They did it in a very cunning way. First, they tapped into the supermarket security systems, which held all of the credentials of every customer who had ever used a visa or eftpos there. That is, almost everyone on the planet. After about five seconds using the computer’s ‘find’ function, they had a full list of every single product the Green family had ever brought. When and where, and after a few minutes of sifting through the list and scoping out what products a teenage girl would consume, they basically had the ‘who’.
So, it was only fair - seeing as they were able to do all of that in the time it takes to make a coffee – that the girl was the only one poisoned.
They then slipped the can of deodorant – same brand and scent as most recently appeared on the list – into the side of the trolley as the family was at the supermarket, both looking the other way trying to decide which brand of oatmeal would taste the best.
It really was quite easy, compared to some other ways of kidnapping a child, don’t you think?
When the seal on the deodorant was broken, a circuit was triggered and a signal sent back to the kidnappers. They wer then able to remotely trigger a release, satisfied that the signal was originating from the right place. That was the last possible time that they had to pull out, but they didn’t even think of that option.
At 5:42 pm, Friday 26th of April, ’10 – just four days after the supermarket database was breeched – the seal was broken. They didn’t even have to wait another day before they took her. In fact, another day would have been too late. The effects only lasted twenty four hours after exposure.
+_+
Stephanie Green was a girl who liked to sleep in, which made it no surprise to her parents that, when they left the house early that Saturday morning, she was ignoring to their horse calls up the stairwell. Or maybe she couldn’t hear them at all. “Oh, well,” Mrs. Green mumbled. “I suppose she can pay for her own winter clothes then.”
“She should, really. I don’t know why we have to. We’re only her parents, and I’m tired of dragging her out of bed to spend hours in a shop—” Mr. Green mumbled as he walked out the door.
“Darling, she’s a teenager.” Blatant fact did get him to stop complaining. “They sleep in a take your money; what more can you expect?” she rubbed her husbands shoulders in an attempt to calm him down.
“Hmph,” she let out a dishevelled sigh as the overcast clouds took her attention. “I suppose I should drive today then.” She always drove when it was bad weather and he in the sun. It was like an unspoken agreement between them; something about the sun just made her too hot and bothered to concentrate on the road; something about the clouds made driving too unpleasant for Mr. Green.
+_+
Stephanie woke up at the precise moment it happened; that is, when the world stopped.
The side effects of the drug were designed take at least eighteen hours to fully take effect, so they agreed to trigger the release some time in the late afternoon. That way she would be easy picking the next day, at a time when her parents were most likely to be out.
They were right - her parents were out – but it happened much quicker then that.
For Stephanie Green, the world stopped at exactly Ten twenty three and fifty eight seconds. That fifty ninth second would take a long time to come.
She didn’t realise this, however, because to her it felt like any other day, waking up just that little bit too early to get a good day in. She let out a groan and pulled the covers back over her head.
But they didn’t want to come.
It suddenly felt like the covers were made from lead, or moving through zero gravity. They just wouldn’t come. Not as they should have, anyway. She tugged and tugged, but they moved so slowly that she thought she must be losing her mind. It wasn’t April fools again for another year, so she father wouldn’t be cruel enough to play another prank. But what could it be. It felt like it took ten seconds to get them ten centimetres.
But really, it took less then one; far less then one second.
You see, you can’t actually stop the world in the same way that many people think. If everything stopped moving, then, well, everything would stop moving. Think about it – galaxies, stars, atoms and particles. If you were able to stop everything, then all the little photons on their way to your eye would cease to exist. They are just energy, really. And how can you have energy without anything moving? No, the assailants did not really stop time, but they got close.
But back to Stephanie. She didn’t realise this until, after a painfully long and unfruitful time trying to get back to sleep, she opened her eyes to look at the time. 10:23:58.
Now she was getting suspicious, and a small thread of logic wriggled its way through the haze that shrouded her mind. This was a big accomplishment because, on any usual Saturday morning, she would not start really thinking about what’s happening until after a nice hot shower and some lunch.
The clock’s broken, she thought. Great.
But it wasn’t until she was tired of not being able to get back to sleep that she really did notice something wrong. About to go and make a smoothie – the third grumble of her stomach was end-point for her – she threw back the covers and hopped out of bed. But she didn’t, because the covers were still there.
Moving painstakingly slowly – an inch a second – she tried to kick up at them with her foot. Maybe dad had played another April fools joke after all. That didn’t help, so she tugged at them with her hands, trying to yank at them and coax them into moving faster. Nothing seemed to work.
By the time she decided to wait it out the white and green duvet was already off enough for her to wriggle her feet out and climb over it. It wasn’t until she was off the bed and standing on the plush green-blue carpet that she realised something was very, very odd. The duvet was still moving. Slowly, granted, but it was almost hovering in the air – the tail of it still sliding across the bed – and, perhaps if it was at a faster pace – such as normal time - hurtling towards her desk.
She reached out to touch it, to see if it really was the heavy, ruffling fabric that she had fallen asleep under. Her finger made a small dent in it, pushing in on the duvet before she pulled back in shock. It had to be. It couldn’t be anything else, after all. Even though her hand was safely pulled back, the dent continued to grow as the duvet continued towards the desk.
“Dad,” she called; “The bed’s broken!” Even though she didn’t expect to get a reply – they were usually out somewhere on a Saturday morning – she did it for her own sense of security. What was happening? And why, she asked herself, was she beginning to feel just as cold as an ice cube in the freezer?
But the weirdness didn’t end there.
Suddenly she didn’t want to be in her room anymore, and she headed for the door. But she had been moving slowly before, transfixed in the moment and not wanting to make any rash movements that might make it stop. Even though it was weird, didn’t mean that it wasn’t the slightest bit cool. But now she did. It was getting too weird.
Her leg smashed into the wall of her pyjama legs, which were almost frozen on the spot for a second before they flung forwards. Her foot was stopped in mid air because of the first impact, and now the back half of the pants were being pulled forwards by the front. Now was about the time that she would move her other foot, which she absentmindedly did. The same effect led to her tripping over her own pyjamas – usually made of such a light, warm fabric – and falling head first towards the ground.
Of course, she couldn’t fall as she normally would, because her pyjama top caught her, slowly starting to lower her towards the ground. But her body weight was already going down and her neck felt strangled by the tight arrangement as she pressed against the silk top.
What’s happening? She desperately thought, briefly thinking of Alice going down the rabbit hole. Falling for eternity. What the heck is going on?
A slight sound came from behind her, somewhat ruffling the fringes of her hair and she turned her head around slowly to take a look. The duvet was now smashing into the desk, and she could see that the desk chair had already been moved. A wave of something was moving toward her, spiralling out from the chair. She wanted to move, to squirm out of its way before it hit, but she couldn’t do a thing.
Her hair was blasted back like a hair dryer was blowing in her face. The cool wind was so heavy that it felt like she had been smacked in the face by the duvet itself. It had finally landed on the desk and all of her possessions – photos, books and the occasional candy wrapper – were being blasted off the desk and into the wall. The same effect would have resulted from the duvet being thrown at the desk at a hundred kilometres an hour.
And there she was, watching, feeling and hearing all of this happen. Falling towards the ground like a pair of goggles to the bottom of the pool.
“DAD! What the F*CK HAVE YOU DONE?”
MORE TO COME!
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