answers

This idea distracted me from studying for my Chemistry exam which I cannot stop studying for. This is only the beginning of what will I think be a long story.

Credit goes fully to mogggggg for the idea of the clock eating gentleman.



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It was a Thursday when the four great thinkers of Europe set out to find the answers to the great existential questions of reality, said reality being kept by each man in a convenient carrying-sack.

For the compulsive-clock eater who desired so earnestly to add more time to his life, reality was a small ice pack at the bottom of his very large lunchbag containing numerous wristwatches and two alarm clocks. The pedagogue carried a certificate of authenticity shoved into each of his very old books, which he always carried awkwardly under his tweed elbow-patched arm. For the scientist, the only reality lay in the extendable pointer which he used to point out various pieces of evidence. (For weeks, the pointer had circled aimlessly around a hypothesis but had not been able to land anywhere - this confused the scientist greatly.) Straggling behind, as always, was a small man who was much younger than he looked, who carried nothing but the clothing upon his back save for one pair of sunglasses that never moved from their place perched atop his head.

The clock-eater, Harry, munched down on the small hand of a once-alarm-clock. Between bites and crunches, he muttered worries about whether or not the group were headed toward the right terminal - what if the right one ended up to be the left one, and then the world were all confused and no truth could ultimately be found? He ground his teeth furiously upon the clock-shards.

"Don't do that," snapped the scientist. "You merely suffer from a delusion, my friend."

"Freud says-" began the pedagogue - but he was cut off by the thud of one of his books upon the ground. "Drat!" he exclaimed as he stooped to pick it up. His legs were sore from all that stooping. The only good that would come of it, surely, would be toned thighs. A pedagogue cannot afford not to be in shape and healthy, for he must be around to pass down knowledge and other such whatnots.

The sunglassed man was named David. "Like the king," he would say. The one to whom he was speaking might enquire if he meant Elvis; in this case, the man would erupt into a tirade about how no one knew anymore the important religious figures and "this clearly showed," would continue the pedagogue, "the decline of spirituality in this the modern age..."

The scientist shuffled his feet. The line was too long. The world was quite overpopulated. Evolution had gone to people's heads. He stared in spite at their baseball caps and - and - things. He wanted to throw a book at the people who stood in his way in line. He glanced at the pedagogue's stack like a hungry man ogling a mushroom pizza.

"Please, will you kindly cease to ogle my collection?" said the pedagogue with characteristic assuredness that his collection was the most important thing in the world and no one should dare ogle it, or do anything to it that sounded so vulgar. "My, my!" he changed tracks. "This line is mightily long!"

"Mighty like the wrath of God is," said the sunglassed man - David - solemnly.

"Wrath?" burst the clock-eater. He was done with his small hand and had no diversion from thoughts about wrath, truth, etc. "Will the torments never cease?"

"Theoretically-" began the scientist and the pedagogue at the same time.

"Shutup!" said David. They had reached the front of the line and were about to be searched. In past it had always taken a very long time for this process to succeed because of the metal bits on Harry's clocks setting off the alarm, the pedagogue's books having to be each opened and examined, the scientist's pointer having to be handed over - he watched it nervously as it passed hand to hand - biting his nails until he got it back. David stepped through relaxedly and came out clean.

The scientist was watching the pedagogue's books as they were being flipped through by security.

"Stop ogling my books!!" yelled the pedagogue.

The security men stopped for a bit and stared at the pedagogue.

"No, not you," said the proper pedagogue. "Him."

They stared at the scientist.

"I am an empiricist!" said man of science asserted.

The books were ruffled through one last time and handed back over to the pedagogue. He snatched them readily and resisted the urge to smash the clock that Harry had just surreptitiously snuck from his bag and started to nibble on.

Harry's eyes widened. "Don't tell," he said.

The pedagogue swore not to.