The schoolteacher droned on from the lectern while uninterested students wriggled in their seats. It was an unusually warm October day, and the classroom windows were thrown open to tempt a breeze. A sandy haired boy sat at his desk, head perched and lolling on his fist. The clock on the wall ticked rhythmically, and the absentminded tapping of pencils and the soft flipping of pages all but lulled the boy to sleep. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right, the teacher recited blandly. The boy stared vacantly at the clock, the second hand continuing its military march around the numbered face. Hamlet, what a drag, the boy thought.
For a moment, the clock stopped, secondhand pulsing briefly before it began whirling like a broken compass. The boy sat up straighter. How odd. He jumped as the school bell started ringing, far too early for the end of class. When the bell did not stop, students hooted as they streamed into the hallway, taking advantage of the teachers' confusion.
The boy looked out the window facing an empty field, hoping this turn of events meant he could play soccer instead of analyzing more Shakespeare. Suddenly, as if magic, an oddly dressed man appeared in the center of the pitch. The boy rubbed his eyes. Surely, that man wasn't there before, but where could he possibly have come from? The man squinted up to the sky, then inspected his hands closely, as if he were surprised to see them. Filing out with the rest of the students, the boy did not congregate with his classmates on the small playground but turned toward the soccer fields at the back of the building instead.
"Hey, mister, are you okay?" The boy asked, eyeing him wearily.
"Where am I?" The mysterious stranger croaked.
"You're in Kent."
"I meant, where I am in time. What is the date?"
"October 22nd, 2018."
"Thanks." The man grunted. With a small pop he flicked a coin at the kid. It was the oddest coin that boy had ever seen. Small and silver, it was inscribed with ancient looking symbols along the edge and a dragon was etched at its center. He looked back up, a question on his lips, but the man, like vapor, had simply vanished.
That night, the boy sat at the kitchen table eating his microwaved meal. His mother was a nurse who worked late into the evenings which left the television as his temporary guardian. The evening news played in the background as he ate.
"Clocks all over London and the surrounding areas were reported to have gone haywire today. From offices to homes to schools, timepieces began spinning unable to keep, well, time! Officials believe it was a power surge which caused the clocks to short circuit."
"Wow! Now that's what I call a race around the clock! More details about the mysterious power surge to come at eleven."
The boy thought back to the scraggly man with his strange clothes and coins, trying to decipher the curious feeling settling in his gut. As he pushed around his soggy broccoli, he went over the puzzle in his mind. Giving up, he shrugged, flipped the channel to cartoons and within minutes promptly forgot about the man altogether.