Tick Tock's Grand Adventure

Chapter 1 Welcome to Clockville!

Welcome to Clockville, the wackiest town in the whole wide world.

In Clockville, the streets bong instead of clang. The doorbells ding. The wind chimes go tinn-tinn-TONG. And the houses? Oh, the houses are bonkers.

Some houses are tall like grandfather clocks. Boooong.

Some are tiny like wristwatches. Beep-beep!

Some have little doors at the top that fly open every hour and a bird shouts, “CUCKOO!”

Every single neighbour is a clock. Yep. Every one.

And on a cobblestone street that wiggles like spaghetti, in a small yellow house shaped like a wall clock, lived a young clock named Tick Tock.

Tick Tock had bright copper hands, a polished wooden tummy, and two googly eyes that wobbled when he was excited. (They wobbled a lot.) He went tikk-takk, tikk-takk all day long. Sometimes, when he was REALLY thinking, he went tikk-tikk-tikk-tikk-tikk very fast. His mum said it sounded like popcorn.

Tick Tock had questions. Big ones. Small ones. Weird ones.

One evening at supper, he plonked his spoon down and said:

“Mum. Dad. I have a question.”

His dad, Grandfather Clock, looked up. (His face was huge, so it took a moment.)

“Go ahead, son.”

“What IS time?”

Cuckoo Mum stopped chewing.

“And why does it go that way—” Tick Tock pointed forward, “—but not that way—” he pointed backward, “—and why are there a hundred different ways to show it? It’s bonkers!”

Grandfather Clock made a deep, slow chuckle. Bonggggg. “That, my boy, is the biggest question in Clockville.”

“Then I want to know!” Tick Tock said. His googly eyes wobbled. “Can I go on an adventure? To ask the wisest clocks in town? Can I, can I, can I?”

Mum and Dad looked at each other. Then they smiled.

“You can,” Mum said. “But take your backpack. Take a snack. And come home before the moon is full.”

“YESSS!” Tick Tock squeaked. He spun in a happy circle. His copper hands went fwip-fwip-fwip.

The next morning he packed:

– a jam sandwich

– a small pencil

– a notebook to write down EVERYTHING he learned

Then he hopped out the door. Boing.

His grand adventure had begun!

Chapter 2 — Mr. Analog and the Three-Hand Dance

Tick Tock skipped down the wiggly street, tikk-tikk-tikk-tikk, until he came to a tall round house with a wide white face on the front. Three big hands wiggled across it.

This was the home of Mr. Analog — the oldest, wisest clock in Clockville.

Tick Tock knocked. Knock-knock-knock.

The door swung open and out leaned a friendly old clock with a moustache made out of two clock hands curled up at the ends.

“Aha!” boomed Mr. Analog. “A visitor! And before lunch! Come in, come in!”

Inside, everything ticked. Even the teapot. Plink-plink-plink.

“Mr. Analog,” Tick Tock said, pulling out his notebook, “I’m on a quest. I want to know everything about TIME. How do you tell it?”

Mr. Analog twirled his moustache. (Which made him tickle his own nose.) “Ha! Easy. I tell time with three hands. Watch.”

He pointed at a short, stout hand. “This little one is the hour hand. Slow as a snail in slippers.”

He pointed at a long, slim hand. “This one is the minute hand. Faster — like a kid running for ice cream.”

He pointed at a thin, zippy hand that whizzed around. “And THIS one is the second hand. Zoooooom! Sixty zooms and the minute hand hops forward by one tiny step.”

Tick Tock scribbled. Hour = snail. Minute = ice cream. Second = ZOOM.

“But Mr. Analog,” he asked, “why does time go forward and not backward? I want to try going backward!”

Mr. Analog laughed so hard his belly bonged. Bonggg!

“Try this,” he said. “Squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube.”

“Okay…”

“Now put it back in.”

Tick Tock blinked. “I can’t!”

“Exactly!” Mr. Analog said. “Time is like toothpaste. Comes out easy. Going back? Pffft. Forget it.”

Tick Tock giggled. He wrote: TIME = TOOTHPASTE.

Then Mr. Analog gave him a tiny paper clock with two cardboard hands held by a brass pin. “Practice, my boy! Move the hands. Tell me — what time is this?”

He set it.

“Three o’clock!” Tick Tock said.

“And this?”

“Half past six!”

“And this tricky one?”

“Ummm… a quarter to nine!”

“BRILLIANT!” Mr. Analog cheered. He hopped up and did a little dance, which mostly just made him bong a lot. Bong-bong-BONGGG!

“Next stop?” Tick Tock asked.

“Go to the Shiny Streets,” Mr. Analog said. “Find Ms. Digital. She tells time without a single hand. Spooky! But polite.”

Chapter 3 — Ms. Digital’s Blinking Numbers

The Shiny Streets were SHINY.

The houses were sleek and glowed in soft colours — minty green, raspberry pink, blueberry blue. Tiny lights blinked behind windows. Blink-blink. Blink-blink.

At the end of the row stood a tidy black house with a glowing face. The face read:

07 : 42

While Tick Tock stared, it changed to:

07 : 43

“Whoa!” Tick Tock said. “It JUMPED!”

The door slid open by itself. Whoosh.

“Hello, Tick Tock,” said a smooth, smiley voice. “Come in. Mind the wires.”

Inside lived Ms. Digital. She had no hands. No moustache either. Just a flat shiny face full of glowing numbers, and the world’s neatest little house.

“I heard you’re hunting time!” she said. “Cool quest. Want a tour?”

“YES!”

Ms. Digital tapped her face. The numbers changed.

“I don’t have hands,” she said. “I have NUMBERS. I just show them. Click — there’s the hour. Click — there’s the minute. Easy peasy.”

“But… how do you KNOW what time it is?” Tick Tock asked.

Ms. Digital grinned. (You could tell, because her smiley dots wiggled.) “Come here. I’ll let you in on the secret.”

She opened a tiny door in her side. Inside was a teeny tiny crystal, no bigger than a grain of rice.

“That,” she whispered, “is a quartz crystal.”

“It’s so SMALL!”

“Yeah, but it’s a champion shaker. When a little zap of electricity tickles it, it shivers — bzzzz! — at exactly the same speed, every single time. My brain counts the shivers. One, two, three… When I count thirty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight shivers, I say: THAT’S ONE SECOND!”

“WHAT? That’s so many!”

“That’s why I’m fast,” Ms. Digital said proudly.

Tick Tock wrote it down. Quartz = world’s wiggliest crystal.

Then Ms. Digital showed him something tricky. Her face flicked between two readings:

07 : 45 AM

19 : 45

“These are the SAME TIME!” Tick Tock said.

“Right! Some of us show two halves of the day: AM is morning (midnight to noon), PM is afternoon and evening (noon to midnight). Others count all the way to twenty-three so you NEVER mix them up. Pilots and train drivers love that one. Imagine getting on the wrong train because you didn’t know if it was breakfast or bedtime!”

“DISASTER!” Tick Tock gasped.

Ms. Digital giggled. Beep-beep.

She gave him a little card with two clocks printed on it — one with hands, one with numbers, both showing the same minute.

“Next stop, Tick Tock?”

“Tell me!”

“Go to the Big Garden. The Sundial Siblings are waiting. Bring sunglasses.”

Chapter 4 — Sunny, Shadow, and the SUN

The Big Garden was buzzy with bees and the smell of warm grass.

In the very middle stood a big round stone platform with a tall, thin metal stick sticking straight up. Numbers were carved around the edge like a clock face — but flat, on the ground.

“YOOOO TICK TOCK!” yelled a bright yellow clock-kid bouncing on the grass. “I’m Sunny! And this is my brother — “

“I’m Shadow,” said a calm grey clock-kid in the cool patch under a tree. “Hi.”

“We’re the sundial,” said Sunny. “We tell time with the BIGGEST hand in the universe!”

“What’s the biggest hand in the universe?” Tick Tock asked.

Sunny pointed up.

“The SUN!”

Tick Tock burst out laughing. “The sun is a HAND?”

“Sort of!” Sunny said. “Watch.”

They led him to the platform. The metal stick in the middle (they called it the gnomon — Tick Tock said “GNO-MAN, what a funny word”) threw a long dark shadow across the stones.

“In the morning,” Sunny said, “the sun is over there in the east. So the shadow points THIS way — to the west. The shadow is long. Like whooosh, super long.”

“At lunchtime,” Shadow said, “the sun is high above us. So the shadow shrinks — shrnk! — to almost nothing.”

“And in the afternoon,” Sunny said, “the sun starts sliding the other way. The shadow grows again — streeeetch! — and points east now.”

“So the sun is the hand and the shadow is the pointer!” Tick Tock said.

“YES!” Sunny cheered. “Smartest clock all week!”

“But… wait,” Tick Tock said. He scratched where his ear would be if clocks had ears. “Why does the sun move across the sky?”

Sunny grinned.

“It doesn’t.”

“What?!”

“WE’RE moving.”

“WHAAAAT?!”

Shadow nodded slowly. “Our whole planet — the Earth — is spinning. Like a big slow basketball. Spinny spinny spinny. We can’t feel it, because we’re spinning along with it. But the sun looks like it moves, because we’re moving past it.”

“My WHOLE TOWN is spinning?!” Tick Tock said. His googly eyes wobbled like jellybeans.

“All the time,” Sunny said. “Day and night. One whole spin = one day. When our side faces the sun: hello, daytime! When our side faces away: goodnight!”

“That is so weird I love it!” Tick Tock said. He wrote: EARTH SPINS. SUN STAYS. WHAT?!

Sunny and Shadow helped him build a mini sundial in the corner of the garden, with a pebble for a gnomon and tiny stones for numbers. Tick Tock watched his little shadow point exactly at “two.”

“Got it!” he said.

“Next stop?” Sunny asked.

“Tell me, tell me!”

“Visit the Hourglass Twins,” said Shadow. “Sandy and Grains. They’re… sandy. Bring a tissue. Sand goes everywhere.”

Chapter 5 — Sandy, Grains, and a Lot of Sand

The next street was a quiet one. The houses were funny shapes: wide at the top, wide at the bottom, squished in the middle. Like two ice-cream cones stuck nose-to-nose.

“HOURGLASS HOUSE!” said a small sign at the gate. “Please be gentle, sand inside.”

Tick Tock tiptoed in.

Two hourglass-shaped kids waved at him from a big squishy rug. One had pale white sand swirling inside her, the other had warm golden sand.

“I’m Sandy!” said the white-sand one.

“I’m Grains!” said the golden one. “And don’t sneeze. Just don’t.”

“Hello!” Tick Tock said, very carefully.

“We measure time with — guess!” Sandy said.

“Hands?”

“Nope.”

“Numbers?”

“Nope.”

“The sun?”

“Nope!”

Grains pointed at her own squishy middle. “SAND!“

She picked up a small glass hourglass and turned it upside down. Click.

The sand began to fall in a thin, steady line. Shhh-shhh-shhh.

“When ALL the sand from the top has fallen to the bottom,” Sandy said, “one HOUR has gone by. Then we flip it!”

Tick Tock stared. The sand whispered like a tiny waterfall.

“It’s so cool,” he said. “It’s like… a sandstorm in slow motion.”

“Exactly!” Grains said. “We don’t need batteries. We don’t need the sun. We don’t need a tickle on a crystal. We just need sand and gravity. And gravity is FREE.”

She handed Tick Tock a tiny pocket hourglass on a string. It was small — only three minutes long.

“Try this,” she said. “Flip it, and see how much you can do in three minutes.”

“Like what?”

“Like… count to a hundred! Tell a joke! Try to stand on one foot! Anything!”

Tick Tock flipped the little hourglass. Click.

“Okay, I’ll tell a joke,” he said. “Why did the hourglass go to school?”

“Why?” said Sandy and Grains together.

“To learn its t-i-m-e-s tables!”

There was a tiny pause. Then —

“PFFFT!” Sandy snorted.

“That is the SANDIEST joke I’ve ever heard!” Grains laughed. Sand wobbled in her belly.

By then the little hourglass was almost empty.

“Whoa,” said Tick Tock. “That was fast. But also slow. But also fast! Three minutes is WEIRD!”

“Three minutes is plenty,” said Sandy. “If you pay attention.”

He tucked the hourglass into his backpack next to the paper clock and the digital card.

“Now…” Grains pointed her hourglass-top at the door. “It’s getting late, little clock. Time to go home.”

Chapter 6 — Home, Sweet Tikk-Takk Home

The streetlamps were popping on, one by one. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Tick Tock skipped up the wiggly lane to his yellow house. He could see the warm light in the window. He could smell soup.

He burst through the door.

“I’M HOME!”

“TICK TOCK!” Mum and Dad shouted together. Mum’s tiny door flew open and a bird shouted “CUCKOO!” which she always did when she was excited.

He plopped onto the rug and emptied his backpack like a magician.

“Look! Mr. Analog gave me this paper clock! And Ms. Digital gave me this card with numbers! And the sundial twins helped me build a stone one — but it’s still in the garden, sorry. And Sandy and Grains gave me this tiny hourglass and it’s the COOLEST!”

He flipped the hourglass and watched the sand zip down. “Three whole minutes! Just sand!”

“And what did you learn?” Dad asked.

Tick Tock thought hard. His googly eyes went still for the first time all day.

“Loads,” he said. “Mr. Analog tells time with three hands — snail, ice-cream, ZOOM. Ms. Digital tells it with shaking crystals. Sunny and Shadow tell it with the SUN and our WHOLE PLANET IS SPINNING, did you know that?!”

“We had a feeling,” Mum said.

“And Sandy and Grains tell it with sand! Like a sandstorm in slow motion! And — and — they’re ALL TELLING THE SAME THING. The same time. Just in their own funny way.”

“That’s it, son,” Grandfather Clock said. Bonggggg. “Time is the same for everyone. We just point at it differently.”

Tick Tock yawned. A huge one. His hands drooped a little.

“Bedtime, popcorn-boy,” Mum said. She kissed him on the forehead. Ding.

He climbed into bed. He could hear, very softly, the whole town outside. Mr. Analog’s tikk-takk. Ms. Digital’s quiet hum. The sundial waiting for tomorrow’s sun. The hourglass twins flipping one last hourglass before bed.