when the clock strikes twelve (the last hour) (headcannon)
Title: when the clock strikes twelve (the last hour)
Pairing: taokai
Rating: pg-13
Genre: dystopian!au
Length: 6000~w
Summary: Can you imagine a world where thoughts are formulated by medication, and friendship and warmth and family are forgotten concepts? That is a utopia. That is the world Kai lives in. That is Cadeau.
when the clock strikes twelve (the last hour)
i | ii
WARNING: This may or may not ruin the story for you, because I talk about stuff that go beyond the plot, stuff you may not want to know, because some stories are better ambiguous. SO PROCEED WITH CAUTION. THERE'S ALSO A LOT OF INCOHERENCY HERE. SORRY.
ALSO, there are uhh a couple of references to 1984 and history, so if you have any questions about those, you can ask me :DD
And uh. Sorry for all the cussing and sarcasm, that's basically how I talk to my friends ('cause this was written for my friends lol).
The Timeframes
There are two timeframes in this story, but three time periods are mentioned.
The first timeframe is the “Present,” which is basically the dystopian universe Kai and Tao live in. This happened after one of the great Superpowers decided to put their nuclear weapons into use and conquered the entire world (don’t ask, omfg). Then, they implemented these super strict rules, which they wrote in a book everyone knows as the Manual. Sound familiar?
Anyways, the “Past,” or the “time Before,” is the world we’re living in. It’s when democracy still existed and before one of the Superpowers (the definition is how we know it as-like the US, Russia, China, etc) blew up Earth and stuff. The story, however, is not set in this time period. It never ventures there either. It’s just mentioned in passing.
The second timeframe is the “Future,” though it’s never explicitly stated as such. This is the time period where the Archangel exists, holding the gold watch, which is pretty much the Hourglass. The Hourglass is the abstract concept time itself, and it morphed into the gold watch after it was destroyed. The holder of the gold watch “controls” time (but they don’t really, they just like, watch over it and make sure nothing fucks up and stuff).
Cadeau
Cadeau is one of the many districts that make up what we know as Earth today. Each district is controlled by a small group of people, lead by a head everyone knows as the President. The Man in the story is not the President of Cadeau, but one of the “Cabinet” members. He advises the President and does the dirty work for the President. Like pulling Kai into captivity.
There are two “wings” of Cadeau, the Upper Wing and the Lower Wing. The Upper Wing is made up of the “intelligentsia,” or those who know how to read and think they’re basically superior to everyone. Within the Upper Wing, there’s another class-the Government Officials. They’re these weird omnipresent people with this Secret Police thing (the hooded figures) who control everyone’s lives (mostly the Upper Wing though). The Lower Wing is freer, and the Government doesn’t spend as much time trying to regulate it, mainly because they think it’s pointless, since the Lower Wingers are “uneducated” and whatnot. The Upper Wingers are sort of taught-or programmed-to view the Lower Wingers as people “below them,” which is why Kai often makes “bigoted comments.” If you want, you can think of the Government Officials as the Inner Party, the Upper Wing as the Outer Party, and the Lower Wing as the Proles.
Thought Waves and Pills
Thought Waves look like sound waves, but they don’t differ with every individual thought. It measures the frequency and the pattern of your thought. The Government gives the pills to each person so they can regulate their thought. If one takes the pill, then their thoughts of a particular subject will stay the same.
For example, someone’s thought process might be like this:
“It is 7:15, I will wake up now.”
“The sun is bright. I’m happy.”
“The sun is not out. I’m sad.”
And it’s like the same exact thing every day. Almost like an NPC.
Their thought waves will stay the same, so if they stop taking the pill, the Government will know exactly, because the thought waves will begin shifting. Kai’s thought waves began shifting even though he never stopped taking the pill. He began to question the Government, and in a way, he found the Government’s rules and stuff sort of ridiculous. But because he’s used to it, he doesn’t really make an effort to change, until he meets Tao.
The pills are made individually for each person so the Government can tell their thought waves apart. Basically, the pills control the way your minds works, and it lets you think only what it wants you to think. Kai’s case is a little bit peculiar because he starts thinking about stuff the pill doesn’t want him to think. This happens from time to time, but it’s mostly the Government’s fault, because they hadn’t made the pill accurately. In Kai’s case, however, he was born with the inherent ability to perceive and to question, two things that are pretty much taboo in Cadeau.
So yeah, he was a “mistake” made not by the Government, but by God.
There are two pills, because one is for Daytime and the other one is for Nighttime. In other words, one is for when you’re awake, and the other one is for when you’re asleep. The one you take when you’re awake controls your thoughts when you’re awake, and likewise for the one when you’re asleep. So it sort of controls your dreams and “filters” it so you don’t get weird ideas and wake up one day going Shit, I want to overthrow the Government.
Tao
Tao was originally from the Lower Wing. He met this exiled man from the Upper Wing (they get sent to the Lower Wing or to Outside if they’re really bad), and out of an action of kindness, he was taught how to read. The Government makes surprise visits to the Lower Wing, and one day, they found Tao reading. They took him away from the Lower Wing and forced him to work for the Government. The Government knows that the pills will not work on Tao, because he was already like, a teenager when they found him, and you have to take the pills regularly for many years for it to work. Instead, they decided to just keep an eye on him. The man who taught him to read disappeared and was never heard of again. People think he’s locked in a chamber somewhere in the Capitol.
Tao also has an odd clarity that is quite rare in Cadeau. Even though the Lower Wingers are more cynical than the Upper Wingers, and know for a fact that the Government is evil and they should kill it, but they also know that with their abilities, they won’t ever be able to overthrow the government. So with that cynicism comes a little pessimism that may or may not be true. Tao, however, possesses also the strong resolve and determination to overthrow the Government.
He’s heard of the Hourglass at the Capitol (‘cause he works there and everything), and on one of his vacations, he decided to go there. Since he’s still a Lower Winger, it’s hard for the Government to track him, especially since the door to the Hourglass is also in the Lower Wing. He went in, went through the same experience as Kai, and he couldn’t break the Hourglass.
As Kai said, the Hourglass was simply too poignant to break. Kai was able to break it mainly because he was too overcome with grief and tears just started appearing and stuff.
So, after the failed attempt to break the Hourglass, Tao began keeping an eye on the thought monitors at the Capitol and tried to find a deviation to break the Hourglass. Later on, he heard about Kai and how Kai was not, under any circumstances, supposed to happen, and bam, he found the person he needed.
Zones
Zones are basically hours. The Government refuses to let other people think that they have something they cannot control, so they completely eliminated the concept of time. However, Zones are pretty much the same thing, but since the Government was the one implanting it, it seemed like the Government was controlling it. So yeah, it was pretty much the Government’s oversized and much too tender ego speaking.
They pretty much disregarded the original concept of weeks, months, years, days, hours, and whatnot. Like, there are only five days a week, and their names are Firstday, Seconday, and so on. There are twenty Zones (or hours) a Day, and ten Zones every Halfday. Don’t ask. The Government is weird.
But yeah, they couldn’t completely ignore time, because that’s simply impossible. Man alone measures time, not time itself.
The Infinite Monkey Theorem
Dude, this shit is actually true okay. This is the Wikipedia definition:
"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.
In this context, “almost surely” is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the “monkey” is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor for an abstract device that produces an endless random sequence of letters and symbols. The relevance of the theory is questionable-the probability of a monkey exactly typing a complete work such as Shakespeares’ Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time even a hunred thousand orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but not zero)."
It’s quite romantic if you think about it.
Tao says it as an explanation for Kai, the glitch in God’s system. Kai took it the negative way though, lol, like "It’s only because God made a mistake that you, such an abomination, can even exist."
The Multiple Universes Theory
Yeah, okay, so this I think most people are familiar with? There is more than one universe, and each universe is a representation of every little decision you make. For example, in this universe, I decided to finish this dreaded story. In a different universe, however, I may have given up halfway.
When Tao says this, what he really means is that there are an infinite amount of universes. If we set infinity as x, then x/2 amount of universes have the dystopian world they do. However, not every universe will have Kai, or at least this Kai that Tao knows.
So, he doesn’t know how many universes Kai’s in, and he feels fortunate to know that Kai will pretty much save everyone.
Wow Kai, so many expectations.
The Archangel
??? SHOULD I EXPLAIN THIS OR NOT OMFG IDK
Kay, as a sort of explanation, here's a conversation between me and my friend regarding this lol:
S: WAIT HOW COME KAI IS AN ARCHANGELAND WHY IS HE LIKE a "MYTH" OR SOMETHING CUHZ IF HES HUNMAN THEN SHOULDNT HE BE HUNGRY AND GO LIKE "AW FUCK THIS ARCHANGEL SHIT, GOING TO THE CONVINIENCE STORE AND BUYING MYSELF SOME BREAD TO EAT"
H: omfg okay, his friend is tao. tao...idk something happened to him so kais like NOO TAO but yeah and then he breaks the hourglass and WHOO MAAGIIICC. the light shit engulfs him and stuff and it turns him into a fking angel, its a metaphor okay. he turns into a fking angel and he's all sad and shit cuz he's saved the world
S: what is kai as archangel? how come he survives so long. in comparison to everyone else? does that "magical light" give him eternity or something? or does he actualy not exist anymore in the future, and he really IS just a myth?
H: myths come from a sliver of truth. the stories of them became legends AND LEGEND BECAME MYTH. so technically its real to a certain extent. the light is formed from the sands of an hourglass yo. the light is time. that time pretty much replaced the Present with the Past except its not the Past anymore, it's the Future, but the Past is sorta the same as the Future in terms of how the world is like. the only difference is probably the people in the Future remember something called the Present, where everyone was fucked up and shit, and they also remember an archangel, kai. whether or not kai becomes an archangel is...debatable? cuz the archangel part is pretty much a childrens story someone tells to their kid to explain how Present was erased and Future came to be and somewhere during that time, the story became more and more embellished and kai became an archangel and ppl say he still lives on in the bell tower with that gold watch to watch over mankind and remind them that sometihng like the Present exists and it might take over again if you fuck up. BUUUUT the archangel may or may not be there? LIEK IN MY WORLD ITS THERE OKAY. KAI IS AN ARCHANGEL AND ONE DAY HE FINDS TAO AGAIN AND THE ARCHANGEL COMES BACK DOWN TO EARTH AND CONTINUES HIS JOB OF WATCHING OVER MANKIND ON EARTH UNDER THE DISGUISE OF A HUMAN AND HE FINDS TAO BECAUSE MULTIPLE UNIVERSES BRO.
S: in my opinion, tao is a hot guy and he should fuck kai (>3> stfu s. stfu)
H: HE FINDS TAO IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE, MAYBE EONS AFTER AND FUCK, HE'LL BE DAMNED IF HE LETS TAO ESCAPE AGAIN, SO HE DOESNT. SO KAI'S READING THE STORY TO A KID AT THE END AND HE ASKS TAP THE QUESTION and then tao whacks him on the head but thats not part of the story so yeah
Pairing: taokai
Rating: pg-13
Genre: dystopian!au
Length: 6000~w
Summary: Can you imagine a world where thoughts are formulated by medication, and friendship and warmth and family are forgotten concepts? That is a utopia. That is the world Kai lives in. That is Cadeau.
when the clock strikes twelve (the last hour)
i | ii
WARNING: This may or may not ruin the story for you, because I talk about stuff that go beyond the plot, stuff you may not want to know, because some stories are better ambiguous. SO PROCEED WITH CAUTION. THERE'S ALSO A LOT OF INCOHERENCY HERE. SORRY.
ALSO, there are uhh a couple of references to 1984 and history, so if you have any questions about those, you can ask me :DD
And uh. Sorry for all the cussing and sarcasm, that's basically how I talk to my friends ('cause this was written for my friends lol).
The Timeframes
There are two timeframes in this story, but three time periods are mentioned.
The first timeframe is the “Present,” which is basically the dystopian universe Kai and Tao live in. This happened after one of the great Superpowers decided to put their nuclear weapons into use and conquered the entire world (don’t ask, omfg). Then, they implemented these super strict rules, which they wrote in a book everyone knows as the Manual. Sound familiar?
Anyways, the “Past,” or the “time Before,” is the world we’re living in. It’s when democracy still existed and before one of the Superpowers (the definition is how we know it as-like the US, Russia, China, etc) blew up Earth and stuff. The story, however, is not set in this time period. It never ventures there either. It’s just mentioned in passing.
The second timeframe is the “Future,” though it’s never explicitly stated as such. This is the time period where the Archangel exists, holding the gold watch, which is pretty much the Hourglass. The Hourglass is the abstract concept time itself, and it morphed into the gold watch after it was destroyed. The holder of the gold watch “controls” time (but they don’t really, they just like, watch over it and make sure nothing fucks up and stuff).
Cadeau
Cadeau is one of the many districts that make up what we know as Earth today. Each district is controlled by a small group of people, lead by a head everyone knows as the President. The Man in the story is not the President of Cadeau, but one of the “Cabinet” members. He advises the President and does the dirty work for the President. Like pulling Kai into captivity.
There are two “wings” of Cadeau, the Upper Wing and the Lower Wing. The Upper Wing is made up of the “intelligentsia,” or those who know how to read and think they’re basically superior to everyone. Within the Upper Wing, there’s another class-the Government Officials. They’re these weird omnipresent people with this Secret Police thing (the hooded figures) who control everyone’s lives (mostly the Upper Wing though). The Lower Wing is freer, and the Government doesn’t spend as much time trying to regulate it, mainly because they think it’s pointless, since the Lower Wingers are “uneducated” and whatnot. The Upper Wingers are sort of taught-or programmed-to view the Lower Wingers as people “below them,” which is why Kai often makes “bigoted comments.” If you want, you can think of the Government Officials as the Inner Party, the Upper Wing as the Outer Party, and the Lower Wing as the Proles.
Thought Waves and Pills
Thought Waves look like sound waves, but they don’t differ with every individual thought. It measures the frequency and the pattern of your thought. The Government gives the pills to each person so they can regulate their thought. If one takes the pill, then their thoughts of a particular subject will stay the same.
For example, someone’s thought process might be like this:
“It is 7:15, I will wake up now.”
“The sun is bright. I’m happy.”
“The sun is not out. I’m sad.”
And it’s like the same exact thing every day. Almost like an NPC.
Their thought waves will stay the same, so if they stop taking the pill, the Government will know exactly, because the thought waves will begin shifting. Kai’s thought waves began shifting even though he never stopped taking the pill. He began to question the Government, and in a way, he found the Government’s rules and stuff sort of ridiculous. But because he’s used to it, he doesn’t really make an effort to change, until he meets Tao.
The pills are made individually for each person so the Government can tell their thought waves apart. Basically, the pills control the way your minds works, and it lets you think only what it wants you to think. Kai’s case is a little bit peculiar because he starts thinking about stuff the pill doesn’t want him to think. This happens from time to time, but it’s mostly the Government’s fault, because they hadn’t made the pill accurately. In Kai’s case, however, he was born with the inherent ability to perceive and to question, two things that are pretty much taboo in Cadeau.
So yeah, he was a “mistake” made not by the Government, but by God.
There are two pills, because one is for Daytime and the other one is for Nighttime. In other words, one is for when you’re awake, and the other one is for when you’re asleep. The one you take when you’re awake controls your thoughts when you’re awake, and likewise for the one when you’re asleep. So it sort of controls your dreams and “filters” it so you don’t get weird ideas and wake up one day going Shit, I want to overthrow the Government.
Tao
Tao was originally from the Lower Wing. He met this exiled man from the Upper Wing (they get sent to the Lower Wing or to Outside if they’re really bad), and out of an action of kindness, he was taught how to read. The Government makes surprise visits to the Lower Wing, and one day, they found Tao reading. They took him away from the Lower Wing and forced him to work for the Government. The Government knows that the pills will not work on Tao, because he was already like, a teenager when they found him, and you have to take the pills regularly for many years for it to work. Instead, they decided to just keep an eye on him. The man who taught him to read disappeared and was never heard of again. People think he’s locked in a chamber somewhere in the Capitol.
Tao also has an odd clarity that is quite rare in Cadeau. Even though the Lower Wingers are more cynical than the Upper Wingers, and know for a fact that the Government is evil and they should kill it, but they also know that with their abilities, they won’t ever be able to overthrow the government. So with that cynicism comes a little pessimism that may or may not be true. Tao, however, possesses also the strong resolve and determination to overthrow the Government.
He’s heard of the Hourglass at the Capitol (‘cause he works there and everything), and on one of his vacations, he decided to go there. Since he’s still a Lower Winger, it’s hard for the Government to track him, especially since the door to the Hourglass is also in the Lower Wing. He went in, went through the same experience as Kai, and he couldn’t break the Hourglass.
As Kai said, the Hourglass was simply too poignant to break. Kai was able to break it mainly because he was too overcome with grief and tears just started appearing and stuff.
So, after the failed attempt to break the Hourglass, Tao began keeping an eye on the thought monitors at the Capitol and tried to find a deviation to break the Hourglass. Later on, he heard about Kai and how Kai was not, under any circumstances, supposed to happen, and bam, he found the person he needed.
Zones
Zones are basically hours. The Government refuses to let other people think that they have something they cannot control, so they completely eliminated the concept of time. However, Zones are pretty much the same thing, but since the Government was the one implanting it, it seemed like the Government was controlling it. So yeah, it was pretty much the Government’s oversized and much too tender ego speaking.
They pretty much disregarded the original concept of weeks, months, years, days, hours, and whatnot. Like, there are only five days a week, and their names are Firstday, Seconday, and so on. There are twenty Zones (or hours) a Day, and ten Zones every Halfday. Don’t ask. The Government is weird.
But yeah, they couldn’t completely ignore time, because that’s simply impossible. Man alone measures time, not time itself.
The Infinite Monkey Theorem
Dude, this shit is actually true okay. This is the Wikipedia definition:
"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.
In this context, “almost surely” is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the “monkey” is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor for an abstract device that produces an endless random sequence of letters and symbols. The relevance of the theory is questionable-the probability of a monkey exactly typing a complete work such as Shakespeares’ Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time even a hunred thousand orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but not zero)."
It’s quite romantic if you think about it.
Tao says it as an explanation for Kai, the glitch in God’s system. Kai took it the negative way though, lol, like "It’s only because God made a mistake that you, such an abomination, can even exist."
The Multiple Universes Theory
Yeah, okay, so this I think most people are familiar with? There is more than one universe, and each universe is a representation of every little decision you make. For example, in this universe, I decided to finish this dreaded story. In a different universe, however, I may have given up halfway.
When Tao says this, what he really means is that there are an infinite amount of universes. If we set infinity as x, then x/2 amount of universes have the dystopian world they do. However, not every universe will have Kai, or at least this Kai that Tao knows.
So, he doesn’t know how many universes Kai’s in, and he feels fortunate to know that Kai will pretty much save everyone.
Wow Kai, so many expectations.
The Archangel
??? SHOULD I EXPLAIN THIS OR NOT OMFG IDK
Kay, as a sort of explanation, here's a conversation between me and my friend regarding this lol:
S: WAIT HOW COME KAI IS AN ARCHANGELAND WHY IS HE LIKE a "MYTH" OR SOMETHING CUHZ IF HES HUNMAN THEN SHOULDNT HE BE HUNGRY AND GO LIKE "AW FUCK THIS ARCHANGEL SHIT, GOING TO THE CONVINIENCE STORE AND BUYING MYSELF SOME BREAD TO EAT"
H: omfg okay, his friend is tao. tao...idk something happened to him so kais like NOO TAO but yeah and then he breaks the hourglass and WHOO MAAGIIICC. the light shit engulfs him and stuff and it turns him into a fking angel, its a metaphor okay. he turns into a fking angel and he's all sad and shit cuz he's saved the world
S: what is kai as archangel? how come he survives so long. in comparison to everyone else? does that "magical light" give him eternity or something? or does he actualy not exist anymore in the future, and he really IS just a myth?
H: myths come from a sliver of truth. the stories of them became legends AND LEGEND BECAME MYTH. so technically its real to a certain extent. the light is formed from the sands of an hourglass yo. the light is time. that time pretty much replaced the Present with the Past except its not the Past anymore, it's the Future, but the Past is sorta the same as the Future in terms of how the world is like. the only difference is probably the people in the Future remember something called the Present, where everyone was fucked up and shit, and they also remember an archangel, kai. whether or not kai becomes an archangel is...debatable? cuz the archangel part is pretty much a childrens story someone tells to their kid to explain how Present was erased and Future came to be and somewhere during that time, the story became more and more embellished and kai became an archangel and ppl say he still lives on in the bell tower with that gold watch to watch over mankind and remind them that sometihng like the Present exists and it might take over again if you fuck up. BUUUUT the archangel may or may not be there? LIEK IN MY WORLD ITS THERE OKAY. KAI IS AN ARCHANGEL AND ONE DAY HE FINDS TAO AGAIN AND THE ARCHANGEL COMES BACK DOWN TO EARTH AND CONTINUES HIS JOB OF WATCHING OVER MANKIND ON EARTH UNDER THE DISGUISE OF A HUMAN AND HE FINDS TAO BECAUSE MULTIPLE UNIVERSES BRO.
S: in my opinion, tao is a hot guy and he should fuck kai (>3> stfu s. stfu)
H: HE FINDS TAO IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE, MAYBE EONS AFTER AND FUCK, HE'LL BE DAMNED IF HE LETS TAO ESCAPE AGAIN, SO HE DOESNT. SO KAI'S READING THE STORY TO A KID AT THE END AND HE ASKS TAP THE QUESTION and then tao whacks him on the head but thats not part of the story so yeah