Hunter, that’s the thing. My mind was stuck on the wrong puzzle the whole time. Hunter, the frames are not skipping, they are bumping, and actually, to be clear, the frames are not moving at all. It was her eyes, Hunter, her eyes were the answer.”
“What?”
“OK, think of it this way, you’re in a car and you drive over a speed bump. Even if you don’t slow down, when the car hits the speed bump, what happens? It slows, or, more correctly, the forward velocity slows down, and that energy, it goes somewhere else. It moves upward. Some of it goes to the shock absorbers, the tires, etc.”
“Speed bumps?”
“Right, it took me changing my tack to get it. I focused on Nikki’s eyes, her eyelids to be exact. She is in R.E.M sleep. The thing is, to make a long story short, her eye movements are continuous; they don’t skip like the video frames.
“Using my theory, I reconstructed the video,” he continued, while starting the video. It looked like a normal video of a person sleeping. She looked peaceful; no more frame flicker, a clear video.
“I will stop it now.”
“Why? What happens?”
“Nothing, that’s just it — it goes on for eight hours.”
Hunter couldn’t speak. His heart stopped. The original video had been less than one hour. She had been in a sleep study, never able to sleep more than an hour. Someone mailed the video and Nikki’s name to Hunter years back. No return address or name. It wasn’t until recently he figured out it might be related to the bigger mystery.
“You’re saying she stopped time?” he asked out loud, as insane as it sounded.
“She didn’t stop time. She altered it, or someone did, something,” Josh explained. “Time was slowed, altered in its path. Think of the speed bump again, but now imagine millions of tiny speed bumps and think of the car as time. Time is moving over those millions of speed bumps, that is what makes the video look like it does, distorted, flickering. And for whatever reason, Nikki wasn’t going over those speed bumps, she slept the full eight hours.
“Eight hours of her sleep was one hour of real time, our time. It’s fascinating, it’s exciting; I don’t know how to describe it. Nothing like this has ever happened, at least never documented.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No, no, I haven’t had time to even digest it myself. I have so much more to do to understand, to study. Hunter, do you know what this means? If this is real, it changes everything.”
“Joshua, you have to promise me, for now. You need to promise to keep this quiet. I am not the only one looking into Nikki. I think you could be in danger if this got out, real danger.”
He nodded. “I may be a geek, but you remember my love for history, I know all too well that people have killed for much less than this.”
“Yes they have, my friend.”
They both sat silently for a time.
“You told me Nikki is dead? That she had a terminal genetic condition?” Josh resumed.
“She’s supposed to be dead, but she’s not.”
“What? If the data you gave me on her condition was right, that wouldn’t be possible.”
“Is this possible?” Hunter pointed to the video.
“Point taken,” Josh acknowledged, nodding his head.
“Let’s walk outside for a while,” he made a swirling motion with his hand, Josh got the hint.
They went out into the courtyard. The air was already changing. It wouldn’t be long before winter took hold, Josh thought to himself.
“Josh, back to Nikki; we know that a cab dropped her off in an abandoned part of town,” Hunter recounted.
“Did anyone see her leave?” Josh asked.
“All the cameras went out for miles, every street cam. We have no idea where she is now. But I’m sure of one thing. She is alive. Josh, we have her making a phone call almost a year later.”
Josh’s eyes flew open.
“Hunter, if she is out there, if she is alive, you have to bring her to me. And, like you said, she isn’t safe
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