Beats Outside of Time

At that moment when the power went out, darkness was not Elias' enemy, but rather an old ally who knew the details of his mechanical kingdom. A heavy silence reigned for a few seconds, broken only by the “ticking” of the spherical machine that pulsed in his hands with strange regularity, as if it were a metal heart trying to tell him something.

Elias heard the sound of wood breaking at the main door. The two men had broken into the workshop. Elias moved lightly, using his senses, which had been trained for years to deal with the smallest details. He did not need light; his body knew the distances between the tables, the locations of the shelves, and even the sharp corners of the hand lathes.

“Mr. Elias, don't make things more complicated,” came the melodious voice of one of the men, who was approaching the center of the workshop. “We know you don't like chaos. Hand over the tool and we'll give you back your peace of mind.”

Elias held his breath behind the huge wall clock cabinet. He remembered his teacher Saber's advice: “Time is not a number we count, but an action we perform.” He had to act on this principle. His escape was not just fear, but a calculated move to protect the secret entrusted to him.

He slowly reached for a nearby shelf and pulled a thin string he had attached long ago to set off a group of alarm clocks simultaneously as a test of accuracy. With a quick, deliberate movement, he pulled the string.

Suddenly, dozens of alarm clocks throughout the workshop went off at once with a cacophonous ringing. The sounds bounced off the walls, creating complete auditory chaos that made it impossible to locate Elias. He took advantage of those seconds of confusion and slipped toward the small opening behind the workshop, a narrow passageway used for disposing of metal waste, leading directly to a fog-covered back alley.

When his feet touched the cold ground of the alley, he didn't stop to catch his breath. He had to get away from the Al-Manara neighborhood as quickly as possible. He put the spherical device in his inner coat pocket and felt its heat increase slightly. He glanced quickly at the indicator under the dim light of a streetlamp: 29 days, 23 hours, and 40 minutes.

He had to find a safe place to understand his teacher's coded message. “The point where the sea meets the mountain.” The phrase echoed in his mind like the ticking of the clocks he had left behind. It was not just a geographical description, but a code known only to him and his teacher.

After half an hour of walking along winding roads, Elias arrived at the “old cliff” area. There, on a towering rocky outcrop overlooking the harbor, stood an abandoned lighthouse. Saber always took him there to teach him how to observe the movement of the waves and compare it to the movement of gears; both are subject to universal mechanical laws.

Elias entered the base of the lighthouse and lit a small flashlight. He took out the spherical machine and placed it on a stone table. He began to examine it with an expert eye, not content with just looking at the surface, but trying to penetrate the structure of the gears through the glass casing.

"These aren't just gears... It's an interlocking mathematical logic," Elias muttered as he noticed that some of the gears did not rotate in a circular motion, but in a complex oval shape, which meant that they followed unconventional calculations of time.

While he was immersed in his analysis, he noticed a very precise hole in the base of the sphere, similar to the keyholes in luxury watches.

He remembered the message: “The storm lies in the gears.” Elias thought about the “causality” that governed this machine; if there was a keyhole, there had to be a key, and if Saber hadn't sent a key, then the key must be something Elias already possessed.

Elias took a small square-headed “screwdriver” out of his pocket, a gift from Saber on the day he graduated from apprenticeship. He placed it in the hole and turned it slowly.

Suddenly, the gears stopped spinning frantically, and a faint beam of light emanated from inside the ball, projecting a three-dimensional map of the city onto the opposite wall. But it was not today's city; it showed underground tunnels and passageways that did not appear on any official maps. There was a red flashing dot under the “National Geological Center” building.

“The archive... it's there,” whispered Elias.

But his discovery did not last long. He heard a rustling sound behind him and turned quickly to find a woman standing at the entrance to the lighthouse. She was dressed in practical clothes and carried what looked like a metal detector in her hand. She was not one of the people in gray coats; her features showed a mixture of anxiety and sharp intelligence.

“Don't move,” she said in a firm but non-aggressive voice. “I'm Dr. Hala, from the Geological Center. If you're the one who received Engineer Saber's package, we're in great danger... The time you see on that machine isn't just a countdown, it's the city's pulse, which is starting to fade.”

Elias's eyes widened. Was Hala part of the “causality” his teacher had prepared? Or was she a new obstacle in his path?

“How did you know where I was?” Elias asked, hiding the machine with his hand.

“The device in your hand sends out subsonic vibrations that affect the stability of the earth's crust in this sector,” she replied, advancing cautiously. “If we don't balance those gears immediately, the ‘storm’ Saber talked about won't be just a metaphor... it will be an earthquake that swallows the entire lighthouse neighborhood.”

At that moment, they heard the sound of a helicopter approaching the lighthouse. Searchlights began scanning the walls of the rocky cliff. The “guardians of silence” had not stopped their pursuit.

Elias realized he had to make a quick, emotional, and rational decision. He had no choice but to trust this stranger who held the scientific answers to his mechanical predicament.

“Dr. Hala,” said Elias as he gathered his tools, “I hope you are good with complex mechanics, because we have 29 days and 22 hours to prevent a disaster that I don't yet understand.”

They set off together toward a secret passageway beneath the lighthouse, while the ground beneath their feet began to shake slightly, in sync with the beats of the spherical machine, which were now accelerating at an alarming rate.