Make
Time Stop
Ava pressed Enter on
her keyboard and leaned back in her chair. She took a deep breath and read
a text from Zack. It had been a few weeks since their first date, and she did
admire him. She thought he was amiable; a favorite Jane Austen reference which
caused her to smile. Although her parents were affectionate throughout her
life, she was occasionally apprehensive about physical touch. She peered at the
ceiling for a mathematical solution. Her personal historical record provided
one conclusion: Zack was a gentleman, yet she wondered. She wondered about her
response as she peered down the hall from her lab – door slightly cracked, as
if she were a spy from the one her favorite 20th century films. Upon
increased examination, she saw her colleagues were motionless. Even her lab
assistant, Garrick, stood hunched over the drinking fountain as if a wind had
shaped him into position over centuries. But stranger was the arc of the water –
frozen in time. She waved her hand in front of his eyes – no response. But her
hand got wet when she passed it through the arc of water. She quickly retracted
her hand and walked backward and away from this eerie phenomenon. It was
unnerving enough as a high-functioning autistic woman to experience a world
unable to keep up with her mind – only the AIs of the mid-21st
century satisfied her neurological appetite. Now, every hall and office
contained motionless people and machines. Time had stopped, she surmised.
Her genius allowed her
to develop and create a machine which, in theory, should speed up the
perception of time. However, when activated for the first time, it seemed as
though the opposite effect occurred. Uneasy was an understatement; her heart
competed with her imagination in a new race of anxiety.
She stumbled into the
cafeteria and nearly knocked over a colleague who was not affected like the
others. Zack moved. He moved in conjunction with the same agitation his face
portrayed. She was startled by his inquisition of her more so than his grip.
“What have you done?” He
shouted.
“Me?” She answered,
perplexed, as she reclaimed her arm.
“Life!” He scanned the
room with a wave of his arms.
“What about it?” She
asked.
“It moves too quickly,”
he nearly stammered, “You! You slowed it down too—” he couldn’t complete his
sentence in his current frantic state.
They were colleagues
for years. She recalled a previous argument within that time. Now it seemed to
pick up where they left off, “The pace – the pace is too slow.”
He stopped to look
around in further detail but found no answers.
“Again, what did you do?” Zack sent darts into
her eyes yet retreated. It was his way. His thick hands seemed to search for
answers in his disheveled hair.
“Nothing. At least—”
“At least what?” He
interrupted.
She quickly analyzed
the situation and recalled the steps and calculations she took to engage her
machine. She held out her hands as if the answers were displayed in her
wriggling fingers. She slapped her hands to her side as a revelation struck her
like Death had risen from the floor.
“It didn’t work,” she
muttered, “My device didn’t work.”
By now Zack was near
the exit with Ava in tow. He pulled a small pad from his lab coat pocket and
swiftly turned back toward Ava. “I suppose this means you’ll decline my
invitation.”
“How can you think of—?”
Ava stopped herself from his attempt to divert her and returned to the problem
at hand.
After an awkward
silence Zack stood motionless.
“Stop that!” She
exclaimed.
“What?” He didn’t
understand what he’d done. So he slowly retreated down the hall with
calculations at the ready.
She collected herself,
smoothed out her lab coat and reassembled her brown hair into the previous neat
yet wavy pony tail. Dissatisfied, she returned to her lab to join all her
equipment. But even her sanctuary was inadequate to provide comfort. Machines
were a poor substitute for the pace she preferred. Nevertheless, she returned
to work to solve the problem. Hours and three cups of her favorite latte later,
she confirmed it was not her machine that caused the perception of time to
stop. She bolted out of her lab like the wind and suddenly stopped in her
tracks. She turned to notice Garrick had moved – subtly, but he moved – and the
water fountain was now topped with a half-arc of water. She added this variable
to the problem and continued her march into Zack’s lab downstairs. The stairs
were her only option since the elevator doors did not open.
Pad in hand, she
entered his lab, only to be greeted by a look of failure painted on Zack’s
face. She ignored his machines and his prized ink-boards filled with equations.
“What?” She asked to a silent result.
He appeared stunned.
She walked over to the
screen which had trapped his eyes. She saw equations which seemed familiar but
soon realized they were an inversion of her own. “This is you!” She blurted and
ignored her instinct to discover further mathematical answers in the ceiling.
He remained stunned and
silent.
“And I thought—”
she stopped, “You son of—”
“The world just moves
too fast.” He paced a circle around the equipment-laden counter until he backed
himself into a corner. “Did you know that we are bombarded with nearly two
hundred new pieces of information a day? People of the 19th century
only endured two—”
“What?” She interrupted
with greater irritation.
Zack quickly understood
this level of detail was irrelevant to her at the time and completed his
confession.
“I – I slowed the pace
of time.” He pointed to his holo-screen.
“At first I thought
time had stopped, but I realized differently when I saw the water—”
“Yes. It’s moving, yes,”
he paused to assess his screen and ink-boards further. “Perhaps you perceive
that time stopped, but in reality it only slowed – although, it slowed beyond what
I intended.”
“Well, this is
unnerving,” she placed her hands on her hips.
“Can you reverse it?” She
implored. Ava rarely made eye contact; it was a social skill still in progress.
But this time her eyes fueled a glare which nearly blinded Zack.
“What do you think I’ve
been doing?” He exclaimed.
He responded as he
threw his arms aside in a single swoop which caused his holo-screen to clear. He
stopped quickly and said with a burst of courage, “I think I understand what
you experience every day,” he flung his arm into the air to reactivate the
holo-emitters.
She relaxed her stare
but maintained eye contact – reception versus exclusion. The latter was her
past, the former she disciplined herself to achieve. But she resigned to a sigh
in disagreement, “Think so?”
Silence.
Ava took charge, “Move
aside,” she commanded, and relayed the same tone to his computer. She entered
calculations from memory and altered or refined Zack’s scribbles from his
ink-board.
“Yes, I tried that—”
“You don’t get to
speak,” she blurted; after a few seconds of awkward silence she apologized. In
light of her self-admitted insolence she witnessed an unexpected reaction: a
light in his eyes as if a star had newly formed.
“Please continue,” she
prompted politely.
Zack added further
commands into the computer formulated by his revelation. For nearly an hour
they worked in unison as if both minds were joined. Both pushed their negative
emotions aside. All four hands were in control of the holo-screens in a digital
ballet. Finally, they achieved a solution. And the dance came to a dramatic climax.
“What do you think?”
Zack asked.
After a second
examination she replied, “I believe – this will work.” She turned to smile as
she forgot the seed of her grudge. They worked to engage operational aspects of
their calculations and within an hour they were ready. It only took a few
seconds. Now the courage to cross the threshold of his lab to observe if they
were successful in repairing negative effects on the world. It was like waiting
for the results of a final exam. They both peered out of Zack’s lab. Their
colleagues moved about as if nothing had happened. They walked about the
hallways. They visited Ava’s floor – Garrick was also back to normal, as was
the rest of the world. Or was it?
~
The day was nearly at
an end. Neither got any more work done. They both sat in their respective labs
and stared. After work they happened to approach the same commuter vehicle.
Before boarding Zack reminded Ava of his invitation for a second date with a
nonverbal cue, as he pointed at his phone to remind her of his text. Ava took
him aside out of eavesdropping distance. “Did you delete your calculations and
dismantle—?"
“Yes,” he replied
emphatically, “But, I wouldn’t want to destroy what we—” First he couldn’t
finish but regained his courage, “— what I thought was a beginning.”
Ava took a step back,
“After today, I’m not sure.”
The AI piloting the
commuter announced its departure. Ava was about to board when Zack invited her for
a walk. They remained on campus. After a silent stroll they sat at a planter-bench
overlooking a series of archways and a fountain which spilled into a
surrounding pond. Zack broke the silence and after he cleared his throat he
said, “I am sorry.”
Acknowledgement and understanding
was clear on her face. They each had a need. His experiment failed to meet his.
She still felt the same about the pace of reality. After a nod of forgiveness,
she asked, “What now?”
“Perhaps we can help
each other – without technology,” he suggested in all sincerity. He reached out
his hand toward her but resigned to rest it against the bench between them.
They were still on campus and conscious of eyes and cameras. “Ignore the tech,”
he added, as he looked into her distracted eyes.
She thought for a
moment and repeated his last statement. Slowly she found the courage to return
his gaze. It seemed like one second and eternity simultaneously. She felt as if
they were caught in the vacuum of space. Outside her field of vision she saw
the fountain move slowly – the sparkle of sunset-light beamed into their space.
She felt at peace for the first time. She could not fathom the mystery as it
occurred and wondered how it was possible. She looked deeper into Zack’s eyes
and realized he just enjoyed the moment – nothing else seemed to matter. Soon,
the moment faded when the earth’s revolution caused the sun to dip below the
horizon and the fountain no longer glistened. They smiled in curious unison.
One word from Zack,
“Fascinating.”
Ava said, “I recall a
story my uncle told me,” She paused with a reminiscent expression.
“What’s that?”
“It seems silly.”
“I want to hear.”
Ava looked down at the pond and the fountain,
“One time when he was with my aunt, when he proposed to her, they both felt as
if time had slowed, almost stood still – as if no one and nothing were around
them.”
“The perfect moment,” he quickly replied, as if
understanding.
“Yes! He said it was like a scene in a Star
Trek movie.”
“With Picard and Anij,” Zack added.
Their silence was confirmation they had just
experienced the same – the perfect moment. Zack allowed some time to pass
before his next suggestion, “I have the movie recorded. Door-dash and a
double-feature?” He suggested.
“And the other movie?”
“To a time when people
receive less information per day, Sense and Sensibility, of course.”
She appreciated his
memory and humor with a mischievous yet playful smile and suggested an
alternative. “I was thinking of something with a faster pace,” she said, as
they both stood to walk back toward the commuter depot.
“What do you have in
mind?” He asked.
“The Matrix,”
she laughed.
He laughed with her.
As they walked their
fingers touched. Ava smiled.
Without eye-contact, he
smiled with her.
~
[Also published in Synchronized Chaos. As of April, 2024, the above blog edition was edited for recently discovered errors of grammar, as well as improved flow of the story.]
