Fast-Time at Aldmont High (The Time Flow Stories Book 1) Read online

  He considered for a moment, thinking there’d be an awful lot of amazing things he could do if he were simply faster than other people, even staying below 2X. It was just that he had a feeling he could go so fast people couldn’t even see him. But, even if I can go that fast, I won’t be able to do shit if I’m blind! he thought disappointedly. He frowned, wondering. And why do I think I can go faster? Because, he realized, I feel like I only have to push a little to speed up to 2X, and I’m sure I can push a lot harder. That I have pushed a lot harder and was moving a lot faster. Even if I couldn’t see what was going on around me, I had the sense I was going so fast the world out there was stationary by comparison.

  Witt sat pondering for a few minutes, then had a little eureka moment, remembering that earlier, when he was going fast enough that the world had gone completely dark, he could still dimly see the laptop’s keyboard where the light from his phone’s screen lit it! He quickly tried it again and confirmed it worked. For a moment he pictured himself wandering around in the dark world of fast-time, holding his phone out in front of him so he could see just a little. It can’t be just the phone, can it?

  He closed his eyes, wondering whether any kind of light emitted from fast-time could go out into the slow-world around him, bounce off something like his laptop and then come back into his time and arrive at his eyes and be visible. Would a flashlight work too? he wondered.

  He got out a little LED flashlight he kept in his drawer and tried it. He could indeed see, but everything looked weird. Some objects were brighter than they should be and colors weren’t what they should be.

  Wait, he thought, if, the frequency of light waves were 500 THz—orange—when they left my flashlight, then, when they entered slow-time, the waves would arrive a lot closer together. If I was in 10X fast-time, that 500 THz wave would be sped up to 5,000 THz when it left my bubble and went out into the slow-world around me. But, when it bounced back to me, the waves would arrive farther apart. The light’d be slowed back down to 500 THz and I’d be able to see it again!

  He blinked, thinking, Wait a minute, what kind of radiation has a frequency of 5,000 THz? Is the flashlight emitting gamma radiation or something? It took a brief search to realize it wouldn’t be gamma, but that 5,000 THz lay on the border between UV and X-rays, both of which ionized molecules and were therefore toxic. Not as bad as gamma, but bad nonetheless. And if I’m able to reach 100X and the radiation was 50,000 THz, I’d be way up into the X-ray band.

  Holy shit, he wondered, could I give someone cancer by shining this flashlight at them? Maybe at 100X, I wouldn’t even be able to see people because X-rays would just go through them?

  With more research, he learned that the lowest power x-ray machines, like the relatively safe ones used in dentistry, consumed about 2,000 Watts, whereas, the label on his flashlight said it only used 1.2 Watts. Also, he found that a significant part of an x-ray beam bounced off—they called it “scattered”—from the patient it hit. So, he thought, the X-rays my flashlight sent into the slow-world around me would be very low-dose and a lot of them would reflect back so I could see them… I already knew that, he realized, because light from my phone’s screen bounced off the plastic of my laptop’s keyboard.

  Oh, he thought, thinking about the way leaves were green because they reflected green light and absorbed the higher and lower frequencies, the way the colors and brightness are weird in the light of my flashlight probably has to do with the way things absorb and reflect UV and X-rays differently than they reflect visible light. Something white, which should reflect all frequencies of light, might reflect the higher frequencies of X-rays differently than the lower ones.

  Remembering that the digital clock his grandmother had given him had a display that wasn’t lit— he thought it was an LCD screen—instead, having to be seen with reflected light, he got it out of his drawer. Because he used his phone for clock functions, he’d never used the clock. When he turned it on, he felt quite pleased to see it displaying seconds though it didn’t show hundredths. Putting his finger over the start button on his phone’s stopwatch, he pointed the flashlight at the clock and pushed hard to slow time. He could read the clock with the flashlight, so he sat and waited for the clock’s second digit to change.

  And waited and waited.

  When it finally changed. he’d gotten so bored he almost missed it. He started the stopwatch app a few seconds late.

  Then waited and waited and waited and waited.

  When the clock’s second digit flipped again, his phone registered six minutes and thirty-one seconds, or 391 seconds. Call it 400X, he thought, which is pretty much stopping time from my perspective.

  That means I’d live close to seven minutes of my time for every second that passed out in the outside world! If someone was in the room with me, I doubt they’d be able to see me as long as I kept moving around. If I laid out on the bed and took a nap, they’d notice me since a twenty-minute nap would keep me in the same spot for three seconds. But, if I kept moving around, I’ll bet they wouldn’t see me any more than they’d see a bullet go past… In fact, if the average walking speed’s three miles an hour, at 400X I’d be going… 1,200 mph!

  When he realized that’d be well over the speed of sound, he felt a frisson of relief that he hadn’t tried to run down the hall at school. Breaking the sound barrier inside the building would probably blow out all the windows, he realized. I’ve got to bring Jesse in on this, just so I can get him to tell me what he sees and hears when I’m doing this stuff… Oh, and I need to get a feel for what 200X is like and try to stay below that so I won’t cause sonic booms.

  Leaning back, he spent a minute staring at the ceiling, then thought. If baseball pitchers can throw over ninety miles per hour, I assume I can throw forty or fifty mph. I’d better not even swing my arms around hard if I can reach high multiples of fast-time. He wondered, Could swinging my arm sound like the crack of a whip? That “crack” sound’s supposed to come from the tip of the whip breaking the barrier, isn’t it?

  Witt sped his time somewhat. Then, wondering whether the laptop would respond at the lower speed, put his phone down and reached toward the laptop’s touchpad. With surprise, he realized that when he’d moved his hand away from the phone toward the laptop, the phone’s screen flickered, then its timer app suddenly ran slower. So, when it’s close to me—or a part of me—it runs at my speed, but when I move away from it, it slows down. How close does it have to be to run at my time?

  He moved his hand slowly back to the phone, expecting its stopwatch to suddenly speed up. Instead, when his hand came within about six inches, the phone glitched a number of times while the timer app intermittently increased its speed. When his hand was within a couple of inches, he thought the phone got back up to full speed.

  Do those glitches mean something’s wrong with my phone, or are the time changes I’m putting it through screwing it up? he wondered. Or, instead of gradually, is its time changing in incremental steps that just look like glitches?

  When he started to reach back over to the laptop, the phone glitched a couple of more times, then settled down with its clock running slowly. As a rough timekeeper, he counted, “one, and two, and three…,” deciding at the end of a count of twenty that his own clock speed was about two seconds for each second in the outside world, or 2X. After easing off on how hard he was pushing time, he got his speed down to about twelve seconds for every ten seconds in the outside world, or about a twenty percent speed increase. The room had brightened and when he looked at his violet school pen, it was a light blue-green he later learned was called cyan. When the school colors turn light blue-green I can probably win races, he realized.

  He pulled open his drawer and fished out his violet and white school wristband. It was pale blue-green too. He slipped it on, thinking it’d be easier to check than his pen when he needed to know how fast he was going.

  Witt spent a little time making himself a table that would let him know the approximate multiple of real-time he was running, based on the color of his wrist band. For instance, at a fifty percent increase, his pen was orangey-red and at eighty percent it was deep red on its way to going black.

  When he moved his hand back over to the laptop, he realized it’d crashed. Realization dawned. That’s what’s happening! The laptop’s components are far enough apart, he thought, that my hand being closer to some and farther from others has them running at different speeds. Speeds that’re changing as my hand moves around. Same thing with the phone, but lesser since its components are closer to one another. The desynchronization of the components only glitched the phone, but completely crashed the laptop.

  Stunned, he sat back to consider the implications of this transition zone. It’s like I have a bubble of differential time modulation around me.

  Holy shit! Transitioning in and out of the bubble might apply to air molecules too, he thought. If I completely stopped time, then held so still my bubble didn’t move around enough to encompass fresh air… my little bubble of air would get stagnant! Mildly speeding time should be okay because air molecules should transit in and out of the bubble the same way light does, but I shouldn’t hold still when I’ve sped time a lot… Though, I can’t imagine why I’d speed my time, then sit still so I guess this isn’t anything to worry about.

  Tilting his head curiously, he wondered, Can I increase the size of my bubble?

  On that thought, he began to wonder how he could tell how big the bubble was. He opened his desk drawer and looked through it. Pulling out some paper clips, he sped his time and chucked one at the far wall. As he’d been expecting, immediately after leaving his hand, it rapidly slowed, then sailed across the room in slo-mo to bounce off the wall and float down to the floor. He could tell its time-fl
ow was normal for it out there, because it bounced farther off the wall and floor than it should have while traveling at what he perceived to be such a slow speed.

  He tried this with a few more clips, deciding that they started decelerating a couple of inches after leaving his fingers. About four to eight inches farther on, they were as slow as they got and kept the same speed from there on.

  Getting out another clip, he tossed it straight up. Again, it slowed shortly after leaving his hand. Even though it sped up in the last inches before falling back into his hand, the slow rate of fall made it easy to catch.

  Catching was something he’d never been good at. Though he could still use improvement in the way his hand closed on the clip as it landed in his palm, it was easy to position his hand so he couldn’t fail to catch it. This could convert me from nerd to superjock, he thought with a sense of awe.

  He blinked, What if the reason some athletes are so great is merely because they can control time this way? Or, even if they don’t change the speed of time the way I do, what if they just run on slightly faster clocks?

  He shrugged, deciding he had no way to test the idea.

  Pulling out another paper clip, he pictured his time bubble expanded to several feet, then tossed the paper clip. He felt a surge of excitement when it slowed over about three feet instead of just a few inches. The same thing happened when he tried expanding his bubble most of the way across the room.

  His eyes fell on the laptop. What if…? He reduced the size of his bubble, but pictured it extending out and around the laptop. The laptop was still frozen, but when Witt rebooted it, it came back up and worked perfectly—as long as he kept his bubble pushed out around it. But I don’t have to keep my hand next to it for it to work, he thought excitedly.

  He looked at his phone and saw it was past his usual bedtime. He let time come back to normal, watching the tiny clock in the upper corner of the phone. A moment later, the clock jumped back in time when the phone reconnected to the network. Apparently, the time-differential had caused enough trouble with the phone’s link that it hadn’t updated its time to match that transmitted through the internet. It probably jumped back each time I let it keep normal-time, he realized, so I have no idea how far off from normal time I am.

  Doing this could seriously screw up my sleep cycle, he realized. I’ve physically been awake quite a bit longer than the clocks register. He still had eight hours before he had to get up though, and he’d read it didn’t help to sleep extra to make up for being awake too long. Maybe I’ll be okay tomorrow, he thought hopefully.

  Chapter Two

  Summary of what Witt learned in the first chapter

  When he goes into fast-time, colors shift toward red (red-shift).

  He can tell how fast he’s going by the color shift of his violet wristband.

  At a twenty percent speed increase, the wrist band turns light blue-green.

  When he’s going over twice normal speed (2X) the world goes dark.

  He can go as fast as 400X.

  If he walks at 3 mph, then at 400X he’s going 1200 mph out in normal time, well over the speed of sound.

  He can use a flashlight to see in the darkness he encounters when he’s beyond 2X.

  The light from that flashlight gets blue shifted up into the UV and X-ray ranges but is so low power it should be harmless.

  When the light from the flashlight bounces back to him, it red-shifts back down to the normal light range so he can see it.

  When he’s in fast-time, there’s a bubble surrounding him in which time transitions down to the 1X speed of the rest of the world.

  He can change the size of that bubble.

  That bubble of time transition has the effect of muffling sound waves passing through it and preventing sonic booms from his fast movement.

  That bubble can glitch electronics like computers/phones (because different components of the computer are working at different speeds in the transition zone).

  Witt stopped right after exiting their apartment the next morning. Shaking his head, he went back, got his little flashlight, and put it in his backpack. Going out the door a second time, he felt amused that he thought he might need the flashlight so he could stop time today. Maybe someday, he thought, but surely not today.

  At school, everything seemed normal. He kept feeling as if there should be major changes in the world around him. Transformations that reflected the monumental revolution in his own life. Instead, other than a couple of people calling him the dodger, the world seemed unimpressed by Witt’s life-changing personal events.

  Between his fourth and fifth classes of the day, Cinna stopped him in the hall. Witt raised an eyebrow and said, “Thanks for stopping me here.”

  She frowned, “Why?”

  “It’s safer than the stairs, I’m not as likely to die if Bear knocks me down on this level flooring.”

  Cinna sighed, “I’m sorry about the way Bear acted yesterday.” She shrugged, “He’s… obscenely jealous. I’m gonna talk to him and make sure he doesn’t do anything like that again.”

  Witt leaned back, giving her an astonished look. “You think you can control Bear?! ’Cause, from what I’ve heard, guys like him don’t let women tell them what to do.”

  She gave Witt an intense look, then leaned closer. “If he doesn’t cut that shit out, I’ll dump him.”

  “Oh,” Will said sarcastically. “My dead body’ll appreciate that!”

  “Come on, Witt,” Cinna said softly. “I really need help with calculus.”

  “There’re girls a lot smarter than me who tutor. You could talk to Kerry. Bear wouldn’t be jealous of her.”

  Cinna looked off down the hall, then turned back to Witt, a blush on her face and tears in her eyes. Her eyes dropped to her feet, “Kerry charges a lot for tutoring.” Cinna looked away, then softly added, “A lot more than I can pay.”

  Witt made a show of surveying her expensive clothing, then rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.” He turned on his heel and started for his next class.

  With a rush of small steps, Cinna caught up to him, grabbing his elbow. In a small, broken voice, she said, “Yes, my dad buys me nice clothes, but he… he wouldn’t pay for a tutor. He doesn’t care about my grades.”

  Given his own mother’s attitude about grades, Witt found this hard to believe. Rolling his eyes, he scoffed, “You’ve got to be kidding. Your dad doesn’t care about your grades?”

  She shook her head. “He’s really… um… It’s like he’s from the dark ages. He buys me nice clothes because he wants me to look good. So…” her lip quivered and she looked uncomfortable, “So I can marry someone like Bear. Dad thinks education’s wasted on girls. Um,” she seemed embarrassed, “he doesn’t say it, but I’m pretty sure he thinks I’ll have a better chance with guys like Bear if I don’t do well in school.”

  Witt realized he could see that being true. Bear seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t want a girl smart enough to show him up. Turning away, he said, “So why do you care about calculus then? Sounds like your life plan doesn’t require it. If it’s a struggle, why fight it?”

  Cinna grabbed his arm again, pulling him around to face her. The look on her face was intense, “My life plan involves going to college, getting a good education, then a great job. I don’t want to depend on a man.”

  Witt pulled away, saying he had to get to class. The humiliated look she gave him as he moved off left him feeling terrible. Once in class, he couldn’t stop thinking about how different Cinna had turned out to be from what he’d expected.

  ~~~

  When he walked out of his last class of the day, Witt saw Cinna striding down the hall toward him.

  He wanted to tell her to give it a rest, but the embarrassed, nonetheless determined look on her face stopped him. She opened her mouth to speak but he suddenly couldn’t stand listening to her plead with him again. Abruptly, he found himself saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll do it. We can start in study hall tomorrow.” He looked away and mumbled, “Sorry I was such an asshole before.”

  She didn’t say anything for several moments. When Witt turned his eyes to hers, relief suffused her previously tense face. She took a deep breath, then said, “I was planning to apologize for being insensitive… um…to your concerns about Bear. I’ve decided to break up with him anyway. I shouldn’t be going with a guy who’d take a swing at someone just because I’m talking to him.”