The Man Who Invented Time, Then Forgot Where He Put It
Back in the year 1842-and-three-quarters, in a town so small the map refused to admit it, lived Jedediah Plum—who once claimed to have invented Time.
I don’t mean clocks. I mean Time itself. The whole tick-tocking ordeal.
Jedediah said it happened while he was boiling squirrel oil and contemplating the size of his own regrets.
“I had this notion,” he said, chewing a harmonica for dramatic effect, “that all of life was just soup—but not finished soup. The kind you stir and stir and it still tastes like hot water and suspicion.”
When pressed for proof, Jedediah produced a rooster that crowed in reverse and a pocketwatch that ticked in Morse code. Neither helped his case, but they made him mayor for six hours.
Then he lost Time.
He said it rolled under the porch. But when the townspeople looked, they only found a raccoon wearing spectacles and editing a newspaper.
The raccoon was named Walter and wrote a column called Chronologically Unstable. His reviews of imaginary events were harsh but fair.
Meanwhile, Time (having rolled away) caused Tuesday to occur twice and one man to be born prematurely every Wednesday.
The town imploded politely.
And Jedediah? He married a windmill and retired into legend—or maybe Delaware. It’s hard to tell with Time gone missing.
