The Time Keeper

Two weeks after Ethan cancelled their meeting, Sarah decides to try to get his attention at the shelter. She puts on a tight skirt and a low-cut top and wears heavy make-up. She leaves early to get to the shelter. When she gets there, some of the unhoused men whistle at her, and she realizes that this was a mistake. She puts on a sweater. When Ethan comes in, she straightens up and runs a hand through her hair. Ethan seems to notice the difference in her appearance, but she can’t tell what he thinks.

Victor sits in his study going back over the information Jed provided him about cryonics. When he is declared dead, his body will be covered with ice, a pump will keep his blood circulating and his fluids will be replaced with cryoprotectant. Then he will be placed in a computer-controlled cooling box and placed in a fiberglass tank called a “cryostat” (83). The tank is like a lifeboat, preserving him until he can be “rescued” by more advanced medicine. Jed refers to the people inside the tubes as patients rather than corpses.

Dor hears the voices of Sarah and Victor above the din of other voices coming from the pool, including Victor saying “[a]nother lifetime” and Sarah asking time to “stop.” He clutches the hourglass and jumps in, falling through. He falls through open air, through deep colors, heat, cold, rain, and wind. Finally, he falls into sand, cushioning his fall, and then the sand blows away. He feels like he’s hanging from something and hears music and laughter in the distance. He’s back on Earth.

Lorraine goes to buy cigarettes and passes the nail salon where she and Sarah once got a manicure and pedicure. She had planned on doing it more often, but then the divorce happened, and now Sarah doesn’t want to spend time with her.

Grace goes to the grocery store. She could send someone to go for her, but she has begun cooking meals herself so that they are healthy for Victor; she is hoping to give him more time through a healthy diet. She plans a healthy salad but also grabs his favorite ice cream in case he wants to treat himself.

A life-size paper-mâché mannequin of El Tiempo, Father Time, hangs suspended from a plywood base in a Spanish town during a December festival. Every few minutes, someone swats at the mannequin with a bat, whacking out the old year and welcoming in the new. A little boy runs over to the mannequin and hits it with the bat and the mannequin’s eyes open, causing the boy to scream. Dor is aware of a twinge in his side and the sound of a boy screaming as he falls from the plywood wall. He drops the hourglass and everything around him moves slowly. He picks up the hourglass and runs.

The sand in the hourglass is barely moving and people and objects are likewise moving very slowly. After walking for miles, Dor climbs a hill and observes the slow-moving world around him. He realizes that everything slowed after he dropped the hourglass, so he turns it on its side and the sand begins to flow freely. People and objects begin to move more quickly. He snaps the hourglass back, and the world slows to a crawl.

Sarah is meeting Ethan at his uncle’s warehouse. He hadn’t committed to the evening until 8:14 pm, when he texted that he was there, and she could come if she wanted. Ethan has vodka and orange juice. As they drink, they talk about dumb TV shows that they both watch, and she tells him that she likes the Men in Black movies even though she hasn’t seen them. Her mother calls, and Ethan changes the ring tone on her phone to a loud annoying song each time her mom calls so that she’ll know to ignore it. Things get a little blurry for Sarah since she isn’t used to drinking vodka, and Ethan offers to rub her shoulders. She says yes, and then it leads to kissing. Sarah is so excited that he’s kissing her. Ethan becomes more aggressive, moving his hands all over her, and she pulls away. He offers her more vodka and the cycle repeats itself. Eventually, they both go home.

On Monday morning, as she’s getting ready for school, she wonders if she did the right thing. She imagines the next time they’ll be together. She decides to buy him a Christmas present so that he will love her back.

Dor explores the modern world through endless time with the power of his hourglass. He can never stop time, but he can slow it, living for days within a single moment. As he explores the Spanish countryside, he enters a barber shop. He allows time to resume and watches as the stylist cuts a man’s hair. He is shocked at his own image in the mirror. He slows time once more, takes her scissors, and begins to cut away at his beard.

Victor has a meeting with Jed about the procedure. Legally, he has to be dead to begin the freezing process, but he wants to convince Jed to begin the process before he has died to give him a better chance of being reanimated. Victor is doing dialysis and without it he would die fairly quickly. Victor offers Jed and his facility millions of dollars if he’ll begin the procedure before Victor has actually died. Victor hands him the legal paperwork to try to convince Jed to change the timeline.

Dor, with trimmed hair and modern clothes, now looks more like he belongs in this time. Dor does more real-time interactions to learn the alphabet and how to spell and read. Dor goes to a library in Madrid and reads more than a third of all its books. He then wanders across Europe, from Spain to France to Germany. He seeks out various timepieces along the way. As he examines all the different types of clocks, he wonders if every clock watcher plays a price like his penance in the cave. Dor reaches the coast after having spent 100 years studying a single day. He hears the voices of Sarah and Victor once more. He wades into the water and begins to swim.

Dor swims the Atlantic Ocean in one minute. As he is swimming, he thinks about all the people in his life he never said goodbye to—his parents, his children, Alli—and he wonders when his journey will be done. Dor arrives in New York. There are so many people, and even with the hourglass slowed he has trouble making his way through the crowds. He finds new clothes that fit him, and he wonders if there’s no end to human ambition.