It was at this time, not knowing it myself but nonetheless extant, that beknownst only to itself, a shimmering helix of glittering light arced across the night sky over, what i was later to learn, was called Toronto. It had come, not unlike we, by an accident. And also, not unlike we, had escaped the clutches of a future ruler of the planet, a vast hawk man of the age of the hawkmen. It is always in such strange and small coincidences that events tend to deploy magnification distortions, tending to create the illusion that the mere facts shared by two things, across the vast and infinite channels of space and time, are somehow not only UNLIKELY, but SIGNIFICANT. Suffice it to say, it is both inevitable and insignificant that, at 5:35 PM EST, Sept 20, 2009, in Toronto Ontario, two time travellers, having recently escaped the clutches of a hawk man, glistened into existence over the dominion towers, and careened a trajectory towards old city hall, colliding with the clock tower and bringing the great face of the old timepiece to the earth, while its hands marked the time of its death. 5:35 PM, EST.
At 2.7 degrees east from galactic meridian, on the local new year of the pan-imperial new year, 2235, a chrominid, or clockman was struck in the face by two hawkfaced travellers, with a small sack of the spice, thyme. The resulting civil war set back the progress of man by 500 years, precisely. Exactly 1000 years, to the day, after this event, a Pan-Hellenic restorationist Danaan vessel encountered a peculiar warp in the fabric of time. While investigating, one of the crewmate’s timepieces inadvertently was sucked in, severing the man’s hand exactly 73.26 Grand Olympian Handibards (the standard neo-pan-hellenist unit of measuring the hand) from the tip of his middle fingers (about his wrist). The watch travelled backwards in time, itself one of those funny ironies, as it was the kind of watch that actually ran backwards, counting down, rather than up. It was based on an ancient device which played music. It told you how much time you had left in a song, rather than how much elasped. It so happened that this watch told you how long you had until the watch tore your hand off at the wrist, and so the crewman in question, one Daniel David Peregrine, had actually meant not to wear his watch that morning, but seemed, by an almost impossible set of circumstances, to have been unable to avoid it. You see, earlier that morning, when he had neglected to put on that watch, he was placed under a kind of arrest that men get placed under who dont’ wear watches, at that time in that part of the galaxy. It was one of those pleasant arrests, where you are fed numinous biscuits, which as their name implies, are a type of cookie. I’ll be getting back to the numinous bit in a moment.
The biscuits were superpartners of other negative biscuits which existed just after the dawn of the universe at high states of energy for only the tinest fraction of a becond (a biscuit second). It so happens that due to an unexplaned time anomaly, a particle of such a sbiscuit was dislodged, and preserved within a chronoinsular field, presumed to be in some kind of novelty watch that told you how long you had to live, or how long your hand had to be attached to the wrist you wore the watch on, and at just that moment, the crumbs from the cookie met the superpartner particle, and the resulting mindfuck caused the crewman to abandon his senses, and put on that watch. 17 minutes and 35 seconds later, he didn’t have a hand, and hiw watch read 00:00 PM EST (eastern space time, east being discovered to be an absolute and not relative direction, while west, north, and semi-west were discovered to be illusions perpetrated by a capitalist mass media for the purposes of selling more cheap consumer goods and keeping the poor in a gradual spiral of increasing subjugation with the myth that, if they worked hard enough, someday, they might join some northbound of semi-westbound blue-bloods in their warm caves in the Pat Benetar fortress district of Hollywood. South is missing from this description. Experts are still unsure why.)
WIth the resulting severing of his hand, his gushing blood, exposed body, and last words, were all frozen rapidly to 2.7 or so Kelvin. Now, all of this is completely insignificant, despite 2.7 degrees being the angle of trajectory of the 2 time travellers colliding with the clock tower of Old City Hall in toronto, that 73.26 grand handibards, the length of hand severed, corresponds to the 73.26% of the day that 17:35 represents, that 17:35 is the 24 hour version of 5:35 PM, that 2235 – 500 years of prograss is 1735, that the crewman’s name became the basis for the naming of hawkmen species after astronauts lost in self inflicted accidents, and that the hawkman species named for him was that responsible for the capture of myself and my friend, as well as the two travellers who just now destroyed the clock tower at city hall. Of course, thyme is a simple pun on time. What else. I think that’s it.
None of this is significant, and indeed, in an infinitely large universe, is ultimately inevitable. BUt still, many readers will feel the urge to find these events to somehow indicate that the universe is a funny place wher emagic happens every day, you just hve to notice it. What i failed to mention are billions of other facts, for instance that Daneil David Peregrine was a 8 year veteran… although 1 + 7 + 3 + 6 = 17 and 1+7 = 8… come to think of it…
Regardless, my purpose is that space is a stark and arid place where no magic exists. So naturally, you will consider it academically insignificant that at that moment, across town, in the downtown core of toronto, two time travellers arrived. Same night. Same time. And that they had specifically come because we had specifically come. infact, though i’m not clear why, We had come to meet one another. Yet, that meeting was not to take place. A certain fast reviving galgravolt would see to that. It would revive in 150 seconds, and kill us, for the first time, in 210. Also, apparently, my and my companion’s combined age is 60. Coincidentally, and i’m sure of no significance, the hands pointing to 5:35, on a clock, subtend a 150 and 210 degree angle measured from the 12, clockwise, and are 60 degrees apart.
to be continued….
P.S. oh, and the date was 20092009, and backwards, that 90029002, which is the number of years i had travelled into the past. Meaningless probably.
or that we were a “september 20ths length” from where my eventual abode would be on this planet. a classic “two time traveller” semi detached bungalow.