For as long as I can remember, every single human has to have a clock installed in the inside of their right arm, center of the wrist where the veins rested inside, when they turned seven. The clock was small and smooth. It held a green background, golden rim and numbers. Like a glass bracelet forever seated in one spot. The intent of this watch, was to count down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the moment you met your soul mate.
I don’t know when the world started doing this, maybe it was after the war of 2020 after the world went into World War III. Or maybe it was after the Marburg disease started to spread and began to kill off the human race back in 2115. Thankfully, I wasn’t around. My grandma was, though. She said she lived in a basement with her family to avoid the disease. Over half a billion people died from the bleeding the disease caused, as well as the high temperatures that cause insanity. But, who knows? History teachers never talk about it. The Watch Makers just seemed to appear. The government agreed with the idea that it would bring people together. Unite the world in different ways than we ever could think of before. Try and bring peace and harmony to earth. Nationalities, religion and sex was no longer a barrier in this forced mesh mash of lovers. So the government told us anyway. That was when people were forced together with each other without a second thought.
Back in high school, all of my friends found their soul mates. I…well I never did find mine. In fact, my clock froze freshman year of high school at one day three hours twenty two minutes and fifty six seconds. Nobody knew what this meant. I was the first for this to happen.
I was envious. I was envious of all those people who had their soul mates. All of the ones who would be happy for the rest of their lives. Envious of the people whose clocks were still ticking down. Envious that I would never have that chance. I wanted my soulmate. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to fit in as any teenage girl would dream. That was six years ago since freshmen year, and my watch still says the same thing. I accepted the fact I was never going to meet my soul mate. Even though my parents keep saying, “Kasai, I never check my clock anymore.
I tread the streets of my college campus heading to my next class. The snow is ankle deep and sticks to my shoes and pants. The University never cancels class. Ever. They expect us students to hike through the multiple inches of snow and below zero degree temperatures to get to where you need to go. The joke is that whenever the President of the University wakes up and sees the snow, he says, “some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to take.” So the college pushes on into the blizzard.
My brown hair is held back under my hood. The fur trimmed hood holds the snowflakes that continue to fall. My back hunches over to keep the icy wind from pricking my eyes. The bags under my eyes are highlighted by the dark shadow that cast itself down over my face from the edge of my hood. Dreams that would never come true keep me awake at night. They are always of a boy, with bright emerald eyes, and fluffy blonde hair. My dream guy.
I see other students walk toward their classes. They are huddled together for warmth, rubbing their noses with each other, all while wearing a smile plastered on their face. There are only couples. I never once see groups of people that laughed together. Just two people, hand in hand with one another. Most of them are happy, in fact more than half of them are. They had found their soul mates already and plan to live with them for the rest of their life. No matter how hard I squint my eyes to try to see the clocks of any lone person walking the streets, all their clocks read 0:00:00.
After about ten minutes of hiking in the snow, I finally made it to my class building. The elevator carries me to the seventh floor. I walk down the tile floors, passing one room and hearing a professor drown on about the orders of operation to solve an equation. Then in the room right next to it, the students are reading Jane Eyre. Two complete opposites forced to coexist in the same place. Kind of like my best friend who found out he was soul mates with an Arabic girl even though he was a white Christian. Nothing was wrong with the girl. She was actually beautiful and very sweet. Neither one of them wanted to disobey their religion though at first. But, they somehow made it work in the end despite the initial awkwardness.
When I reach my destination, room 722, no one else has arrived yet. I glance at the wall clock. I am fifteen minutes early. Chairs and desks are lined in perfect rows, and the room only has two windows to see to the outside world. I sit down in my chair, unpack my notebook and pencil then wait for the class to begin.
The wall clock ticks by as more students arrive and take their unassigned yet mentally assigned seats. Students are like herds of sheep. They knew where to go and didn’t have to be told to go there. Why can’t finding love be like that? A natural attraction where we didn’t have a watch tell us who we love. Like the way it was in the stories I read. Where you spend time with someone and then you fall in love with them.
I tap my pencil against the table in boredom and look down. What I see makes my heart stop. A lump forms in my throat. It’s hard to breathe, and my palms are instantly sweaty.
My clock.
It’s counting down.
It now says one hour fifteen minutes and thirty two seconds, thirty one seconds, thirty seconds. I stare at the seconds that tick away into the past. My thoughts are a scrambled mess. A mess of, do I really want this machine to control my life, and its working! After six years, it was working again. I was going to meet my soul mate today, in one hour and now…fourteen minutes!
The class seems to fly by because I am too busy staring down at my clock. Two minutes, wait, now one minute and fifty nine, fifty eight, fifty seven seconds left. My heart’s pounding, my hands sweating, and breaths are ragged. This is finally happening and I’m not even ready for it. I’m not sure I want to be ready for this. Why should this thing choose my life? It’s my life and my love, why should I listen to this? I know if I don’t though I will never find love. No one even knows what love is anymore.
As soon as I get out of the class room, I look left and right. Wait, which way am I supposed to go? What if I go the wrong way and meet the wrong person! Could I even meet the wrong person? My mind is racing and the clock is ticking down to the moment my life would start over. I turn toward the left toward the elevator and stairs. Now, I face another dilemma. Should I take the elevator or the stairs? If I take the elevator whoever would be at the bottom would be the one I stay with. But if I take the stairs I could get there quicker. What would have happened if I get there too soon, though? With a grumble of annoyance, I get onto the elevator and descend to the first floor.
The four reflective metal walls are my prison for the next fifty seconds. Now time just seems to slowly pass by. My heart is still racing, my breaths have become uneven and my mouth is dry. Each time I hear the elevator ding I know I am getting closer to my destiny. Destiny, a word I have resented for the last six years. A word I didn’t want anything to do it with anymore. It was like this clock, this so called predetermined destiny by the universe, was going to control me for the rest of my life. I have no say in the matter of who I am going to meet once the doors open on the bottom floor. Would it be my dream guy? Was it even going to be a guy? What if the person was a girl? I never found girls attractive before. Do I really want this mechanism that was installed in me when I turned seven to rule the biggest decision of my life? This wouldn’t be love. This is forced match making and forced relationships based on who knows what. In my books that I would read, love is described as a strong profound bond between two people who would spend a lot of time to grow with each other. Now, it was just whoever the clock decided you should be with. Male and male, female and female or male and female. It doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is, you had to listen to the clock on who you were supposed to be with for the rest of your life.
My eyes dart around the elevator as my heart beat pounds out of my chest. I see myself against the reflection of the metal wall. I walk over to look at it for a moment. I see myself, the girl who has resented this clock for six years of her life. I’ve never actually looked at myself before. I was happy with who I was, how I looked and how I lived, even though I was single. I hear another ding and that brings me back from my thoughts into my own self-worth and joy. I am about to meet my “soul mate.” Am I nervous or scared? No, I am definitely scared. I don’t want this clock to control my life. I look at the time. It was seven seconds left until the doors open. My eyes dart up and there it was. The escape to my freedom and happiness, a big red button that says “ALARM.” My hand lunges forward, and stops for just a half a second before I slam the button in.
The elevator jerks to a sudden stop. I stagger, but I’m able to catch myself on the railing around the walls. Red lights flash and an alarm blares through the elevator. A voice comes in over the intercom, but the words are inaudible from the thumping in my head. Chaos has erupted inside of the small container. What have I just done? Not only did I mess up my destiny but also of whoever I was going to meet in five seconds! Now the Watch Makers would have to design another plan for them. Would they get someone else? My eyes quickly make their way to the small glass clock on my wrist. The numbers are going crazy. Going back and forward in time. It stops and the numbers disappear. The glass shatters off my wrist and the small metallic machine falls to the floor. The spot where it was sitting, is very pale skin, with some holes where the needles that use to hold the watch in place, went into my veins. With a deep breath and shaking hands, my fingers caress the new skin.
Once the voice realizes there is no emergency, the elevator continues its descent down. When the two doors slide apart there is a group of people there. I hold up my hand and show them that my clock is gone from my wrist. I raise my foot and stomp down onto the already broken glass on the floor. The other students there glance down at their watches and that’s when I saw him. The boy of my dreams right in the front. Golden hair and emerald eyes. It was him. He was there. My dream guy! Was he supposed to be the one I was going to end up with? I see the watch on his wrist which was stuck at 0:00:05. The same time mine was before I hit the alarm button. His beautiful eyes look up directly into mine, but are quickly gone though, when he walks away with the crowd to continue on with their everyday life.
