Elliot Crane was no ordinary clockmaker. Hidden behind his workshop in an alley off Regent Street was a machine unlike any other — a brass and glass sphere that hummed like a heartbeat. To the untrained eye, it looked like an unfinished clock. But Elliot knew better. It was his Time Engine.
He had been working on it for forty years, following blueprints left by his late mentor, Professor Halden, who vanished mysteriously one stormy night in 1885. The notes said, “Time is not a line, but a circle — find the right gear, and you can step anywhere upon it.”
One night, as the rain pattered against the windows, Elliot decided it was time. He wound the final gear and stepped inside. The sphere closed around him, gears spinning faster and faster until the room dissolved into light.
When the humming stopped, he stepped out onto the same street — but everything was different. The air smelled cleaner. The buildings towered like glass mountains. And the people carried glowing rectangles in their hands. He had landed in the year 2125.
Elliot wandered, stunned, through the neon-lit city. He marveled at the flying vehicles, the talking machines, and the absence of clocks. Time, it seemed, was now invisible — measured only by devices no one could see. He felt both awe and sadness. His life’s work, the art of clockmaking, had been swallowed by progress.
As he passed a museum, a display caught his eye: “The Lost Clockmaker: The Mysterious Disappearance of Professor Halden, 1885.” There, behind glass, was a photograph of Halden — and beside him stood a young apprentice. Elliot.
Heart pounding, Elliot read the plaque. It claimed Halden had vanished along with his apprentice, leaving behind sketches of a “temporal mechanism.” But that couldn’t be. Elliot was here, now. He looked closer and noticed something else — the date of their disappearance: October 11, 1885 — the same night Halden vanished, and the same night Elliot had left.
Realization struck him. The machine had not merely moved him forward; it had completed the circle. Halden had succeeded in traveling through time — and Elliot had followed, only a century too late.
As the lights of the city reflected off the glass case, Elliot smiled faintly. He understood now. Time wasn’t meant to be conquered — only observed. He returned to his machine, set the dials to 1885, and whispered, “Let’s finish what we started, Professor.”
The sphere closed once more, gears turning in perfect rhythm — the heartbeat of time itself — and Elliot Crane vanished into the circle, leaving behind only the faint ticking of an invisible clock.
Michael J McCluskey 