The Heirs of Time

Father Time is a very busy man, as you know, constantly working on time so that it continues to run smoothly. He generally oversees one very long-term project (that is, ensuring time never runs out), so he has delegated the day-to-day tasks to his three beloved children.

Fiona is responsible for the seconds and the minutes, flitting around so quickly, changing her mind at the drop of a hat. It is impossible to capture her attention, and yet, in every singular moment of each day, she dedicates herself to the ticking and the tocking of the clocks. Sometimes, you can feel her in the seconds that stretch too long, as if the world has stopped. She is present in the 3-2-1 and joyful cheers when the ball drops for the new year, and you catch eyes and lock lips with the stranger you’ve been sneaking peeks at for the recent end of the past year. She’s there again in the moment when you squeeze your eyes shut to make your annual birthday wish and blow out the candles. She’s the three dots on your phone when you’re waiting for them to reply, holding your breath and thinking maybe you shouldn’t have sent that text, after all, but knowing they’ve already read it.

Dan holds the hours that allow the days to pass, releasing twenty-four hours at twenty-four equal points. He is precise, observant, and hopeful. There will always be another hour to come, and you will never experience the same hour twice. He watches on when you feel too many emotions at once, and knows all too well how that can make just one day feel like an eternity or like a sand castle wiping out with the tide and disappearing with a single passing wave. He is the ache in your chest when you think you will never feel better, and yet, as you sleep, the hours lessen the pain. He is the constant glancing at your watch, tapping your foot impatiently as you wait for work to end so you can rush home to make your 6 p.m. plans. He is midnight releases, limited-time offers, and the “I’m still watching” button on your streaming services.

Charlie moves a bit slower than Fiona and Dan. She is months, she is milestones. She sees endings and beginnings, and feels bittersweet about them both. You can feel her when you go home to see your parents and realize they have more grey hair than last time and know they will never have less grey hair than they did before. She sees a man become a father, going from peering over at his wife’s swollen belly with curious eyes to staring at a tiny human sleeping soundly in a crib, to watching little hands reach up at him as that same little lump takes his first steps towards his waiting arms. She is the excitement that turns into homesickness when you go away for college, when you move to the big city for work, when you leave that city for another. She is the mirror and the scale, and the before and the after.

Fiona, Dan, and Charlie have always understood their roles and work well together, anticipating each others’ needs in the way siblings do (though sometimes spitefully, you know, in the way siblings do). They had to, really. There weren’t any other heirs of time, so there wasn’t anyone else to share the unique burden of keeping time flowing the way it always has and the way it always must. Only once in their infinite lifespans has a single, precious moment slipped.

It wasn’t clear who was to blame, though Fiona tried to pin it on Dan. His exacting control over the hours locked her seconds and minutes into a strict schedule, so it couldn’t have been her fault. She didn’t control the schedule of time like Dan, making it just awfully mechanical and monotonous. It must have been him that lost sight of this moment. And either way, it was just a moment. It probably wasn’t that big of a deal. She tried to get Charlie on her side, but Charlie handled it terribly. In hindsight, Fiona should have anticipated her older sister’s anxiety. Nothing had ever gone wrong before, so Charlie, always putting too much pressure on herself, immediately intervened.

She chastised her brother and sister on the weight of time, the importance of keeping it, and the consequences of failure. “We have to fix this,” Charlie ordered her siblings. “Fiona, figure out who was affected. Dan, work on a contingency plan.”

Fiona sighed, rolling her eyes with both exasperation and purpose. She rolled them all the way back up and around to the other side to look at her memories. She flitted through the last day, looking for where the minutes had been lost. She played back the lives of the millions of people who were conscious during that moment. It didn’t look like anything had happened at first, but then she saw her.

One woman, about fifty-four and three months to Fiona’s estimate (but who’s counting), was not where she was supposed to be. Claire Green was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She should have been in London, not Dallas. She was given an opportunity to travel for work, to travel out of the country for the first time and see a city she had always wanted to visit but had never gotten the chance to. Claire had always dreamed of visiting London, but first there had to be the house, and the marriage, and the kids, and the taking care of the kids, and the getting back into the workforce, and the taking care of her aging parents. There had always been something bigger than her that took precedence over her secret dream of traveling. As the years passed, it seemed like it would never become a reality. Her travel funds always went towards some new emergency, like getting the roof redone after a tornado or buying a new car for her teenage son when he crashed it. Each time she started over, putting some money aside for her London trip, and each time it seemed like the money was needed elsewhere. But she had gotten a promotion with this job, and there was some travel involved. She had gotten to see the East Coast for the first time this year, and hoped one day, there might be a need for an international trip. Specifically, a trip to the United Kingdom, where her company’s global headquarters was.

To her surprise, the opportunity came. Her company was hosting an event where employees could work from any office for one week. All she needed to do was add her name to a shared spreadsheet under the office of her choice. There were limited slots under each office location due to the availability of cubicles, but she was going to put her name first. She opened the document and moved her mouse to the top cell under “LONDON” and began to extend her fingertips towards the keyboard. She slammed the car door shut and put her forehead against the steering wheel, sighing-

Wait. Fiona scanned the moment, forward and backward. Claire went to put her name on the list, then what? What happened? Jump to Claire in the car, looking upset. What. Happened. Fiona sped forward, seeing Claire clock into work, resigned. Clock out of work, sighing. Looking at pictures of her colleagues on her phone, celebrating the work trip with Big Ben in the background. She missed the chance. She never got to put her name down.

“I found it,” Fiona called out. “Claire Green, approximately one thousand, one hundred and fifty-two hours ago. She lost a moment that meant a lot to her. The opportunity just vanished. What do we do?”

“We can wait for next year. They will do it again,” Dan suggested.

“No, no,” Charlie muttered, her eyes whipping back and forth as she scanned through time like pages in a book. “It isn’t offered again. She is supposed to take this opportunity, she moves her family to London. They are all supposed to be in London. Their lives are worse off if they don’t go, and they don’t even have any idea. Oh, no. This isn’t good at all. And don’t get me started on the lives of the people who were supposed to move into Claire’s house. The children! And their neighbors. Oh, no.”

“Alright! That’s enough!” Fiona interrupted. Charlie was never going to make it past this moment if she stayed stuck in time. “Ok,” she smacked her hands together, swinging her arms. “We just need to get Claire to London another way, right?”

“Well, technically-” Charlie began. Fiona shot her a dagger-sharp look.

“Yes,” Dan cut in.

“So we just need to give her another chance. Watch this,” Fiona smiled, determined.

Claire drove to work, sipping the coffee in her thermos and humming quietly to the radio. During the commercial break, she heard an ad for a travel company offering discounted flights to London. When she got to her cubicle, she overheard Julia and Patrick from another team discussing a news story that had somehow gotten emailed to the whole office. The queen’s corgis has gotten loose, hopped right out of a horse-driven chariot while she had been waving to the public, and the straight-faced guardsmen had to wrangle them back in. It was all over Claire’s social media feed too, her friends reposted memes about it all day.

“We just have to give her a nudge,” Dan said, watching her day.

Claire’s meetings for the day had been canceled, giving her a rare quiet day. She sat at her desk, cleaning out her inbox and sorting out old emails. She paused on the email from just a couple of months ago, inviting her office to participate in the location switch. She hit the trash can button, sending it away once and for all. What good did it do her to keep thinking about it? The opportunity was gone, she had missed it. She had to just keep moving forward. Claire put in her earbuds, drowning out the conversation around her for the rest of the day.

“Ugh!” Fiona threw her head in her hands.

“Maybe we’ve been thinking about this wrong. We’re trying to make Claire relive a missed moment, but moments never repeat. Maybe we shouldn’t try to fix the past. We can try inspiring a new future,” Charlie suggested.

Fiona peeped through her fingers at her siblings, “What do you mean?”

Dan nodded thoughtfully, ”Let’s give her a fresh moment. Let her creative something by herself.”

And so they set their plan into motion.

Days passed quickly for Claire. Work was the same, life was the same. There were no surprises or shakeups to her routine, yet something felt different. She checked the mail and saw a postcard from London sitting in her mailbox, mistakenly delivered to the wrong address. She traced the London skyline pictured on the postcard with her finger before throwing it into the recycle bin. She saw random advertisements on her TV for a mystery travel sweepstakes, and even searched it up on her phone once. Of course, that resulted in nonstop ads chasing her across every site she visited, popping into her feeds on social media.

One evening, Claire paused and considered the advertisement. She clicked the flashing banner, opening the link. Without letting herself pause for a single thought, she filled out the form. Submit. She realized she had been holding her breath and exhaled. It was silly, wasn't it? She wouldn’t actually win. But it felt good to want to travel again, and on the very small chance that she actually did win, it was exciting to think that she could end up anywhere in the world. She smiled softly and went back to enjoying the rest of her night.

Fiona, Dan, and Charlie exhaled too. Fiona had been waiting for that critical second. Dan carefully structured an hour for reflection and alone time, and Charlie marked this as a milestone.

Claire didn’t win the sweepstakes, but it didn’t bother her in the slightest. She had actually forgotten when the deadline was for the sweepstakes winner to be announced and never thought to check. Something within her was freer, somehow. She was lighter. She logged into her savings account and checked the balance. She was surprised to see more money in there than there had been in a long time and thought back over the past few months. There had been no emergencies, no crises. The house was about as clean as you’d expect but otherwise not damaged or in need or repair. Cars were running, and mouths were fed. Month over month, Claire had been able to build up a decent travel fund. With this, she could plan a trip with her husband, and they could go just about anywhere. Maybe they’d go somewhere romantic and tropical and slow, or maybe they could go to a historical city with lots of museums and walking and wine. She laughed to herself, thrilled at the idea of exploring somewhere new, and picked up her phone to call her husband and let him know he needed to request some time off soon.

Charlie nodded, sighing contentedly. All was well, finally. Not the way she expected it, but in the way it was meant to be. “Good job,” she told Dan and Fiona, who were gazing down at Claire’s life alongside her.

A voice called out warmly behind the siblings, “You’ve done beautifully.”

They turned, happy and surprised to see their father standing with his arms open, gesturing at Claire’s moment. He looked proud.

“Time is not meant to be a prison,” Father Time said in his gentle yet powerful voice. “It’s more like a river, ebbing and flowing but always headed in the right direction. Your role is to guide its flow, not to build structures to dam it.”

“Every moment matters. But the best part about our work is that there are infinite possibilities in the ones yet to come.”