery. “That’s oversimplifying it really, but I did say you were in for a ride. The sights, the road trip, the adrenaline. Like, isn’t fun what you’ve always wanted, deep down inside?”
Riley shook her head. Whatever spunk she had was gone. “You’re sick. In a bad way.”
“Did you do all of this?” Tolu asked. “Who are you, really?”
The boy still sat, swinging a leg in the grass. “Sometimes I just want to pause and play, and see if I actually can. I’m always flying when you’re having fun, and I’m wired to wait for no man.”
“What does that even mean?” Riley glared.
Tolu’s eyes widened after a moment of thought. “Time.” He stole a glance at Frank who still looked away. “Think about it. Time flies while you’re having fun. Time waits for no man. It’s like a riddle, right?” He suddenly realised what this all meant. “Are you kidding me? Are you serious right now? You are Time?” Tolu said the words, and the fact that absurdity made sense in this mad world astounded him.
Riley’s face lit up with dawning realisation. “You’re joking.”
Frank still didn’t look up.
“You can call me Justin, please,” the boy said with a shrug. “It just rolls off the tongue with ease.”
“You’re Time and you are Justin?” Riley bit the bait. “Justin Time? Are you serious right now?”
The boy slapped his knee on that one. “She got that one! Ha! Finally, someone gets my pun!”
Tolu was still amused that an abstract concept stretching millennia could be standing before him, here, and in this form. “He really is just a kid. Even thinks like one.”
“What, you think I age like you guys do?”
“How is that possible? What’s going on?”
“You’re really taking this in stride, aren’t ya?” Riley eyed Tolu.
“I just want to get back to my family,” he said. “I’m trying to make as much sense of this as you are.”
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Frank said. “Don’t give yourself Hope. That’s the worst thing you can do in this place.”
Justin shook his head. “Ok, yes where were we? You wanted to know what’s happening, oui? The Timescape is what you see around. You can call this my own playground.”
“But why me? Why us?”
“What you humans don’t understand is that time is linked by pathways. These ‘portals’ connect each second. It’s your path to each new day.”
“I never needed to find a portal before,” Riley said. “And I’d been living just fine.”
“You’ve never needed to, Riley. It’s the same with everyone. But something in your space this time stopped you from moving on.”
“What did?”
“Space,” Tolu chewed on the word. “You’re talking about the time-space continuum?” He had wanted to sound smart, throwing in some science fiction lingo to keep up with the conversation. But hearing it now he realised he really hadn’t needed to.
Justin winced. “Time’s always tied to space, in science this is true. But the component you often miss is that your Time is tied to you.”
Riley folded her arms. “This is really freaking me out,” she said.
“A time to be born, a time to die. A time to laugh, a time to cry. The process intervening these is you, my friends. It’s true.” He nodded. “It is.”
Frank grunted. “Like that’s supposed to mean something.”
“So we’re trapped here in 2019?” Riley surmised. “And we can’t get back?”
“Yes, this is 2019,” the boy said, standing on the bench now. “In many ways, that’s true. It’s the very last second, but it is so much more, too. In this Timescape, I’m not tied to your laws. I come and go when and how I want. I run, reverse, or pause. Every moment of every age has left remnants all through history. In this dimension we’re not bound to serial chronology.”
In any other scenario Tolu would have loved the rhythm of his words, but it was more distracting if anything.
Riley was pacing now. “So where does that leave us. Stuck here for years to become like the Grump here? No offence.”
Frank didn’t even flinch. “I’ll take it.”
Justin was balancing on one leg now. “Aaargh, you lot are so boring! Can’t you see the fun? So many times and realities before you. This isn’t the only one.”
“Except the future,” Frank said. “That’s the one we’ve all missed.”
“Wait,” Riley took a step forward. “Are you saying we can travel back in time?”
Justin cocked his head. “That’s oversimplifying. I’m saying now’s as 2019 as it’s 1999.”
Tolu exhaled. “Am I ever going back? Back to my parents and the life I had?”
Justin tapped his head. “I may not promise the future, but what about the past? You missed out on the coming moments, but what about the last? In a flash you can be with your family in the places you loved the most.”
“And risk the weirdness of feeling like a disembodied ghost?” Frank added.
Justin was actually leaping now. “You actually rhymed that time!”
Frank shook his head. “I refuse to let your weirdness get to me.” He might have smiled that time, Tolu wasn’t sure.
What a world it had become. Tolu wondered why he had never been told that there was a layer like this to the world he knew. The possibility that he would never be with his family again felt like hell. What if this was hell?
God, are you there? Are you here?
“I’ll go,” Riley said.
Tolu shot her a double-take. “What? Where?”
Her eyes were still teary and her eye makeup ruined, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. “He’s right. There’s really no place else to go from here. It’s over. Might as well enjoy it while we can. It’s gonna be a long one.”
“Are you serious? You’re going back in time?”
“Well it’s better than sitting on our nubs and navelgazing at how hopeless it is.”
Justin leapt to her side. “Now this is my kind of girl. You ready to go for a whirl?”
She still looked on him with disdain. “Just get me out of this dump.”
“WAIT!” Tolu yelled.
And just like that, Riley was gone.
Don’t leave me here. He had only known her for a few moments, but somehow she had become the closest connection to the sanity he missed, the only connection he still had to the world that was. And now she was gone.
“Another one bites the dust,” Frank said, leaning back in his seat.
Tolu felt awkward standing before him. “So what happens now?”
“Now, you get to decide what you want,” Justin was suddenly behind him. Tolu actually shrieked in shock. “You can stay or we could take a chrono-jaunt.”
Tolu’s hand was on his chest as he tried to still his breathing. “Must you always be like that? Wh-where’s Riley?”
“Her time is not the same as your own. Each of you has to go it alone. Come, Tolu, tell me, where would you rather be?”
He stared out over the precipice and the empty expanse. He had come face to face with reality gone insane, and he felt exposed. He was not prepared for any of this.
“I just want my Dad and my Mummy.”
Justin walked over to him, concern in his eyes. Tolu wasn’t sure if he was about to mock him when Justin suddenly embraced him. “There, there.”
And they were gone.
Frank smirked, crossing his legs once again.
“Yet another one takes the bait,” he muttered.
Justin was back, seated beside him. “Hope I’m not too late.”
“Stop doing that!”
Justin raised his hands. “Sorry, that’ll do. But I think my charisma is rubbing off on you, eh?”
“You’re trying to give them hope, and that’s worse. The façade will crack and they’d see just what a hard-knock life it is. You didn’t tell them the horror they would see. What it would do to them.”
Justin nodded, staring in the distance. “Quite a hard-knock life it is. But I find the hardest knocks are with your knees.”
Frank stared over at him. “What’s that even supposed to mean?”
Justin shrugged. “Sounded deep. Might come in handy sometime.” He nudged him. “Get it? Some time?”
Frank shook his head. “I hate you.” He kept his eyes on the old cottage before him.
The journey continues here.
Emmanuel Onimisi 