VAL DAY-SANCHEZ

Copyright © 2016 Val Day-Sanchez

All rights reserved.

There’s a man that lives on our street. He isn’t very tall nor is he considered short. He has beard or maybe it’s a mustache. He isn’t remarkable but he keeps the time. I don’t mean like on a watch or even in his head,he literally holds the time for all of us.

I was about four when my father pointed him out to me. I was closer to seven years old when I understood what he had meant. The Timekeeper remembers everything, even The Before. He wasn’t arrogant or sanctimonious, he was just a guy. He lived in a small mud house, like the rest of us, except his yard had something that had proven impossible in any other part of the world. His yard had grass. You see, the Timekeeper was able to recall ancient secrets but he had been advised, by The Creator not to let his subjects learn too much of either their past or present. So instead he inspired us by showing us what could be. Our job was merely to figure out how to get there, explore every possible avenue, perhaps discovering something completely unrelated in the process.

The grass had been the most significant, or at least the most visible, for while it meant that growth was possible with our ever polluted soil. It was also breathtaking. Color like that - most of us, perhaps a few of the very old citizens, had witnessed it outside of books. Blue skies, green lawns, flowers of every shade and hue, all this was the subject of children’s stories. In real life was limited to varying shades of browns, greys and blacks. Color was for dreams until the Timekeeper’s yard sprouted.

The students at the University were all a flutter with recreating their latest challenge but none of them had succeeding in growing a successful crop. There was first the issue with locating viable seeds. They turned and turned the soil but only revealed layer upon layer of ash and soot. They tried to mix in animal carcasses and rotted rations, a tactic they had read about but nothing grew. They increased the amount of water filtration daily to irrigate but still nothing grew. While they learned how to improve efficiency of our settlement, fresh crop was still a distant improbable ambition.

One afternoon I kicked up rocks walking home from my studies. A mist of dust had formed in front of me causing me to nearly knock over the Timekeeper as I collided with him. Realizing my abomination I quickly dropped to the ground in a full bow, afraid to return to my feet.

“Dear boy, please stand up. You have committed no crime, and I fear I am not worthy of such devotion.”

I rose to my feet but did still not return his gaze.

“And where are you off to in such a dust-filled scurry?”

“Just home, I’m coming from school.” I explained lamely but he seemed to have taken an interest at something I have said and bends down to my level.

“Never use the word just in front of the very important irreplaceable word, home. You see there is still nothing that wraps itself around us, carves a permanent unwavering blinding love like that place we choose to call home.” And then after a long pause, as if he too is digesting what he just said he added, “Or perhaps it chooses us.” And then he smiled at me at walked away.

I don’t speak to the Timekeeper for another three years. I am sixteen and I find myself attempting to grow a garden. I have entered university two years early because of my aptitude, so I am told. My colleagues have been able to sprout seeds in a laboratory but out of that highly controlled environment we have been extremely unequivocally unsuccessful. After a long day turned into late night in the lab I begin my walk home. As I approach the Timekeeper’s place I see that, unlike the rest of the homes his is bright with light. We have a strict electrical curfew, in fact some months no electricity is allowed at all, for risk of damaging the grid. Yet the Timekeeper’s house is completely lit up. I can see throughout the rooms of his house from the otherwise pitch black street. Staring at the various odds and ends that comprise his abode I suddenly have the distinct feeling that someone is behind me, before I can turn around he speaks.

“I find that curiosity is as natural as breathing.” Then he walks around so that we are standing shoulder to shoulder. The light from his home illuminates our faces and I can see that while I have aged he remains unchanged.

“Your lights are on, you aren’t worried?”

“Oh the law?” He ponders this briefly. “No I don’t fear sanctions, they often come when you need reminding, good or bad.”

“No,” I explain. “Not the law, they would never bother you but of the grid, overextending it and causing everyone to lose power?”

“Oh,” He sounded disappointed. “No, my lights don’t run off the grid. I have created another way to harness power.”

And for the next few years, I tried to discover how he had done it but to no avail. I began to grow angry with the way things were, chasing the answer to an unanswerable question. We were nowhere near where we needed to be to grasp the lesson the Timekeeper was attempting to teach. Finally defeated I began to work in the department of records, abandoning the world of science and discovery.

I read more thoroughly and more hungrily thanI could ever remember. The history of how the world had chosen to fight, clawing at one another until there was nothing left. We found ourselves in a wasteland; where nothing would grow, where we knew our ancestors had once dreamed and achieved great triumph but none of their tools or handiwork remained and so we were stuck. We could never repeat their mistakes of nuclear war but we could also never achieve their success. We had nothing, nothing but the Timekeeper.

I slam the book shut that I have been reading and find myself at his front door. I bang on it, only for him to appear from behind his house.

As if reading my mind he explains, “I was counting the stars.”

“But you can’t see the stars, the pollution is still too concentrated.”

“You can see them if you know where to look, it’s one of the ancient tools for planting.”

“Enough, you talk as though nothing has changed, as if our planet isn’t in complete disarray. Don’t you see the reality?”

“Perhaps it would help if I explain. I don’t see a past or present. For me time is fluid, all of it moving, some forward some back but always moving revealing new possibilities.”

I feel my heart sink. “Then I was right to leave the research position, we had no way of ever figuring out how you’d done it? We don’t have the ability to see like you do. We were always meant to fail, just for being who we are?”

At this he looks deeply saddened and for a brief second I am pleased. Now he finally sees how I feel. Day after day of being capable of nothing but failing.

“You have to want to see it however you like. You can’t read about how, you can’t wait for someone to tell you. You have to create the desire and let the passion push you and then it will come.”

“You don’t think I want to be able to grow fresh food or to put light in every house? Believe me I want nothing more than to improve life.”

“I don’t believe you.” He responds lightly with no air of judgement.

I am flabbergasted and stumble over forming a coherent response.

“Truly search within yourself, while it is only you and I. Look into your own soul and tell me that is your one true passion but I sense you have another.”

I calm myself down and clear my head and ask myself what I want, “I want everyone to be safe.”

“Awww not a bad or selfish goal, perhaps even admirable.”

“So you were wrong?”

“Was I? You claimed you want to improve life by providing electricity and fresh food is that the same as safety?”

“Well I suppose not.”

“Yes because safety means enforcing limits, keeping mankind away from anything that could cause harm, even protecting them from themselves. Is that what a scientist should concern himself with?”

“But I just don’t want us to repeat our mistakes.”

“Do it differently than before.”

Valerie Day-Sánchez enjoys reading and writing across genres, although young adult is her favorite at the moment. Threshold is her first attempt at Sci-Fi. Her other work consists of YA Fantasy Trilogy, Harlow Whittaker. She received both her B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies from New Mexico State University. Her love of the desert Southwest keeps her close to home although she loves to travel, especially when she gets a chance to try the local cuisine. Playing with her two sons and the family’s Boston Terrier, Winston, are how she occupies her time when she’ not writing.