[IC] ｆｒｏｚｅｎ ｉｎ ｔｉｍｅ

[Succulent]

"I'm sorry but Mr. Willhem is fully booked for the next week, ma'am. He's planning on revealing a new energy prototype on Friday and needs to spend these next few days preparing. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but thank you for calling."

As soon as she hung up, Chloe let out a groan and closed her eyes, needing just two seconds of peace and quiet. All day she had to deal with snobby people getting upset when they didn't get what they wanted. She even had to skip her lunch break to help Mr. Willhem with whatever stupid presentation he had to do. Her stomach loudly growled in protest of any more work but the woman knew that, at any moment, another rich patron would call and demand attention.

Yet, surprisingly, the office was quiet. Dead quiet. The room was quickly warming up, too, and when Chloe opened her eyes she realized the only light was coming from the large windows that surrounded the work area. "The power must have turned off," she muttered to herself as she slowly looked around, a slight frown appearing on her face when she noticed something was... off. As she wondered about some sort of backup generator she stood to get a better look at the others in the room. She worked as a secretary for Colby Willhem, CEO and founder of Willhem & Co. Research Enhancement Center, on the office and presentation floor. The room was wide open and secretary desks dotted themselves in front of closed doors where the more experienced and higher-paid scientists worked. Mr. Willhem's office was directly behind her but he was in the laboratory two floors above.

"Is this some kind of joke?" She yelled when she realized the other coworkers weren't moving. They were frozen, mid position. One lady was putting a phone back on the receiver, another was in mid-sneeze. A guy directly across the room was bent over his desk. A frown appeared on Chloe's face as she stepped around her desk, her heels slowly clicking against the polished floor. Hesitantly walking to one of the offices, she pushed the door open without knocking. Inside a bald man named Fischer, according to his name plate, was mid-bite in a sandwich. The woman slowly walked in, still convinced this was all a prank, and slapped his hand. The sandwich scattered across the desktop but the man's hand still remained midair.

"What the hell is happening," Chloe muttered, quickly turning to the large, floor-to-ceiling window that showed a grand view of Park Avenue. Everyone outside was frozen, just like her coworkers. Cars paused mid-turn, people standing on sidewalks with open strides. A bird was even frozen just a few feet from the window.

The black-haired woman's breathing started to become a bit labored as the utter silence of the city, and the gravity of the situation, hit her. New York City wasn't supposed to be silent. It was supposed to have car horns and police sirens and people yelling. Strangers were supposed to be busy, moving and shoving people to get to their destination. Not this. Not whatever the hell happened.

She stumbled out of the office and went to her desk, practically ripping out a drawer to access her purse before digging in it for a cigarette. Shoving one between her teeth her fingers fumbled on the lighter. Once it was lit, however, she drew in a deep breath and held the smoke in her lungs before releasing it slowly. She did this once more before she started to settle down, the nicotine forcing her to relax.

"Okay just think Chloe. One minute everything is fine and the next everything stopped," she muttered, looking around for some sort of answer. Her left hand held the cigarette and she mindlessly smoked as she tried to turn her computer back on. It wouldn't start and even reconnecting it to the outlet didn't work. Her phone turned on but the connection was extremely spotty and unreliable. Every app or game that didn't require an internet connection worked fine, but those that needed internet or even just a hot spot didn't work. Her clock was stuck on 1:41.

As she lit her second cigarette a thought hit her. Everyone but her was frozen in time. She could do whatever she wanted. Take whatever she wanted.

An old feeling welled up inside of her, one that she had to suppress if she wanted a job and all. When she was a teenager she used to steal little things to get by and, if no one was around to tell her "no," then why shouldn't she indulge herself a little bit? She bit her lip to stop her smile as she stubbed her cigarette out against the desk. She grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder as she used the stairs to get to the street.

Poking a few random citizens in the face and getting no reaction, Chloe couldn't help but laugh as she began her way down the street, poking and accidentally knocking over people who were probably dead or something. None of them mattered, though, because this was like she was running the show. This was her world. She figured everyone was frozen or dead or whatever happened and didn't both actually looking around for people like herself.

[baskets]

As Sarah rose from her slumber, she let out a long, loud groan that resonated within her bedroom. She stretched out, relishing the feel of her soft sheets on her skin. She knew she had wasted the day away sleeping, but in her defense, Sarah had only just gone to bed at about four that morning. It had been a long night of partying, but fortunately for Sarah, there was no hangover to be suffered today.

She pulled her sheets off, sitting up in her bed. It took her a moment to readjust to her surroundings: the tiny apartment Sarah liked to call home. It had only four rooms; the small living room and kitchen area by the front door, her bedroom to the left of the front door, a small study to the right, and a bathroom that was connected to her bedroom. It was messy and largely unfurnished, save for her mattress that rested on the floor in the bedroom, a large dresser on the opposite side of the room, a couch in the living room set across from a decent thirty inch television set, and a small kitchen table with only two chairs in the kitchen. The study had a desk, but it had gone unused for years now and the room itself had essentially been turned into a glorified storage closet. Sarah rubbed her eyes as she began to wake up, and energy flowed through her body once more.

That was when the silence struck her - despite the fact that it was midday and Sarah’s tiny apartment was right in the middle of Soho, there was absolutely no noise coming from outside. She scrambled to the edge of her bed that overlooked Broadway and clawed the window open. She poked her head out the window and-

Nothing. No noise whatsoever. And to top it off, nothing was moving. The cars looked like they had just stopped in the middle of the street, but the drivers were still there. The pedestrians had all been frozen midstep, and the street vendor that worked the corner of Spring and Broadway was stuck mid-transaction.

Sarah spun back towards her bedroom, checking the digital clock that was on the floor next to the bathroom door - but it was blank. Nothing at all. Fortunately, she had a backup: a battery powered analog clock leaned up against the wall just next to its digital counterpart.

But while the clock read 1:41, none of the hands moved. She had just replaced the batteries only a couple days before, so Sarah knew that wasn’t an issue. Then it hit her - time had stopped.

She almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought. It seemed impossible, but all the evidence in front of her seemed to add up to that conclusion. But why did she keep going? It was like one of those video games she would play as a kid, where she was the special player character that, for some strange reason, was the one who survived the freezing of time.

Of course, the logical next step for Sarah was to experiment with the new reality she seemed to find herself in. Her phone was completely dead, and the lights in her apartment weren’t working. There was no running water either, which unnerved Sarah slightly. She’d have to find a different source for water, then. Her television wouldn’t react to the press of the power button, and all her kitchen appliances were dead.

“So, electricity is dead. Makes sense, I guess,” Sarah muttered to herself, recalling the words of her high school physics teacher. Electrons did need to be moving for electricity to work, and it didn’t seem like anything was moving on its own in this time frozen world Sarah now lived in. She figured if she could get them to move somehow, things would work again, but what kind of power sources operated manually these days? It was 2078, for Christ’s sake.

Sarah entered the study, scrambling through the boxes and piles of stuff that had accumulated in the room over the last three years she had lived in the apartment. After twenty minutes - wait, did that still apply? Sarah paused to consider that concept. Had she been searching for twenty minutes? If time was frozen, hadn’t she been searching for no time at all? She shook her head, struggling to come to a solid conclusion.

In any case, she had found what she was looking for. An old box of film cameras she had kept, with enough film to last about a week. The film had been protected, so it was likely still good. She inserted a roll of instant film into one of the instant cameras the had in the box. She framed a museum worthy shot of the kitchen and hit the button. As the film emerged from the camera, Sarah was surprised to see that the film didn’t seem to be developing at all. Wait, scratch that - the film did develop, but the entire image was pure black, as if she had taken a picture in a completely dark room. Sarah frowned, placing the camera back into the box. She had wanted to take pictures of the city while it was frozen, but that was clearly not a possibility.

Slightly disheartened but still curious to test the limits of this time freeze, Sarah went back to her bedroom and opened up her dresser, setting up an outfit for the day. Just because the world was frozen didn’t mean Sarah wasn’t going to look cute as fuck.

Sarah emerged from her apartment building in ripped dark blue jeans, a loose, low-cut white shirt, and her favorite black leather jacket. On her head was a loose-fitting black knit hat, and her shoes of choice were a pair of brown combat boots. And to top off the look, a pair of (stolen) aviators over her eyes. Perfect. She lit a cigarette and headed north on Broadway, on the lookout for any kind of trouble she could get herself into.