The Pocket Watch

Soft, golden pools of light lay like blankets of snow on the cobbled streets, highlighting fuzzy details in the surrounding brick buildings. Ominous shadows were cast over the world, wrapping themselves around the illuminated shards of streets and buildings. The air was crisp, like the perfect apple; like the softest winter breeze; like the sound of a whip cracking. Pale moonlight filtered through wispy, darkened clouds to conflict and convulse with the yellow light of the street lamps.

The only sounds that could be heard were the resounding click click of new leather boots, and the quiet rasp of a man breathing. A cough pierced the night, quickly muffled by a shirt, and then the near-silence returned. Michael passed under a street lamp, and his light brown hair and tan complexion were briefly revealed. For a moment, as his eyes flicked up to take in his surroundings, light glinted off bright green. His attention was quietly focused on his own thoughts, his steps naturally avoiding the darkest parts of his environment. He looked up, peering at a street sign far ahead to gauge his location, reassuring himself that his navigational instincts were, as always, unerringly correct.

But the peace was suddenly shattered by the appearance of a tall, slender man clad in a black coat that softly dusted the cobbled street. He did not step out of an alley—no alleyway was to be seen—nor had he been walking towards the lone man. It was as if he had appeared out of nowhere; out of thin air. Michael recoiled backwards, barely recovering from his stumble. His eyes widened as he stared at the mysterious interloper. His gaze was calculating. His grin was reassuring. The way he held himself spoke of confidence and knowledge. Through the waves of shock Michael’s thought was arrogant.

“Do not be alarmed.” His voice was smooth and deep, a voice that demanded attention and expected obedience. Almost immediately Michael felt his shock ebbing away, against his rationality. “In five minutes you will enter the tavern known as ‘The Three Lucky Men.’ You will see me seated at the table in the far corner, near the fireplace. You will approach me and utter this name.” He whispered the name Alagor like it was made of silk, and it caressed Michael’s ears. “You must utter my name, as at this point I have not yet decided to confront you. I will explain further then.” Before Michael could utter a single word in response, the stranger called Alagor vanished like a flake of snow hitting warm water.

Michael fell heavily to the grey, damp cobblestones, scarcely believing his memories. The stranger, Alagor, had simply melted into the night. He had been there, then he was not. Michael closed his eyes, seeking some iota of logic in this sudden maelstrom of confusion. I am Michael, I am Michael. Over and over he thought these words, until his breathing returned to normal. There is a logical explanation for all of this. I probably never saw it at all. I fell asleep while walking. It’s stress-related. Food poisoning. Anything but men appearing out of thin air. Slowly Michael collected himself, rising onto his feet. Some tiny, irrational piece of him was proud that he only required the assistance of the rough-grained brick walls to the right of him once in order to stand. Michael committed to his original course of action: the tavern, for a few drinks. Again the sound of his newly made boots echoed around him, except this time his gaze was more furtive, and no shadow lay unobserved. Every darkened alcove was carefully analyzed and filed away, before his wary eyes flicked to the next nearest possible danger. Eventually he began to hear the soft laughter and conversation of a great number of men, and saw the strong, steady yellow light coming from foggy window panes and a slightly ajar door. A green sign with the words The Three Lucky Men came into view, swinging as if of its own accord.

Michael’s stride lengthened to a pace slightly above normal, and he pushed the door a little harder than was necessary. It collided with the wooden counter behind it with a clack clack clack, causing a few men to look up at him. Michael refused to meet the gaze of those men, and marched to where the tavern keeper was currently serving out drinks. Michael leaned against the bar, waiting for the patron in front of him to finish his woeful recital of his life, and slowly took the room in. Four long, worn pine tables comprised the main floor of the tavern, with dozens of men—of varying degrees of cleanliness and social standing—crowded at the chairs and benches, holding mugs or eating from clay plates. Surrounding the long tables were a number of smaller, more private tables, at which groups of solemn men or rowdy groups of gamblers conversed and socialized. The room was illuminated by powerful oil lamps, sharply lighting the faded, splintered plank walls and the brown-tinged straw littering the equally wooden ground. Serving girls ran back and forth, serving the numerous men and nimbly dodging the attention of their hands. The whole atmosphere was accented by the ever-present background noise of loud, boisterous men.

At the front of the room was a brick-and-mortar fireplace, lighting almost everything around it in an orange, flickering glow. Barely caught in the sphere of ambient light was one of the smaller tables, at which sat a mysterious man clad in a black coat. Michael gasped and suddenly found himself coughing. Several patrons around him stared in open amusement, watching as he vaguely tried to recover from attempting to breathe in his own saliva. After several long seconds, he straightened and attempted to resume his study of the table. Eventually Michael’s insatiable curiosity fought its way past his fear, however, and he found himself marching resolutely to the table in the far corner, with the intention of confronting the mysterious—and terrifying—stranger who called himself Alagor. He vaguely felt the straw underneath his feet crunch, or rather squish wetly, as he swerved between numerous tavern customers. Then he was standing at the edge of the fireplace’s light, suddenly unable to speak.

“What do you want, stranger?” It was not Michael speaking, but the man seated at the table. “I am not interested in company tonight. Besides, you’re not exactly my type.” There was no mistaking that voice, the liquid sound. Even the laugh seemed to have its own life; the low, humor-filled notes danced around Michael. “So be gone with you, and let me finish my drink.” Again, that tone that demanded instant obedience. Michael found himself turning to leave, but caught himself. He would not be turned away.

“W-what was the meaning of our confrontation outside the tavern? It was bizarre and not at all conventional.” Michael hated the way his voice cracked.

“Confrontation? There has been no confrontation between the two of us. You are a stranger to me.” the man replied smoothly.

Could I have been wrong? Michael shook his head—there was no forgetting the man’s distinctive voice, the black coat, the tall, muscular build. “I am not mistaken, sir! You appeared as if out of thin air and spoke strange words that confused me greatly.” Much better Michael said inwardly.

The stranger was silent for a long moment. “What is my name?” He asked so softly Michael had to strain to hear it.

He hesitated. “Alagor,” he finally said, “Your name is Alagor.”

Alagor laughed once more, beckoning with his hands. “Come, sit down, we have much to discuss. If you know my name then I obviously had need to tell you.”

Michael reluctantly sat down. “Now you remember me?”

Alagor leaned forward, and for the first time Michael saw his features clearly. He had pale skin, stretched tight across well-defined muscles and sharp angles. Dark blue eyes peered out of deep indents set under thick, bushy eyebrows. His hair was nearly black, hanging in long, curled rivulets that teased his neck. “No.” Alagor’s voice broke Michael’s observation. “No, I don’t remember you, because there’s nothing to remember. I have never met you.”

“Yes you have!” Michael protested, vividly recalling their confrontation.

“No, that wasn’t me.” Alagor countered easily, a pleasant smile breaking out. “That was a different me. A me from a different future.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about time travel my friend. Well, you call it time travel. I refer to it as jumping.” Alagor spoke these words like he was discussing the weather, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Michael was flabbergasted. “Time travel? You’re being preposterous! There is no such thing.”

“Yes there is, because I have done it.”

“You cannot alter time! It is an abstract concept. It has no substance, no volition. It exists only in our minds. It cannot be folded, nor shaped, nor traveled. All you can do is ponder, and calculate, and wait.” Michael was rambling, and he knew it, and this man was positively insane. Or playing a joke on him. He began to stand up to leave.

“That is where you are wrong.” Alagor interrupted, an unspoken command telling Michael to sit back down. “Ideas are infinitely more malleable than reality, depending solely on the mind of the idealist.”

Michael found himself sitting again. “An idea cannot affect reality. The thought of wind cannot make the leaves fall from the trees.”

“All of reality began with an idea. The reality we know is no more than our perceptions and observations, filtered through our knowledge and past experiences, and projected as reality. The reality we know started with just ideas.” Alagor’s smile was large, content.

“You can’t be serious! Talk of time travel and some-such can get a man put away.” Michael exclaimed.

“Only because men refuse to accept the possibility and therefore lock it away as impossible!”

“You’re insane.” Michael could think of nothing else to say.

It seemed Alagor had plenty to say on the matter, however. “Time is nothing more than possibilities. The future is an infinite number of possibilities, each decision branching out into an infinite number of decisions, which branches into an infinite number of more decisions, and so on. The past is those infinite paths, proven false by the one true path that we are on. The present is here, no here, no here, and so on. Every man follows his own individual path, and his decisions branch out into an infinite number of more paths, and everyone’s paths intersect, so that one path can affect the nature of another. It is an impossibly large number of possibilities, and that is precisely why we cannot accept the possibility of these possibilities. The ramifications are too high.”

Michael opened his mouth to argue, “You’re just being—“

“Silence! You are ignorant, my friend, so let me educate you. Very few humans actually possess the ability to ‘time travel,’ although it’s not as uncommon as the rest of the world seems to think. We do not travel so much as we jump between folds. We fold together our individual paths in order to jump between different points in time. I can do the same with space, and although the foundation is the same the rules and execution are different, so we will not talk about jumping through space.”

“Is this some form of joke?”

“Your puny perceptions of the world around you are a joke. You only see what you have already seen, so when a man appears in front of you it’ll haunt you for hours, and consume your dreams. You only know what you have already been taught, so when a science yet untaught appears, you throw it off as fantasy. Do not presume to know everything, for arrogance of that kind isn’t even matched by myself, and I’m the one who can time jump.” Alagor’s smugness angered Michael.

“My knowledge is based off of fact! It’s based off of what’s been proven! It’s—“ Michael was interrupted when Alagor swiftly clasped onto Michael’s arm. Alagor’s brow furrowed in concentration, and then the world shifted around Michael. Suddenly, the softly lit cobbled street outside was below him, and he could see himself walking slowly in the direction of the tavern. Alagor appeared and Michael watched himself stumble and nearly fall like a fool. The conversation did not last even a full thirty seconds before Alagor was gone. Suddenly Michael was seated at the tablet again.

“So that’s what happened.” Alagor mused, sneering at Michael. “You certainly are clumsy.”

“How did you do that!” Michael stuttered.

“I showed you the past. I used physical contact to find your own paths, and then jumped both of us into your path. I also had to jump through space, else we would’ve appeared here at the time you were out there. Something that I’ve never done before, but it was interesting to try it. I wasn’t as precise as I would’ve liked, however, or we would’ve appeared on the ground.” Alagor was almost talking to himself, reasoning through the impossible events that had just occurred.

“But…” Michael couldn’t continue. Behind him, a fight broke out, two burly rivermen throwing a table out of the way to get to each other. A serving girl shrieked and hurriedly dodged out of the way, while two massive peacekeepers intervened and broke the fight apart. Michael was barely aware of it all.

“Not so arrogant now, are you?” Alagor chuckled in open amusement.

“So…you haven’t even met me yet? What happened in the past hasn’t actually happened?” Michael finally found his voice.

“Oh, it happened alright. In the past, but not in this future.”

Michael didn’t think he could be more confused. “What do you mean?”

“In a different future, I singled you out, and jumped into the past to confront you. Then, for dramatic purposes, I jumped through space to appear in front of you.”

“You couldn’t jump directly in front of me?”

“I could if I knew exactly where I was jumping, but I wasn’t attached to your paths, only mine, so I could only jump along the events in my past, and jump where I’ve either been or where I could see.”

Michael took a deep breath. “So you still have to go back and meet me?”

“Not at all.”

“But why? You haven’t met me yet even though you have and—“ Michael put his face in his hands, a headache quickly forming. “I have no idea what we’re talking about.”

“Let me explain, then. I no longer have to go back and talk to you, because it already happened. The future where I decided to go back and talk to you no longer exists, because I altered it by jumping back to talk to you. This is the new future, where it already happened. The ‘me’ you talked to no longer exists.”

“Why did you talk to me in the first place?”

“It’s simple, you can jump as well.”

“How can you tell?”

“Absolutely no idea. I’m not exactly an expert.” Alagor grinned.

Michael groaned and hit the worn, wooden table. Almost immediately his hand recoiled and he was prying out a splinter. The noise in the tavern swelled as a man won a hefty amount at a table a dozen feet away.

“You could make it so that never happened.” Alagor spoke softly, seriously.

Michael looked up. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know how I can tell you are able to jump, but there’s no other explanation for me jumping back to confront you. It’s quite possible your abilities come out on their own and get you in a lot of trouble, or worse.” Alagor tapped his chin thoughtfully, before answering Michael’s question. “I’m very serious. It’ll be good for me to teach someone. I’m still experimenting myself. For example, can I jump into the future? I reckon I can, it’s just a matter of finding the exact path I wish to jump to.”

“Don’t you jump back to the future when you jump to the past?”

“Not really, as I anchor myself in the present. I don’t jump completely into the past.”

“Can I really learn?” Michael said reluctantly, the rational part of his mind screaming about his stupidity.

Alagor shrugged. “If you want. You’ll need to buy a pocket watch first.”

“Why in the world would I want to do that?”

Alagor’s look was incredulous. “To keep track of the time, of course!”