Time & Acceleration - Prologue

“The Races are an honor to those who lose.”

The days were passing faster, it seemed. He couldn’t help but wonder if things were coming to an end soon, or to a new beginning, for that matter.

Smoothly he blinked his bright light eyes, staring out the window and off into the distance. The sun was sinking into the horizon, its colors spilling over the dusty landscape.

He inhaled. Oxygen cycled through his body.

Some thought of that horizon as home, once-upon-a-time. But that home had turned into a toxic wasteland, devoid of anything but dead trees and crushed grass. That home had crumbled into pieces.

Even so, he could see it returning. As the last droplets of shining dew slunk away from the sky, he could see that the world was coming back to itself. The home was returning. Besides, how many Times had gone out there– to that home– and inhaled the air and stepped on the grass and touched the trees? The stories they shared with the Yesterdays, tales of clear water and clouds in the sky, seemed to light up the whole world.

He sipped his tea. A quiet clink followed when he set the ceramic cup back on its plate.

Home was coming back. Years had passed since it was thought of as home, but even so, it was coming back. Saplings had grown into trees and buds into flowers.

He peered at the world with a curious eye. How odd it was that, years after everyone had fallen asleep, the world was restoring itself? How strange was it that, when the Stations had been organized and the peoples set into their glass boxes, the world decided to reset?

Interesting.

Tzzt.

Static fizzled through his head, which he lifted as he stared at the stars glimmering in the sky. The radio announcer’s voice snapped and crackled. He shifted, and the voice returned to normal, and he heard the results of the Races ride through his ears:

“This year, it seems that we have no winners…”

He sighed.

It was the same phrase every decade: “This year, we have no winners. This year, we have no winners.”

Despite the unpleasantness heavying his chest, he managed another sip of tea. Perhaps there would finally be a winner this decade. Perhaps one of the Stations might finally receive ten years of showers of praise and freedom to explore the home.

He sighed. That wasn’t going to happen. Not this time. The wolves were too fast and the children too weak.

But wasn’t that how it was planned?

Contemplating, he let his eyes trace the constellations, then set his tea down with a short sigh.

“How disappointing.”

As if he knows that this is how it's supposed to go. This is the way it will always go. Beyond this point, it never changes.

They come. They Race. And no one ever, ever wins.

It is tragic to those who stay trapped in their Boxes, to those who have no understanding of what has been done, only watching it happen every decade. It is sullen and sad and terrible to anyone left who has feelings.

But they all just stay inside their Boxes. They all are assigned to their Stations, and in there, they stay. The "home" is too dirty and disgusting and deprived for them to return to. It has stayed the same way for years. Desolate. Abandoned. Broken into little pieces.

Buildings scrape weakly at the sky. Large, metallic, winding structures hang limply to one side. Streetsigns have the color worn out of them, old toys lie in the roads. There are even the remnants of "cars," whatever those were. They're meaningless now that the In-Air Transportation exists.

There is no real crowd. There are no real people. Just the ones who watch, trapped within their Boxes. Just the ones who gaze from far off, wishing that these children did not have to come in every 10 years and Race until it was obvious that no one was going to win.

He chuckled. He'd forgotten that there was one Time who won.

The Time from Station 10.