There Was A Minute

There was a minute where every clock in the world just stopped. No one knows why, but we were all aware when it happened. Ask anyone who was old enough to remember that time. They all describe the same thing. A sort of general need or feeling to look at a clock. And sure enough, they were stopped. 12:02. That was the time. Nothing special about it as far as I know, or as far as anyone knows. And strangely no one panicked about it in the moment. It was a curiosity, something weird but not necessarily bad. And nothing else seemed to stop. Birds were singing, cars still hummed along in the streets, children ran and laughed and played. But the clocks had a moment where they just sort of hiccuped, as if every single one of them went, ‘Wait, what was I doing?’ Even the phones and all the digital ones. It’s funny in a strange way. It lasted for a minute, exactly a minute according to some scientists but I’m not really sure how they were able to tell. Then everything went back to normal. It was nice too. That moment of calm. Just one minute where the world felt at ease. I think we sort of needed it to be honest. Or at least I did.

Of course, it couldn’t last. It took a few days, but people did eventually start to question and panic a bit. The panic didn’t last long, but you had the usual people screaming about the end of the world, aliens, communists, all sorts of nonsense. Inevitably, we returned to the turning, ticking day to day. I still think about that moment sometimes and wonder why it happened and how. But I don’t think I’ll ever really know. One of those mysteries of life. After that, all the clocks ran fine, picked up right where they left off and haven’t been off since except for low batteries, power outages, human error. All the usual stuff. Some people don’t seem to care or think about it. It comes up in the news sometimes, scientists are close to figuring out what happened they’ll say, but then turns out no they aren’t. People bring it up in podcasts, have written books about what they think it was. But no one really knows. It’s mostly died down by now. But every so often, at 12:02, you’ll catch people looking at the nearest clock and waiting for a minute, just to see.