Operation Pendulum

Image by My pictures are CC0. When doing composings: from Pixabay



Everybody remembers where they were

when the time-stop experiment, Operation Pendulum, was run. I’ve heard stories from people who were hang gliding, and others in the middle of a gun fight when it hit. But me and Zig had an experience I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t been there.

You are too young, of course. To you, it’s just a moment in history,
but what young people don’t get is that DARPA didn’t tell anyone they were
going to do it. Maybe they thought they were going to contain it in some room
somewhere, or maybe they just didn’t care. In the end, it doesn’t really
matter.

Zig’s cousin had a boat, just a little wind-powered thing
not good for anything but getting your kicks. So, one evening, just before
sunset, Zig says to me, “I wanna take it and just go.”

“Go where?” I said.

“Anywhere. Wanna come?” And, yeah. I did. So, we just rode
out until we couldn’t see land anymore, and Zig trimmed sails until they just
sort of flapped peacefully.

The wind died to nothing, and the water went still as glass.
The sun was down, but there was still some light, you know?

That’s when it happened. The air grew thick, like it didn’t want to move, and
Zig jumped into the water, only he slid across the surface. It looked like
memory foam, the way it held his impression and slowly filled in. You could
walk on it, but standing still, you’d sink.

You see, time didn’t stop entirely, it just slowed to almost
nothing. And sentient beings were unaffected. Scientists theorize it’s because
we carry our own time reference, but who knows?

Here’s the thing no one else knows: The fish were all
frozen, but the dolphins still swam.

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