The line stretched out for a mile,

orderly and single-file.

All wait with patience and without a care.

In Tempus, there is time to spare.

~

At 3:47pm, a car approached an intersection.  The driver looked around, she saw no cars and proceeded through the intersection. She also did not see the couple crossing the street.

The front corner of the car connected with the woman pedestrian and, with a gentle lurch, hurled her into the middle of the road.  Her husband, just steps behind her, ran to her crumpled body.  

The driver slammed on her brakes.  Shakily, she exited her vehicle and watched, dazed, as the man she didn’t hit frantically checked his wife’s vitals.

The husband looked up at the driver with tousled, sandy hair who was wearing unusual loose-fitting, brightly-colored clothing.  She was staring vacantly at the scene.  

Tears streamed down his face.  “Call 911!  She’s hurt! Really hurt!.”

The driver continued to stare.

“What is wrong with you?”  The husband struggled to cushion his wife’s head while his shaky hands fumbled around in his pockets until he freed his phone.

As he dialed, he yelled at the driver.  “Do something!”

The driver began trembling, like a dog shaking off water.  She walked over to the man cradling his broken wife in his lap.

 “Don’t worry.” she said, “It’s going to be alright.”

“Alright? This is not alright!  How can you…”  Someone on the other end of the phone answered, then the man’s attention shifted immediately.  “My wife’s been hit by a car!  We’re at Fourth Street and...and…”  The husband looked around for other street signs.

While the man was distracted, the driver ran to her car and sped away.

“Hey wait!” he called after her.

“The driver just drove off!  She’s wearing baggy, light blue pants and driving a blue car.  I think she was from Tempus.”

~

At 3:40pm, while a woman with sandy, unkempt hair was driving from Morville to Tempus, she noticed a note in her hand.  It read:

Look out for pedestrians.

Stop at red lights.

She became immediately attentive.  Her head on a swivel, she watched for everything.

Seven minutes later, she approached a red light.  She saw no other cars, but crunched the note in her hands and switched her foot to the break.  The car lurched -- to a stop.  

She looked up and saw a couple crossing the street in front of her.  Halfway through the intersection they wrapped their arms around each other and walked the rest of the way in an embrace.

The driver let out a sigh of relief, then smiled.  The light turned green, and she sped through the intersection.

~

The City of Tempus was a small, strange town.  And if outsiders could remember, the townspeople would have a reputation for being spacey and careless, reckless and naive.  But any instance of them acting so was erased from history.

Instead, Tempus was known for baggy, colorful clothing, its citizens’ overly sunny dispositions and their obsession with timepieces.  Most people born in Tempus never left; those that did -- came back very soon.  

Newcomers were rare.  Usually visiting for a one-time tour of the most accurate watch manufacturing facility in the world.  If they tried to stay longer, they were, at best, treated like cardboard cutouts, at worst, like lepers.  Most often, they moved out as quickly as they moved in.  Each left with the same unanswered question:  How could a city of little more than a thousand people have a line of hundreds of citizens stretching through the middle of it, every single day?

Only those few who stuck around long enough ever found out.

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