Author : Roderick Holl

Elijah checked the readout on the pen-sized tool, cursing to himself as he placed a hand on his helmet and spoke into the communications channel, “Hamlet do you read me? I don’t think the problem is this balance spring.”

“It must be something, it’s chaos down here.” responded Hamlet.

Elijah shook his head disappointingly, “I’ll have a look around.”

Elijah turned his back to the open panel and shoved off, eyes searching for the odd event occurring within the Temporal Clock. Itself an odd event, the Clock was the accidental result of scientists attempting to view time. An interstellar clock, the embodiment of time in the Universe.

He floated through an infinitesimal field of golden hands and raging temporal clouds, looking about a behemoth structure which no man fully understood. Time sped up and slowed, traveled backwards and forwards around him before finally stopping before what he hoped was the problem.

A quantum crystal spun and twitched violently within its containment, nearly falling out as it pulsated energy for time to flow. Relying on an archaic repair method, but knowing no alternative to fix the crystal’s position, Elijah kicked it. A bright flash echoing through the Temporal Clock, arms spinning as clouds calmed and shifted, stabilizing time as the crystal locked back into place.

“Whatever you did worked, Elijah.” congratulated Hamlet.

But Elijah was gone. His spacesuit floating empty in the void of the temperamental Temporal Clock. Back on Earth, Hamlet sat at his station with a blank stare, aware of what he was doing, but the name of who he was speaking to escaping him. Seconds later Hamlet stood up. Realizing there was no reason to be at work today, he left the control room.