The night air was painfully cold, the two figures walked briskly. No clouds in the sky meant a full moon could shine brightly, and also that there was more cold ahead than warmth.
"You know what would be great, Robert? A 'pause' button. You'd press the button and time would stop. Not for you, though. You could go aroud, do your things, and then resume time when you were done. For example. If you have to wake up at 9, you could set your alarm apropriately, and then when the buzzer goes off, you press the Pause button instead of the snooze button. Now time is stopped and you can sleep as long as you want. When you wake naturally you would resume time and be ready to greet the day as if you had woken up with your alarm."
"That's all well and good, Stephen, but someone is bound to notice."
"Who could notice? And if they did, you could just pause and walk away and they'd never catch you."
"I'm not talking about people. There are things that dwell beyond the threshold of human comprehension and thank god for that distance. Were the human mind capable of seeing the forces---
A black shadow passed over the moon. Only Robert seemed to notice. Stephen just looked at him curiously.
"Look, Stephen, you believe in extra-terrestrial life? In aliens and the like?"
"Sure."
"Well, think about it. The human system of physics is cumbersome and arbitrary at times. It is a complicated means of explaining a simple unnameable rule. There are others who understand that simplicity. Dwellers beyond time. Beyond our feeble minds' reach. Do you think contact with one of these would be a matter of a hand-shake and a hello? Preposterous! The mere sight of such an anomolous creature would shock the human mind into a stupor. Those with a strong enough will might retain the mental faculties of a three year old when they discover that communication with the creature is conducted on a level so high that the avenues of knowledge it opens in the humand's pahtetic grey matter simply tear it asunder!"
Stephen stepped back. Robert was trembling, his voice elevated and excited, tears streaming from his eyes and the hairs on his neck standing on end. It was as if he were talking about events and places that were sitting right before his eyes. Stephen saw him slide a hand into a pocket on his jacket and produce a small grey box with a red circluar... a button! by god it was a button! ... and faster than this thought crossed Stephen's mind, his friend was gone.
