The Ascension of Theodore Williams

Leaving behind the beauty of the butterfly garden, Theodore drew ever closer to the doors of the clock tower. It’s architecture was the finest of humanity’s work.

The most perfect elements taken from every clock tower ever conceived and monolithic in scale. A gothic spire that transitioned through Victorian, Edwardian, art deco, ever onward up into the heavens, the shining purple clock face staring down from the top.

The doors opened slowly, deliberately. Theodore was greeted by a sight most maddening, and yet beyond compare in its splendor and beauty. A complex tower of mechanical madness that conformed to no laws of design, mortal or universal. Gleaming metal reflecting light from non-existent sources and gears that spun into themselves and around each other in all the ways that were impossible. Machinery tirelessly worked to keep the thing alive, and it’s heartbeat was heard in way of the ticking of every clock. The man was not phased by it, his timepiece heart keeping in perfect time and the clocks in his eyes ticking ever closer to 12.

For a moment he could swear he could see all the way to the top, but within the same one it seemed to stretch on eternally. An infinite spire of temporal perfection. A spiral staircase stretched upwards, daring to even attempt to reach the bell at the top. Theodore took the first step, and in an instant he was 20 steps up. The next 4 steps were taken normally before once again he had advanced a couple dozen more.

For a second there was a flash of light, a flood of visions from his past.

- A young boy on the playground. Never able to make his own decisions, writing down in a small notebook exactly what his schedule was. A note to remember to brush his teeth at no later than 7:30, to eat at precisely at 12:15, every action preordained for him. It was more comfortable for him.

The crayon drawings and notes were eventually substituted for elegant penmanship in sleek journals. An office job where it was all tracked digitally. The life of a man who could never decide his own fate and had always been given orders. -

And then in an instant Theodore found himself at the top of the unfathomable heights the clock tower held, the closest thing it had to a soul directly behind him. The ticking had never been louder. He stared out through the face and found the view to be… beyond all understanding yet somehow he understood. There was no sweeping view of the zoo, the theme park surrounding it, the remnants of the factory in the distance. All he could see was time immeasurable and ineffable, stretching out before his eyes in an endless sea of possibilities and absolutes. Everything that had ever happened and everything that would ever happen, even the things that would never come to pass. All of it was both set in stone and still somehow fluid and as malleable as clay. He could see it all in perfect clarity and perceived every detail down to the smallest grain of sand on the beach.

The clock began to chime.

With the first chime was more felt than heard and came with a deep pulsing that permeated every fiber of his being. The second is when it began to unravel. Threads frayed at their ends and loosening to weave into infinitesimal patterns. The third chime brought a feeling of weightlessness. The fourth introduced the absence of all senses accompanied by feeling things on a level far beyond the physical world.

By the fifth chime the clock tower was no longer there, leaving him alone in the seas of time to drift.

The sixth brought a deep pain. A pain fathoms beyond anything he’d ever felt. The seventh resonated with the visions of everything that had happened to him. The eighth cried out the tortured life of the Reverend in the back of his nonexistent skull. The ninth sang the Soldiers song and the full breadth of everyone's lives even past where they were cut short. The tenth was silence. The eleventh felt like the calm before the storm, the last moment before the crash of thunder and the searing illumination of thunder. The clock struck twelve.

Everything was still in the cosmic tempest of reality. A silent voice called out with a booming question that was never felt, nor was it heard. It was simply something Theodore knew he was being asked. “What do you wish”

Theodore Williams closed his eyes, and answered.

"I WANT TO BE THE ALPHA AND OMEGA. THE BEGINNING AND ENDING. THE WARDEN THAT HOLDS THE KEY TO THE SHACKLES OF TIME AND FATE."