Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a place where you could still see stars.
Not many — but enough to dream.
He lived in the Recanto of Stars, where time seemed to move differently.
Not always slower, not always faster. Just… different.
When he played video games with friends,
minutes flew like swallows in summer.
When he heard his mother humming softly in the kitchen,
time stood still — suspended between one word and the next.
And when he cared for rescued animals — the ones nobody else wanted —
the clock seemed to fall asleep beside him.
That’s when the boy realized:
Time didn’t live in the clock.
It lived inside his chest.
And each heartbeat was the perfect measure
of a moment lived truthfully.
The grown-ups would ask:
“How many hours did you study?”
“How many minutes did you spend?”
“How many seconds are left?”
But the boy could only answer with other units:
“Today I loved for three dog hugs,
I listened for two songs carried by the wind,
and I was silent for a single tear that never fell.”
He didn’t know it yet,
but he had invented the Crônons —
the invisible units of time that actually matter.
And by doing so,
he lit up XChronos:
a clock that doesn’t count hours,
but presence.
They say the boy grew up.
But even today,
when someone truly listens,
they can faintly hear
the tick-tock of his heart echoing through time.
Written by Jaconaazar Souza Silva
Laboratory Technician at Instituto Federal de Brasília – Campus Recanto das Emas
Founder of the XChronos Project
