Fate Rewritten

Ramses stood still in the center of the city square, the distant hum of his own thoughts the only sound in the frozen world around him. A crisp wind whipped through the empty streets, but it didn't carry the usual clamor of life—no birds chirping, no voices calling, no cars revving in the distance. It was as if the world itself had been swallowed by silence. The vibrant pulse of the city, its lifeblood, was gone. Time had stopped, and he was left in its eerie wake.

He had learned to adapt to this stillness over the course of weeks. When time first froze, it had felt like a dream—a strange, exhilarating gift. He had wandered through the abandoned streets like a child, touched every object, explored every corner, and reveled in the solitude. There was a sense of freedom he had never known before, a freedom that allowed him to live outside the usual bounds of time, without worry, without stress. But now, that initial excitement had faded. The emptiness that had once seemed like an opportunity had become a heavy, suffocating burden.

What had once felt like a treasure—being the only one left in a frozen world—had now become a prison. The questions had started small, then slowly grew to fill every corner of his mind: Why me? Why am I the only one who's awake? Why has time stopped? Is this a punishment? A gift? Or just some bizarre twist of fate?

As he walked the streets, Ramses noticed the same patterns: people frozen mid-step, their faces locked in expressions of ordinary life. Some of them were smiling, others talking, while some seemed to be mid-gesture. The world appeared to be suspended in a single, everlasting moment. Time had ceased its relentless march forward. But why? Was it something he had caused? Or was it something beyond his control?

The question he could not shake, the one that gnawed at him more and more each day, was: What happens now?

Ramses paused in front of an old café, its glass doors half-open as if waiting for someone to walk through. He had passed it countless times, but today, the sight of the frozen world inside struck him in a way it hadn't before. The chairs were pushed out from the tables, some tilted at odd angles, as though the last customer had left in a hurry, or worse, had simply frozen in place, unable to move. A moment in time preserved forever. He looked inside and saw the quiet, abandoned atmosphere—a reflection of the loneliness that had begun to creep into his heart.

Had it always been like this? Had he always felt so isolated?

Ramses had to look away. He couldn't bear the thought of it—his own thoughts mirroring the stillness of the world around him. His mind swirled with the idea that maybe this wasn't an accident. Maybe he was meant to be here, alone. But for what purpose? He had lived a life of indecision, of fear, of anxiety, but was this truly some cosmic punishment? Some form of divine reckoning for his failure to be the man he wanted to be?

As he stood there, the frozen world feeling heavier with each passing second, a thought struck him: What if I'm not supposed to be here? What if this place, this stillness, is just another prison—an endless loop of punishment designed to keep me trapped in my own inadequacies?

It was a dark thought, and he pushed it away, but not entirely. If he was meant to learn something from this, what was it? Time was frozen, but that didn't stop his mind from racing. It didn't stop his soul from aching, from yearning for answers.

Ramses had spent countless hours researching the phenomenon that had befallen the world. The books he found in abandoned bookstores and libraries told him about quantum mechanics, about theories of time and space, and the possibility that the world could, in fact, come to a halt under certain conditions. But none of the explanations seemed to fit. Everything he read seemed to suggest that time couldn't simply stop. It was a constant, a linear force, moving forward, never pausing. But that wasn't what had happened. The world had stopped. The question remained: why?

He had read about the concept of time dilation—a phenomenon in relativity theory where time could appear to move differently for different observers. But this was not time dilation. Time wasn't moving slowly for anyone. It had stopped entirely, and Ramses was the only one who seemed to be immune to it.

It was hard to comprehend. It felt like a dream, yet it was undeniably real.

As he continued to walk through the city, trying to make sense of it all, another thought occurred to him: What if time hasn't stopped for everyone else? What if I'm the one who's been left behind?

It was a terrifying possibility. The idea that everyone else had continued on with their lives, moving forward, while he remained stuck in this frozen moment, haunted him. Had he been abandoned, forgotten, left to wander in a world that no longer existed?

For the first time, Ramses felt a deep pang of panic. If time had continued for everyone else, what did that mean for him? Was he still a part of the world? Was he even alive, or was he some kind of ghost, stuck in a limbo, trapped in a reality that no longer held any meaning?

He leaned against a streetlight, his thoughts spiraling. Could he truly be the only one left? Could time have stopped for everyone else but him? Or was there something more—something he was missing?

Ramses pushed himself off the streetlight, taking a deep breath. No. He couldn't allow himself to be consumed by that fear. If there was one thing he had learned from all of this, it was that fear was the enemy. Fear had held him back in life, had kept him from moving forward, and it wasn't going to control him now. Time may be frozen, but I am not.

His eyes wandered to the city clock—a large, imposing structure that had once marked the passage of time. The hands were stuck at exactly 3:15. Not moving. Not ticking forward. The clock had stopped, just like everything else. Yet, the structure was still there, intact. Time had stopped for it, just as it had for the world. The hands were fixed in place, as if frozen in time. And yet, it seemed like the clock was still waiting for something—waiting for a signal, waiting for a change.

Ramses approached the clock slowly. It stood there like a monument to a past he couldn't quite grasp. He had spent years trying to outrun time, trying to manage it, control it, and now that it had stopped, he was faced with a different kind of challenge. The challenge of not being bound by it.

For the first time in his life, Ramses began to consider that time—at least as he had known it—was an illusion. It was a measure of change, of growth, but it wasn't real in the way he had always believed. Time could be manipulated. It could stop. And if time could stop, then maybe it could be restarted.

He ran his hand over the clock's cold, metal surface, the weight of its stillness heavy against his palm. Was this truly the end, or was it the beginning of something new?

The more he thought about it, the clearer it became: Time wasn't just a force that moved forward. It was a concept, a measurement, a tool—one that had been used to control him for most of his life. He had allowed himself to become a slave to it, racing against the clock, counting the seconds, minutes, and hours. But now, the clock no longer ticked. It no longer ruled his life. Maybe this is what it feels like to be free, he thought. To be outside of time.

A sense of calm washed over him. He wasn't trapped. He was free.

And for the first time in weeks, he smiled.