November 13, 2026 · A fictional column from the Electric Icarus universe, created by Jon LaBelle
Dr. Elias Locke’s Log — The Friday That Borrowed a Number
The trouble began at 8:13, when the town clock struck fourteen.
This was inconvenient for several reasons, chiefly that the clock possessed only twelve numbers and the mayor had already spent the previous Thursday insisting that time was a municipal responsibility.
I was summoned to the courthouse by a clerk named Miss Tallow, who informed me that Friday the thirteenth had arrived carrying a receipt for an additional Friday.
“Who ordered it?” I asked.
“The town council,” she said. “By unanimous abstention.”
On the courthouse steps, a brass plaque read: TODAY IS FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH. TOMORROW IS ALSO FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, PENDING APPEAL.
Inside, the council had convened an emergency meeting to determine whether the second Friday should be taxed. One alderman proposed declaring it Saturday. Another demanded a scientific demonstration, provided the demonstration did not inconvenience his lunch.
I examined the clock. Its hands were moving correctly; its calendar wheel, however, had been fitted with a small paper label reading UNLUCKY. Someone had attached the label to the mechanism with a pin, and each time the wheel tried to advance, the pin caught the next tooth.
“There’s your extra Friday,” I said. “A superstition has become a mechanical obstruction.”
The mayor frowned. “Are you saying superstition is real?”
“I’m saying the pin is real. The superstition is merely the explanation somebody wrote on it.”
This distinction displeased the council. They had already printed commemorative stationery.
Miss Tallow brought me a screwdriver, a cup of coffee, and a form requiring me to certify that the screwdriver had not been used to alter the laws of nature. I signed the form under protest and removed the pin.
The clock ticked. The wheel advanced. The courthouse bells rang once, sensibly, and the calendar displayed Saturday.
There was a moment of silence.
Then the mayor declared the experiment inconclusive because the town had not voted on the outcome.
“An observation,” I told him, “does not require permission to have happened.”
He looked at the clock, then at the stationery, then at the waiting reporters. “Can we at least keep the second Friday as a festival?”
“Certainly,” I said. “But put it on the calendar as a choice, not a discovery.”
By noon, the town had announced its First Annual Festival of the Friday That Wasn’t. Attendance was excellent. The clock worked. The commemorative stationery sold out.
I returned to my office with one final note: a label can stop a machine if we fasten it to the gears. That does not make the label a law of the universe.
The mayor sent me a bill for the extra day.
I paid for the coffee instead.
