Echoes of an Endless Hour
by Emmie Christie
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
At Joli’s work, analog clocks overlaid everyone’s faces, each representing a different hour of the day. The incessant ticking of the second hands resonated in the sterile brightness of the overhead lights, as if anyone needed a reminder of how all of Corporate watched them.
Rasheed from accounting trotted over, the clock on his face pointing to 8:14 am. He lived in that first hour of chaos, of finding emails from nightshift that needed attention, when everyone needed everything, and no one had made coffee yet. Rasheed stopped at the time barrier and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
Joli rearranged the DX7 project folder on her desk so the word “Important” showed. She hadn’t checked anything off on it yet. She’d saved it for the middle of the day, halfway through her 24-hour cycle of 3pm, for when she wanted to pull her hair out just to count the individual strands and have something to do. So far today, she had balanced 27 safety pins on top of each other. “What is it, Rasheed?”
“You’re due for vacation at the end of today, right?”
“If I can get anyone from a decent hour to cover for me.” She pasted on a grin and pointed at the edges of her smile, where the minute hand pointed to 3:15 on her cheeks. “How about it, Rasheed? 3pm? Nothing pressing?”
Rasheed eyed her safety pin tower. “You mean when I have nothing to do, but still have to pretend? I’m good, thanks.” He flipped through some papers on the clipboard he carried. “8am isn’t available for vacationers, anyway. You’ll have to switch with someone outside eight to five. Didn’t you know that?”
Joli shrugged. “No one really tells me stuff here.”
Rasheed stopped flipping through his papers and pointed at her desk. “Listen, I need to work on that DX7 project for a bit. Yolanda has been on my back to get it done and I just would prefer to finish it before the afternoon.”
“You want to take the one project I’m in charge of?”
“Joli. Come on. You’ll be gone the next two weeks anyway, and you know how Yolanda gets. The key stresses her out. She wants everything done before Meeting, and if she doesn’t, the higher ups—”
The overhead lights flickered. Rasheed stilled.
Joli bit her lower lip. She and Yolanda used to work together before the Merge. Before the body of Corporate had descended from the stars and chopped up time itself into compartments, into little jails for people to walk around in—
Rasheed waited, looking nervous. Joli flung herself back into her present hell. “Sure. Yeah. That’s fine.” She slid the project folder labeled “Important” into the time barrier’s slot. It dinged and transferred out of her area and into the bin on the outside.
Timewaster, she reminded herself. 3pm. That’s my role. She should have known she wouldn’t get to keep DX7.
She twisted in her chair, bumping the safety pin tower with her elbow by accident. They scattered across her desk. Her shoulders slumped.
Rasheed picked up the folder. “Thanks a lot!”
Joli hadn’t gone home for 573 days. Almost a year and a half of 3pm, of that mindless, echoing time of stretching out tasks to make them last. Her mind buzzed with unspent energy but also dreamed of 6pm, when she’d collapse in that overstuffed chair in the lobby and close her eyes, but everyone had already claimed all the nice evening slots through the next few weeks for their vacations. They’d thought ahead while she’d wasted her mind.
Fatigue weighed on her in a sudden fierceness. She had reached her limit.
Merle, the marketing guy in the 2am assignment, stayed at the office on nights. She’d take his assignment at this point. She’d just instaspace to the company’s provided hotel room, let sleep snatch her up like a bird of prey, and wake up two weeks later as the Corporates suggested.
She asked Merle to switch with her. His hands trembled. “Yes,” he said. “God. Please.”
A couple of years ago, he’d mentioned something from before the Merge, something about missing the sensation of eating. No one needed to eat unless they worked the hour of a meal, of course, but he’d said out loud what everyone felt: he missed wanting to. The Corporates had punished him with no vacation. And he worked nights.
Wait. Joli started. She bit her lip. “Merle, are you allowed to switch out?”
He pressed his hands on his desk. His permanent personal night made his eyes seem sunken in his face. “I’ll still be working, right?”
Joli repressed the urge to snort. “Um. Yes. Technically. You have a role as the timewaster.” Closest to vacation that you’ll get, really, she wanted to say. Nonstop fun.
“Then I’m allowed to, as long as I’m not sleeping.”
Never allowed to sleep. How long could a person do that? “Is this your first switch since what happened?”
He ducked his head. “Most don’t want a vacation on nights, you know?”
They trudged to Yolanda’s office. Papers littered her desk, and the time on her face showed 9:37. “Switch?” she asked.
Merle jerked his head up and down. Yolanda fished the key out of her pocket and motioned them five feet apart. She touched Joli’s barrier, then Merle’s, unlocking them both so the shimmering shields disappeared for a moment. 3:38pm and 2:38am traded places, and Yolanda locked the barriers once more.
3:39 showed on Merle’s face, and a little daylight filtered down on him. He shivered and trailed off to Joli’s desk in a kind of haze. She wished she could hug him or pat him on the back or something. But any contact without the barriers could set off a time issue, a mixing of hours. The Corporates would neutralize her for trying something like that. Relegate her outside of any time whatsoever. A permanent floating space of nothing and no one.
“Thanks, Yolanda,” Joli said. The Meeting organizer waved; her head already bent over her papers again.
At that point, the 24th rotation of the hour ended, and the next day started. So, Joli went on vacation.
She instaspaced to her mattress, but she couldn’t sleep. She spent the first six days tossing, turning, and cursing her pillow every hour south of midnight. She needed to sleep. The Corporates always stated that employees needed their full 14 days of sleep a year. But the tiredness had crept out of her mind and into her body, and her thoughts ran around like toddlers in a water park. Just messy and jazzed and then tripping and bleeding from the knees, like her and her sister back from before. Casey. What did Casey look like, now, five years later? Did she still highlight her hair that goldenrod color?
She slept at some point.
She woke up three days later, groggy. She tried to go back to sleep, but that ticking in her face! With a groan, she plodded out to buy some sleeping pills at the AllTimez. The space around her darkened the space five feet around her, and most of the shops closed as she trudged past; her permanent personal night warping the neutral space.
A sunny day shone down on the girl behind the counter, a nice cozy spot displaying 1:15pm. She smiled at Joli, and Joli copied it and pasted a smile back. She jogged to the hotel instead of instaspacing, trying to fatigue her thoughts back into vacancy. She’d earned this vacation, darn it! Every employee received just one a year, and here she was, wasting it, just like she wasted her mind on 3pm. Timewaster. Isn’t that my job? Isn’t that what they want from me anyway? The anger flared, the irony bubbling under her tongue. Echoes, endless echoes, bouncing in her empty brain: want from me anyway, want from me anyway . . .
Her clock chimed, signaling she’d spent her allotted two weeks.
She plodded in bleary-eyed to work, and there her desk waited. The lights overhead bore down, so bright after her stint on the 2am, so blatant, so blaring. Had 3pm always been like this? What time did Casey work? The 12pm? The 5pm? Did she get to work on projects that she wanted, or did she have to waste time and her life too?
What does it matter? I’ll never see her again.
Rasheed brushed past her on his way to something Important. “How was your break?” he asked, flipping through something on his chart.
Never see her again never see her again never—
“Sometimes,” she said, over the non-stop echo in her brain, “I wish we could just go through all the hours in a day, you know? Just go through in order. Like before.”
Rasheed’s head jolted up. “Hey,” he said. The overhead lights flickered. “Don’t—don’t say that. You’ll—”
The overhead lights sputtered and formed into human shapes in the hallway. The Corporates, those ultra-beings who never slept, whose eyes flared fluorescent white. Those who had taken over the world. “3pm woman. You are scheduled for the Meeting at 10am.”
Yolanda opened the meeting room door for her and shot her a worried look.
Joli shrugged. They’d punish her, but something in her couldn’t return to that desk. She couldn’t continue wasting time. She wanted to do something with her days. She wanted to think again, to see Casey again, to live again, to change again.
Ten of the beings sat around the table, fluorescent eyes flickering.
“3pm,” one of them said. “You have been charged with the mention of forbidden topics. This is grounds for termination from your time. You will gather your things and be instaspaced into working the 3am.”
Just like they had done to Merle. How long had he worked his night assignment without a break? Two years? Three?
She didn’t care. Not anymore. What did any of it matter if she couldn’t use the money she earned? It weighed in her bank account, and she had no need to spend it. No need to buy a home to sleep in. No need to buy food to eat. No need to spend time with sisters. Work superseded all.
Beside her, Yolanda hung her head. “I’m sorry.”
No, I’m sorry.
Joli reached out and touched the time barrier between them, that distorted shield between them preventing contact, like bumper cars at a theme park.
“Joli!” Yolanda jerked back in her chair and held her hands up.
The Corporates all swung towards Joli. “Do you wish to be neutralized?” One of them said, the one closest to her.
Neutralization. Floating. No concept of time whatsoever. The new way to die, as time did not age people anymore with the Merge.
“Seems better than this,” Joli said. “I’m not living right now, anyway.” She faced Yolanda, an idea forming. “Don’t you think so? Aren’t you tired of organizing this freaking Meeting over and over? Aren’t you tired of the echoes?” The being near Joli gripped her shoulder. She tilted her chin up in defiance. Might as well go for broke. “Don’t you have the key?”
A muscle jumped in Yolanda’s cheek. She stared at Joli’s outstretched hand.
“We worked in the same building,” Joli said, talking faster. “Remember? 9-4. We’d go out for drinks after.”
The being nearest Joli slapped its hand over her mouth. A jolt shuddered through her, and she drooped. The clock on her face stopped ticking.
Time stopped for her. Instead of looping, it lurched, and something in her gut flipped over, and she couldn’t breathe.
Yolanda tapped Joli’s barrier with the key. That goldenrod key, the color of Casey’s hair.
The Corporates pivoted as one towards Yolanda.
“Reach!” Yolanda cried.
Joli reached for her, just before the Corporate jerked her back. The key brought the barrier down around her and their hands intertwined.
Time restarted for Joli. Her heart started; her lungs filled with air. The clock hands on both Joli and Yolanda’s faces, 3:41pm and 9:41pm, bolted like wild animals from a cage and tackled each other, mixing their numbers.
The Corporate with its hand over Joli’s mouth shuddered. Its eyes flickered in a manic, broken way. “No!” It shouted. “The Merge! It’s broken!”
Broken. The Merge, it’s broken. The echoes garbled in her brain. Broken. It’s—Merge. The—Casey. Goldenrod.
Something reverberated throughout the room like the knell of a bell. The Corporates all screamed and held their heads in their hands, and the fluorescent light from their eyes shot upwards. They all dropped to the ground in withered heaps, like the shells of cicadas.
Joli and Yolanda grasped hands in sudden desperation for contact, for the warmth of fingers, and the texture of skin. Something righted itself inside Joli, that feeling of going somewhere, of a string unspooling forward instead of around.
Minutes passed. 9:45. 9:46. The clocks on their faces had disappeared, but time had ingrained itself in their minds.
Rasheed swung open the door to the meeting room. “What—what happened?”
“Come on in,” Joli said. “Actually, tell everyone to come on in here.”
People shuffled in from all over the office, drifting, confused. The clocks on their faces had all disappeared, as had all the shimmering barriers that had surrounded them. They murmured, not daring to speak yet. They waited for the minutes to pass, to unroll forward.
9:53. 9:54.
9:59.
10.
Want another gripping story by Emmie Christie? Read “Every Nowhere Leads to Somewhere” in Horrific Scribes April 2025 and “Chrysalis” in Horrific Scribes August 2025.