February 28th was like every other day, until midnight, when nature, reassuringly, fell apart. It seemed that the powers-that-be drew their heads between their shoulder blades and sheepishly conceded that time was not as sane and stable as you’d been told. The year was out of line to us sun worshippers. Five hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds out of order, give or take. And for that, every four years, except every hundred years, but not every four hundred, the calendar needed to be slapped with an extra day.
But this isn’t just any extra day. This day boils with the possibilities of being outside of time. Clocks and calendars hold their breath as they wait impatiently for the sun to catch up. The planets and stars saunter slowly across the sky as alarm clocks hold in their ringing and watches repeat the same ticks over and over again. It almost seems that the sky is teasing Earth’s timepieces, moving in slow motion and even pausing, just because it could.
It was on such a day that she came to you in red petticoats, dressed all in white save for the scarlet blooming from beneath her skirts. She bore a crooked smile. She was daring you, even before she spoke. Her irises seemed three-dimensional; as if her pupils were planets whose gravity had attracted rings. She was decked out in emeralds, on fingers and toes, and somehow it never occurred to you to wonder where they had come from. She murmured something about Irish traditions that you knew you were not meant to hear and suddenly her hair flashed to crimson. Just as suddenly, it was black again and indistinguishable from the sky.
She takes your hand and she leads you to the river. It is silent, as if the water has stopped flowing. It’s too black to see them, but you are almost certain that boats are rooted in the current. And just when you mean to tell her that you’ve got no time to give her:
“Marry me.” It was not a question, but it was a proposition. In the thick humidity of the night, the sky paused long enough for you to wonder what that would mean. If time would continue its mundane march through schedules. Or maybe, just maybe, the gravity of this moment would bring the spirals of galaxies to a halt. Maybe a leap made on a night like this would cause the rest of time to hold its breath, head cocked, suspended in a date that did not exist.
You know already what would happen if you refused. You would owe 12 pairs of gloves. One pair for each month in the wobbly year. One glove for each hour in the faltering day. They would be worn, again and again, hiding ringless hands. And time would continue as it always had, orbiting a sun that did not seem to care.
And yet… in just this instant there seemed to be a way out of Big Ben’s repetitive clacking and the 10,000 Year Clock didn’t seem like such a bad idea. The only movement in this moment came from the flickering of stars and the challenge in her eyes. In this present, with the universe frozen to a temperature that was livable, the Long Now almost seemed possible.
Is that a chance you are willing to take?
Thank you to http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/ for the photo of the 10,000 Year Clock prototype! Hooray!