Man on the Clock

“You know, Frank, there really isn’t that much trash in the ocean.”

Frank Minor looked up. He had been cutting the plastic hi-cones from the office’s weekly soda supply when his older colleague’s voice had broken his concentration. Reuben Schneider stood over Frank’s desk, his fingers holding an unlit cigarette to his smirking lips.

“Whatever you say, Reuben,” said Frank, as he returned to his cutting.

“All I’m saying is it doesn’t add up.” Reuben stooped down so that his forearms were on the edge of Frank’s desk, their eyes perfectly aligned. “Every nature documentary you see, it says that turtles are some of the smartest animals in the world. And yet I’m supposed to believe that they don’t have the good sense to avoid strangling themselves?” He shook his head, his eyes closed, his smile now full and satisfied. “No way. If you ask me, it makes way more sense that the environmentalists figured they found out how to score a nice propaganda victory, even if it was at the expense of a precious creature. And, given how many dopes like you they’ve convinced, it’s almost hard to blame them! Hell, maybe we should all take their lesson and be a bit more –”

“Reuben! Leave the poor kid alone!” At some point during Reuben’s ramblings, Mr. Pinch, the Director of the Timekeepers, had entered the office. He strode in his dark navy suit down the long aisle of desks on the perimeter of the room, his buoyant chest and shiny bald head carried by long yet sturdy legs. “There’s a reason he’s the officer of the Anti-Diet commission and you haven’t seen a promotion since the turn of the century, and it’s because he doesn’t spend his work hours dicking off with you!”

His smirk unfazed, Schneider gave the unlit cigarette a last bite before tossing it onto Frank’s desk and walking lazily back to his own desk at the opposite end of the office. Watching him go, Frank thought what an odd sight he was. In comparison to Mr. Pinch, Reuben’s own rumpled and faded suit, the ankle cuffs nearly dragging on the ground, made him look like a drunk who had somehow found his way from the streets of Helsinki up into the headquarters of the most important secret organization in the world.

“Frank, we all appreciate your commitment to nature.” It was Mr. Pinch, standing at Frank’s desk with a white canvas bag slung over his shoulder. There was a note of condescension to his voice but his unlike Reuben’s his smile was entirely authentic. “Don’t let Reuben get to you. He’s got rocks in his head, and spewing nonsense loosens them up.”

“Well, it seems like he’s certainly short on sensical tasks.” Seeing Pinch’s smile fade and start to turn into a grimace, Frank realized his comment might be taken as a criticism. Wanting to change the subject, he nodded at the canvas bag and asked, “Any mail for me today?”

“Oh, a big haul as always. It seems like the whole world is intent on turning themselves into sticks. Well, not me!”

Pinch reached into the bag and pulled out several pieces of mail, dropping on Frank’s desk a plethora of health magazines, diet pill ads, reports on concussions in the NFL – all of which Frank would peruse and use to direct his work. A lot of it bored him, but as he spread them out in front of him, he noticed that there was a small white envelope hiding within the pile, with nothing but Frank’s name written on the outside. After looking up to see that Mr. Pinch had already began walking away, he opened the envelope and read the letterhead: From the desk of Lawrence Boland, Attorney at Law.

***

The people of Helsinki only knew Frank’s place of work as an architectural oddity dreamed up by a secret group of Finland’s twentieth-century modernists – the “pear tree,” a greyish-green clocktower with a spine-like pair of ridges in the center leading up to a pear-shaped depression at the top. At the top of the pear was the embossed image of a globe. To the public it was simply a crudely Byzantine and meaningless emblem, but behind it lay the vast newsroom-like office space of the Timekeepers, whose entire function was the political, industrial, and cultural safekeeping of the giant clock that sat in the pear’s wide bottom. Although not much to look at, its single rectangular hand, made of a many billion years old hunk of black iron, was responsible for the ticking of time itself. If there was any flaw in its design, it was that it couldn’t run itself.

The job called for a large man. Not a male, necessarily, but it had usually worked out that way over the course of history. Three-hundred and twenty-eight pounds, to be exact. The foundation of the agency, and time itself, was a man of this size strapped to the top of the clock, a feeding tube attached to his belly, keeping his weight constant. Only this, plus the vibrations of a beating heart, would keep the hand moving.

It was for this reason that the weight-loss fads could never be allowed to win out altogether. As the head of the Anti-Diet commission, it was Frank’s job to sponsor propaganda and funding for any space in society that required large men, and particularly those with tendencies towards violent crime.

The last man on the clock had been a defensive tackle named Lawrence Boland. Five solid years for the Tennessee Titans, then he’d gone to the wrong club on the wrong night, three people were shot, and he was stopped leaving the scene with a gun tucked inside his jacket. It didn’t match the bullets but that didn’t matter. He was found guilty, and in Tennessee this meant the death penalty.

He was waiting on death row when two men in black suits came to his cell and offered him an alternative. There was no need to think about it. The electric chair for a crime he didn’t commit, or forty years locked in a clocktower with the opportunity to emerge the same young man he was when he went in? No question.

His forty-year term on the clock was due to end in 2015. Frank, fresh out of Quantico and new to the agency in 2012, spent the first three years of his career doing what all rookies did – rotate shifts of constant surveillance on the clock. It was against company policy for agents to form friendships with the clock-men, but Frank couldn’t help finding something appealing about Lawrence. After thirty-seven years on the clock he would be damned if he didn’t say what he pleased. On nights when it was just the two of them together, Lawrence would chide Frank until finally the young agent could no longer ignore him. The two talked endlessly – about their lives, about the agency, about what it would mean if they failed to protect this clock from the warlords and rulers who would destroy it in an instant if only they knew of its existence. They agreed that, although Lawrence was clearly innocent, there was at least some solace in using his body to work towards a greater good, rather than let it rot in some rundown prison cell. Still, something about this conclusion always felt off to Frank, and a feeling that something about the agency was not quite right had stayed with him throughout his career, even as his role grew increasingly distant from the actual workings of the clock.

When Frank began reading the letter from Lawrence, the worst of his feelings were confirmed. The letter read:

My dear friend Frank,

I have spent my seven years of freedom in deep study. Law school only led me in circles, but I have finally come across the only conclusion that could make sense. How could we be so blind! The Timekeepers, your agency, is directly responsible for perpetuating the monster that is the capital punishment system. It was only after I grew sick of reading about these court cases that I finally had to get a look at the bastards who actually made them happen. And wherever I looked, in every case from Gregg to Penry to Baze, there’s that shabby man making friends with the judges. I only saw him once in person, during my admission to the pear tree, but I’d never forget a man who laughs at another man wearing chains.

Frank stopped reading to dig into the white envelope and find several black and white pictures of courtroom proceedings, each of which contained the same sniveling face of Reuben Schneider.

***

The end of the letter simply read, “Unless you want to keep doing the work of evil, meet me inside the clock at midnight on March 28. I will be entering through the face.”

Frank looked at the calendar on his desk: March 28.

***

Frank was expecting to need his security clearance to get into the tower, but for once the ground entrance was unguarded and unlocked. There were no guards as he climbed the twelve flights of stairs leading up to the clock, and as he reached the large double doors that concealed the room, he wondered what could be going on. Had Lawrence already arrived and decided to take the hard way, killing guards and taking their bodies with him as he ascended towards his target? There was nothing left for Frank to do but push the doors open.

Across the dark room he could see the clock, its hand pointing straight up, the large body of a Wall Street banker who murdered his wife strapped to it and sleeping soundly. It took Frank a few seconds to recognize his surroundings, but then he saw that there was another man to the side of the clock, his bald head reflecting just a hint of moonlight coming in through the glass. Mr. Pinch walked forward until his whole body was lit up by the background of the night.

“You didn’t really think that your football friend was coming through the clock like some sort of superhero, did you?”

“Yes, I had thought that,” Frank admitted. Of course, now the thought seemed childish, but this encounter was what he had really wanted all along. “So, where’s Reuben?”

Wearing that same authentic smile, Pinch said, “Reuben Schneider is dead. His identity has been compromised. It was never within him to keep a low profile. By now he should be at the bottom of the Vantaa.” Tapping at the temple of his skull, he said, “Remember, rocks in his head.”

Letting instinct take hold, Frank ran towards Mr. Pinch, putting his hands his navy suit and grabbing him by the lapels.

“Go ahead, Frank, push me out the window. All it would do is point the world’s attention at us and after that, who knows what will happen to the clock.”

Frank looked at the clock and thought that yes, it was worth protecting. His reverie didn’t last long, though, as Mr. Pinch grabbed Frank in return and switched the positions of their bodies. Before Frank could protest, Pinch pushed him through the face of the clock, the glass shattering as Frank fell to the streets of Helsinki. Just before he hit the ground, he looked up and saw Mr. Pinch’s smile change to a horrified grimace as he was grabbed from behind by the clock-man, who had escaped the hand and stopped time for everyone but himself in the process. Suspended in air, Frank watched as Mr. Pinch was powerless as his own body was pushed out into the air where he hung like a helium balloon. Within this endless moment the man then came down, snatched Frank’s body out of the sky, and returned them to the clocktower, where he resumed his spot on the hand and resumed the course of time.