My eyes opened. The clock read 7:24 am. Six minutes before my alarm went off. Is that enough time to merit going back to sleep? My phone vibrated in my pocket. So that's what woke me up. I really ought to stop falling asleep in my clothes. I read the message:
It's working. I'm going though with it. Things are going to be different now.
Immediately I was up and running towards the door. As I raced down the stairs I hit my head on the over overhang, drawing blood. Biting my lip, I did my best to ignore the pain as I threw on my shoes and stepped outside my apartment. I ran past the elevator to the much quicker stairs, racing down them two at a time. I ran right into the crash bar on the door and out into the rain, surprised at how many words it took just to get outside. I ran down the sidewalk, desperate to get to him before he did something stupid.
What is he thinking? How could he take such a risk? My friend never could tell me what had happened to him in the past, but whatever it was this wasn't the way to fix it! I could see the glass building ahead of me, too far for comfort. My breath was ragged, but my determination lead me to run faster. I was out of breath, about to colapse, drenched from the heavy rain. I had to make it.
With more effort than my slightly out-of-shape body would care to admit, I reached the glass building. My friend was already at the door, waiting for me.
"Something went wrong" he said.
My blood ran cold as those words went though my ears and finally reached my brain. I stood there, not saying anything for a minute. "What did you do, Evan?"
"I.... I tried to go back. I tried to fix things"
"You can't just screw with time like that!" I said as loud thunder roared overhead and the heaviness of rain increased. "What went wrong?" Evan looked down, fiddling with his glasses. I grabbed the front of his lab coat. "What, went, wrong?" I asked with a stern voice.
He didn't even look up. "I froze time" he said.
"What do you mean, you froze time?"
"It was 7:24 am when I tried to go back, and it is still 7:24 am, and it will always be 7:24 am."
"But what does that mean? Things are still happening, We can go on like this, right?
"We may be able to keep living, but without the progression of time, no one will ever make progress on anything. Most will lose their motivation, while the few who keep theirs will never be able to change anything."
"So you're saying that we are stuck like this, in this one moment in time, keeping the status quo forever?" Despite the horrifying prospect, my life isn't all that bad at the moment, so at least I wouldn't be suffering.
He seemed to lose all emotion as he responded, like a man giving up all hope. "A moment is only suppose to last a moment. We were constantly changing moments, keeping them stable, but the longer we linger upon this moment, the more unstable it becomes until time crumbles. We won't notice it, though, we'll be too worried when space collapses around us."
" You're telling you just condemned the world to... collapse!?"
His face showed a bit a horror there. At least he wasn't completely gone. "No!, No, no, no! I've only affected the city at most."
"Can we stop it? Surely we can stop it?"
He just shrugged. I couldn't believe it! How could he be so apathetic about this? I then realized that the entire time I knew him his only goal in life was to go back and fix whatever had happened. Now that his dream was ground into dust, he could care about this life at all. What could have been so bad to drive a man to such extreme measures?
I didn't have time for such pity. What irony. I looked at my friend, hurt that ever our friendship wasn't reason enough to live. "How long until everything collapses?"
He gave me a smirk. "It happens at 7:24"
I could tell he wouldn't be any more help. I ran past him into the building. As I looked back, the ground beneath Evan crumbled and he fell into the abyss. I looked around and could tell the building was starting to crumble. A darkness spread across the windows. I ran up the stairs, a sinking feeling growing in me as I remembered the device my friend showed me was on the 17th floor.
How long was a moment? A moment was relative, wasn't it? As I climbed the stairs I tried to remember the times time passed slowest. I focused all I could on my most boring paperwork, the girls I had kissed, intense moments of suspense. The last one seemed most effective, as the crumbling slowed down as I thought of it. At least I think it slowed. I could just be imagining it. But then that's the point, isn't it?
I reached my friends office after what seemed like hours, but the chaos was almost upon me. As I burst into the room I was shocked. I expected a chaotic, bucking, sparking machine and what was before me was as calm as when it was turned off. I had no idea what to do. Maybe Evan's apathy wasn't because of his past, but because time had stopped. So that left me as one of the few motivated but doomed to fail at any worthwhile thing I tried. I just climbed up here though the collapse of time without any idea of what to do, without any guaranteee it was even possible to be stopped.
I looked the machine over, hoping for an obvious emergency stop button or something similar. My search went without luck, so I started pressing buttons semi-randomly, whatever looked like an off button. No response from the machine. Maybe I could smash it with something. I went back into the hall where I grabbed a fire extinguisher. The hall was crumbling just a few yards away from me on both sides, catching up to me quickly.
I ran into the room and smashed the machine repeatably as hard as I could with the fire extinguisher, make it spark and whine. I kept at it for a few seconds until I felt a jerk as the floor started to descend and the walls continued to crack. I hesitated for a second before returning to work, smashing away at the machine. The floor gave out, and I fell into darkness, desperately trying to give it a few more wackes before I was pulled away. I lost all sense of direction and feeling. The fire extinguisher was no longer in my hand. I thrashed out, desperate to feel something. And I did feel something. Something soft. I began to feel it all over my back. I could then tell I was lying down. I didn't dare open my eyes, allowing myself to rest in this hope that I could be safe. I moved my hands around and I felt sheets. Is this my bed? It seemed too good to be true, but I had to know. I breathed in, bracing myself.
My eyes opened. The clock read 7:24 am.
