The countryside had never seen something of its immensity. When it first traveled—or more precisely, hovered—from the South across the ocean, people thought it was a tornado. To be fair, the dark and dusty appearances of it did resemble one. But when the villagers ducked and hid for their lives, they realized that it wasn’t a huge spiral of storm, yet an enormous structure of the old industrial world.

The huge structure was dark, so dark that it resembled a pillar carved out of obsidian. Threads of metallic tubes surrounded it like veins of blood. It floated above the sandy beaches in an eerie silence. Under it, not a single grain of sand was displaced. On the top of the black pillar was a huge clock. The minute and hour hands pointed to a dial place with no numbers. Through the clock, the metallic gears could be seen. The hands of the clock rotate and rotate without rest. Distant echoes of time could be heard along with the waves.

The village was nothing but ordinary. Several hundred people inhibited numerous houses along the beach, mostly local fishermen and occasionally some travelers who liked undiscovered sites. Houses were painted white with other bright colors, with blue as the favored. Some were supported by pillars to allow the clear ocean waves sweep under them. Others were fortresses carved out of white concrete and stone This part of the Southern coast of Crete was underdeveloped as only small sandy roads could reach this isolated village. But still, it could marvel at the immense Mediterranean yonder.

They never knew where the clock tower came from. It seemed to have flown across the ocean from a distant land of desert, but many didn’t acknowledge another world across the waters. In fact, the brave sailors and explorers of the last Age had never returned from sailing down south.

It was a vivid morning when the clock tower arrived. Calypso was planting flowers near a flooded house when she heard the mayor walked towards her. The house, as rumors from his goat-horned neighbor told, was filled with water when a man melted on his chair. She was never too fond of the mayor of the village, but still assumed him to be kind in heart. The old man with beard weaved into plaits stared at her with his eyes of storming ocean. He explained to her that she had to go.

Calypso’s dark hair and white garment waved in the salty ocean wind. She stood on the warm sand, staring at the immensity on the shore. It hovered on the beach, casting a long shadow under the morning Sun, like a sundial. A true measurement of time, she thought, not just a clock tower. It was a monolith. An alien, here, wandered to a small village on shores of Crete. It was something people couldn’t possibly build with paper, wood, sand, or stone. Despite of its heaviness, it floated without any support. A house without a base.

But meanwhile, she wondered silently why the mayor asked her to stop the watering of her flowers and come to marvel at the clock tower.

The mayor was annoyed and bewildered when he heard the doctor’s clamor as he came into the office. He was already troubled, because earlier this month a man melted in his house. No matter how he tried to get rid of the water, the house was still submerged, like a huge fish tank. The water not only ruined the flowers, but also his mood. The mayor lifted his eyes from the book, preferably Odyssey, and mumbled some curses. The doctor told him all about the black clock tower. While listening to him half-heartedly, the mayor stared out of the window. The blue ocean glimmered in the morning light; however, there was a huge bar-like shadow on the waves. The mayor could not help but frown.

He was dragged out of his office by the doctor, into the waves of salty wind. There, on the shore, above the golden sand, was the clock tower in all its immensity. The dark pillar was so tall that it could pierce open the blue sky. The huge dial place covered the entirety of its tip, like a window into its inside, all the organs of metal gears seen. The obsidian and black iron were reflecting the light coldly. The mayor could not help but gasp.

The doctor called him and another specialist—a linguistics professor in his retirement—to the base of the tower. They stood near it, marveling its sheer size. The base could probably cover an entire block of the village. But they dare not go under the hovering base into the dark shadow. The three stood, with a circle of villagers surrounding them further away from the tower.

The linguist was the first to walk towards the shadow. The instant he stepped inside the darkness, an iron plate dropped down from the base of the tower. It splashed the white sand into the linguist’s face with a muffled thud. He walked towards the plate. Letters were carved onto it. The linguist studied the carvings. Not Greek. They were presumably letters, ones that he didn’t quite understand. But he was a linguist, and he knew what he had to do.

“The plate from the tower said something.” The linguist said in Greek as he walked towards the mayor and the doctor. “Bring someone in youth to the tower by noon.”

The mayor obeyed. He went through the name list of all the young people in the village and wrote them onto slips of paper. He then poured the names into a huge wooden bowl and called the doctor in. He took a sip of water and placed the cup on Odyssey, leaving a round watermark on the pages. The doctor was using one of his books as a fan. The climbing sun was making the air hot. Time was short. He stuck a hand into the bow, fingers fumbling between the white slips of paper. Then he picked one and handed to the mayor. The mayor opened it.

Calypso was brought to the base of the tower. The linguist stared at her half-heartedly. She stared into his dark, profound iris. Her ocean blue eyes glimmered like waves. Some villagers gathered around the tower for leisure, seeing the whole scene in all its exotism unfold. The mayor asked her to go into the shadow. She walked in a graceful manner, the white garments unraveled like wings of an albatross. She stood there in patience. With a silent crackle, the base of the tower opened. The clacking of metal gears could be heard as a spiral of dark metal stairs were lowered down slowly and hit the ground with a muffled thud. The tower still hovered above the sand, several meters away from Calypso. She looked up, then to the linguist.

“What is your name?” The linguist asked calmly. Void resided in his eyes.

Calypso replied to him. The linguist stared at the stairs. It led to a dark hole into the tower. The linguist did not like mysteries.

“Very well. Calypso, please walk on the stairs.”

She stepped onto the metallic staircase. Slowly she ascended through the dark spiral, closer and closer to the alien craft hovering above her. The villagers surrounded the staircase in a circle. She looked down. The linguist, mayor and doctor were all looking up, meeting her eyes. She could feel the wind again. After some time, she was completely submerged in the darkness, gone from their sight. The spiral of stairs creaked and moved up into the tower. Nothing was left under the base, only a large shadow that was getting more and more stretched as the sun went down.

The dark clock tower disappeared the next morning. It hovered towards the endless ocean in the mayor’s eyes, slowly and calmly, while echoing with the waves in harmony. The dark pillar grew smaller and smaller, until it was gone to the other side of the horizon. The linguist was reading the mayor’s book, Odyssey, and he frowned at the circular watermark damaging one of the pages. The doctor was somewhere in the village. The mayor sighed in relief as he lied down in his chair. Now he just needed someone else to replant the flowers near the house filled with water.