I sat down. “Give me the potion,” I said. “If the worst comes to the worst it will save having my hair cut, and that I think is one of the most hateful duties of a civilized man. How do you take the mixture?”

“But someone must have taken it,” said the bewildered cashier. “Money doesn’t just walk off of its own accord or vanish into thin air—"

Think a minute. If the watch seems running double speed that would indicate that your perception of its movements had slowed down fifty per cent.

What I’ve done is to build a time-space traveler, working by atomic energy. Even as long ago as 1913, you know, Rutherford succeeded in partly breaking down the hydrogen atom. By 1933, others succeeded in partially breaking down atoms with high voltages of electricity. But they used up far more energy than they got back, or released. I’ve simply perfected the method to a point where, with an initial bombardment of fifty volts, I can break down one atom and get back thousands of times the energy I put in. There’s nothing strange or wonderful or miraculous about it. I don’t create energy of power from nothing. I simply liberate energy that already exists. Part of the power I use to break down another atom, and so on, while the rest is diverted to propel the torpedo by discharging through tubes—like a rocket. I’ve made one short experimental trip.

I awoke this morning to some very puzzling incidents. It seemed that time itself had stopped, or that the whole world had gone into super-slow motion.

Physicians listened to heartbeats that dragged on, lonely and deep, for over a minute per. They worried over eyes that refused to blink, yet remained somehow moist. They despaired over encephalograms whose spikes could be counted in single neuron flashes, adding up to a complex pattern that was . . . normal!

The large clock appeared to be broken, its second hand stopped at thirteen seconds past the hour.

Zak: My dad consults on these super-secret projects, and I think this is one of them.
Francesca: So your watch stops time?

Luister, jongedame: De mensen denken al eeuwen dat ze leven in het einde der tijden. Het zou handig ziln als je jezelf ietsje minderbelangrijk maakt.