Bliss

It was 12:18 PM GMT on a rainy Thursday when, for one second, the world stopped. Archie watched the geese take off from the river and stop mid-flight, then continue, as if someone had momentarily pressed the pause button for the whole universe. He wondered if he’d had a stroke, but it soon turned out that he wasn’t the only one who experienced the strange phenomenon. The news that night confirmed that it had happened to every single person on Earth. Apparently, everyone who was awake at that moment had experienced a moment of silent stasis. They could still think, but reality had stopped for roughly one second, all over the globe. The Internet blew up with conspiracies and memes. The East blamed the West, the Left blamed the Right, and vice versa, but nobody seemed to know anything concrete. Fortunately, the phenomenon caused only minor trouble. There were a few traffic accidents due to spooked drivers. Archie scrolled through his phone before he went to sleep, and put it out of his mind, like most of humanity.

The next day, it happened again at exactly 12:18 PM. Archie was in mid-chew of his lunch sandwich at the time. As before, all the sounds stopped, but he could still taste the ham and mustard he was eating. He couldn’t be sure, but did it take a little longer this time before the world resumed as normal? Archie spat out his half-eaten sandwich, coughing and spluttering. The sensation of the partially chewed cud on his motionless tongue had made him gag and ruined his appetite for the rest of the day. The news exploded with more speculation, and the world's governments announced that task forces were being set up to study the bizarre phenomenon. They implored the public to keep calm and asked anyone who thought they had suffered lasting effects to come forward for further study. The world was feverishly speculating what would happen the next day. On the Internet, the hashtag #timestop was trending worldwide, and people were already making up challenges. The consensus was that whatever sensation a person was experiencing at the moment would last throughout the entire subjective length of the time stop. Archie laughed when he read about the #timegasmchallenge, but he didn’t doubt someone would come up with far worse than that.

Just before 12:18 PM the next day, Archie found a quiet spot to sit down. The time stop had so far not been painful (although yesterday’s sandwich moment wasn’t pleasant) or obviously dangerous, but nobody seemed to have even the beginning of an explanation for what was actually happening, so Archie planned to take it easy. Many others felt the same, it seemed. Traffic seemed unusually quiet. The moment came, and time stopped again. It felt even longer this time. Immediately afterwards, Archie checked his phone. Social media posts were flooding in with people’s experiences. The consensus was that, yes, it was longer than the two previous ones. He tried to sort through the chaff of idiotic online challenges and find someone trying to reason about what was happening.

‘I was looking at a running timer and started counting seconds in my head when it hit. Got up to 4.’

‘If time itself stops then how come our brains keep working? It’s just electric signals and chemicals gushing between the synapses, all of that stuff should be stopping as well. We shouldn’t notice any time passing during the time stop.’

‘We are more than flesh and electricity. It’s the soul that keeps going.’

‘What a load of complete bollocks. Go proselytize to someone who cares, godbotherer.’

‘Got a better explanation? And where do you get the idea I’m religious? I'm a physicist with a PhD while you are probably stacking shelves in some warehouse…’

Archie stopped reading when the discussion turned into yet another flame war. As weird as it was, it still didn’t seem worth it to get too worked up over it. Having time stop for a few seconds every day was hardly dangerous. He figured it was something like a small, involuntary break that everyone got for free. If anything, it was a positive development. But, it did seem that the stops were getting longer. So far, it had just been a few seconds. How much longer could they get?

The next day, it happened again, and this time it was noticeably longer. The people who were making an effort to approximately measure the length of the time stop without the benefit of a timer posted their results online. It became clear that the time had doubled yet again: they were up to eight seconds now. An image was widely circulated that showed the projected duration if the length kept rising exponentially.

Day 1: 1 second

Day 5: 16 seconds

Day 10: 9 minutes

Day 15: 5 hours

Day 20: 6 days

Day 25: 194 days

Day 30: 17 years

Day 35: 545 years

Day 40: 17433 years

Day 50: 17851025 years

Day 100: 20098468420665700000000 years

‘lol guys imagine ur in the #timestop and ur cuming for 20098468420665700000000 years im gonna practice w/ my girl #timegasmchallenge’

‘I can’t spend a few hours stuck in place with nothing but my thoughts, never mind days or a for years, I’ll go insane. Does anyone know if you can sleep through it safely.’

‘My brother’s in the army, the government is having whole battalions sedated for a few minutes to make sure we have at least partially functioning military in case the time stops ramp up like that or even worse and people go catatonic from being stuck in time stop limbo for eons.’

‘I’m a policeman, we are doing the same. Fire and hospitals are the same.’

‘Commercial airline pilot here. All nonessential flights around 12:18GMT are grounded until further notice. Remaining have an extra sedated copilot for insurance.’

‘My daughter keeps asking me what happened yesterday. She’s only 5 and I don’t know what to tell her. She’s scared of it happening again, I got to admit so am I, when is this going to stop?’

Around ten days after the first time stop, the world began to fall apart. Archie wasn’t bothered when it was just a few minutes, but being stuck in place for half an hour, unable to move and with nothing to do but think, was excruciating. He was dreading what would happen if it got even longer.

‘#timegasmchallenge everyone please read this you have to STOP. we were in an orgy, me and my partner, all these people going at it at the same time, trying to hit the spot right on time. you know we are up to more than two hours by now. it was incredible but when we got out of the time stop everyone was screaming and puking and punching the shit out of each other, they absolutely lost it, i think they couldn’t go back to normal life after that. My partner went full on catatonic and is in the hospital, she can’t talk, i don’t know what to do’

‘jesus i read about terrorists or cartels or something torturing people while time stopped so they feel the pain of having their fingers cut off for hours someone please kill these animals’

Archie was lying on a blanket in a field, completely naked. It was a nice sunny day. A warm summer breeze played over his skin and made the hairs all over his body tingle pleasantly. The girl he’d met a few hours earlier was lying beside him, also naked. He’d already forgotten her name. They were survivors who had made it this far into the new age, the era of the time stop. Nobody had found an explanation. The world’s governments had introduced draconian regimes of forced sedation to get as many people as possible through each day’s time stop, but it was getting hard to resupply and organize in the unfolding chaos. Too many were left out; those with non-essential jobs to do, anyone who couldn’t prove their worth to the system. Those left behind tried to ensure that they were asleep, but that wasn’t foolproof either. Many never woke up again. Some, like Archie, chose to go out on their own terms. He figured it was like going to heaven, really. Who knows what actually happens after death? This way was guaranteed bliss, at least until the time stop disengaged and his mind turned into dust in an instant after resurfacing from ten million years of orgasmic ecstasy. He looked at the girl. She nodded and lay on her back without saying a word. Archie bent over her. At least I’m going out with a bang, he thought, and started thrusting.