“If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soul mate, would you want to know?”
One minute, 37 seconds.
My legs are shaking. Holy cow, there is no way I can do this. None.
One minute, 29 secods.
I glance around at the faces surrounding the room. Of course my Meeting would take place in the gross, overcrowded cafeteria.
One minute, six seconds.
Somewhere within these four walls, someone has the exact same countdown on their wrist. They’re going through the exact same pressure as me.
54 seconds.
Mom said I should be excited, not nervous. Yet I still find myself wiping my sweaty palms on my dress. I can’t believe she talked me into wearing a dress. I mean, shouldn’t my Soul Mate meet me as I normally am? All plain jeans, blah shirts, and wild brown curls?
30 seconds.
Something deep within me tells me to stand up. I do, drawing the attention of my tablemates. They all know too. They smile encouragingly up at me. I chew my lip nervously.
25 seconds.
That same feeling pulls me towards the center of the room. My stomach drops away from me as I take a step in that direction.
20 seconds.
I continue in that direction. With each step the tempo of my heart picks up.
19. Faster.
18. Quicker.
17. More rapid.
16. It’s racing.
Oh my god this is it. The moment my life changes forever.
My eyes search frantically around the cafeteria, searching for someone who looks as nervous as me. For someone who’s heading towards their future with no sense of direction like me.
10 seconds.
The feeling directs me slightly to the left. I turn to accomodate.
5. My heart has given up entirely.
4. I stop walking.
3. Just waiting left.
2. Everything is about to change.
1. Deep breath.0000 d 00 h 00 m 00 s
Someone bumps my shoulder. I twirl around and my gray eyes meet blue, blue ones.
“Hello there, love. It appears as though we’re Soul Mates then, eh?”
As my words fail me, the only thing I can think is “I’m so glad I shaved this morning.”I’m sitting outside a cafe when it happens, sipping some cheap drink, pretending to enjoy the sunshine. The counter runs to zero, and there is an audible click, the tab deactivates, falls off. The clink of polyurethane to cobblestone floor is echoed a few feet ahead of me. I shake a proffed hand, look up at a disdainful face.
“This is all I get?”
It’s just a couple more weeks, now. I’ve been watching closely as the numbers tick steadily down. Just a couple more weeks, I keep telling myself. Out of my group of friends, I’m on what they like to call the “fast track,” people whose numbers start much lower than others.
Two weeks, six days, fifteen hours. The clock keeps ticking. Two weeks, one day, four hours.
The days are getting so close now I’m pretty sure my uncontrollable excitement is starting to seriously annoy everyone around me. My friends tease me incessantly about who they imagine my soul mate will be. Tall, short, fat, dimples, nail biter, foot tapper.
At one week, three days, and seven hours, the clock stops.
Instead of a soul mate I get condolences, a therapist, and a broken clock.
I hurry down the clinic hallway as I slip on my button-down shirt. They just installed it- how could it have been just two minutes?
Two minutes, thirteen seconds to be exact, and I was nowhere near ready! My hair was a mess, and I felt something in my teeth. I had to look good for my soulmate. A perfectionist through and through.
A sign hanging from the ceiling pointed to a restroom to the right. I checked the time again. A minute and thirty-three seconds? Fuck! I picked up the pace and almost slipped on the time floor.
Time was almost up and my heart was racing. Finally, I dashed into the bathroom to fix myself up. The door shut, and as I looked into the mirror, I heard a click.
I checked the time. Zero.
What? This doesn’t make any…
I looked back at the mirror. Then back at the timer. Back at the mirror. Back at the timer.
“Aw, shit.”
Can this please become the new machine of death??? I want a whole book of little stories like this!!
Forgetfulness and loneliness could be such a deadly combination, especially in this case. Or perhaps it was just a lack of noticing how long I really had. The last time I looked down at my wrist was God knows when. Maybe yesterday, maybe last week. Possibly longer. And living in such a busy city should have really made me more aware of when I was going to meet my soulmate.
It was one morning when I was drinking my coffee when I realized already that it was already at 000 days.
00 hours.
00 minutes.
And 00 seconds.My heart drops. I could have passed my soulmate by in the crowd of people crossing the street. It could have been that woman who gave me directions to the bookstore or maybe the waiter who let me have a free cup of coffee. It could have even been that man who almost mugged me a few nights ago, knowing how strange fate can be.
But I never knew who that one person for me was. I’m going to have to go through my whole life without another chance to meet them again. I wonder how they feel about all this…
Not a half hour after installation, my clock went off. A doctor (very handsome, although clockless) was working on my bedside, assisting my nurse. Well then, we both must have thought, why not?
Early on, things went smoothly. But when your clock goes off, it usually does. There’s no not-knowing. You’re insured. It’s safe.
He and I were comfortable.
Very domestic.
And I was bored (to tears).
This man was not what I had envisioned. He was safe, and easy and cut and dry.
He didn’t understand, and though he was happy (content) with me, I wasn’t with him. I left.
Busted clock, I thought. A scam? Maybe it’s just not for me.
But what bothers me most, is that when I think back,
my nurse was clockless too.
And I’m not sure what that means.
That damn clock had been going for what seemed like forever. Realistically, it was just set to a longer time than all of my other friends. Such was the way things were I suppose. Some had less time, some had more, and honestly, I wasn’t sure which was worse.
With less time, it’s like waiting for a birthday, or Christmas, or some other wonderful special occasion, because when it comes down to it, isn’t that what it is? You never feel ready enough, pretty, handsome, perfect enough for that moment when it comes, and time just moves so fast.
I possessed far more time, and at first it was agonizing. Thirty-seven years, fourteen days, ten minutes exactly. Why did all my friends get to be so happy so soon? Why, by having less time on their clock, did they get so much time with their soul mate?
But… after a while… I just forgot about it.
Sure, I occasionally glanced at it, but for the most part I just worked. I busied my mind to rid myself of that damned clock and all it’s many minutes and hours and days. Eventually I stopped worrying, and eventually I stopped caring. I traveled the world, saw amazing sights, ate amazing foods, and met some of the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful people.
I wasn’t ready for that to stop. I wasn’t ready for the adventures to go away. When the test results came back, I was devastated. Dying… so slowly… from the inside out. You’d think that with all our advances, we would’ve found a cure by now, but no… no treatments… just enough to stop the pain, and if I didn’t feel that… how could I tell that I was alive?
Less than three months into my assisted care, I noticed my clock ticking down.
Three days… four hours… two minutes exactly…
Could I hang on for that much longer?
The days passed slower than anything in my entire… in my entire life. How final that sounds…
When morning came, I saw the young man and I knew, even without looking at the clock.
I smiled…
He cried.
I remember that day even now, as though it hadn’t been twenty-two years ago. The clocks were the same as they were today; they were never wrong, never needed to be improved. That’s why I was confused in my young age why mine began to malfunction. My buddies down at the pub would make fun of me for it. Most had met Theirs, their clocks were precise right to the second. It never occurred to me why mine seemed to skip ahead days, then back, then forth. Wasn’t Time itself supposed to be punctual?
It was a dark winter morning; wet and cold and miserable. Made even more so when I woke up to see my clock was at full zeros. It didn’t make sense. The last I checked, I still had 943 days. It was a stretch for someone like me in his thirties but I had waited that long, the clock couldn’t be wrong now. I probed and poked at the small screen, but it was no use. Something was wrong, and I could feel it with every second I continued to look at the darkened screen on my wrist.
Suddenly, realization struck me.
“No…”
I remember hearing something drop to the ground, and something wet fall down my cheeks.
“But… but I didn’t even get to meet her…”It was on my fifteenth birthday that my best friend and I received our clocks. She had waited patiently for the three weeks between our ages- fifteen was the limit and we wanted to get them at the same time. It was a simple process, taking little time at all, but just as the doctor was finishing up I heard a yelp from the other side of the room.
‘Doctor mine is broken! I’m zeroed out!’ She stared at her wrist with a panicked look on her face. I barely glanced down as mine clicked into place, but out of the corner of my eye I saw it; a brief flash of numbers running down into a line of blanks. ‘Chris look! I think it’s malfunctioned.’ She said as she offered her timer for me to see. Silently I raised my own wrist, identically dead screen showing.
The expression on her face as we realised struck chords like a bell, and I remember it even now as if she were standing in front of me, bright and warm and clear as day.
At first glance, this table would seem fragile, magnificently designed and constructed this isn’t the case. This golden balloon coffee table is in fact a magnificent concept by Christopher Duffy. The young designer based out of London has developed this table suitably titled UP. Duffy ensures that all of his products are made of the highest grade materials. What appear to be balloons are actually orbs made with a metal-resin composite with the toughened steel rods keeping them a float. Truly amazing work, I look forward to his fine furnishings in the future.
Written by Chris Aizen - Discovered on Inspirez (View the full article here)
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Fun and simple gadgets and accessories!
That fish bowl makes me so nervous.
I want all of this, but especially that knife set…
Timm Kong Schneider is a freelance designer from Germany. This project, called “They live” is just as simple as amazing. Using only some white balls with a black dot as eyes and placing them on garbage containers and other urban furnitures, Timm created this series of funny characters around the city.
NASA Turns to 3D Printing for Self-Building Spacecraft
Spacecraft could build themselves or huge space telescopes someday by scavenging materials from space junk or asteroids. That wild vision stems from a modest proposal to use 3D printing technology aboard a tiny satellite to create a much larger structure in space.
The “SpiderFab” project received $100,000 from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program to hammer out a design and figure out whether spacecraft self-construction makes business sense. Practical planning and additional funding could lead to the launch of a 3D-printing test mission within several years.
“We’d like someday to be able to have a spacecraft create itself entirely from scratch, but realistically that’s quite a ways out,” said Robert Hoyt, CEO and chief scientist of Tethers Unlimited Inc. “That’s still science fiction.”
Using 3D printers to build spacecraft parts in orbit would offer an easier way to construct huge space antennas or space telescope components 10 or 20 times larger than today’s counterparts without having to fold them up and squeeze them inside a rocket — missions could simply launch with the 3D printers and raw materials.
Rolling Master Plan by Jägnefält Milton
A project for the Norwegian city of Åndalsnes that was awarded third prize in an open international masterplan competition. Mobile buildings roll on old train tracks as season and situations change, complementing the city and landscape with facilities like a rolling hotel, a rolling public bath, a rolling park and a rolling concert hall. Really dreamlike. See all the details here.
eVolo 2013 Skyscraper Competition – Win One of the World’s Most Prestigious Award for High-rise Architecture
eVolo Magazine is pleased to invite students, architects, engineers, designers, and artists from around the globe to take part in the eVolo 2013 Skyscraper Competition. Established in 2006, the annual Skyscraper Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious awards for high-rise architecture. It recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the implementation of novel technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations along with studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. It is a forum that examines the relationship between the skyscraper and the natural world, the skyscraper and the community, and the skyscraper and the city.
