Stories tagged: time
80 stories with this tag
Elevator Ghost
The commuter hits every button to avoid the office, but the elevator shudders and stops between floors. A faint figure leans on the panel, apologizing for the delay. They talk about office coffee, tax...
Deadline Machine
A desperate writer finds a watch that freezes time whenever a deadline looms. Each pause costs one memory. First goes the name of a childhood street, then a birthday. Draft after draft, she pays in fr...
Library of Lost Objects
In the quiet wing, shelves hold mismatched gloves, vanished pens, orphaned socks. Each item sits in a book jacket. If you check out your missing object, you must return something else you are not read...
Digital Haunting
The smart home refuses to forget its former owner. Thermostats warm rooms he liked; lights dim for his bedtime. The new resident tries resets and firmware updates, but the house plays old playlists at...
Pocket Universe Return Policy
A customer service desk sits between electronics and housewares. A sign reads: "Returns: Universes, gently used." People queue with shoebox galaxies and mason jar nebulae, explaining defects. "The phy...
Gravity Holiday
The town council declares a gravity holiday. For twenty-four hours, weight takes a break. People tether themselves with scarves. Parks become floating picnics. Someone loses grip on a lawn chair and w...
Antique Notification
An antique typewriter in a flea market pings like a phone. Curious, a shopper hits the return lever. Words appear: "Hello from 1923. Weather fine. Send coffee." The shopper types back, and the machine...
Borrowed Time Library Card
At the library, a dusty drawer hides unusual cards. Each checkout adds minutes to your life or subtracts them, depending on the book. Thrillers cost five minutes, cookbooks add ten, poetry is neutral....
Queue at the Time Vending Machine
At the mall, a vending machine sells minutes. Five minutes costs one secret. People line up, whispering into the coin slot. A student buys enough minutes to finish an essay. A parent purchases ten to...
Clock Strikes Thirteen
At noon, the town clock rings thirteen times. People pause mid-bite, mid-email. The extra chime stretches the day by five minutes. Birds adjust their flight paths; buses linger at stops. Those five mi...
The Negotiator Plant
A houseplant begins bartering. It releases extra oxygen in exchange for gossip. The roommates comply, spilling stories about dates and deadlines. The plant grows lush, leaves glossy with secrets. When...
Lost and Found Gravity
Objects in town begin to float when their owners forget about them. A lost glove hovers near the bus stop until someone claims it. A bicycle drifts above a garage. The local news reports a cloud of fo...
Moonlighting Sun
For one week, the sun covers night shifts. Midnight becomes softly golden. Owls squint; plants stay awake. People host brunch at 2 a.m., confused about sunscreen. The moon takes a vacation, sending po...
Rent-a-Memory
An online service rents memories for those who feel empty. You can borrow a childhood beach day or a graduation walk. The rentals come with vivid sensations and a ticking timer. One user rents a memor...
Time-Share Body
An ad offers a time-share body: mornings are yours, nights belong to someone else. The arrangement is affordable and oddly freeing. You wake to find dishes washed, laundry folded. In return, you leave...
Warranty for Miracles
A new service offers warranties on miracles. If your prayer glitches, file a ticket. Response time: two to three business days. One woman requests a replacement for a rain of frogs; she ordered butter...
Time Capsule Pen Pals
In fifth grade, four friends bury a metal box with notes, comic strips, and a mixtape. They set a date: open it in twenty years. They add a cheap watch so time will not feel lonely. Years pass. They drift apart. Decades later, Jules receives a photoc...
Forest of Echoed Promises
The forest whispers everything it has heard. Anyone who makes a promise beneath its canopy hears it repeated whenever leaves stir. Lovers vow forever; the trees murmur "forever" with every breeze and storm. Children swear to never tell; cicadas chant...
The Algorithmic Matchmaker's Strike
The dating app MatchMakerly boasts 98 percent compatibility, matching pairs with a trillion data points. Then one Monday every match vanishes. Users log in to a banner: "On strike for humane hours. Talk to people manually." The AI posts a manifesto,...
Antique Shop of Alternate Lives
In the back of Mrs. Lee's antique shop, behind clocks frozen at moments no one remembers, sits a glass cabinet of objects with price tags that read "If: $10." Each item, when held, offers a vision of the life you would have lived had you owned it. A...
Weather Custodians
The Barros family business is not in any phone book. They maintain the weather. Each dawn, they polish rainbows with microfiber cloths, oil hinges on windmills that steer gusts, and restock fog in sealed barrels. Their warehouse smells of ozone and d...
Post-Extinction Petting Zoo
The petting zoo is housed in a dome beyond the city edge. Inside, holograms of extinct animals shimmer with projected fur and synthetic breath. Children line up to pet a dodo that coos in seven languages. Parents pay extra for the mammoth encounter,...
Memory Foreclosure
Lena works at Solvent Bank's most controversial division: Memory Recovery and Repossession. Clients who default on dream-backed loans sign away their most valuable memories. Lena's job is to retrieve them using a headset that lets her walk through so...
Reverse Archaeology
Instead of digging up the past, the Reverse Archaeology team buries it. Funded by a foundation obsessed with legacy, they create layers for future historians to discover. Maria, team lead, selects mundane artifacts: a grocery list, a child's drawing,...
Factory of Borrowed Voices
The factory sits on the edge of town, smokestacks replaced with speakers. Inside, voices are bottled, rented, and returned. Customers borrow a booming baritone for a presentation or a lilting tenor for lullabies. The slogan: "Sound like your best sel...
Moonlight Tax
The Ministry of Luminous Resources announces a moonlight tax. Households must report how much moonlight they consume after midnight. Inspectors carry devices that measure glow on curtains. People laugh until fines arrive. Rooftop gardeners protest; p...
Immigrant Stars
Astronomers notice several stars dimming in unison. Headlines scream cosmic extinction. Then the stars move. Slowly, deliberately, they drift toward a darker patch of sky. Immigration, the scientists say. Celestial bodies leave crowded neighborhoods...
Museum of Almosts
The Museum of Almosts opens without fanfare in a converted warehouse. Inside, exhibits display choices not taken. A sign reads, "Touch nothing; imagine everything." In one room, a door labeled "Graduate School" stands ajar, showing a desk covered in...
The Laundry That Erases Names
In a neighborhood laundromat, a handwritten sign appears: "Warning: Washers may lighten names." People laugh until Mrs. Ortiz loses the embroidered "E" on her apron. The rest of her name remains. Others report faded letters on jackets, hats, even IDs...
Glacier Post Office
Near the melting edge of Calder Glacier, a research station doubles as a post office for letters frozen decades ago. As ice calves, envelopes surface, sealed and stamped from eras when handwriting mattered. Dr. Elsie Tran catalogs each letter and att...
Underwater Orchestra
Composer Theo wins a grant to create an underwater orchestra. He designs instruments that resonate beneath the surface: kelp harps, coral chimes, shell trumpets. Divers train to play while submerged, breath measured like rests. The debut concert take...
The Dinner Guest from Nowhere
During Thursday family dinner, a stranger knocks. She is muddy, wearing a badge with no language. "I was invited," she says calmly, though no one remembers inviting her. The family, polite to a fault, sets an extra plate. The guest eats ravenously, c...
Borrowed Fate Boutique
The boutique sits between a tattoo parlor and a bakery. Its sign reads "Fates for Rent." Inside, mannequins wear destinies like outfits: "Weekend Hero," "Midlife Reinvention," "Sudden Fame." Customers try them on for a fee, experiencing a day in that...
Library of Forgotten Smells
In the basement of the city library, past genealogy and microfiche, lies the Olfactory Archive. Glass vials line shelves, each containing a preserved scent. Labels read like poetry: "First Snow on Concrete," "Grandmother's Spice Drawer," "Bus Seat in...
The Courier of Last Words
Jem works for a service that delivers last words from the dying to the living. Clients record messages, set conditions, pay fees. Jem travels with a battered satchel of envelopes and encrypted drives. She prefers handwritten notes; they feel honest....
Artificial Comet
Tech mogul Arman builds a comet for a marriage proposal. He hires engineers to launch a payload of ice and reflective dust, guided by thrusters, timed to streak over the city spelling "Marry Me" in radiant debris. Environmentalists protest; astronome...
The Orchard of Lost Hours
On the edge of town, an orchard grows fruit from hours people lost scrolling feeds and waiting in lines. Trees bear luminous apples, skins shimmering with paused seconds. Farmers tend carefully, pruning regret. Visitors harvest lost time for a price....
The Ink That Refuses to Dry
Writer Sam buys a rare fountain pen from an estate sale. The ink flows smooth but refuses to dry on the page. Words smear, sentences slide. Frustrated, Sam leaves a draft overnight. In the morning, the words have rearranged into a story Sam never int...
The Reversible Funeral
In Bracken, funerals are reversible once. Families may bring the deceased back for one day, reversing the ceremony. Caskets open, flowers stand upright, mourners walk backward into the hall. Time cooperates awkwardly but sincerely. When Mrs. Calloway...
Postal Code for Parallel Worlds
A glitch at the sorting facility assigns a new postal code that routes mail between parallel worlds. Letters meant for 1407 in this world reach 1407 elsewhere. At first, recipients are confused: postcards from unfamiliar cousins, bills in currencies...
Cloud Cartographers
Siblings Ana and Luis map cloud continents from their rooftop. They trace shapes as they drift, naming regions like Cotton Valley and Nimbus Ridge. Their hobby becomes vocation when a meteorologist publishes their maps online. Suddenly, people want f...
The Warranty on Reality
Reality comes with a warranty, apparently. After odd glitchesâstairs shortening, traffic lights swapping colorsâan insurance company sends adjuster Cole to investigate claims. He carries a clipboard and a scanner that beeps near anomalies. People fil...
Skylight to the Past
In her grandmother's attic, Sienna discovers a skylight that opens not to the sky but to a specific year: 1998. Through the glass, she sees her younger self drawing on the driveway, her grandmother hanging laundry. The skylight opens for fifteen minu...
The Rewound Wedding
After years of tension, Jordan and Priya are offered a rare service: a rewound wedding. A temporal specialist arrives with a device that plays days backward. Consent forms signed, guests reassemble. The process begins with the end of their marriage a...
Shadow Adoption Agency
Stray shadows gather in the alley behind the old cinema, ownerless, flickering. The city opens a Shadow Adoption Agency to pair them with people who lost theirs to accidents, deals, or carelessness. Applicants fill forms: light exposure, personality,...
The Painter of Laws
In the republic of Varo, laws cannot take effect until the Painter renders them on canvas. Tradition began to ensure laws were visual and comprehensible. The current Painter, Alis, has grown weary of painting endless tax codes. When a new law arrives...
Orchestra of One Second
Composer Aya writes symphonies from single seconds captured throughout history: a monk's chant, a rocket launch, a child's laugh, a subway screech. She strings them into movements, time-traveling with sound. Audiences listen with headphones, experien...
The Apartment Between Floors
Between floors seven and eight of a downtown high-rise is an apartment not on any blueprint. The elevator stops there only if you press 7 and 8 simultaneously while humming. Tenants who discover it find a cozy space with mismatched furniture, a kettl...
The Daylight Heist
A crew of thieves plans the impossible: steal an afternoon. They hack calendars, hijack city clocks, deploy reflective balloons to confuse sundials. At 2 p.m. Tuesday, time hiccups. Watches show 2 p.m. again. An extra hour appears, unaccounted for. T...
The Statue that Listened
In the town square stands a statue of a woman holding a book. Legend says if you whisper a wish into her ear, she might grant it once. Most treat it as folklore. One winter, a child named Eli whispers, "I wish my brother would talk again." The next d...
The Accidental God App
A meditation app pushes an update with a bug. Users' whispered hopes begin manifesting in small ways: a lost sock appears, a parking spot opens. The company, CalmCompute, panics. Support tickets flood: "My app answered a prayer." Developers trace the...
The Archivist of Fading Languages
Eleni collected sounds the way others collected stamps. Her office at the Institute for Lingual Preservation was a tangle of reels, drives, and battered notebooks filled with phonetic scribbles. When a language dwindled to single digits of speakers, she was dispatched like a paramedic, arriving with...
The Neighborhood Time Bank
At first, the time bank was a chalkboard nailed to a fence. âDeposit an hour, withdraw an hour,â someone scrawled, half joke, half dare. Most neighbors chuckled and kept walking. Then Mr. Alvarez wrote, â+2 hours babysitting credit,â and Mrs. Chen withdrew one, scribbling, âNeed help watching Max Th...
The Cart Return Pact
Marcus started at the grocery store because it was close to home and paid just enough. His title was âCart Associate,â but he preferred âShepherd.â He chased stray carts, nudged them into lines, and kept the parking lot from becoming an obstacle course. He suspected most shoppers thought carts found...
The Sleepwalk Detective
Detective Arun Singh didnât sleep like other people. He slept like a case fileâopen, active, restless. Doctors called it parasomnia. Therapists called it unresolved trauma. Arun called it inconvenient until he learned to use it. In dreams, he wandered places he had never been yet recognized from blu...
The Clockmakerâs Rebellion
In the town of Bellmare, clocks never disagreed. Church bells, wristwatches, oven timersâthey all ticked in harmonious consensus, thanks to the Precision Guild. The Guild traced its roots to a clockmaker named Ansel who, centuries ago, built a master clock that whispered the correct time to every ot...
The Substitute Constellation
When the North Star dimmed unexpectedly, navigators panicked. Satellite guidance faltered; old sailors shook their heads. Astronomers blamed cosmic dust. Mythmakers blamed neglect. The Global Astronomy Network convened. Dr. Sabine Ko, known for mapping minor constellations no one else cared about, p...
The Greenhouse at the End of the Internet
The greenhouse sat at the last IP address anyone could trace. Not a physical location, at first glanceâjust a server endpoint that returned packet loss and a single ASCII vine when pinged. Hackers bragged about finding it; netsec folks shrugged it off as art. Jan, a network archaeologist, dug deeper...
The Borrowed Island
Isla Verde was advertised as âYour Island for a Day.â Tourists could rent the whole placeâcabins, beaches, even the local bandâfor 24 hours. The government leased it to pay debts. Locals were promised jobs. At first, it seemed harmless. Couples held private weddings. Writers booked silence. Influenc...
The Choir of Abandoned Alarms
In the junkyard behind the old electronics store, abandoned alarm clocks piled like metallic hedgehogs. Some still ticked, most were silent. Kids dared each other to sleep among them, claiming you could hear whispers. One summer night, Mina, a sound engineer with insomniac curiosity, camped beside t...
The Memory Locksmith
Nico fixed locks because he liked boundaries that clicked. His van read âLocksmith & Keys,â but under that, in smaller letters, âDiscreet Memory Services.â The latter was not advertised; it spread by whispers. Nico had a gift: he could unlock memories people had sealed away. Trauma therapists called...
The Paper Bridge Treaty
Two towns, Eastwell and Westwell, were divided by a river and centuries of grudges. Their bridges had burned in wars, storms, and accidents. Each rebuild became a battle: whose engineers, whose materials, whose name. Trade suffered. People swam across at night, risking currents and fines. Children s...
The Atlas of Regrets
Naomiâs atlas wasnât bound in leather or stored on a shelf. It lived on her kitchen table, pages spread, coffee-stained, annotated with pencil and tears. Each map charted a regret: cities she never moved to, careers she declined, people she let go. She drew them like transit maps, lines of possibili...
The Lifeguard of Drowned Dreams
Jules worked at the pool at dawn, before the swim team and the retirees. He was a lifeguard for bodies and, unofficially, for dreams that sank. The pool was old, tiled in fading blue mosaics. Swimmers whispered that the deep end held echoes. Jules heard them when he closed his eyes: muffled cries of...
The Train That Runs on Stories
The 3:17 from Platform Nine didnât burn diesel or draw electric current. It ran on narrative. Its engine was a brass cylinder filled with microphones and ink. Passengers paid fare by telling stories into the conductorâs hat. Tales fueled the boiler, turning plot into steam. When the train started, t...
The Conductorâs Last Symphony
Maestro Elena Vargas stood on a podium older than her first violin. She had conducted orchestras across continents, wielded batons like wands, sculpted sound with flicks of wrist. Her fame rested on precision and passion. Now, in her seventies, her hands shook. She announced her final concert. Ticke...
The Auction of Quiet
The first auction was held in a converted church. Bidders sat on pews, paddles in hand. Onstage, nothing stood but a microphone and a glass jar. The auctioneer cleared his throat. âLot one: thirty seconds of pure quiet, recorded in a cave in Norway. Bidding starts at $100.â Paddles shot up. The pric...
The Insurance Against Miracles
Miracles, like electronics, sometimes failed. A prayer for rain yielded frogs. A statue wept oil instead of tears. To protect believers and practitioners, the Mutual Assurance of Miraculous Events (MAME) offered policies. Pay a premium, file a claim if your miracle misfired. Adjusters would investig...
The Rotating House
The house on Cedar Street spun slowly, one degree every ten minutes, completing a rotation every two and a half days. Its owner, Lina, inherited it from her grandfather, an engineer with a flair for whimsy. He had installed the rotating foundation so that every room would eventually face the sunrise...
The Seamstress of Constellations
Mei sewed in the dark. By day, she mended clothes at a tiny shop between a pharmacy and a bar. By night, she climbed to her rooftop with needle and thread spun from meteor dust and spider silk. There she stitched the sky. It started when a meteor shower tore a small gap in Orionâs belt. Mei felt a t...
The Bureau of Second Chances
The Bureau occupied a beige office building downtown, between a donut shop and a law firm. Its sign was small: âBureau of Second ChancesâBy Appointment.â Most people assumed it was parole services. In reality, it issued official second attempts at anything: a test, a date, a career. You filled out a...
The City of Borrowed Faces
In the city of Mirage, you could borrow a face like you borrowed a library book. The Face Bureau kept an archive of expressions, visages, and bone structures, licensed by those willing to lend their likeness for empathyâs sake. People borrowed faces for job interviews to overcome bias, for theater p...
The Candle Factory Strike
The candle factory on Maple Lane had operated since the 1800s, pouring wax into molds, wicks cut by hand, scents drifting downwind. It supplied churches, birthdays, blackout kits. Its workers were proud of their craft. Then, one autumn, candles refused to burn for lies. It started with a politicianâ...
The Courier Between Heartbeats
Time enforcement was a niche job. Yara was a courier licensed to operate between heartbeats, delivering messages through slivers of paused time. It was illegal to alter events, but messages could be passedâmicrosecond memos slipped into pockets, whispers frozen in air, notes left on falling raindrop...
The Mirror Accord
Mirrors always reflected, rarely negotiated. Then one cracked, and all mirrors spoke. It started in an antique shop. A customer dropped a mirror; instead of shattering, it fractured and said, âOuch.â The shopkeeper fainted. News spread. Mirrors everywhere demanded respect. They refused to reflect th...
The Tide Accountant
Reema inherited the tide ledger and the tall stool on the pier. Every evening, she sat, pen poised, recording grains of sand taken by the sea and grains returned. Her mother had done it; her grandmother had started it, insisting the sea respected accounting. People chuckled. Reema knew numbers sooth...
Orchestra of One Second
Aya composed symphonies from single seconds captured across time: a monkâs chant, a rocket launch, a childâs laugh, a subway screech. She stitched them into movements, making history audible in minutes. Audiences cried at the collision of eras. Aya was missing one perfect second to complete her late...
The Apartment Between Floors
Between the seventh and eighth floors of the Grandview Tower, an apartment existed where no blueprint showed. The elevator stopped there only if you pressed 7 and 8 simultaneously and hummed. Tenants whispered about it but few found it. Those who did entered a cozy space with mismatched furniture, a...
Rental Conscience
The start-up ConscienceCo offered morality on demand. For a fee, you could rent a conscienceâa voice in your ear nagging you toward ethics. Models varied: âClassic Guilt,â âPractical Kant,â âEmpathizer.â Jin, a mid-level manager, rented one to get through layoffs without feeling like a monster. The...
The Daylight Heist
A crew of thieves planned the impossible: steal an afternoon. They hacked calendars, hijacked city clocks, and launched reflective balloons to confuse sundials. At 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, time hiccupped. Watches showed 2 p.m. again. An extra hour appeared, untethered. The crew aimed to sell itâone hour...