Life in Still Life

“We have all the time in the world”

Dropping her bathrobe in the middle of the floor, Jennifer grabs her clothes from the wasteland of a room, empty water bottles and food packaging litter the floor. She comes over to stand next to me, and together we stare out from the penthouse balcony across a cityscape in still life.  No matter how I try to focus on the details, I can only see it as scenery.

She leans in to whisper in my ear.  “If you make that joke one more time I swear I will throw you over this balcony and then jump myself.  It was barely funny a decade ago.”

My face cracks into a smile.  “You laughed at it then!”

“It was more of a snort I think.”

“At least you’re stranded with the funniest man moving in the world.”

“Stooop.” She shakes her head and pushes me playfully.  Her blonde hair, bleached even lighter from the constant sun, dances across her too tan shoulders at the motion.  Will it be skin cancer, is that how we go?

“Let’s go get lunch, that run this morning has me starving now.”

“Aye miss, I have made reservations uptown at a new spot.  A surprise, if you will.”

“Uptown?  Can we afford that?  On our meager salaries?”

I make a show of reaching into my pocket and pulling out my billfold.  I crack it open, and grinning ear to ear, show her that it’s packed with money from a board game.  I found it in a closet of this penthouse while she was showering.  

“Woooow, you’re flush.  Should I wear my nice dress and heels then?”

“Whatever you can ride a bicycle in, my lady.”

“No cab ride there?  Cheap date you are.”  She says with a wry smile.

This is a game we’ve played for so long, a joke that we keep sharing.  It’s become our banter, our common language of understanding this place.  A way to keep the world fresh, to keep ourselves intact.

We fill our belongings into our packs – a change of clothes, food, water, a few medical supplies, and a crowbar.  After over ten years of this lifestyle, we both live with little.  We meet in front of the owner of the penthouse, who is in his bathrobe sipping an eternal cup of coffee at the kitchen sink, frozen in time.

“My dear sir, we must give you our utmost thanks for the use of your penthouse while you were indisposed.  You may find yourself lower on food and bottled water, I’ll leave this to cover any expenses.”  

I pull out a large numbered fake bill from my wallet, and set it on the counter in front of the man.  Holding hands then, Jennifer and I bow to him.  It’s the same curious farewell we’ve given to each of our hosts, as if through it we maintain some semblance of community with the frozen.  On the way out, I look at the splintered door frame and give a comically big sigh.

“Might want to call a locksmith too, my good man!” I sing back into the apartment, as Jennifer shakes her head at me.

–

In the beginning, we tried to leave no trace.  Nothing taken, nothing displaced, no signs of intrusion.  We mapped out a network of unlocked apartments through the city.  Jokingly, we’d give them a star rating and write fake reviews to each other afterwards.  Back then it all felt new, like we were the first explorers to find this new world.  Each new block was full of countless discoveries.  We’d marvel at the stopped cars, a puff of exhaust smoke clinging to each of their tailpipes, and engines permanently warm.

Our bicycle trips through the frozen city are just part of daily existence now.  We know what streets to take, and which are too clogged with traffic to pass.  There are no sudden stops to look at the small details anymore, at the intricacies of a life frozen.  It just blurs past us.

Jennifer follows me as I lead us in search of a new restaurant.  I found it in a guidebook in the last convenience store we stopped in, and I’m just hoping the information isn’t outdated.  We round the last corner, and I see it.  An upscale hibachi grill dominates the center of the block, the brick facade painted black and lined with stainless steel trim.  It glints in the noon sun like a beacon.  I turn to Jennifer, and her eyes have already grown wide in anticipation of what we’ll find inside.  We lean our bikes against the building, and I rush forward to grab the door for her.

There’s a curious magic to this frozen place, a beauty in the moment that we never noticed when time kept moving.  In this grill, a spot catered to date nights and tourists that we would typically avoid, the beauty in still life is on full display.  Jennifer and I stand in the doorway for a full minute taking it in.

Cooks work at a grill built into each of the tables, each of them paused in the most insane actions.  Flame shoots off of several grills, but instead of the burst of quick thrill this usually brings we can study the way it arcs and dances off the table.  Other cooks launch eggs off their spatulas, which they intend to catch crossways and break open.  But we see them in mid throw, their eyes locked in concentration on the performance as the egg hangs above their heads.  Children sit at the tables, their eyes massive with pure joy as they watch the combination of acrobatics, flames, and cooking skill.

We walk the room silently, as if in an art gallery.  There’s a beauty in this frozen existence that I stopped seeing years ago, but the influx of something new takes me back to those first days.  We drink it all in, pausing at each scene to give it the proper respect.  I point out one table where the cook missed their egg, and we can see the disappointment spreading on their face.  Jennifer points out another, where a sudden burst of flame surprised a woman on her cell phone.  She’s frozen right at the moment of awareness, as she flings herself backwards into her seat cushion in surprise.

We find a semi-circular booth in the center of it all that’s empty.  I motion to her to sit down, while I scour the surrounding tables for our lunch.  I find another couple on a date, frozen in time over two still steaming bowls of ramen.  Perfect.  I grab an empty serving tray, load the bowls on, and balance them precariously back to our table.  When I set the tray down with a look of great satisfaction though, I see that Jennifer’s silently crying.  A joke about returning from the hunt dies on my lips.  I reach out across the table, and take her hand in mine.  Her eyes bore into mine, and all of my facade of humor drops away.

“Thanks, Brian.  I know how hard it is to keep finding something new, and this is… magnificent.  I’d forgotten how magical this could be, and for a minute… I felt like I did when we first stopped everything.  I needed that, I don’t think I knew how badly until just now.”

I smile at her then, a sad, honest smile, and sit down across the table.

“I needed it too.  It’s been so long with the same sights that I barely register the strangeness of it anymore.  It would be our anniversary of the freeze today, did you remember?”

She smiles wryly, and shakes her head.  “Would it?  I don’t know how you keep track of the days in that head of yours.  It’s been July 12th, 2045 for ten years…”

I can see her face start to darken at the thought, and I know already where the conversation is headed.  I knew it before we came here, felt it in my gut when I woke up.  We had to talk about it again.  About going back.  About the unfreeze.  I watch as she chews it over, trying to find a new way to broach it that we haven’t before.

“I know you’re tired of it here, Jen.  But if we go and press the button again… well I don’t know what happens then.  We don’t even know if it works, that was the whole point of us coming here.  It could freeze us too, and make the whole timeline come to a stop.”

She nods, looking off into space now.  Our conversation is already tracing the same lines it has before.  Wearing through the same groove.

“And the alternative is we live out our lives here, and when we die, the timeline returns to normal.”  She recites what I’ve said in the past back to me as she stares into space.  Her eyes snap back to mine then.  “Look, Brian, I know that’s the safe route.  That’s what others have done, we’ve seen their journals and we know that works.  But I don’t want to live out the rest of our lives here, I miss it.  I miss the movement and the chaos and the bullshit.  I miss the changing days, the seasons… do you remember thunderstorms?  I want to see one of those again before I die.  When we first paused everything, it was magical.  We stepped out of the world together, and I loved it.  All the time alone with you, just us and nothing else.  But now it just feels like stagnation, doesn’t it feel that way to you too?”

Words careen inside me, fighting to get to the surface in response.  All the old arguments we’ve had about this, all the fears and anxieties I have circle around and collide.  I hear the words inside my head and none of them are what I need to say.  I let out a sigh, and feel the truth at the bottom of it.  I’ve always felt the same way, that’s why I fight back when she says it.  I just didn’t want to accept that.  I want this world to be just ours, no intrusions, no one else to ruin it.

“Yeah… it does.  It feels that way to me too.”

I see her eyes widen minutely in response, she was braced for the argument already.

“I’m just scared Jen, scared that pressing the button again won’t work, or…” or that it will, I taste the words, but don’t speak them.

She squeezes my hand in response, and smiles.  She knows my fears already, of course.  You can’t live alone with someone for a decade and think they won’t know your inner self.

“I know going back is scary, we’ve changed so much.  There’s been no bills, no work, no people.  And we can’t just pick and choose what of it we want, we get all of it or none of it.  We’ll regret it some days, we’ll miss this.  But Brian, I want things to change again.”  There’s a long pause, and I can see her chewing something over, afraid to say it out loud.  “Brian, look… I’m pregnant.  Can you imagine what this place would do to a child?”

I start crying at that, and smiling, and laughing.  I’m suddenly a giddy, blubbering idiot.  All of it comes flowing out at once like a tide that’s been building for the last decade, and has finally crashed across the shore.  All the resistance I’ve built up to returning shatters in those two words.  I’m pregnant.  It rings through my ears.  She slides over in the booth until she’s next to me, and we hold each other.  

After a while of being silent together, I say; “You know, they might arrest us or something.  We were only supposed to leave and then try to come right back.  A controlled experiment, they called it.”

I feel her smile against my chest, where her head has been resting.  “I bet they’ll be more interested to learn what we experienced.  Dr. Ludwig will be very stern–” she sits up and mocks the professor’s face, and I laugh, “but then his curiosity will overwhelm him.”

–

It’s strange to see the research facility again, ten years later.  A towering, nondescript building of steel and glass, it sits on a hill overlooking the coast, surrounded by layers of security.  Guard towers and fencing surround the building, passable only with key cards and identification.  Of course, we left all the doors propped open when we left.

I remember back then, we thought we’d only leave for a few days, a week at most.  I hear Jen’s voice saying; we’ll just enjoy a short vacation, what’s the harm in that?

We navigate our way through the layers of security, and back into the building.  On the way in, we pull each of the doors back shut behind us, sealing us off from the magic we’re leaving behind.  We walk through the corridors of the research facility, the hallways stirring now distant memories, until we’re back in the lab with Dr. Ludwig.  An imposing man of fifty, he’s frozen in a white lab coat with the same dour expression he always wears on days with living test subjects.

As we stand in front of the button to the freezing machine, we look to each other for assurance.  With hands held, we press the button together.  The world that has been static for so long, immediately jumps back into motion.  Noise and movement overwhelm my vision for a moment, and I have to close my eyes at a sudden wave of nausea.

“Wha, but how… dear God.  How long have you been gone?  It was supposed to be just a moment!”

I turn to see Dr. Ludwig, whose eyes are wide as he takes us in.  The tanned skin, hiking clothes, long hair, and backpacks.  The ten year older faces.  And then I give him the biggest grin I can muster.

“My good man, I bring tidings of joy and a gift of immense wealth.”

Reaching into my pocket, I remove a crumpled wad of fake money, and ceremoniously deposit it in his hand.

"Something strange happened to us out there. Suddenly ten years had passed, my wallet was full of fake money, we'd spent too much time on the beach, and Jen got pregnant. Literally no clue how, well maybe a bit of a clue on that last one, but I'm sure with enough investigation we'll all get to the bottom of the rest of it. Right then, talk soon, got to get this woman off her feet."

I pat the confused Dr. Ludwig on the shoulder, and holding in laughter, Jen and I squeeze out of the room before he can stop us.