The Day Everything Stopped

    Struter Jones dashed to the corner–just in time she figured--to catch the 7:58 Fifth Avenue bus. As usual, she had timed her sprint to the bus stop down to the last second.  

      Quickly getting fed up with her go-nowhere clerical position, she did only what she had to do when she had to do it. 

      “Only in a holding pattern with this gig,” she thought to herself as she searched for the miracle job that would take her out of the morass that, for the last five years, had kept her on the vicious treadmill while she waited to crash through the Glass Ceiling.

     However, little did Struter know that her world this day would spin off its axis into an unknown collision with an uncertain and dangerous future.

      The 7:58 bus didn’t show up that day, or any other–in 15 minutes, a half hour or even an hour.

      Struter had to estimate the passage of time because her smartphone clock had stopped dead at 7:57 am. 

      In fact, when she rushed up to the Apple store at 49th Street, almost falling on her face in her high heels, that clock also had stopped dead at 7:57. The same went for the huge street clock at 47th Street.

       As she looked around, Struther saw the midtown traffic slowing down to a much slower pace than its usual Manhattan morning rush hour traffic jam crawl.  Massive confusion also seemed to have taken over the usual robotic masses along the Avenue.

     Several passersby looked desperately at their Apple watches, wristwatches or Ipads with the same stunned expression that Struter had when her own watch stopped.

     “What the hell is going on?,” she asked an obviously confused NYC traffic cop trying to prevent collisions precipitated by drivers angered over delays along their normally carefully-mapped-out routes    

       “I have no idea,” the officer replied. “Looks like time decided to stand still.  Our precinct commanders report their morning roll calls running way behind schedule with no explanation; the court system completely stopped and the MTA doesn’t know if any of its vehicles are on schedule. Metro North reports the same problems and the airlines are in chaos.”

     New Yorkers didn’t have a monopoly on the time stoppage, as Struter found out when she tuned in to WCBS radio.  The Boston, Chicago and San Francisco transit systems all reported significant delays with no apparent cause.  Congress had shut down quicker than it did by political stonewalling and the Supreme Court had cancelled all its sessions because scheduling had become impossible.

     The financial sector, which depended so heavily on timing, found itself mired in confusion as Wall Street had no yardstick by which to measure the start of trading and many banks closed because millions of dollars of customer funds lay sealed in vaults whose time-controlled locks frustrated officers could not open.

     Motorists stood stranded on roadways without gasoline because computerized pumps could not operate and even electric-propelled vehicles could not move because charging stations had timed out.

     Hospitals could not schedule operations, appointments or emergency room procedures.

     “The FBI, CIA and FEMA all have established emergency task forces to investigate what, I am confident, will be a temporary shutdown, and I have asked the governors of all 50 states to activate their contingents of the National Guard to help keep order,” President Maria Johnston announced.

     She promised frequent updates “throughout this rapidly-evolving crisis.”

      In her small corner of the world, Struter began to see this time stoppage as an opportunity to reassess her life and get it moving in a more positive direction.

     After spending hours navigating through the confusion, she rushed home down Fifth Avenue.

      Mired deep in thought, the young woman did not realize that her next step would lead her into a gaping hole in the sidewalk.  She kept falling for what seemed like another eternity before landing in a room that resembled a 1960s-era discotheque.

     A door then opened into another room bathed in a deep orange glow.  Huge dayglow clocks covered almost every inch of the four walls of the room.    A nearly eight-foot-tall man with flaming red hair sat on a huge chair in the front of the room.

     The man spoke in a booming voice that resembled that of the king in The King and I musical of the 1950s.

      “I am Tock Ryerson, president of the Eternal Dialex Corporation,” based on the planet Euroton,” he said. “For many years our scientists have studied various methods of controlling time because our planet faces destruction from pollution emanating from the earth’s atmosphere.  We have discovered a formula that has enabled us to stop earth’s time.  By stopping your planet’s time we believe we can delay the ultimate destruction of our planet.”

       Ryerson further explained that earth’s leaders could “buy back” their use of time by negotiating with the Eurotonians and setting guidelines for destruction of the pollution threatening Euroton and cooperatively working toward restoration of his planet.

      “We don’t trust most of earth’s leaders to negotiate the kind of agreement we seek,” Ryerson said. “We believe we can only trust a person less tied into your planet’s political power structure. Therefore, we have selected you to carry our message back to your leaders.  In our estimation, we only have another three months before Euroton’s destruction. As a sign of good faith, we gradually will restore time to your planet. However, if the parties do not reach an agreement in another month, the telling of time on your planet will reach total destruction. Our terms cannot be changed.  You hold the future of your planet in your hands. We will release you today to bring our message to your leaders. If you disappoint us we will trigger the destruction of all time on your planet.”   

     With that, Struter found herself wisked from the underground room to the headquarters of the Secretary General of the United Nations. She told Secretary General Marisa Lopez that the Eurotonians demanded her appointment of four second level diplomats–from the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Russia–with full powers to negotiate a one-month timeline for the dissolution of the pollution that had targeted Euroton or have the earth face the permanent stopping of all time around the globe.

     Although Lopez did not like the blackmail-like pre-conditions set by the Eurotonians she felt she had no choice.  She immediately appointed the four-person commission.

     The four diplomats deeply resented their use as pawns in this interplanetary game of environmental chess, but they felt the future of earth depended on ensuring the survival of Euroton.

     Within a week time again began to advance on earth.

     The diplomats signed an agreement with Ryerson and his assistants setting a timetable for dissolution of the Eurotonian pollution within a month and clocks around the world began once again to function as life returned to normal.

      Struter, no longer a minor clerical cog in the United States corporate machine, won the Nobel Prize for Peace and wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about her experience whose sales earned her millions in royalties.