About time

The smell of wet soil in Lagos Is different from the smell of wet concrete. Concrete just smells damp, like an old basement or a soaked rug after a roof leak. Soil, on the other hand, the red, thick earth of my grandmother’s yard smelled alive. It smells like ancient secrets waking up after a sudden, violent downpour. I wiped a streak of drying mud off my cheek with the back of my wrist, leaving a faint grey smudge near my cheekbone. Outside the small zinc-roofed workshop, the afternoon rain had finally subsided from a deafening roar to a steady, rhythmic drip-drop against the gutterless eaves. "Dara," my grandmother called from the back kitchen, her voice crackling like dry palm leaves in a harmattan breeze. "Check the lower shelves. If the water got to the unbaked vases, we’ve lost three days of work." "Checking now, Ma," I called back. I bent down, my knees popping in the quiet room. The air was thick and humid, clinging to my skin like a second uniform. On the bottom shelf, three large clay pots sat safely above the waterline that had seeped under the wooden doorframe. I let out a quiet sigh of relief. Clay was forgiving while it was wet, but once it took a shape you didn't intend, fixing it took far more energy than starting over from scratch. I understood that principle better than anyone. My life, as far as I was concerned, was already molded, I molded it myself and I would do anything to keep it in place, little did I know how much rain it would take to change the shape of my already molded life… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..………. In the small, quiet workshop, I was sitting on a low wooden stool, carefully scraping dried clay off a wooden bat. The rain had picked up again outside, steady and monotonous. A sharp, frantic banging rattled the outer door. I stood up, startled. Before I could even reach the latch, the door burst open. Tife stood on the threshold, soaked from the rain, her hood pulled low over her face. The effortless girl I remembered was completely gone. Her eyes were bloodshot, heavy with dark circles, and her hands shook violently as she pushed the door shut behind her. "Tife?" I stepped forward, my voice filled with immediate concern. "What happened to you? Why didn't you answer my calls?" "Shut the door, Dara! Just shut it!" Tife snapped, her voice tight, brittle, and shrill. She leaned back against the wooden frame, breathing in ragged gasps, her expensive perfume now mixed with the sour smell of cold sweat and rain. "Tife, you're shaking. Sit down, let me get a towel" "I don't need a towel!" Tife shoved her hands into her hoodie pockets, taking a step closer into my personal space. Her eyes locked onto mine with a terrifying mix of desperation and sharp, desperate malice. "Do you have any idea what’s happening right now? Do you even look at your phone, or are you just sitting here playing in the mud while my life falls apart?" I froze, the rag slipping from my fingers. "I saw the link on the school portal. The About Time app. I downloaded it, but I didn't" "You didn't look at the rankings," Tife spat out, letting out a harsh, breathless laugh. "Of course you didn't. Because you’re at the bottom, Dara, but you don't care! You’ve always been fine down here in the dirt! You don't have a reputation to lose. You don't have a future riding on people knowing who you are!" I felt a cold prickle at the back of her neck. "Tife, it's just an app. It's just numbers on a screen" "It is NOT just numbers!" Tife took another step, her voice dropping into a low, trembling threat that cut straight through the quiet of the shop. "They kicked me off the magazine board, Dara. My followers are gone. People I’ve known for three years are sending me threats, telling me not to bother coming back when the gates open. My life is ruined. And it’s not going to stay that way." I stood my ground, my mind racing. "What are you talking about?" Tife pulled her phone from her pocket, the screen glowing against her pale face, and held it out. "Someone controls this app. Someone with power. And they gave me a choice today. They want something from me if I want my life back." I looked down at the screen, reading the encrypted message. My stomach dropped as the reality of the words settled over her. "They want a victim Dara" Tife whispered, her eyes wide, wild, and pleading, yet laced with a dangerous edge. "They know that I’m their best bet, I know everyone’s secret, they know I can create the next victim, I’m going back to school and I don’t care who has to drop out for me to go." Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. The only sound was the heavy drip of water from Tife’s soaked coat onto the concrete floor. I stared at the girl she had quietly admired for months the girl who had unwittingly given me the courage to dream bigger. Now, standing in my grandmother’s shop, Tife looked like a cornered animal willing to tear down anyone to escape the cage, and that someone was her, only Tife knew about “About Time Hits a Stop”. "You came all the way here," Isaid slowly, her lower tone steady, unyielding, and deathly quiet, "to threaten me?" "I came here to tell you that I'm surviving!" Tife cried out, her voice cracking. "I gave you Maryland High, Dara! You wouldn't even be there if it wasn't for me! You owe me this. If I have to throw you to the wolves to save myself, I will do it. Unless..." Tife paused, her lower lip trembling as she looked at Dara. "Unless we stop them first." I took a deep, deliberate breath. The passive, lay-low mentality that had kept me safe for the past year shattered in an instant. Hiding in the background was no longer an option. If I let Tife leak my secret, my scholarship, my family's security, and my future as a writer would be obliterated before physical classes even resumed. But retaliating against Tife wouldn't fix anything it would only feed the algorithm. The problem wasn't Tife's desperation. The problem was the invisible architect pulling the strings from behind a screen, weaponizing their deepest fears during a time when everyone was isolated and vulnerable. I looked Tife dead in the eye, my posture straightening, my hands clenching into firm fists at my sides. "You're not posting anything," I said, my voice dropping into a quiet, icy resolve. "You can't stop me" "I don't need to stop you, Tife," I interrupted, stepping past her to grab my own phone off the wooden counter. "Because we're not playing their game. You want your life back, and I want to keep mine. The only way out of this is to find out who created About Time, expose how they built the algorithm, and tear the whole system down as soon as the school gates open." Tife stared at me, stunned into silence by the sudden shift in the quiet girl she thought she could control. "Dara... you don't know anything about coding or anonymous servers. How are we supposed to trace a ghost? How am I supposed to go to school?" I looked down at my screen, tapping the app icon as the interface loaded its cold, calculated leaderboard. "Every algorithm leaves a digital footprint," I said, my voice filled with a sharp, burning determination I had never felt before. "And whoever built this knows too much about Maryland High's inner workings. They aren't a ghost, Tife. They're a student. And we're going to find them and yes we are going to school for that to work". Maryland High’s gate would be swung open in a few hours and students will flood in, but this time around will be different, the night is cold and I sat their contemplating my plans in silent retreat, I made my decision, I picked up the phone. A simple broadcast link sat on the screen, accompanied by a line of plain text: The hierarchy is live. Know your place before the gates open. [Download: About Time v 2.0]