Time Dilation and Karan || Si-Fi Short Story Series Part 1

Arpit Kumar
4 min readMay 11, 2024

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What would happen if there were more than 24 hours in a day?

Karan sat in his college classroom, barely paying attention to the lecture on quantum mechanics. He was doodling in his notebook when something strange happened. Everything around him seemed to slow down, like someone had pressed pause on the world.

He blinked, thinking it was just his imagination. But no, the other students were moving in slow motion, and their voices became soundless. It felt like time itself was stretching out, making each passing second feel like a couple of minutes.

Source — Dalle 3

This wasn’t the first time it had happened to Karan. It had started a few weeks ago, just for a few moments at a time. But today, it lasted longer, stretching on for what felt like ages. Karan felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he realized that these strange episodes were happening more often.

The professor’s voice shut down, and Karan couldn’t focus. He was too busy trying to understand what was happening to him. Why was time slowing down around him? And why was it happening more frequently now?

After class, Karan decided to talk to his friend, Ravi, about what was going on. But when he tried to explain, Ravi just looked at him like he was crazy. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay, Karan?” Ravi asked, concern evident in his voice.

Karan left feeling even more confused and alone. If he couldn’t talk to his friends about this, who could he talk to? He spent the rest of the day lost in thought, trying to come up with an explanation for what was happening to him.

That night, as he lay in bed, Karan couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was about to happen. Little did he know, his life was about to change in ways he never could have imagined.

The next day, the time distortion happened again, this time while Karan was walking home from class. He watched in amazement as people and cars moved in slow motion around him. It was like he was in his own little bubble of time.

As he continued on his way, lost in thought, Karan bumped into someone on the sidewalk. “Watch where you’re going, buddy!” the person snapped, before hurrying off.

Karan apologized, but the encounter left him feeling shaken. What if someone found out about his time distortion? What would they think? He needed to find a way to control it, or at least understand it better.

Source — Dalle 3

With that determination in mind, Karan set out to learn everything he could about time and how it worked. He spent hours in the library, pouring over books on physics and philosophy, trying to make sense of his strange ability.

But the more he learned, the more confused he became. Time was such a complex and mysterious thing, and Karan was just a regular college student trying to make sense of it all.

As the days passed, Karan’s time distortion episodes continued, each one leaving him feeling more isolated and alone. He began to withdraw from his friends and classmates, afraid of what they would think if they found out about his secret.

But just when Karan thought he couldn’t take it anymore, he made a breakthrough. While reading a book on theoretical physics, he stumbled across a passage about time dilation — the idea that time could stretch or shrink depending on the observer’s perspective.

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Karan realized that he wasn’t alone in experiencing time distortion. It was a natural phenomenon, something that happened all the time in the universe.

Armed with this new understanding, Karan felt a sense of relief wash over him. He may not have all the answers, but at least he knew he wasn’t crazy. And with time on his side, he was determined to unlock the mysteries of the universe, one day at a time.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed the story so far… but it’s not over yet! There are more stories on the way.

Part 2 → https://medium.com/@aforarpitkumar/time-dilation-and-karan-si-fi-short-story-series-part-2-794a19464843

Follow me and stay tuned for part 3.

#AforArpit
https://medium.com/@aforarpitkumar

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Arpit Kumar

I love to write short stories 😍😎. Engineer + Game Developer + Writer.