What time Is It?

By: Patrick Barry

“Within the surface of the fleeting river the wrinkled image of the city lay.” I stopped and observed this for some time deep in thought about how much I wanted a gas-powered sweater. Sadly, being a stand up comedian, I had little or no money. I then thought to myself, why did I become a comedian? The answer was obviously not clear to me. I became a comedian after an unfortunate bad luck streak as a lumberjack. When I was a lumberjack I had this awful habit of showing up at the wrong location and chopping down a couple trees on someone’s property. Needless to say that ended my career in the lumber business.

I glanced at my wrist watch, Oh My God! It was 11:00. I Was Late. At that moment I took off running. My side began to cramp up and I thought, that burrito was a bad choice, had I known I would be running I would not have eaten so much. In my thinking I forgot to pay attention to the sidewalk ahead of me. I ran straight into a large blue mailbox and fell over. The pain was terrible! Somehow I managed to get to my feet and started to run again. Finally, I had reached the show! I was five hours early. This didn’t bother me so much as the fact that my watch had been broken for weeks.

While waiting for the show time to near, I sat on the curb deep in thought. I began to ponder. I pondered about what smarter people probably pondered about, why they ponder, and if they ponder do they not ponder about what dumb people ponder about? After pondering for a good hour, I proceeded to think. However, this did not last long as I was hungry. I got up from the curb and began to stroll down the sidewalks of the city in search of someplace to get some food. While walking I bumped into a man who began to strike up a conversation with me. I forced an uncomfortable smile and pretended to be interested in what he had to say. He talked about the weather and I thought, how boring, if I wanted to hear someone talk about the weather I’d watch TV, yet I acted interested while inside my head I heard, “Get something to eat! Stop talking to this guy and get some food now!” I made sure I ended the conversation with the boring man and continued my search for food.

I walked into what from the outside looked like a restaurant. I soon found out it was not a place to eat, but the whole place was one huge empty blank room. I thought I should walk back outside, but when I turned around the door I came in was gone! I turned back around and saw a door at the other end of the building. I walked cautiously towards the door. I opened the door and saw a vast black nothingness. I thought about what I should do. At that point I realized I had two choices: number one, go through the door and take my chances in the vast black nothingness, or number two, turn around and hope the door leading back to the street would appear and forget about the vast black nothingness. I figured, what the heck, what is the worst case scenario of going through the door? I stepped through the door. Immediately I was walking through the door again only I was walking into the building. I saw a door, so I ran to it. When it was opened it went outside. I stepped through it and was glad to be out of the building.

The city changed during the time I was in the building. Everything looked sleek, shiny, and metallic, like something from the future. I looked in a puddle and saw my hair had turned grey and I had a beard, my hair used to be black and I had no beard; I couldn’t believe what I saw, so I found a newspaper and looked at the date. It was thirty years into the future. This didn’t bother me so much as my watch was still broken and I couldn’t tell if I was late to the show.