Written by Ihor Antoniuk
Translated from Ukrainian by Anna Bendiy

I dare say you never even spoke to Time
Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do
almost anything you liked with the clock.
— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

I don’t know how much time I have left.
This story might end at any moment, dying on an unfinished sentence, dangling on half a word. You’ll have to put the period in this bizarre tale yourself. Yes, you — the person who took it upon themselves to read these twisted lines, written by an insane man, who will never see the light of day again. The next movement of the clock’s hands might become my last.
The glitches began about a week ago.
Or maybe ten…twelve days. Twenty max. It’s difficult to find the origin of this hellish situation. We’re not like the narrator of Wells’s novel and can’t go back to the beginning freely and at any time. We can’t start up the rusty Time Machine and change this damned past. There is no way back and there never was. Human choice is a perfect and an immutable concept. A coin thrown down the maw of an abyss can never be retrieved.
They didn’t tell us about the spatial disturbances at first. The temporal distortions. The ionic defects and sudden deaths. People died because their bodies simply burned up — often within a matter of minutes.
Even today, in the era of the Second Revolution, some still live in closed societies, cut off from the rest of the interconnected world. Without the all-powerful invisible web and without even the most primitive connection. Without birth control and vaccines for viral diseases. Without the right to choose.
They call this “freedom”. In contrast, we put the safety of our citizens first. Now, I don’t know which one of us is more stupid than the other. After all, one group is controlled by a totalitarian regime; the other — by an archaic religion. The rest? They only call themselves “free”, but in reality, they’ve been abandoned to their fates. Death’s flywheel can no longer be stopped…
We didn’t raise the alarm immediately. One, two deaths — that’s just statistics. Natural selection, I’m sure you agree. It’s absurd, but more people die from the flu than from plane crashes. Suicides happen more often than workplace deaths. But as soon as one of the higher ups or one of their relatives dies, the event grows to national proportions.
On Thursday, September 11th, the prime minister’s daughter died.
She woke up around seven. Washed her face, brushed her little snow-white teeth and had breakfast. Went to high school, to her scheduled classes and clubs. The chauffeur picked her up at five. He drove her to the restaurant, where her mom and older brother were waiting. The table was permanently reserved for distinguished patrons. It was the kind of place that had white table cloths, real flowers and storefront windows overlooking Kyiv’s Khreshchatyk Street.
Her father, a chronically busy man, was at a global energy conference. He was informed of the tragedy right after a presentation from an Australian scientist who proved the feasibility of using tidal power on a much wider scale. The prime minister’s airplane rose into the air at six local time. In an hour, the capital’s airport greeted him with a drizzle. Within twenty minutes, the official service car stopped in front of his house. He never got to see his daughter’s face again, alive or dead. Her body had disintegrated to ash…
You read about this in the news, of course. That was the point of no return.
Manipulating time — that’s what our company, Chronos, was doing for the past twenty years. It was a secret international corporation with millions of investments and a hidden lab in a ghost town. The closed “wormwood territory” was ideal for scientific research. We weren’t the only ones to put a research centre there. There were others who were more interested in projects in genetics, biological experiments, and the latest sources of alternative energy. Obviously, weapons were also involved.
It wasn’t hard to scare off the tourists. After the 2000s, the officials wanted to capitalize on a new gold vein of tourism: trips to the Chornobyl exclusion zone. That is, whatever was left of it after the April fires in 2020, the year of endless “fun.” They organized transportation, hired guides. They hung signs on nearly every half-ruined structure, printed those damn QR codes. In Lviv, the tourist signs had lions, in Chernivtsi — hedgehogs, here — they slapped on chupacabras. Laughter and sin.
To hide our activities, we created artificial fields with higher radiation. There was nothing remotely deadly there, but the tourists’ Geiger counters beeped violently anyway. So, they were too scared to keep trudging further. No need for any anti-trespassing signs, 24-hour security, or barbed wire. People, like all biological beings, react best to audio signals. Pavlov’s dog is an illustrious example of this.
We kept everything under a “Top Secret” seal. As though our activities could be written into the script of an American TV show from the ’90’s. A secret lab. A ghost town. Previously unknown experiments with time and space. In reality, everything comes back to money. First get a patent, then show the world. Otherwise, your insanely genius idea will be stolen and sold off to the highest bidder. To our Chinese or American friends across the ocean. I don’t see a difference. All of them are the same in their desire to brag about their new toy. People never change. Even on the threshold of total annihilation, there will be those who’ll try to turn a profit.
But wait, not so fast. I have a few more minutes. At least, I hope I do. So, let’s go back to the beginning. No, not to the beginning of the deaths, but to my beginning…
Actually, everything started with a theory in a kids’ hardcover encyclopaedia with black and white illustrations. Someone gifted it to me on my seventh birthday. Most of the boys at this age got bikes or rollerblades. I could only dream of something like that. I learned to read early, at five years old. I never learned to walk to this day. Yes, you guessed correctly: I write these lines sitting in a wheelchair. It became my only friend. It taught me to be patient.
Back then, I read about a strange idea, which gave me no peace for the next few years. Imagine this for a second: if you take a pair of twin brothers, who are so identical that their mother has a hard time telling them apart, and send one into space while the other one stays on Earth, in twenty years, you’ll be looking at completely different people. One brother, let’s say he’s named Mykhailo, will live a full life here: work overtime, constantly drink, smoke like a train (over two packs a day), and, God forbid, get married for the third time. The second brother, Mykola, will calmly wander through the cosmos, admiring the stars, and gnaw on disgusting food from a plastic tube, while some of his muscles atrophy, like in a paraplegic person.
When “the meeting of the century” takes place, Mykhailo will look like a balding, sixty-year-old grandpa with a host of illnesses and will be in a second stage of obesity. Meanwhile, Mykola the astronaut — obviously after a bit of rehab on Earth — will look like a thirty-five-year-old man with a pleasant mug, fairly good physical health and great potential. And this has nothing to do with lifestyle. Time is the determining factor.
In space, time doesn’t pass the same way it does on Earth. Up there, it’s almost as if it slows its step, lingering, unhurried. How wonderful: take your whole family and move to space to live much longer. Send spaceship full of the scientists up there first, who never have enough Earthly time to discover medicine for deadly illnesses. Send the bookworm, who always complains that they won’t be able to finish reading all the books in their lifetime.
I bet you’ll say: that’s crazy! But at seven, I didn’t think so. I fantasized that “time will come” and I will become its master. I’ll be able to speed up boring, grey weeks and stretch out, almost to infinity, a minute of my highest triumph. You’ll think that I’m insane. In reality, I had no other choice. For wheelchair kids, cold winter days are a lot longer than for those who rush around on sleds.
For the first fifteen years, I was consumed by this idea. I collected scraps of any relevant information: scientific hypotheses, different theories and pseudoscientific treatises on temporal anomalies, time-slips or wormholes. I reread mountains of books, stacks of periodicals. My bookshelves sagged under the weight of newspaper and magazine clippings. The hard disks in my computer were stuffed with billions of words, but the most important one was time.
The next fifteen years I voluntarily spent in isolation, in a “prison cell” that was the research centre, and, like a madman, worked myself to utter exhaustion. At times I woke up drenched in sweat, with a fever and an aching body. My head spun, and my stomach cramped from hunger. But all this was trivial in comparison to what I stood to gain in return. Time. It was my only and my most sacred goal.
Humans are social creatures, which is why even the worst villain sometimes wants to talk to someone else. To open up, cry on their shoulder. Me? Never. Not even for a second. I avoided any and all contact with the outside world. I became a prisoner of a single illusion.

I don’t know how Chronos found out about me, but that was meant to happen sooner or later.
They gave me state-of-the-art equipment and complete freedom. I enjoyed that, but I didn’t relax for a minute. Big bosses who pay for your most crazy idea always hope for a positive result. No one cares about how genius you are. People need the product of your work and nothing else. No emotions or friendly pats on the back. Today you’re a star — shine and be happy. Because tomorrow no one will remember you. The world doesn’t stop spinning. Just like time.
Money never really interested me. Or publicity and fame. Or unending competitions for positions and titles. That’s all minutiae, which will be eventually swallowed by oblivion. Have you ever noticed this interesting fact? Today, most average people mean salad when they say “Caesar” more often than the Roman ruler. And a piece of Napoleon cake is more important than the greatest commander of the “long nineteenth century,” as they call it.
Eventually, everything in our world loses its colours. Memory becomes faded, like an ancient coin. But not my mission — never. My only goal, which never left me, was to capture time. And one day, I finally succeeded…
The devices registered a jump, an anomaly.
I noticed the clock hands jerk. The red numbers on our screens went crazy. For a moment, all of the sensors went off. Beeped. It seemed like our test subject continued to sit in the large room, scarfing down his food, but his vital signs changed drastically. His weight increased a few kilos. His face grew plumper, and his stomach, as though it was going through a sped-up pregnancy, became significantly rounder. I didn’t even have the chance to blink. You won’t believe it, but just like that — it all happened in a split second.
“A jump!” I uttered. I didn’t immediately believe my own eyes.
“Good heavens… Finally! A damn! Jump!”
I rushed to the sensors’ dashboard. Checked the data again.
The devices showed the same result. An analogous result. No, a mistake was impossible. Though after so many days of uninterrupted work, the system could have broken.
“A jump,” I said again, but this time in a whisper, as though afraid to scare off this moment of triumph. My hands shook nervously. Sweat rose on my forehead. A cold draft went down my back. For a moment, I wanted to quickly get up from my chair, run outside at full speed and announce to the whole world that I finally did it. I actually did it! Everything worked out! I made the impossible, the unfathomable, happen. The unutterable. But only for a moment.
Then my gaze dropped to my unmovable knees, and everything returned to how it was. Almost everything… The research moved to a new stage, a more difficult one. The clock raced madly forward, but I no longer hurried. My goal was almost complete.
Within the year, the results were confirmed. Within two years, human tests revealed no abnormalities. No mistakes, failures, or regressions. No side effects, like in current vaccines. Vaccines can kill too, actually. But I gave people a second life. Like in that Andrew Niccol movie from the early 2000s, In Time.
I was bursting with pride. My head was spinning. “Vertigo from success” was scary and bizarre, but that was the best way to describe my breakthrough. Of course, it was the growing scope that started to kill. No one will ever be able to record all the victims. Stats always lie.
Within three years, Chronos began production. Of watches. Yes, those watches.
They started with a limited series — no more than twenty or thirty pieces.
“And how does it work?” the first clients asked me with trepidation.
“It’s simple,” I answered, smiling, “So simple that at first you won’t realize that you’ve made a ‘change.’”
“Sorry,” the man across from me blinked in confusion, and I instantly thought: How is this idiot in charge of a whole country? A superpower, at that. “Make what, exactly?”
“A change,” I repeated, somewhat cooly. “More simply: a jump in time.”
“Are you joking?” The president looked at me with suspicion. “You’re joking, right?” Then his flushed face softened and a raspy noise escaped his throat. The man clutched his stomach and tried to keep his fit of laughter at bay, but to me it looked like he was going to puke. That lasted about twenty seconds.
“Do I look like a joker? Do I look like one of the presidents?” When he stopped laughing, finally getting that this was not a joke, I continued: “Our device is called Kairos, and it can change the temporal boundaries of a person. It manipulates time, changes the real state of things. That is, now you can control your own time — literally.”
“Well, well…” He didn’t understand me at all. “What do you mean by the word ‘literally’?”
“Tell me, if you please,” I had to spell it out for him, “do you also hate sitting in an airplane for six to eight hours?”
“Let’s say, no… My back gets sore.”
“With Kairos, your flight will be a minute long.”
“How? That can’t be!” He probably thought that I lost my mind. “That’s impossible!”
“And what do you like to do the most?” I said through my teeth. “Pardon my boldness: what is your hobby, Mr. President?”
“I don’t know why you need to know that…”
“Not to leak it to the press, obviously,” I reassured him. “This is all for the sake of our business.”
Without thinking for too long, he replied, “Maybe you won’t believe me,” he met my gaze, “but it’s taking my dog for a walk. Alone.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Loneliness has a high price.”
He did end up buying the device. Convincing people wasn’t my expertise, but the results, charted out on paper, did their job. As promised, he called me before his flight took off.
“I’m flying out!”
“Have a good trip,” I replied. “We’ll talk in two, no, three and a half minutes.”
During those six hours, I managed to flip through Erich Fromm’s To Have or to Be? drink a couple of cups of coffee, and nap for a bit. I knew that the call would come in three, two, one…
Nine rings. Then the ringing stopped.
Another call. Obviously, I didn’t pick up right away. He can wait; let him calm down.
“Hello,” I said smoothly. “How was your flight?”
At first, there was only heavy breathing on the other end of the line. A loud clearing of the throat. A gulping of air, similar to the first signs of dysphagia.
“Who else did you show this device?” he asked me in a hushed voice.
“Only you,” I lied, knowing that Kairos was already presented to maybe ten of the wealthiest people in the world. “But you understand that news gets around quickly.”
“I’ll take five more. Okay?”
“Not so fast.” I smirked to myself. “Although, I guess maybe that fast is possible now. Three weeks and they’ll be yours.”
“Thank you. I’m counting on you,” he replied, and then added, patriotically, “The whole country is counting on you!”
I was silent. These words made me nauseous. Made me shake. People throw out phrases that stupid only at funerals.
Country, he says. What is this “country”? And what does it have to do with me?
Instead of saying goodbye, I asked him, “You never said what your dog’s called.”
“Adolf,” the president answered, “he’s German.”
The funniest part was that it was completely true.
Later, he actually did spend a whole week, according to regular time standards, walking his dog. He wasted a whole week of his life on that damn dog. A week! Or, maybe, he finally managed to live how he wanted? A typical man alone with his wants.
After all, with the help of Kairos you could manipulate your own time.
Tired of sitting in traffic — fast forward. Six hours left in the work day — spin the wheel. Waiting for the next series to come out — simply press the button. On the other hand, when a secretary unbuttoned one of the Asian politicians’ pants after lunch, the device registered a “change.”
How did we know about the “unbuttoning”? Kairos tracks and creates an image of everything around it within a three-metre radius. This is the final judgement that the users signed off on themselves. And we’re not as petty as Apple with their voice ads. If you’re going to play, then play only with a trump card.
After a thousand devices sold well, mass production started. The company stock rose sky-high; the founders were rolling in money. By the end of the year, in their own words, I deserved a Nobel Prize and a host of other awards. But everything went to hell later. Later, “temporal disruptions” appeared…
I randomly stumbled upon a piece of “yellow journalism” in some unknown paper from a fourth-world country, that described how a thirty-five-year-old man aged in one day. Then, his body shrivelled in a matter of a few minutes. And disintegrated.
At first, I thought he had wanted to shorten his lifespan. Played around with Kairos to its limit, turned everything up to the max. The sensationalized headline: “Time kills.” Our network grew; we built “hangars for controlling time.” Dozens, hundreds. But there were some who were crazy enough to keep their “buttons” open for several weeks. And instead of using up their own time, they, for some reason, used someone else’s time. Stole someone else’s minutes, days and years of life. I still don’t understand how this happened, but we messed up badly.
One after the other, notifications about new deaths flooded in. Burnouts. Tens to hundreds of people could crumble into ash in a single day. There was no way to hide mass worldwide deaths. Now death stalked everybody. Time killed without warning. It killed with every passing hour. And when the prime minister’s daughter decayed in front of their eyes — I realized that this was the end…
I hear the deranged screams outside our office. I smell the melted plastic and burning tires. I see the world dying… You know, I don’t give a single damn about the people. Let them die! Every last one. Let them turn into grey ash within minutes in front of their loved ones. Screw them. They deserved it.
In this situation, I feel the sorriest for myself. Today was the first day I could finally see clearly. I didn’t use Kairos, not even once. I didn’t need to. Idiot! Thousands of people also never used it, but died anyway. Kairos killed those who never spun its hands too — it stole minutes from their lifespans and transferred them to someone else.
In the morning, I looked at my own time data and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was impossible, unfair. Insanely, the numbers had plummeted. And when I turned on Kairos — my very own creation and salvation — it glitched. It didn’t work. That which is taken is not always returned. And my whole life, which I dedicated to the creation of this Killer, exploded in an instant and rolled into the mouth of hell.
I feel my body smouldering. It’s burning inside. A moment will pass and all that will be left of me is a pile of black ash. Soulless and nameless. Remembered by no one.
We live as long as others remember us. If only for a day. I, too, am a one-day man.

About the author:
Ihor Antoniuk is a writer from Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, as well as a historian and educator. He debuted with horror and mystical stories in Ukrainian magazines and anthologies. His debut collection Whisper of the Pines appeared in 2018. His latest book, Everyone Flips a Coin (Zhorzh Publishing, 2024), features uncanny tales of fatal coincidences and mystifications. Stories from this collection have been translated into French (Galaxies) and Polish (Nowa Fantastyka). He also contributes to Chytai, Chytomo, and the horror platform Babay, writing about weird fiction and early 20th-century authors.

About the illustrator:
Moz (1970) illustrator & designer. Creates the design of cultural magazine Sintel. Illustrates for Fantastische Vertellingen, Parmentier, Fantasize etc. Also makes the design and web design for local TV broadcast, IBTV. In another capacity also a painter & a writer.