Chronostasis
The serendipity that led to ruination
AJ did not bother hitting the snooze button anymore. As she got ready for class, her eyes fell upon the dust-covered novel on her table, and she experienced a dull pang of pain in the deepest corner of her heart. She averted her gaze and took off as quickly as possible.
While the morning classes saw a frustrated AJ stealing glances at her watch every five minutes, the ones in the afternoon were even more brutal. The weariness that grew in her while sitting through them certainly didn’t make the club meetings in the evening very enjoyable. It was way past midnight when she finally collapsed onto her bed; fatigue was drowning out all the noise in her head, leaving but one fervent wish:
I wish I could stop time somehow.
“Another one? I wonder what it is now…”
As the screen glowed green before him, a smirk spread out on his face.
“This looks interesting. It’s been a while since I’ve had some fun. Aarohi Joshi huh? Well, AJ, I shall let you have it…”
The only respite Saturday offered was that there were no classes. She sat in the café sipping her cappuccino, while her fingers tapped away furiously at the keys on her keyboard — her brain was working overtime. A sudden frustration welled up in her as she hit a dead end, and the passing thought haunted her again.
Argh, only if I had more time!
As she dilly-dallied for a while, waiting for inspiration to hit again, she suddenly realized that something was off. Around her, the little coffee shop had come to a stand-still. The people to her right sat immobile as if part of a tableau. Taking off her headphones, AJ heard it for the first time in her life — the sound of silence. The stream of liquid pouring out of the coffee machine was frozen in place, and so were the hands of the clock on the wall.
She fled out of the café in search for answers but the world outside screamed back more questions at her. A flock of birds hung in the sky, forming a perfect V. Leaves were suspended in the air.
Did I just… stop time?
The very thought made her knees go weak. How was it possible? This was not a fictional world and she was clearly not the main character.
“It must be a dream,” she thought out aloud as she pinched herself, but the pain she felt was very real. Still unconvinced, she spent what felt like an eternity trying to snap out of what she thought was a lucid dream. As she finally settled back down in the cafe, head buried in her palms, one part of her had already accepted the absurd fact that this was real. The other part simply assumed that even if it was a long, stretched-out dream, she’d still make the most of it.
She remembered stuffing the novel into her bag that morning with the hopes of being able to read a page or two and pulled it out enthusiastically. For a heavenly amount of time, it was just her in her own space, flipping through the pages and sipping her coffee, until she finished it.
“Now what?” she asked herself. “How do I get things going again?”
Suddenly, she heard laughter echo through the air, the AC whirring and the coffee filling up in the cup. Everything was back to normal. Amused, she ordered another cup and decided to play around with her ability as she sipped it. With each sip, she wished for time to pause, and resume again.
She quickly figured out that the skill had some sort of cool-down period, which meant that she had to wait a few minutes before using it again. Her glowing computer screen reminded her to get back to work, and she decided grudgingly that further experimentation could wait.
The next few weeks saw her living life to the fullest. All the novels she’d wanted to read were read and all the shows she’d wanted to watch were watched. Her sleepy escapades in class went blissfully unnoticed. Forgotten notebooks and assignments no longer gave her headaches. The moment she felt a meeting getting boring, off she’d go to amble around and rejuvenate. She had even gone as far as pausing right in the middle of a heated debate, belting out Eminem on the stage and of course, sneaking a peek at the judges’ score sheets while she was at it.
Sometimes it felt like things were getting out of hand. She always managed to make up little white lies about how she managed her workload, but couldn’t help bragging about the number of TV series she’d watched at the same time. Despite being aware of the suspicion drawn, she enjoyed the gentle push into the limelight that now cast itself upon the one who mysteriously found the time to do it all.
“And so it begins. The downfall of the mighty.”
It was D-Day at last. The final round of inductions was on for the club she’d set her eyes on the moment she’d joined the college, as did every other freshman. The group discussion was scheduled at nine in the morning, and she was all set to crack it. The qualifier was a JAM session on the topic Chips vs. Chocolates; she’d made an impressive start, expressing her heartfelt kinship with chocolates. All of a sudden, there it was — the urge to go buy one. Deaf to the pleas of her conscience, she dashed off to the supermarket, leaving fifteen pairs of unsuspecting eyes staring at an empty seat.
As her eyes fell upon the beautiful purple cover, she didn’t think twice before grabbing it and rushing towards the counter. She realized that she didn’t have her purse, and a devilish thought sprang up in the back of her head. Not a soul would know if she didn’t pay. She couldn’t believe what she’d done even as she stepped out of the mart, relishing its taste. It didn’t stop her from making her getaway, hurrying back to the hall. She got back to her seat and let time flow again, realizing too late that she’d entirely forgotten what she was speaking about when she left off, and that the skill’s cool-down period would cost her dearly.
An utterly dejected AJ hurried out of the hall, knowing that she wouldn’t even make it to the next round, let alone the club. As she left, she heard the whispers.
“What was that? It was like she glitched in the middle of her speech.”
“I’m telling you, that girl definitely has too much on her mind”.
And just like that, her perfect world began to collapse.
The needle was tilting. Further and further away from order it went. It was only a matter of time before chaos ensued.
She realized that her friends were drifting away from her, owing to her growing increasingly cocky each day. Initially, she’d made up for it with what she called the Magic Bag trick. Usually known to be the stingy type, she flipped that image of herself around by fishing out — time and again — packets of chips, an occasional chocolate, and even bottles of juice when she was with them. She told them it was her way of apologizing for not spending enough time together. But they weren’t fools either, and the weight of the money she was not spending was slowly proving too heavy for both her heart and her brain.
“Hey Roh, how is it that you rarely visit the supermarket but you’re still able to get fresh packets of chips? I never even find them on sale because they sell out too quickly.” Jai was ever the inquisitive one of the group. She laughed him off, but she knew she couldn’t get away with this forever. She should have stopped, but she just couldn’t give up the high.
When the first streaks of grey appeared in her hair, she found it hard to swallow. She covered them up as best as she could, feeling her fingers falter and joints throbbing. Her eyes widened as they set upon something that sent a fresh wave of panic through her — the first few wrinkles setting upon her face. Of course, it made sense. She was aging faster than everyone around her. She knew she’d been feeling a little more stressed than usual, but she’d waved it off as the effect of giving in to the kleptomaniac in her from time to time. But now, it was evident. Not only was the workload she was handling extremely overambitious, she was also living at least three days for every normal day.
Dead center. It pointed towards chaos.
“Time for the final act. Your fate, child, was sealed the day I granted you the wish. It’s been a fun ride, and I hope I never have to see you again.”
The Student Council met publicly that day with an urgent agenda. Aarohi had to struggle quite a bit to conceal the wrinkles and make sure the grey strands weren’t peeking out before rushing off to attend.
“Okay people, listen up.”
The President jumped straight to the point. “The Manager of the Campus Supermarket just contacted me saying that quite a few of their goods have gone missing over the past few months, and they want us to look into it. They’ve been going over the CCTV footage but haven’t been able to make much progress.”
AJ felt the hair on her neck rise up. She was so sure that nobody would notice a missing chocolate or two that she’d forgotten it wasn’t just that any more. Sure, there was no physical evidence connecting her to the crime, but somebody was bound to put two and two together someday. She could process nothing else said at the meeting, nor throughout the entire day. As she lay down in bed that night, she felt extremely sorry for herself.
She’d been digging her own grave from the cursed day when she’d chosen a God-forsaken chocolate over her dream club, and this was the final nail in her coffin. The past few months had seen her grow extremely paranoid of everyone and everything around her. She felt like everybody was staring at her, their hushed whispers following her as she walked by. Their voices resonated within her head, whispering away about her aging faster, her faltering that fateful day, and how she was the culprit behind the series of robberies, to the point where she could no longer differentiate between hallucinations and reality. Were the voices just in her head or were they real?
As the fatigue drowned out the noises in her head, all but one fervent wish remained.
I wish that none of this ever happened.
“The shorter road has more pitfalls — you either fall right in, or you give up the journey while trying not to.”
The needle tilted back to order as he gently turned the dial backward.
“Well AJ, I shall let you have it…”
Saturday offered respite in that there were no classes. AJ woke up that morning, and had the entire day before her to accept the fact that time had skipped backwards somehow. The date was definitely that of the day when she’d received the power to stop time, which she no longer wielded. After trying and failing for the tenth time in a row, she broke out laughing. As she stared at the dust-covered book on her table through the tears of joy in her eyes, she thought to herself, “Well, at least I got to read you, my friend…”
This story was written in collaboration with Surya Sridhar.
