All the Seconds Are Wrong

A retired watchmaker's quiet morning coffee is disrupted by flickering realities and a newspaper from tomorrow, forcing him to question the very fabric of time in his favourite café.

It’s not the gear train, he thought, running a thumb over the crystal of his own perfectly calibrated timepiece. A slip in the escapement? Unlikely on a modern quartz movement. It’s behaving like a mechanical watch with a loose pallet jewel. But it wasn’t. It was cheap, battery-powered, and should have been as reliable as death and taxes. Yet, it faltered. This place, this specific pocket of the universe smelling faintly of burnt milk, was a rogue cog in the grand machine. And it was getting worse.

He took a sip of his coffee. Linda, the proprietor, caught his eye from behind the counter. She was a woman whose age was impossible to pin down, with silver hair tied in a loose knot and eyes that held the patient calm of a lighthouse keeper. She gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod, not of greeting, but of acknowledgement. As if she’d heard his thoughts. As if she knew about the stuttering seconds.

A flicker. John blinked. For a split second, the electric tram gliding past the window wasn't a sleek modern Bombardier. It was a lumbering, double-decker thing, bottle-green and cream, sparks flying from its connection to the overhead wires. A man in a trilby and a heavy wool overcoat had been reading a broadsheet on the pavement, and then he was gone, replaced by a young woman in neon leggings staring at her phone. The illusion was so brief, so seamless, that his mind immediately tried to dismiss it as a trick of the light, a reflection on the glass. But he’d seen the texture of the man’s coat. He’d smelled the phantom scent of coal smoke.

“Daydreaming about winding the town hall clock again, John?”

Terry slumped into the chair opposite, dropping a damp copy of The Guardian onto the small, round table. He was a man built for tweed, a former journalist whose cynicism was a carefully cultivated shield against a world that had consistently disappointed him.

“Something like that,” John said, his voice quiet. “Did you… see the tram just now?”

“The 9:15 to Piccadilly? Yes, I saw it. Managed to avoid walking in front of it, which I count as a victory for a Tuesday morning. Why?” Terry flagged down Linda. “The usual, love. And a slice of that lemon drizzle before this old fossil inhales it all.”

“It looked old,” John insisted, leaning forward. “Proper 1950s job. All green and clunky.”

Terry sighed, a theatrical, world-weary sound. “You’ve been staring at tiny gears for fifty years, mate. Your eyes are probably stuck in the past. It’s a miracle you can even see the tables in front of you.” He unfolded his paper, then paused, frowning. “That’s odd.”

Linda arrived with Terry’s order, placing the coffee down with a steady hand. “What’s odd, Terry?” she asked, her tone light, but her eyes were on John.

“This paper,” Terry muttered, tapping the masthead. “It’s for Wednesday. Tomorrow.”

### A Problem of Tense

John snatched the paper. Terry was right. The date was clear: Wednesday, 24th of October. He scanned the headlines. ‘Council Approves Controversial High-Rise Development.’ ‘City Suffers Record Power Outage.’ He felt a cold knot form in his stomach. He’d read the Tuesday edition on his way here. The headline had been about a transport strike.

“Where did you get this?” John asked, his voice tight.

“Newsagent next door. Same as every day,” Terry said, though he was looking at the paper with a newfound curiosity. He took a bite of his cake. “Well, I know not to bet on the 3:30 at Haydock, then. Little Minx falls at the last hurdle.”

“You’re not taking this seriously!”

“John, it’s a misprint. A screw-up at the press. Happens all the time. Remember when they declared the wrong election winner in ‘92? This is just… premature. Besides, a power outage is hardly a Nostradamus-level prediction for this city.”

“And the tram?”

“A brain fart, Johnny. A senior moment.” Terry grinned. “Don’t worry, you’ve got a few good years before they stick you in a home where all the clocks are digital.”

Linda wiped down an adjacent table, her movements slow and deliberate. “Time is a funny thing,” she said, not looking at them. “People think it’s a straight line. A motorway. But sometimes… it’s more like the backstreets of the Northern Quarter. Full of wrong turns and cul-de-sacs.”

John stared at her. She knew. Of course, she knew. This was her establishment. Her little bubble of temporal instability. “What is this place, Linda?”

She offered a simple shrug. “A coffee shop. We sell coffee. And cake.” She looked towards the door as a bell chimed. “And welcome all sorts.”

---

The man who entered was not one of the usual sorts. He was young, perhaps mid-twenties, with his hair slicked back. He wore a demob suit, the shoulders a little too wide, the trousers a little too short. His shoes were scuffed but well-polished. He looked around the shop with wide, utterly bewildered eyes, taking in the chrome coffee machine, the students with their laptops, the soft indie music trickling from the speakers. His gaze was one of total displacement, of a man who had not just taken a wrong turn, but had wandered into a different century.

He approached their table, twisting the brim of a non-existent hat in his hands. His face was pale. He looked at John, his eyes pleading for an anchor in this sea of strangeness.

“Excuse me, guv’nor,” the young man said, his accent pure, uncut Mancunian from a generation long gone. “I’m a bit lost. Could you… could you tell me the year?”