Multiverse 8 Snippet 2

 Sitrep: Some minor changes to the Bast cover. I'll get on that project probably tomorrow.

On to the snippet!

Time Zone

Rita Geffen was having a normal day or thought she was. She came out of her building and put her ear buds in. She headed to her scooter to head to work but then stopped when she noticed everything was frozen.

She smiled, thinking it was some sort of flash prank. She’d heard about them played years ago. She thought of the people as mannequins or like a mime. But when she went over to touch a woman walking midstride, the woman didn’t react.

Even her dress was fluttering and the wind was blowing her hair. It remained out like that.

She looked around and saw a plane in the sky, just frozen in the air. Off to her right, she saw a distant helicopter. Again, just frozen. She spun in place and saw other things just frozen there. A flock of pigeons were nearby; one was pooping on someone. She could see the poop just hovering in the air.

“What the hell is going on?!?” she demanded loudly.

~~~~~~

Rashid Bashar had been working in the tunnels underground. His phone had no signal and of course no internet. When he came out to check on things, he found that the phone was still losing battery power faster than it should. It kept trying to find a signal. He had to put it on plane mode to keep it from draining the battery. He was confused about it until he looked around and saw the bustling market frozen in place.

“Allah …?” he asked in disbelief, eyes wide in surprise. It was near dusk and everything was just frozen. He didn’t understand. Nothing made sense.

~~~~~~

There was an eerie silence; it was so quiet it was scary. Like the calm before a storm, like when all of the insects went silent just before something happened. There was no sounds of birds, no insects, no machinery, no people talking, nothing at all. Darren Monroe realized how much you just tuned out all of the ambient noise until it was gone.

 “God, this is freaky,” he muttered.

He hadn’t understood what was going on. He still didn’t. It was 9 am and just … stuck. The sun didn’t move, the people didn’t, nothing did except him. He’d tried to take a nap and hoped it was just a bad dream, but when he opened his eyes, the world was still frozen. Even Max, his old buddy, was frozen in his dog bed licking his privates. The scene made him snort. Someone should make a sculpture of it or some such, he thought.

He pulled out a generator and plugged in an old radio from the back of his closet. But of course it didn’t work. He finally got a clue and tried his old CD collection. Those worked thankfully.

He didn’t have many; he’d inherited them from his uncle and just stuck them in a box because his mother had insisted that they’d be valuable some day. Now he was glad he’d kept them. The same for the DVDs.

Just hearing sound again helped him feel a little better. The situation was freaky, and he didn’t understand what the hell was going on but hearing the Top Gun album helped him somehow.

~~~~~~

Sergeant Ezra Falk of the Israeli army made his way through the apartment and saw everything and everyone just stuck in place, frozen in time. When he got outside, he looked around to see birds, planes, cars, people, all things that had once been in motion were just frozen still. Things that were falling were just stuck.

“Hello? Anyone in there?” Ezra asked as he waved a hand in front of the woman’s frozen face.

“Freaky, it’s like no one is breathing … and who the hell am I talking to again? You can’t hear me!” He turned around and looked to see everyone and everything just stuck in time.

“Does anyone know what the hell is going on?” he demanded.

There was just silence. No sounds of anything at all.

“This has got to be the weirdest damn dream I’ve ever had,” he muttered as he stormed back inside.

~~~~~~

Tammi Cabot started to make some headway on what was going on. It didn’t make sense but some rules were starting to become apparent to her.

Like that other people were frozen but if she got close to something, it began to move. The first time that happened it had startled her. She hadn’t expected it. But then it froze again.

She pictured a bubble around her, some sort of field that was allowing stuff to move.

She tried various ways to interact with stuff and then people. It didn’t work with the people though, at least not the same as the inert items. She wasn’t certain as to why.

One thing she did find was that once the item moved out of whatever bubble was around her it just stopped again.

She tried tracing a paper airplane she made, moving along with it. That was fun.

“Either this is a dream or God is nuts,” she muttered as she wandered around to see the sights and take pictures. She might as well make the best of the situation.

~~~~~~

Debbi Jordan was hysterical as she looked around at all the frozen people and things. She thought that she was dead. “I’m in hell? This is hell?”  she cried going through some hysterics until she began to hiccup. She finally hit the bottle and got drunk. She eventually passed out and never woke up again.

~~~~~~

Darren made a hell of a mess while eating a tub of ice cream and watching a DVD. He thought of a scene and snorted and then snickered. It reminded him so much of the first Home Alone movie. “Hey, I’m eating junk and watching smut, Someone better stop me!” he caroled loudly. As expected no one answered.

He started to get headache and thought it was eye strain. He shut off the DVD and got up to pee. As he walked down the hallway, he started to feel a little better.

In the bathroom, he peed and then hit the lever to flush the tank. Water actually went down but the tank didn’t refill. He played with the lever and then took the tank top off and fiddled with the innards, totally confused as to why it wasn’t filling.

He finally gave up after a moment and decided to deal with it later.

He opened the medicine cabinet and took an aspirin for the headache and then downed some water to wash it down and then went to eat.

~~~~~~

Lance Stewart made his way home and moaned when he saw his wife frozen. He studied her for a long moment and then gently touched her. The whole world was frozen; he didn’t know why. But he didn’t want to be alone.

~~~~~~

Tammi Cabot continued to record her video diary. She took tons of photos and video of people frozen in the air. She then dictated her thoughts, unsure why, or who would see it.

She spent a lot of time video recording strange stuff. It was amusing, and she started to look for the truly bazaar stuff.

~~~~~~

Darren went to sleep on his bed with his phone on his chest hoping it was all one bad dream. The alarm on the phone went off sometime later; He checked it hoping it was a call. He instead saw that it was a carbon monoxide detector. He was confused and rolled to the side feeling a bit disoriented.

It was still broad daylight outside. That confused him until he remembered the world being frozen. But that was a distant unimportant thing. He looked at the phone in his hand once more.

He’d set that app up at his mother’s nagging. He didn’t understand why it went off. His head hurt more and he was tired. He was very sleepy; however, it was a pain in the ass to sleep with it being broad daylight out.

He wasn’t going to go to sleep at all with his bladder full he realized. Well, it was time to do something about that he thought blearily.

He got up and coughed, and then he had to hold out a hand to steady himself to get down the hallway to the bathroom. Again, he noted that it was still daylight out. He held the phone in his free hand and wondered why he felt like he was hung over.

When he got to the bathroom, he looked out the window and saw that yes, everything was indeed still frozen still. He let out a long suffering sigh.

He unloaded his bladder again but this time he had nothing to flush tank when he hit the chrome lever. He grimaced in realization of that problem as the smell of his own urine wafted up to his nostrils. “Gonna have to plunge that or something,” he muttered as he got into the medicine cabinet and got another aspirin. He fumbled the bottle and lid but finally got one out. Of course several spilled on the counter, down the drain, and on the floor.

He didn’t care at the moment. He just wanted the pain to go away.

He popped the pill in and then took a swig of water from a bottle he kept on the counter. He used to have a cup for tap water but the damn ants had been all over it and groused him out. He leaned against the wall and wondered what the hell was wrong with him now.

~~~~~~