Story two - 00:00:00-The countdown watch
Mateo Harmon first noticed the countdown on a Tuesday morning.
He was standing in line at Revive Coffee, idly scrolling through emails on his phone, when his smartwatch buzzed with a soft vibration. Expecting a calendar reminder or a message from his boss, he glanced down, only to see something unfamiliar.
Stark white digits glowed against the black screen:
168:00:00
Mateo tapped the screen. Nothing. He swiped left, then right. The numbers didn’t budge. Frowning, he pressed the side button, which usually brought up his apps. The screen blinked, then returned to its usual display:
8:27 AM.
Weird. Probably a glitch.
Shrugging it off, he stepped forward and ordered his usual medium Americano.
By noon, he’d nearly forgotten the strange alert. Deep in a project meeting, he barely noticed when his watch buzzed again. This time, the screen read:
164:23:17
The numbers were counting down.
Mateo stared. From what? To what? He couldn’t remember setting a timer, certainly not one that would end in nearly a week. He opened the timer app. Nothing was running. Ten seconds later, the screen reverted to the normal watch face.
“Mateo? The quarterly reports?”
His manager, Diane, was looking at him with raised eyebrows.
He looked up quickly. “Sorry,” he said, lowering his wrist. “I’ll have them to you by end of day.”
That evening, Mateo sat at his kitchen table, laptop open, fingers flying across the keyboard as he searched for answers. He combed through forums, tech blogs, and the official UniverseFit Pro support site, nothing but standard troubleshooting advice and promotional fluff.
At exactly 9:00 PM, the notification returned:
156:33:47
This time, he snapped a photo with his phone. Evidence. Proof he wasn’t imagining it.
He called over to his roommate. “Trevor, look at this.”
But by the time Trevor leaned in, the watch face had already reverted to its usual display.
Trevor squinted. “Okay... am I supposed to be impressed by the time?”
“It was a countdown,” Mateo muttered. “It showed up again. Keeps changing.”
Trevor reached for another slice of pizza. “Maybe it’s just counting down to an update? Tech companies do weird stuff like that sometimes.”
“Maybe,” Mateo said slowly. But unease gnawed at the edge of his thoughts. “Still, why not just say ‘Update in six days’ or whatever? Why a cryptic timer?”
Trevor shrugged. “Marketing gimmick? Trying to be mysterious? You know how these companies are. If it’s bothering you that much, just take it off.”
“I can’t,” Mateo snapped, sharper than he meant to. “I’m on day 293 of a 300-day step challenge, ten thousand steps, every single day. If I take it off now, I lose everything.”
Trevor raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you have a backup?”
“I ordered one earlier today after this started, but it won’t be here for three more days. I’m not throwing away ten months of work over some weird glitch.”
“Man, your fitness obsession is getting out of hand.”
“It’s not an obsession,” Mateo shot back. “I made a commitment. And it’s not just personal, I linked this watch to FitGoGoGo for the workplace challenge. Our team is counting on me.”
“Right, right. Corporate step supremacy.” Trevor smirked and took a bite. “Just don’t come crying to me when your watch becomes self-aware and tries to take over the world.”
Mateo didn’t respond. He just stared at the device for a moment before finally taking it off and placing it face-down on the nightstand. He climbed into bed, the glow of the countdown still burned into the back of his mind.
Wednesday morning, the countdown read:
146:34:03
During his lunch break, Mateo finally caved and called customer support. He sat in the break room, earbuds in, half-eaten sandwich forgotten on the table.
A cheerful voice answered. “UniverseFit Support, this is Melissa speaking. How can I help you today?”
“Hi, yeah,” Mateo began. “I’m getting this weird countdown notification on my UniverseFit Pro. It shows up every few hours, and I can’t get rid of it.”
“A countdown?” Melissa echoed, her voice warm with a soft Southern lilt. “Sir, the UniverseFit Pro doesn’t have any countdown feature, unless you set a timer yourself.”
“I didn’t,” Mateo said firmly. “And I’ve checked the timer app. There’s nothing running. It just... pops up. Stays for ten seconds. Then disappears.”
“Okay, let me check if there are any scheduled updates that could explain it.”
He listened to the rhythmic tapping of her keyboard.
“No updates on our end,” she said after a moment. “Have you tried restarting the device?”
“Twice.”
“Well, a factory reset might be your best option.”
Mateo hesitated. “If I do that, will I lose my step data? I’m on day 294 of a 300-day challenge.”
“We can back up your data to the cloud before you reset,” Melissa assured him. “Your streak should stay intact.”
Reluctantly, Mateo agreed. After backing up the data, he reset the watch during his afternoon coffee break, sitting in a quiet corner booth of the café with his phone and smartwatch side by side.
For six whole hours, the device behaved perfectly.
Then, at 8:14 PM, the screen flickered once. A familiar pulse of white digits emerged:
133:03:21
Five and a half days left.
To What?
Thursday
Mateo decided to ignore the countdown.
Despite the unsettling notifications, something about the mystery hooked him. Was it a glitch? A hidden feature? Some bizarre marketing stunt? The more he tried not to think about it, the more it tugged at the corners of his mind.
Still, he stuck to his usual routine: a morning run, a quick shower, a granola bar on the way out. Nine hours at his marketing job. Takeout dinner in front of the TV. Four times that day, the notification appeared. He saw it. He refused to react.
But just before bed, he glanced at his watch one last time.
108:13:07
The numbers glowed briefly, then vanished.
A thought had been forming in the background since Tuesday morning, subtle at first, almost invisible. But now it clicked. He did the math.
If the timer kept its current pace, it would hit zero at 8:27 AM next Tuesday.
The precision of it unsettled him.
Out of curiosity, he pulled up his calendar. Nothing scheduled. No appointments, no meetings, no birthdays. He scanned his email, no deadlines, no reminders, nothing out of the ordinary.
He even looked up astronomical events. Eclipses? Meteor showers? Planetary alignments?
Nothing.
And then, just before drifting off, the thought came, uninvited and sharp:
What if it’s counting down to my death?
He laughed, a low, nervous sound in the dark. Ridiculous.
Still, sleep didn’t come easily that night.
But he couldn’t bring himself to take the watch off, not when he was so close to day 300. Just a few more days, he told himself. Then the new watch would arrive. He could retire this one, once and for all.
Friday passed without incident.
Other than the countdown.
It still appeared every few hours, but now, Mateo noticed, it lingered. Each time, the digits stayed on the screen a little longer. Ten seconds. Then twenty. By evening, it was nearly a full minute.
At the gym after work, Miguel caught him glancing at the display again.
“Hot date this weekend?” Miguel asked, wiping sweat from his forehead between sets.
“No,” Mateo said, not looking up. “My watch is just acting weird.”
“Weird how?”
He hesitated. Saying it out loud would make it real. And ridiculous.
“Just… random notifications.”
Miguel shrugged. “Throw it away. Get a new one. That’s what I’d do.”
“Not until the new one comes.”
That night, the notification stayed on screen for a full minute:
85:22:33
His new watch still hadn’t arrived. Desperate to fix the problem, Mateo tried everything he could think of.
By the time he finally went to bed, he had:
? Performed another factory reset
? Removed and reinserted the battery
? Left it in the freezer for an hour
? Contacted the manufacturer, again
? Posted about the issue on three different tech forums
Nothing worked. The countdown continued, steady and silent, ticking its way toward zero.
On Saturday morning, Mateo woke to find the watch vibrating continuously on his nightstand. The screen flashed again and again with the countdown:
78:18:09
He picked it up. The vibration stopped. The watch returned to normal.
Now he was getting obsessed.
Determined to fix it once and for all, he brought it to a local electronics repair shop. The technician, an older man named Raj, with thick glasses and steady hands, examined the device carefully.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Raj admitted after running several diagnostic tests. “The countdown doesn’t appear to be part of the watch’s programming. It’s like it’s coming from elsewhere and displaying on your device.”
Mateo frowned. “What do you mean, coming from elsewhere?”
Raj shrugged. “Like a remote signal. But that’s not possible with this model. It doesn’t have the capability to receive external commands like this.”
“Can you stop it?”
“I can try reflashing the firmware,” Raj offered.
An hour later, he handed the watch back with an apologetic expression. “The new firmware lasted exactly seven minutes before the countdown returned.”
Mateo paid for the attempt and left the shop feeling more unsettled than before.
Trying to shake the tension, he called his sister, Elaine, and arranged to meet her for lunch downtown.
The restaurant was crowded, but they managed to find a small table by the window. Mateo deliberately placed the watch in his pocket.
“You seem distracted,” Elaine said halfway through their salads.
“Work stuff,” Mateo lied. “Big project coming up.”
“Must be important if you’re thinking about it on a Saturday,” she said.
He nodded, then shifted the conversation. “How are the kids?”
Elaine launched into a story about her daughter’s soccer tournament. Mateo tried to focus, but halfway through, he felt the watch vibrating in his pocket. Without thinking, he pulled it out.
68:04:52
“What’s that?” Elaine asked, catching the look on his face.
For some reason, Mateo didn’t want to tell her the truth.
“Just a deadline,” he said, slipping the watch back into his pocket.
“For your big project?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, picking at his salad. “For my big project.”
By Sunday, the countdown began updating hourly:
48:27:41 → 47:27:41 → 46:27:41
In the past five days, Mateo had checked the math again and again, but the result never changed: the countdown would reach zero at exactly 8:27 AM on Tuesday.
His curiosity about what would happen at zero only grew.
He tried leaving the watch at home while he ran to get groceries. But when he returned, he found the device vibrating so violently it had moved several inches across the dresser. The screen flashed the countdown in red instead of white.
Even more disturbing, when he picked it up and strapped it back on, the vibration stopped instantly. At the next hourly update, the numbers returned to their usual white.
That night, he dreamed of clocks and watches with faces that twisted into screams as their hands spun backward.
36:27:41
The watch vibrated every hour on the hour. Now the countdown stayed lit on the screen almost constantly, only flicking back to the regular watch face for a few brief seconds every fifteen minutes.
Mateo barely slept. When he did drift off, it was only for moments, and always back into that same nightmare of timepieces contorting into agony.
On Monday morning, he called in sick. He hadn’t slept. The hourly alerts had become inescapable. The watch now vibrated five minutes before every hour, and the countdown displayed in a steadily growing font.
Sitting at his kitchen table, Mateo stared at the device strapped to his wrist.
26:12:27
On impulse, he took the watch off and set it on the table. Then he went to the hall closet and pulled out his toolbox. A moment later, he returned, hammer in hand.
Just as he raised it, the front door opened. Trevor walked in.
“Whoa!” Trevor exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
“This thing is driving me crazy,” Mateo said, the hammer still poised above the watch.
“That’s a three-hundred-dollar watch,” Trevor pointed out. “Maybe try selling it instead of smashing it?”
Mateo hesitated. Slowly, he lowered the hammer. “Yeah… you’re right.”
He set it down. But then, the watch began to vibrate on the table. Its screen lit up:
26:07:27
This time, the numbers were blood red, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Trevor leaned in. “What the hell? Still the same countdown? I thought it was white before.”
Mateo nodded and gave him a quick rundown of everything that had happened.
“And customer support couldn’t help?” Trevor asked.
“They suggested a factory reset. Didn’t work.”
Trevor cautiously picked up the watch. The instant it left the table, the vibration intensified, buzzing so hard he nearly dropped it.
“Jesus! It’s like it’s alive.”
“It stops when I wear it,” Mateo muttered.
Trevor passed it back. Mateo reluctantly strapped it on, and just like before, the vibration stopped the moment it touched his skin.
“This is some freaky shit,” Trevor said, rubbing his arms. “Maybe take it to another repair shop? Or better yet, just toss it.”
Mateo shook his head. “I tried leaving it at home yesterday. It got worse.”
“Didn’t you order a new watch?”
“It got delayed. Transportation issue, apparently.”
Trevor frowned. “Well… what happens when it hits zero?”
Mateo looked down at the pulsing numbers.
“That’s what I’m curious about.”
23:27:41
Less than one day left.
By Monday afternoon, the countdown had become more intrusive. It no longer disappeared from the screen at all, and the numbers had grown to fill the entire display:
17:42:27
Mateo sat in a coffee shop, staring at the device.
A woman at the next table noticed his intense focus.
“Cool watch,” she said. “Is that a limited edition? I’ve never seen one with that kind of display. Is it for a product launch or something?”
“Something like that,” he mumbled, not looking up.
When he got home, Trevor was waiting for him, looking grim.
“I called a buddy who works at UniverseFit,” Trevor said. “Told him what’s been happening with your watch. He said there’ve been a few similar reports this month.”
Mateo’s heart skipped. “What happened to those people?”
Trevor hesitated. His expression darkened. “That’s the weird part. They don’t know. The complaints just… stopped. The customers never followed up.”
“They never followed up,” Mateo echoed, “or they couldn’t follow up?”
Trevor didn’t answer.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
That evening, Mateo sat on the edge of his bed. He decided to sleep early. He was too tired to stay awake, too anxious to think clearly anymore.
The clock on his nightstand read 8:27 PM.
The watch displayed:
12:00:35
Almost exactly twelve hours left.
He had tried everything. Factory resets. Leaving it behind. Ignoring it. Asking for help.
Now, he just wanted it to be over, to finally find out what was waiting for him at 8:27 AM on Tuesday.
The end of the universe, or his own death, he didn’t care anymore.
His phone rang, making him jump.
Unknown number.
“Hello?” Mateo answered cautiously.
“Is this Mateo Harmon?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“My name is Nora Chen. You don’t know me, but I saw your post on TechTalk about your UniverseFit Pro countdown.”
Mateo sat upright. “You’ve experienced this too?”
“No,” Nora said. “But my brother did. His watch started counting down three weeks ago.”
“What happened when it reached zero?” Mateo asked, throat suddenly dry.
There was a long pause on the line.
“He disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“Exactly what I said,” Nora replied, her voice tight with emotion. “The countdown on his watch hit zero at 3:16 AM on a Thursday. By the time I woke up at seven, he was gone. His car was still in the driveway. His wallet and phone were on his nightstand. The front door was locked from the inside. But David was just… gone.”
Mateo’s heart pounded. “Did you tell the police?”
“Of course,” Nora said. “They found nothing. No signs of struggle. No evidence of foul play. Just a missing person… and a dead smartwatch on his bedroom floor.”
“Dead?”
“The battery was completely drained. Won’t charge anymore.”
Mateo looked at the red numbers on his watch:
11:39:12
“Why are you calling me?” he asked.
“Because you're only the third person I’ve found who’s posted about this issue,” Nora said. “The first was David. The second was a woman named Rebecca Torres from Miami. She disappeared twelve days ago, right when her countdown hit zero.”
The floor seemed to tilt under Mateo. “What’s happening to these people?”
“I don’t know,” Nora admitted. “But I’ve been researching. There might be a way to stop it.”
Mateo gripped the phone tighter. “How?”
“David’s countdown started after he installed a third-party app called HealthSync+++. Did you install anything similar?”
Mateo thought back.
“Yes, actually. FitGoGoGo.”
“Delete it,” Nora said quickly. “Right now.”
Mateo pulled up the app management screen while keeping her on speaker. He scrolled until he found FitGoGoGo and hit Uninstall.
A warning flashed:
‘Uninstalling this app may result in data loss. Continue?’
“It’s asking for confirmation,” Mateo said.
“Accept it,” Nora urged. “Delete the app.”
He pressed Yes. The uninstall bar crawled across the screen…
Then stopped.
A new message appeared:
‘Uninstall blocked by administrator. Please enter override code.’
“It won’t let me delete it,” Mateo said, panic rising.
“That’s what happened with David too,” Nora said grimly. “There’s one more thing you can try.”
Mateo listened closely.
“The watch and the app might be tied to your identity, personal data, location tracking, biometrics. If you want a shot at surviving this… go somewhere no one knows you. Don’t bring your ID, credit cards, anything that links back to you. Be completely anonymous when the countdown hits zero.”
“You think that’ll work?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But David and Rebecca were both at home when their countdowns ended.”
Mateo glanced down at the watch again:
11:34:51
“I’ll try,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Call me after,” Nora said quietly. “If you can.”
11:27:41
Less than twelve hours left.
Mateo emailed Diane, asking for another sick day. Then he packed a small bag, cash, snacks, toothbrush, an extra shirt. He left his wallet, ID, and phone on the kitchen counter.
He scribbled a note for Trevor:
Gone to deal with the watch situation.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the police.
And whatever you do, don’t install any fitness apps.
He grabbed the watch, planning to toss it somewhere no one would ever find it.
Still, something felt off. No phone. No watch. It was like a part of his body had gone missing.
On the way out, he checked the mailbox, and there it was. The new watch. Perfect timing.
He strapped it on, set it up, and made sure not to download a single app.
He took a city bus to the outskirts, then another to a town thirty miles away, a place he’d never been, where no one knew his name. Somewhere forgettable.
At a quiet stop lined with pine trees and cracked pavement, he stood up, reached into his bag, and flung the old watch into the woods.
As it spun through the air, he caught one last glimpse of the glowing red dot…
Then it was gone.
By mid-afternoon, he was checking into a roadside motel under a fake name, paying in cash.
