Frozen in Love
The universe is broken.
There’s really no other way to put it.
The universe is completely and inherently broken.
The entirety of the universe halts at a moment’s notice when you see someone. Your soul mate. The worst part is, they don’t even have to see you back. You just have to witness them in some medium and the world itself will halt for you two to make that first connection. My mother and father saw each other in a college class. That must have been simple enough.
Lucky me, I looked at a picture of her. In an advertisement on a train. One with a dog filter on her face.
The two of us were immediately thrown into this new, frozen time. Of course, we had no way to reach each other. No way to leave a message to find out where we were. Even better, she had no idea what I looked like. She was stuck because I saw her. That would be a great start to our relationship.
I scratched a line into my notes. There was no way to keep track of time, of course, so I just did it every time I woke up. Looked like it was “day” 930. Fun.
I spent a lot of my time foraging for food. That actually wasn’t too difficult, most of it was cooked in restaurants and I would just eat it off of people’s plates or go “shopping” for non-perishables every once in a while. I couldn’t cook anything since I couldn’t get a fire to start on any appliance. I was once interested in why but “the universe is broken” really seems like the most appropriate response. I found an aisle of jerky today. That would do fine.
I’d been leaving notes everywhere I went, telling my soulmate where I’d be next, but I never stayed in one place for more than a couple days. For all I knew, she was staying in one place, waiting for me to find her. Or maybe she was stuck somewhere. What happened if one of us dies? Is the other free to continue their life, or we still have to make contact?
I entered a park, packed with people. I don’t remember what day I froze on, but it must have been a holiday.
“Hey,” I asked a dog, frozen mid-air with a Frisbee in its mouth. “You know where she is?” I tended to ask a lot of people that, hoping that one day she would just be there like it was a joke that we were both in on. The dog remained still, waiting to return its Frisbee to its owner. Someday. Or time, I guess. I walked around the park looking around it familiarly. I always went to the parks first. I loved parks. And that meant she probably loved them, too.
Suddenly, I saw a note on a park bench. I ran over to it, diving at the bench and grabbing the paper. This is the first contact that I’d ever make with her. And it was possible she was close by!
It read:
Hi! I’m so excited to meet you! I’ll be heading south from here! It shouldn’t be more than about 30 miles to the next city! I probably love you!
“No, way,” I said loudly.
This was my handwriting. Somehow, I made a full circle without realizing it. But, it wasn’t in the same place I left it. I always left them on statues, not benches. Guess it was time to follow my own path. Hopefully, this wouldn’t take more than another year…
I groggily walked onto the next city. It was in the middle of a rainstorm. Not that a storm would hinder me too much, it was just difficult sometimes to see beyond all of the water frozen in midair. But it was fun to drink them. It was perpetually dark in this city. The sun would never grace it as long as the universe remained frozen. The park was the same as ever. Completely devoid of people on account of the rainy day, and my note left at the foot of the statue.
What was I doing here? How long had it been since the last time I saw any sign of her? 30 days? 40 days? The note that was moved from the statue many cities ago was the only sign of her ever acknowledging my existence. There were no other notes moved, and she made no effort to contact me. I was multiple cities down the line but felt like I was getting farther away from the solution. I was in excellent shape, but I was losing pieces of my mind. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that it could all stop.
I stopped abruptly in the middle of the street, in front of a semi-truck.
Why would she only move the one note?
Of course! The only explanation was that she couldn’t read English! How could I know that just by looking at her!? Of course she couldn’t read, otherwise, we would have found each other long ago!
My mind was racing.
What do I do next? I could just continue to look for her. Ration food and figure out a way to run to find her?
No, I’ve done that for years already. I have to leave notes. Messages. Something! Clearly she’s not staying in place!
I started spinning in place.
Maybe I can learn to draw maps. But even maps require a little bit of writing to determine —
My eyes fell upon a library.
Of course!
I jumped for joy and ran inside. The lights were on! Which meant they were always on! Which meant I could always read!
I ran to the librarian, whispering,
“Excuse me! Where can I find the language section? I’m trying to learn Spanish! Or German! Really, all the languages!”
She sat frozen at the desk reading a novel, a slight smile of amusement on her face like she read a joke.
“Got it, you’re busy, I’ll go figure it out myself!” I ran down the aisles, looking for Spanish for Dummies since I doubted they had Spanish for Those Slowly Losing Any Semblance of Sanity and that was probably a close second. I pulled out dozens of books and ran to the nearest desk. An elderly man was sitting on it, with his eyes closed.
“Hey…” I whispered. “Are you asleep or did you just blink before you timed out?”
He didn’t reply.
“Asleep, got it,” I said, pushing him off the chair and laying him down on the floor next to the desk.
I devoured the books, it seemed like I was going through one a day breaking only for the necessities. On day 1211, I finished all the books on language. Even the etymology of the Latin-based languages. I shoved the last books incredibly aggressively, trying to fit them all in the “Book Return.” It seemed to be filled with books about languages.
“Hey, could I get some help over here?” I asked the librarian. She smirked, amused at my struggle.
“Estas mucha grosera,” I said, hoping I didn’t butcher the pronunciation. I didn’t have much practice talking with others and I was afraid she would make fun of my accent. She smiled at it, pleasantly. I sighed in relief and left the last books in front of her on the desk.
I ran back to the city I came from. The one where I first saw any sign from my soulmate. I would write a note in every language I knew, and be as thorough as I could possibly be. I ran and ran, not caring that it would take me days to get there. I had a new purpose and so much new knowledge.
I arrived at the park. It was sunny as always and even had a dog catching a Frisbee in midair. That was cool. Something felt odd. For what seemed like the first time in my life, I felt another presence. I looked around madly, trying to pinpoint what this feeling was coming from. My eyes fell on a young woman sitting at a bench.
She… moved.
She almost looked like my soul mate, but she was missing the dog ears and tongue. She looked at me with shock as I ran up to her. She looked scared, so I stopped a couple of feet away from her.
“Hola,” I swallowed, “puedes hablar en Espanol, o un otro idioma?” I stammered, unsure whether she would be mute like the rest of the world. She looked crestfallen.
“Do you not speak English?” she asked.
I stared at her for an awkward amount of time. Well, not time, it was definitely still frozen, but I stared.
She speaks English?
That poked holes in a lot of my thoughts and plans. All of my imagined lives with her, each of them I would learn her language with all the mental notes I’d made after spending so long learning everything I could. It wiped itself out.
She shifted on the bench, uncomfortably.
“I guess we don’t have to understand each other. We already know we’re destined for each other,” she said, reassuring herself.
I cringed and swallowed hard. It was disconcerting to have someone speak to me. I hadn’t heard external noises for what seemed like years. Everything about my life used to be guided by me. Now I had to have a call and response. I shuddered and breathed deeply,
“Hi,” I said. She raised an eyebrow in pleasant surprise. Her body became less tense and she smiled a bit.
“Hi,” she replied.
Her composure changed the situation entirely. Our silence didn’t feel like an awkward one, but like the silence, I had grown accustomed to after all of these “years.” I took my time thinking of the best question to start with.
Oh yeah.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I had asked that to many frozen individuals in many cities, but I’d finally get a response. She looked to the park, thoughtfully.
“I don’t remember,” she said.
“What!? How’d you forget your name?” I asked.
“Must have just got used to it after a while. Had no need for it. What’s yours?”
“M — “ I looked up in thought. “It’s Mmmm…” I scratched my head, embarrassed. “I think it starts with an M.”
She blew air out her nose.
“Better than me, I suppose,” she said, plainly.
“Why didn’t you follow my note?” I asked.
She frowned. Sore subject, I guess, but it wasn’t like she could talk to someone else about it.
Wait, that definitely wasn’t true, I’d spoken to plenty of people during this period. They just were all mute and didn’t respond.
“Do you want to go back?” she asked, looking at me worriedly.
“What? You mean like back to normal? Of course!” I said.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because we have to! We’ve been looking for each other for so long just so we can live our lives in reality!” I threw my hands in the air. Was she seriously the one?
She looked out at the park, again. Took her time to really absorb each of the scenes before her. She breathed deeply and looked up to me again.
“Don’t you think this is beautiful?” she asked. “The silence. The lack of responsibility. The true freedom of it all? We don’t have to go back, you know. We can just hang out here, eating all the food they have prepped and enjoy each other’s company for as long as we last,” she gave me a halfhearted smile.
I looked around. I thought about the city frozen in the middle of a storm. The sun was always at its peak here. But what about somewhere else? We could watch an infinite sunset! Or see a frozen waterfall! Watch leaves of autumn defy their call to the ground.
Or… or read every book in every library! There was so much that could be done!
“But what about everyone else? Do we just leave them like this? They’ll go insane!!” I yelled.
“No, they won’t. But we already have.”
“What? I’m fine. I haven’t even needed to sleep for like the past two weeks!”
She shook her head.
“We would cause two things by returning to real-time. One, we would have to deal with life again. Its struggles, its hardships, its evils. We are not ready for that. I haven’t heard a real sound in forever. Haven’t had a real conversation. Haven’t paid for anything I’ve taken. Haven’t treated anyone like they’re an actual living being. But here, it’s just us. Secondly, we would have to answer for all the things we did if they ever found us out.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, a couple of miles east of here, I saw like 20 bikers on the freeway, so I moved them all into the river next to the freeway.”
“Why?” I asked, intrigued.
She shrugged, smiling a little.
“In the city that has a water tower with a squirrel on it, I switched everyone’s wallets around,” I said, giddily.
She laughed.
“I got a sledgehammer and smashed all the cash registers in the food court and then put ski masks on all the customers!” she said, riling herself up.
“I put all the kids in a playground upside down on the monkey bars!” I returned between fits of laughter.
“I went to the ice-skating rink in this town and removed all the ice! Then I replaced all the ice skates with roller blades!” she screamed.
The sound of our laughter enveloped us, taking over the entirety of the world. There really was nothing else but us. And we didn’t have to answer to anyone. We calmed down and looked to one another smiling. I still had to know one thing.
“Why didn’t you follow the note?” I asked.
“I went to the bathroom, and then saw that it was moved when I got back. I thought you were in the city, so I waited for you to come back.”
“You’ve been here the whole time??”
“Well, I also spent a lot of time in the ice skating rink,” she smiled mischievously.
In the span of what couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes, I felt entirely like myself again. I remembered what it was to be alive, without endless searching in store. She looked the same way, beaming at me wonderfully.
“So, do you want to stay with me, messing with the world, and remaining at arm’s length forever?”
I looked to the dog frozen in the air again. In his last moment, he went for it. He grabbed what he was after. And he was utterly blissful.
“Of course,” I replied.