Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 143. "He's Always Watching." The Timekeeper Ep. 2

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

After the video game behaves weirdly, Charlie and Gama pay a visit to Zoe (Chandler Kinney) to try and figure out how it works. Charlie storms out when Zoe’s boyfriend arrives, but calls on them for help once he comes to believe The Timekeeper is somehow watching him play. The Timekeeper, Episode 2 features Judah Lewis as Charlie, Chandler Kinney as Zoe, and Arjun Athalye as Gama. The Timekeeper was created, written, and directed by Matthew A Brown. Sound Design, Scoring and Mix by Jeff Schmidt Original Score composed by Joshua Zimmerman Additional dialog editing by Marika Perlmutter Executive Produced by Matthew A Brown, Kaelyn Moore, and Judah Lewis The Timekeeper is a production from Heart Starts Pounding. For more from Heart Starts Pounding: Subscribe on⁠⁠ Patreon⁠⁠ to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts . Follow on⁠⁠ Tik Tok⁠⁠ and⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠ for a daily dose of horror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When does fast delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without its grainy mustard. When the barbecues lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders, service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver.

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tap is in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. slash YAMX. We went to her bedroom window, since her mom was on the night shift at the hospital and probably still asleep. Zoe! Zoe! Maybe this was a bad idea.

Zoe, open up! Why didn't you text me back? Hey, Zoe. Hey, G. You didn't answer my question, Charlie. I hadn't seen her. I actually seen her, not on the screen, in a month. That was at Tasty Burger.

I'd stop by to see my dad on my way home from Funland, and she and Buzz came in for milkshakes. I tried to act normal, whatever that means, but instead, I stuffed an entire carton of fries in my mouth and pointed to my cheeks as if apologizing for not being able to talk while I ran out the door and got in my car and drove away. I wished I had more fries as I stood there. with the rain dripping down my face and the laptop ticking under my arm.

No? Okay, well, see you later. Wait. We need your help. I need your help. I'm sorry. Go around. You bring a bomb? Basically. Cool.

How's the stream? I'm gonna need more coffee. Hey chap, can I take a break for a few? I'm really sorry, Charlie, for real, about Blake. I know you weren't super close or anything, but it still sucks. Thanks. That's actually why we're here. Do you know anything about Shady Pines? Haven't heard anyone talk about that place in forever.

old mental hospital that burned down. I mean, it wasn't a hospital anymore. I just remember someone in class had a cousin who was a fireman up there or whatever, so the kid was telling all these stories about what he'd found, burn bodies and stuff. Well, do you remember any of them? The stories? No, I was like eight.

Well, yeah, it was a tech company called Next Level. We think this game is part of whatever research they were doing. Tim was cleaning the place up and found it on an old server. He and Blake were both playing it. Yeah, and Blake's dead and Tim's missing. Missing like he won't call you back? Missing like the Borden County Sheriff called his house and said they found his truck. Oh, shit. You think it has something to do with the game?

Yes. No. I mean, not really. We just wanted to see if you could tell where the server was. Like, is it really at Shady Pines? Sure, just need the VPN address so I can get the IP. Here. Is this your laptop? No, it's Tim's. Ugh. Gross. I don't want to know why the keys are sticky.

Why is it ticking? Because I'm not playing the game. God, this OS is old. Uh, let me see. So, yeah, Shady Pines is the name of the VPN. Tim's logged in as a guest. Let me just get the IP. Looking it up and...

Yep. Checking the map. And we're in Borden County. Shady Pines. Looks that way. X marks the spot. Yo, we looking for treasure? Bus, what the hell? Oh, Jesus. Didn't hear you pull up.

Hey, babe. I thought you wanted to go to Burden. No, not until I finished the game. Oh, cool. What's up, Charlie Brown? G Money. Is that, Buzz? Babe. Somehow hearing Buzz say it was more grating than the constant TikTok of the laptop.

Well, that's all we really needed. Thanks, Zoe. Wait, I want to see the game. Is it cool? I don't know. We haven't really played it. Zoe brought the game up and tried to move around the hospital-like room, but the character was frozen. Is it not WASDI? No, it is.

Keeps doing this. It just, it just freezes. Here, let me try. It worked fine for me. I moved the character around the room, back and forth, side to side. Weird. Okay, let me drive. Zoe sat back down and nothing. Huh.

Gama, you try. I'm good. Come on, G. Just play. Fine. Um... And Charlie, you try again? I sat back down and it worked perfectly. Ghosts! I knew it was ghost! I told you not to play

But you didn't listen. Yo, chill. Gama, you think your phone has ghost in it? I don't know. It's facial recognition. You look at your phone, it knows it's you, it unlocks. Wow, you guys have controller brains. Probably part of what they're working on out there.

You said it was a tech company, right? Super smart, babe. There it was again. Babe. So familiar. So annoying. Thanks, babe. Babe, babe, babe.

It was one thing when Buzz said it, But when Zoe said it, it was like that feeling you get when you know you're about to vomit and you can't think about anything else but sprinting to the nearest toilet. Let's go, Gamma. Wait, don't you want to ask about the leaderboard?

How someone could stay awake that long? Zoe, only one person beat the game and she stayed awake for like a month. Wait, really? Thanks for your help, Zoe. Yeah, she played almost non-stop for 30 days to get all 13 keys, but she was the only one.

Charlie, wait. If you're going to play, Just play here. I'll be up all night anyways. It'll be like the old days. Yeah, just like the old days. I looked at Buzz when I said it, but it's not like Zoe didn't know what I meant. Buzz was oblivious because Buzz lived his entire life in a state of blissful oblivion. I don't want to play, okay? I just wanted to make sure it wasn't my fault. That what wasn't your fault?

Blake, dying. I wanted to make sure I couldn't have played. Oh, I get it. What? You don't think you can beat it, and you don't want to be embarrassed. It's only one girl who beat it, so I understand. I'll beat it before you beat Eldon Ring. Yeah, right. I will.

Bet then, if you're that confident. Three days. No? No, you guys, this isn't that serious. Fine. Three days. I don't think... Deal. Deal. Charlie, wait up!

Three days meant three days where the other person got to choose what you wore to school, which usually meant at least... one trip to the principal's office. Dude, what's your problem? You need Zoe to help with the game. I don't need Zoe, okay? I have Tim's notebook. It probably shows how to get the first 12 keys anyway.

All I need to figure out is the last one. Yeah, the last one is the hard one. Yeah, and I don't want to hang out with the buzz. Yeah, I know that, dumbass, but what? You're just going to avoid Zoe all of senior year? I don't know. Maybe. Well, I'm not choosing between you, so you two need to figure it out.

Do whatever you want. I just said what I want. I want you to figure it out. Talk to her, man. You can't just put your head down and ignore things forever. I don't have to ignore them forever. I just have to ignore them for another nine months. That's your plan.

It wasn't a plan so much as my default way of handling everything in life. When my mom got sick, she kept her head down and kept working like everything was fine. She just went about her business until she was too weak to stand. And even then, she tried carrying on like normal from the hospital bed. after she died Dad and I did the same thing because Dad said it's what she would have wanted

to keep moving and we had we just weren't going anywhere I pulled up in front of Gama's house and gripped my steering wheel so tight I could feel the disintegrating bits of rubber turning the powder in my hands Charlie, what?

The vein in your head is doing that thing where it looks like it's going to explode it's just years of pent up bridge okay cool, cool Well, if you want to play the game over here tomorrow, let me know. But seriously, you guys are going to figure it out, and this stupid competition does not count.

Gamma's right. I didn't know how to figure it out. What I knew how to do was stay busy. So that's what I was going to do. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton cross-training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move.

Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross-Training Treadplus at OnePeloton.ca. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision?

No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web. Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. I was going to beat the game.

I knew one person had done it, even if it had taken her a month. Tim got 12 keys and he only played for two days, and I had all his notes if I needed them. Surely I could figure out the last one. I at least knew it was possible. The first thing was getting out of the hospital room. The door was locked, but there was a number pad I could interact with, so I needed the combination.

When I stood in front of the computer monitor on the desk, I noticed a set of numbers would flash every 10 seconds or so. Barely long enough for me to see them, and then they were gone. Nothing I did would make them stay up, but the numbers were the same each time. Fifteen numbers. I figured maybe at the facility people wouldn't have been allowed to write things down when they played, which would have made it harder. Maybe everything in the game was that way,

which would explain why Tim had gotten the key so fast. I copied the numbers down and entered them one by one. The door opened and I walked into the hall, way. It was empty except for an ID badge on the ground. It said Jacob Fairchild. I remember the name from the articles. It showed up in my inventory as J. Fairchild. The floor I was on was a square with hallways cutting it into four equal quadrants, and one hall all around the perimeter. There were rooms around the outside, offices with glass walls, some with two-way glass looking into empty patient rooms like the one I'd started in, but most of the doors were locked.

There was a lot of generic art on the walls, geometric shapes and colors, bland stuff you always see in hospitals and a waiting room with a coffee pot and a vending machine and a TV looping the same video. The weird thing was it was a real video of the guy talking on a stage.

The screen said it was Jacob Fairchild. This thing all things devours. Birds, beasts, trees, flowers. Now is ironed. fights steel, grinds hard stones to meal. Slays king, ruins town, beats, mountain down. I remembered the riddle from the Hobbit. Of course we probably all know the answer to the riddle.

Time, that's right. Time is for living organisms like us, a mechanism for decay. You probably can't hear my watch ticking there in the audience, even though it's quite loud, loud enough to annoy my colleagues who've given me the, I like to say, friendly nom de guerre of the timekeeper. But I like the reminder.

The timekeeper. The man in the mask covered with eyes I'd seen when Tim ran out of time. If it was Fairchild's program, Fairchild's game, I guess it made sense that he was the timekeeper, the one who was always watching. Humanity has always had dreams of eating time back.

The search for the fountain of use, Still goes on today, though it's in well-air-conditioned Silicon Valley Laboratories instead of the sweltering jungles. But I've decided to go down another path. Throw your guard against time. Assuming we can't get more of it, could we perhaps use more of it? Or even all of it. At this point, I decided this was the worst video game I'd ever played. But if I had to listen through an actual TED talk to get a key, whatever.

Think about this. Let's say you live 80 years, which for a person in a rich country today is pretty good. Of those 80 years, you'll probably spend about 26 sleeping. A third of your life. You can't say it's a third of your life wasted because the human body, the human mind, requires sleep. If you don't sleep, you die. But what if you didn't? The human brain, like all animal brains, has evolved to become what it is today.

There are animals like horses that sleep 15 minutes at a time. just a couple of hours each day. Proponents of the so-called Superman's sleep schedule and perhaps one or two James Bond villains have tried this out, but I wouldn't encourage it. What I find more interesting is animals like dolphins and many

types of birds who use what we call hemispheric sleep, where they shut down the left brain for a while and let it rest while the right brain works and vice versa. Why did their brains evolve this way? Well, dolphins live in the water, but they need air. If they slept like we slept, drown. Birds have to migrate long distances, fall asleep while you're flying and you probably won't wake up. So what does this have to do with us? Well the brain

evolves and unlike birds and dolphins humans have the luxury of shaping that evolution in new ways. And that's the focus of my research which I am grateful to announce today is what we'll be working on at next level. The next stage of evolution in the human brain. This thing all things to And then it started over. The next stage of evolution in the human brain. Brains that didn't sleep. Zoe would love it.

If that's what they were researching, the game made sense. To see how long people could stay awake while you board them to death. Give them more money the better they did. Pretty much how the world seems to work anyway. I went back to the elevator in the center of the floor. I could open it with Fairchild's badge. There were 13 floors. There were 13 floors, one through B12.

I was on one. I went through every button and the elevator moved to each floor. But I couldn't get out on any of them because every time the elevator opened to a different style door with a different style key. One was huge and wooden and looked like it had been ripped from a castle. Another had a padlock connected to a chain. Another was covered in brightly painted flowers. Another was made of dark glass and had a keypad. One had a sensor for a badge, but Fairchild's wouldn't open it.

And then there was B12. B12 opened into a long dark hallway. I could get out, but I didn't want to. At the end was a door, and behind the door something was ticking. I stepped out. It felt like the hallway narrowed as I went on, and the light from the elevator seemed very far away. The only other light was a red light coming through the keyhole that ran through the center of the door. A keyhole with teeth on the top and bottom

A double-sided lock The ticking wasn't my time counting down It was the tick of a watch coming from behind the door In my mind It was the sound the watch Fairchild had held on stage would make It felt like the eyes of whoever held it were on me I turned and headed back toward the light of the elevator As fast as the character would go

Which was mad iningly slow because I hadn't found a way to sprint. I went back up to the first floor and laughed at myself for getting so scared. I remembered Zoe and I staying up all night playing amnesia and Gama huddled in the corner covering his eyes because he was too afraid to watch. I figured I'd better check in and see how far along Zoe was,

and I opened her stream on my phone. Do you think I'm going to sleep, Jeff? Well, you're wrong. Are we still hours and hours and hours away from finishing? Yes. Do I have a constant stream of coffee? Yes. Buzz?

Buzz? Buzz. Coffee. I got you, babe. You want orange juice or something? What? On TV, you know? It's always like, here's a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice.

For like breakfast. Uh, yeah. Okay, you know, two-a-o-o-j. Why not? I love some. I wanted to sleep, but I didn't want to lose. Zoe had a head start, so it was only fair I used Tim's nose. I used Tim's notes. I opened the first page of the notebook.

He'd written in thick black sharpie front and back, so it had bled through and made it hard to read, but I could tell it was the same number sequence I'd written down to get out of the first room. Below were a lot of symbols I recognized from the elevator. I went back to B1 in the elevator. The door had an abstract pattern. Reds, blues, greens.

I realized the colors and shapes were the same ones in the boring paintings upstairs. Tim had written the symbols in a specific order with the words vending machine. I walked to the vending machine in the waiting room and noticed it didn't have normal buttons for sodas. Instead of brand names, there were shapes and colors. I could interact with it, so I hit the buttons in the order Tim had written down, and a key dropped out. One down.

My key counter went up, and when I stopped playing, I could tell the clock had sped up just a fraction. I flipped ahead in the notebook. He takes your days, he takes your nights, and then he takes your life. Was written across one of the pages. He's always watching. That same phrase filled a whole page over and over. Then scribbled through in thick black lines, facial recognition, using the camera. Of course he was always watching.

I guess Tim had figured it out too. I looked right at the camera, and I noticed. something. Something I hadn't noticed it's always. The light in the kitchen caught the laptop just right and there was a glare on the screen, but the reflection over the camera was dull and flat. I looked closer and over the pinhole it seemed like someone had scribbled over it with a black marker. I minimized the game and opened the webcam at, a black screen loaded. I ran my fingernail back and forth across the camera and cracks of light began to appear. I kept scratching until I could see my face. Timit blacked out the camera. There was no facial recognition. No way he could

know who was playing. Hey, it's Gama. I leave a message after the town thing. I swear to God if this doesn't work, I'm throwing my computer out the window. Not answered that. Come on, Z. Okay, quick break chat. Then we beat the shit out of Mr. Blackblade. What do you want? Hold on, Gama's calling me back. I'm adding it. What's up? Guys, the camera is blacked out. What? Tim's computer, the camera on the laptop, he scribbled over it.

It doesn't work. I mean, it has to work. It's recognizing your face when you play. No, that's what I'm saying. It can't. It can't recognize anything because it doesn't work. Okay, then how does it know who's playing? Ghosts. It's not ghosts.

Then what is it? The timekeeper is always watching. The timekeeper doesn't exist. He did exist. Fairchild was the timekeeper. What are you talking to? There's a video in the game. Fairchild says the people he worked with called him the Timekeeper. Shady Pines was his program. It's his game. Charlie, Fairchild is dead. He's been dead for 10 years. I know.

So the Timekeeper isn't watching shit. I could make up a believable story for Blake writing TikTok on the door as a joke and dying in the accidental fire. And there were plenty of reasons Tim wouldn't have texted us back. But I couldn't explain how it knew Blake was playing. how it knew Tim was playing. And now, how the game knew I was playing. Okay, look, we'll figure it out. Yeah. Gamma will be there in ten.

Okay. Wait, what? Why are you bringing the ghost here? Buzz? Grab the coffee. My dad was asleep. I left a note telling him I was speding the night at Gamas and sprinted through the neighborhood. When I got on Tagama Street, I saw Buzz's truck pulling up to the curb.

What up, Charlie Brown? You want some Mojay? No, I'm good. Hey, keep it down. If you wake up, my brothers, you're dealing with him. Sorry. Hurry up and come inside. We spent the first hour experiment. We all agreed the camera was useless, but we still tested it. Me sitting in front of the screen, Zoe or Gama trying to type.

Didn't work. Zoe's sitting in front of the screen, but my hands typing, character moved fine. Even the most basic things like interacting in the elevator to move to a different floor, I was the only one who could do them. And I was the only one the clock would stop for. By the time we gave up, I had 15 hours and 8 minutes left, and I was still sitting on one key. Well? I don't know. I don't know what it is.

It's a cursed ghost game is what it is, and you brought it into my garage. Yeah, the good news is you're not playing. It's not cursed. It's just... What? Magical, extraterrestrial? What are the other options here, Zee? I don't know. I need to see the code, and I can't get to the code because we're logged in as a guest, and the only thing you could do as a guest on this stupid VPN is play the game. So what if you were logged into someone else? Sure, if I could log in as an admin or something.

I could probably see all the reference files. I don't suppose you've found a login. No. Maybe that's the 13th key. Get to see how the game actually works. Too bad nobody gets the 13th key. You said one person did? Yeah, Maria Shepard. See?

Charlie, I was joking. The only person on the leaderboard with all 13 keys. She was up for a month straight? That's what I said. It's easier now, though. I mean, I don't think they could write anything down. It was all mental. That's why Blake and Tim could get keys a lot faster.

Wait, the last thing Tim wrote down was Maria's name with a bunch of numbers beside it. Maybe it's a login. Here, Zoe. Look, what do you think? They look like coordinates. What? Yeah, latitude and longitude. Coordinates for where?

I'm about to tell you. Look, here. Nine Mount Bridge. That's right by Nine Mile Bridge. You know it? Yeah, it's where the sheriff found Tim's truck. Everything else he wrote down is a clue about the game. I mean, whatever is there has to be a clue to the 13th gate. Uh, Charlie, video game keys are usually in the video games?

Yeah, yeah, but maybe this one isn't. Maybe that's why only one person ever found it. So the 13th key was a 10-mile hike from Shady Pines. Okay, in the video, Fairchild talks about dolphins and birds, being able to do these basic physical functions like fly and swim while half their brains to sleep. Maybe people had to like sleepwalk? I think we all need to sleep because that's the dumbest idea I've heard. I agree.

Well, with who? Both of you. Super dumb, but he had to have written down Maria's name for a reason. It just doesn't make sense why Maria would be a clue to a key in the game she was playing. Maybe she worked there, and it was like an Easter egg. Wait, yeah, the other people who worked there would still be alive. It was just Fairchild who died. Well, it shouldn't be that hard to find out.

There's got to be something online. Okay, uh, Marie Shepard, Borden, next level, 2010. Anything? Oh, shit. Did she work there? No, but she was definitely there. It's a missing person's report. Marie Shepard, age 26th, last seen at a Greyhound bus station on March 26th.

Participated in a study at Next Level Technologies, taken to the bus station by the staff after she finished, left on the next bus. Bus driver remembered her, but that was the last time she was seen. Please tell me there's a found person's article? Doesn't look like it. What are the other names on the leaderboard? Let me see.

Stephen Schiller. Okay, Stephen Schiller. Borden, next level. I could see the search hit. The report was filed in 2010. Stephen Schiller reported missing, last known whereabouts, helping Hans Halfway House. That's only a few hours from Borden.

Who's next? Danielle Sharp. Okay, Danielle Sharp. Missing persons report, 2010. Missing, June 2010. Last seen, Friday evening near corner of Powell and St. Marks? Who's next? Philip Rona. We went through all ten names on the list.

Four died the night of the fire. Two didn't turn up at all, and four had missing persons reports. People who were last seen at homeless shelters and halfway houses and big cities a few hundred miles in every direction. But the only one who was reported missing after they left Shady Pines was Maria. Gama, where are you going? My dad has a bottle of holy water. He got it when the Pope is at his hometown. I'm going to drink it.

Anyone want anything? Nah, I'm good, bro. Jesus, Buzz, I forgot you were here. Had to get a little power nap in. Got to keep the mind fresh. What a run! This champ is picking up speed. But they found a lane.

Phenomenal launch into the air! Absolutely incredible! Air! Fly the seven-time world's best leisure airline champions, Air Transat. Maybe it's just a phase you're going through. You'll get over it. I can't help you with that. The next appointment is in six months.

You're not alone. Finding mental health support shouldn't leave you feeling more lost. At CAMH, we know how frustrating it can be trying to access care. We're working to build a future where the path to support is clear, and every step forward feels like progress. Not another wrong turn. Visit camh.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health care. This doesn't mean anything, okay, Charlie.

We already knew a bunch of people died in the fire. And like, okay, they were running experiments, so they got people who were desperate. We still don't know what happened to them. We still don't know what happened to Tim. For all we know, he's fine. Yeah. Zoe was right, but it wasn't exactly comforting.

The 12 people we knew played the game were all dead or missing. Whatever was going on there, it had to have started with Maria. The high scores all show the date they were set, and Maria's was first. March of 2010. Everyone else is after. Is that really Holy Water? No, it's from the Brita. I forgot my sister knocked the Holy Water over last week.

What were they doing out there? Burning people alive? Eventually, yeah, but Fairchild gives that talk, right? Hey, we're starting this really cool program to change the evolution of the human brain or whatever. He's not going to announce whatever they're doing, if... The program is actually a murder factory. Something had to have gone wrong. Yeah, you think?

Their child went wrong. That's what happened. Didn't you read the articles? Yeah, I read them. God, I hate this stupid ticking. There's got to be a way to shut it up. Zoe messed around with the volume, but it still didn't work. It never had.

But when she gave up, she left the cursor hovering over the file, and I noticed something. Hey, Z, do you see that? See what? The metadata for the game file, it was modified January 10th, 2011. at 158 a.m. That's the night of the fire. Who changed it? Let's see, modified by user J. Fairchild.

Joey, can you tell what he changed? Not without comparing the code to the version before, which means I'd need to log in as Fairchild. I'd been thinking about the night of the fire and something about the story hadn't made sense. But I was pushing 24 hours awake and my brain was Jello. I knew I had a thought I wanted to share, but every time I tried to grab it, it evaporated.

Jello. What? I like Jello. Red usually. Charlie, what about Jello? Is that the password or something? No, no, I... I mean, maybe that's what Fairchild was doing that night,

putting clues into the game. Clues about what? About what really happened? Or was about to happen? We know what happened! He chained the doors, dumped a bunch of gasoline, and cooked everyone inside. And locked himself in the server room.

Right. And then he dies, wrapped around the server. Like he's trying to keep it from being destroyed. Which he did, apparently. Okay, so what? He goes insane and lights the place up, and then has a change of heart, and it's like, no, no, I've got to protect my life's work. Exactly. Zoe, you've been building your Survived-the-Night game since, like, 8th grade. Would you ever just destroy it? I wouldn't, and I would murder anyone who tried to.

Exactly. Okay, so why not just unlock the doors and run out? Maybe he couldn't unlock them. Why not? Did he lose the keys? Maybe he didn't lock them. Wait, what? Maybe he was locked in. If he was locked in the server room and the network was offline,

He wouldn't be able to send anything out. The game would be the only thing he could change that anyone else, anyone who ever logged onto the server would have access to. But if he didn't lock them, who did? Maybe that's what he was trying to tell us. Okay, that almost maybe makes sense. Whatever was happening there was bad enough people didn't want it getting out. Maybe Fairchild was going to expose it?

Expose it? It's his game. He's the timekeeper. What do you guys even see? saying everyone who plays this game dies or disappears it's just a game gee charlie how many keys do you think you can figure out from tim's notebook um i mean it's kind of a mess but probably most of them okay so keep playing look for anything that might be a password and i'll try it if he was changing things in a hurry he changed simple stuff names numbers anything text-based and he wouldn't be hiding it it would be in plain sight okay so we go to nine mile bridge and see what Tim was looking for.

And I look for a login in the game on the way. Use Tim's notes to get as many keys as I can. Plan? Plan. Gamma? Bad plan? Terrible plan. But plan.

All right. I'll go get my car. Wait, Buzz, can you drive? Oh, yeah, babe, for sure. I got a good power nap in. I'm juiced. No, I can drive. Charlie, no offense.

But your car isn't making it to board, and you need to be playing the game. She was right. I could imagine my car stalling out halfway there and it taking more than the time I had left to walk the rest of the way, by which point I'd be dead. And that still would have been better than getting a ride from Buzz. Yeah, I guess, I mean, my car would be fine, but like it's not, it's not here, so.

Good. Clock's ticking. The Timekeeper, episode two, features Judah Lewis as Charlie, Chandler Kinney as Zoe, and Arjun Italier as Gama. The Timekeeper was created, written, and directed by Matthew A. Brown. Sound design, scoring, and mix by Jeff Schmidt. Sound design, scoring, and mix by Jeff Schmidt. Original score composed by Joshua Zimmerman. Additional dialogue editing by Marica Perlmutter.

Executive produced by Kailen Moore, Matthew A. Brown, and Judah Lewis. The Timekeeper is a production from Heart Starts Pounding. Additional cast includes Matt and Spa as Buzz and Guy Kent as Jacob Fairchild.