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The machine, a device that could have been constructed in the devils workshop, snorted loudly and then fell silent. Slowly an unsettling rumbling grew from deep within its innards, it shook, juddered violently before giving up a strangled rasping sound and expelling a dense cloud of billowing white vapour from its twisted array of vents. 

Its operator, a dark Machiavellian type with a profusely sweating hook nosed face nervously attended his charge. As if driven by a twisted Faustian pact with the device he twisted knobs, pulled levers and polished its gleaming chrome surface with a damp cloth. Having completed his labours he turned and leered at the beholden queue and yelled out hoarsely, 'Next!' 

We all took one step forward. 

I fretted. 

'Next.' he shouted as he dispatched his waiting customer. We shuffled forward, closer to the machine. 

I struggled. I always did, my head was in turmoil. 

'Next,' he yelled wiping his hands down his stained apron. 

My turn had come. My mind went blank, I looked at the chalk board for salvation. 'A large café mocha and a piece of walnut cake.' 

I was gratified to see I had his approval. He bobbed his head, turned away from me and gave the machine a quick wipe down, singing out, 'to eat in or to take awayha.' 

'Eat in,' I offered apologetically looking round the busy shop with its crowded tables. 

'Righteeoo,' he grabbed a milk jug and attended to his infernal beast. 

My fare arrived in a cup large enough to have satiated the thirst of a bull and a thin slice of yellow walnut cake studded with edible brown diamonds. 

A girl with ten earrings and a silver nose ring dropped my change on my tray and looked at me from behind her blackened Goth eyelids. 'We're collecting for the local donkey sanctuary.' She nodded at the pop up cardboard box by the till. 

I pushed in ten pence into the donkeys head and gained a sultry smile from her dark glossed lips for my troubles. 

I surveyed the shop. A small sofa had been vacated by the window overlooking the street, a choice place for people watching. I fixed my stare on it to assert my rights from afar and wove quickly round the busy coffee tables and dropped into the comfort of its worn plump cushions. 

My vantage point gave me a view of the street. It was Wednesday, market day, five thirty according to the clock in the medieval tower over the far side of the square. Pensioners hovered waiting for late deals from the shouting vendors by the vegetable stalls, mothers looked apprehensively up at the gathering clouds and pushed prams hurriedly on to comfort of home and returning husbands.  

I took a sip of my coffee, and picked out a walnut from my cake and turned my attention to the bookcase beside me and its ranks of shabby books procured from house clearances of the dead and departed. I concluded that the one who had offered their books in de-facto to the shops collection had been a five year old with sci-fi leanings and a bent for ancient history. Crammed between a two volumes of Gibbon's History of the Roman Empire hid a slim copy of Winnie the Pooh. I levered a thick volume of HG Wells short stories from its peers and flicked through it pages, The Empire of the Ants , The Country of the Blind....... The Time Machine.' 

The noise in the Café suddenly dropped, a slight commotion had arisen at the tills, the raised voices ensuring a captivated audience. The Goth girl was on her feet scowling at a man who had evidently jumped the queue, heated words were being exchanged. An older man looking to resolve the conflict interrupted. Speaking quietly he fleetingly touched the other man on the wrist to pacify him. The other angrily pushed him away, said something to the girl and stormed from the shop.  

I returned to my book, the others to their coffees and blueberry muffins. But something about the encounter nagged me. When I thought about it, it was the touch of the elder man, on reflection it seemed odd, out of place. It was the smallest of things but I am the god of small things. My work is with pathogens so I'm used to observing and recording. 

'Do you mind if I sit here. Kindred spirits and all that,' the man from the confrontation smiled at me and threw a glance at the open volume on the sofa besides me. 

I did mind but wouldn't have said so. I moved my book. 

He shuffled in with a sigh and rested his Cappuccino on his knee. 'HG Wells,' he said, 'an old classic I see. It's probably out of print, worth a lot I should imagine.' 

He stopped abruptly, turned and gazed through the window as if he'd forgotten he'd started a conversation. His eyes were pale, the colour of faded tan leather set in a thin face with a neatly trimmed grey goatee beard. He wore a neat plain bow tie and casual jacket. A cultivated look that was somehow distinctive but anonymous. 

He was watching the man from the till, standing on the pavement waiting to cross the road. 

'I can't abide rudeness, can you?' he said to himself as much as to me. 

We watched him step out into the traffic. Instinctively I raised my arm to warn him. There was a flash of a red vehicle, a screech and a bang. The figure was whisked away like a doll being torn from a dog's mouth. 

There followed a deathly silence and a few cries of dismay from inside the shop. And then in the stillness a crash of a dropped coffee cup. I got up to help. 

'Don't go, there is nothing you can do, he is dead. Quite dead.' His tone was flat as if he'd become accustomed to such things. I wondered if perhaps he was a war veteran, used to summing up such things and out of necessity putting them quickly behind him. He sipped his coffee and ran his tongue over his thin lips chasing the flavours away. 'I can see you find it quite distressing. You look tired, stay here and we can talk for a few moments while they sort it out.' 

Truth be told I was relieved to find a reason not to go. 

'The Time Machine, one of my favourites.' He pulled my attention back to the cosy warmth of the shop and the book on the table. 

A crowd was gathering outside. I turned to the goateed stranger and allowed myself to be drawn in.  

He picked up the book. 'A fascinating concept isn't it, time travel? I've always thought that, it offers up so many possibilities don't you think?' He leant forward and looked at me earnestly,' but Doctor, time isn't something you have is it?' 

I stiffened. My voice constricted with puzzlement, 'How can you know that?' 

'I have seen your pictures in some of the press, I recognised you when I came in. A brain tumour. I'm sorry Doctor, to see such a brilliant career cut short. Have you much time?' His faced flushed with an expression of genuine concern. He reached out to touch my hand. I pulled it away. 

'I'd rather not talk about it if you don't mind.' I replied curtly shutting the book in an attempt to end our conversation. 

He sipped his coffee studying me under his bushy eyebrows. 'I understand, your time is short. It was insensitive of me to ask.' Then he reached forward and picked up the book and returned it to its place on the dusty shelves. 'It's a nice idea though, a time machine. Perhaps if you'd had one you could have gone forward in time and found a cure but I'm rather more prosaic in my outlook. Like you Doctor I don't believe in such things and in your position they must appear rather trite. But what if...' 

I had been gathering my things to leave. I slowed and looked in his hazel eyes, 'If what?' 

'Time is the path on which we must all travel Doctor, there can be no stepping back, no pausing to take in the view. The sunsets will gleam and dip and rise again as we walk to the rhythm of the ticking clock and mark the passing of the years with the chimes of the hours. There can be no lingering or running only the feeling of remorse as we look at the hours and wonder where the time went, wonder how we frittered it all away. When the clock hands approach twelve we will watch the seconds in attempt to slow the hands but they will irrevocably move forwards despite the fact that we urge them not to. When the clock strikes midnight we must leave our loved ones and lay down and watch the earth of ages scattered upon us. Why is that such a worry to you?' 

I sat down again. I had much on my mind. 'I suppose I feel my work here is not done, my clock is going to stop at quarter to the hour. I feel I have been short changed.' 

'A fine sentiment Doctor, one that I agree wholeheartedly with. You must look around you here and see me and all these other people frittering their lives away while you work to such purpose.' He leant forward and dropped his voice to a whisper, 'but what if you could find the key to wind the clock's mechanism up again so it runs to midnight, to five or ten past or even if you had a mind to, to let it run on eternally.' 

I sat back slightly surprised by his familiarity. 'How would I do that?' 

'Each of us has our time allotted to us. Our inner key is set to run each and every one of our clocks to its set time.' He surveyed the room. 'Look around you, this room is so full of keys. If you knew how you could reach out and take one.' 

A feeling of disquiet spread through my body as I watched his thin eyes flicker across the faces in the room. 'And if you could, what would happen to them?' I asked. 

'Ah there it is. You have me. The thing is it's like the conservation of energy principle. There is only so much time available, it cannot be created or destroyed, just rerouted. If you step into another persons timeline and take it, then that is it, their clock will stop and yours will be wound.' 

'A life for a life?' I postulated aloud. 'In the unlikely event that what you tell me is true it would go against the Hippocratic oath, not something many of us could live with.' 

'But where's the loss, you will do greater things than any of these people here. While they waste away their hours you labour for the better of all-your work will save many lives. How can that be wrong? Perhaps you'd like a demonstration?' He began to rise from his seat. 'You see the young lady over there.' 

'Don't,' I said urgently and pulled him back. 'How can what you say help me?' 

'Shall we walk?' He pulled a fob watch on a short chain from his pocket and checked the time. Seemly satisfied he rose and lifted his coat. 'I fear it going to rain.' 

We pushed through the door, far off I could see the darkening of the rushing clouds, a fresh breeze bought the rumbling sounds of far off thunder into our faces. 

He turned his collar up and clapped his hands together as if to ward off a chill. 'It is a gift- this thing. Sometimes I feel a bit like Dorian Grey. It's odd that I have found time can be won from others, like a card game, it can be played for. Only a few who are invited to the game know the game is being played. Of course there are some that know, a few novices, and exceptionally there are some masters. I consider myself a Grand Master in the game.' 

'But the losers. Like him?' I threw a glance out of the window. 

'Ah well, he didn't know he was playing did he,' he shrugged, 'there must always be losers mustn't there?'  

We stood together on the edge of the pavement, the trucks and cars whistled by. I felt a momentary fleeting touch on my wrist. 

The sound of metal hitting flesh is a deeply unpleasant thing. The screech of brakes, the long desperate skidding of tyres, the sound of a live thing being hit by a hammer of metal is deeply distressing.  

When I got to him he was quite dead. Apart from his bow tie coming undone he looked serenely peaceful. I sat with him until the ambulance came. They asked if I knew who he was. We turned out his pockets, they were empty apart from some loose change and a voucher for a free coffee from the shop. I consoled the Goth girl for a while then headed home. I felt exhausted with the whole experience.  

I contacted the hospital a few days later and got his name - Harold Pink, like the man himself both distinctive and instantly forgettable all in one go. I did some research on him, he lived close by me in a semidetached house with a neatly maintained garden. I talked to his neighbours, he was a widower, quiet, unassuming, a pleasant man by all accounts. He'd lived there for years. The only thing they really remembered of him that he was always checking his watch. 

Mortality is a funny thing. Fifteen years ago Harold Pink died. Ten years ago I won the Nobel Prize for my pathogen research. Cures for many diseases will be with us soon, other brighter souls are picking up my mantle. I'm happy to step aside. I've been enjoying the tranquillity of retirement.

I find I'm checking my watch more these days. I'm reminded more and more of Harold Pink. I check my face in the glass of a newspaper shop, the reflection shows a thin man with a goatee, grey around the edges, distinctive I think. I'm not like Harold, he was a taker, and I was never that. I only took what he gave to me and he'd collected many, many keys. 

The man I have been following is a physicist. I have been watching his work, he has recently been diagnosed with Lykens Disease. A great mind to be lost so tragically young.  

I straighten my bow tie, pull up the collar on my coat and walk faster to catch him up. 

I have a gift for him.