The Case of the Missing Minute

by Sarah Morell

  My dad works at a large computer company helping build hardware components for those robots you see in commercials. You know the ones that build cars? He gets home late every night and tells us about his day, but again, nothing special happened at work that week for him either; just ordinary stuff.

  The only thing notable was how much it rained that week. I don’t remember ever seeing that much rain at one time. There were even a few places in the yard where little gullies had formed from the runoff.

  Mom insists that one of our home school lessons is to take care of the animals. It was my turn to feed the small pigs, but the pigpen was filled with huge mud puddles. Abacus accompanied me, which isn’t usually a problem. Today, however, she decided that she wanted to play in the puddles. I was supposed to be watching her while Ivy got the feed bucket. I swear, I only turned around for a moment and she was gone. By the time I caught up with her, she looked dirtier than the pigs themselves. Of course we got in trouble when Mom found Ivy and me in the pole barn with our sprinkler trying to hose down a screaming two year old with icy cold water.

  By Friday the rain had stopped, but the yard was still soggy. It had dried just enough for Dad to mow on Saturday. The extra rain had caused the grass to grow longer than normal, which is probably why Dad didn’t notice before he hit something with the mower. It must have been lying there hidden in the yard the whole time.

  We were sitting at the window watching Dad roll up and down our 10 acre farm. We have several hills, so when he gets too far away, the tractor goes behind one of the hills. I know, I know, what is a 12 year old doing watching a tractor mow the grass? I was really watching Abacus more than the tractor. One of her favorite things to do is sit on the tractor with Dad when he mows the lawn. She gets such a thrill when he makes the front end loader bucket go up and down.

  Abacus was sitting with her face pressed up against the window waiting for him to come in to get her. Each time she saw the tractor hide behind the hill she would say, “Where Tractor is, Where Tractor is?” Then as soon as the tractor was within sight again, she would excitedly come get either Ivy or me. She would pull us to the window and say “There Tractor is! There Tractor is!”

  It just so happened we were at the peak of one of these “There Tractor is” cycles when it happened. The tractor stopped. Not the normal kind of stop. It was more than that. The birds stopped, the noise stopped. Almost everything stopped.

  I could faintly hear Ivy and Abacus, even though they were sitting right next to me. It was like they were in another room. Ivy slid over and said, “I’m scared. What is going on?” The funny thing is that when she was right next to me, I could hear her almost like normal. When Ivy pulled away, I couldn’t hear her any more.

  Dad was getting off the tractor by this point. I could tell he was struggling with the levers. Nothing was moving. There was a small bird next to the tractor floating in thin air about shoulder height. It wasn’t moving either when Dad got off the tractor. We were waving our hands to get his attention, but he was too focused on the little bird.

  Abacus went running off to get Mom. Ivy and I went after her. Mom was standing there with her mouth open as if she was in the middle of saying something. Just like the bird, Mom wasn’t moving, either. It was like she was stuck in place. I ran back over to the window and began waving my arms to get his attention. I felt Ivy next to me and noticed she was trying to get his attention, too.

  Dad reached up to touch the bird on the beak. It was like he hit the reset button. The bird flew right over his shoulder nearly hitting his head. He dropped to the ground. A few feet away, the tractor now came roaring back to life, but then sputtered out immediately without a driver.

  The noise was overwhelming. I heard Mom in the next room scream as she tripped over a clinging Abacus. “How did you get here?” she asked loudly.

  Dad came rushing into the house. “Did you guys see that?” he asked excitedly. “Melody, did you see that? The bird, the tractor, the grass, the noise.” He was incompressible, speaking in half sentences.

  The cacophony, in this case meaning the loud noises coming from two parents, three kids, one dog, and one angry bird, was overwhelming. Finally, Dad yelled, “QUIET!”

  Abacus still sat there crying from all the noise. Dad picked her up and calmed her down after a minute of back patting and shushing. He handed her back to Mom before continuing.

  “Ok, Melody you go first. Why were you screaming?” he asked.

  “Well, I tell these kids all the time not to scare me. Wouldn’t you know it? I turned around and there is Abacus with her arms wrapped around both my legs as if she just appeared there. I nearly tripped and landed on top of her. I asked Lily and Ivy to watch her at the window, but they must not have paid attention,” Mom said, sounding frustrated.

  Dad was still trying to piece everything together. Next he asked me, “Lily, why were you screaming when I came in?”

  I explained, “I was trying to tell Mom that she wasn’t moving for the last few minutes.”

  Melody cut in, “I wasn’t moving? What are you talking about?”

  Dad shushed us all again. “Ivy, why were you yelling?”

  “I don’t know, everyone else was yelling. But Mom wasn’t moving for a long time. It happened at the same time that the tractor stopped,” Ivy finished.

  Dad paced up and down the hall way, muttering in his thinking-out-loud voice. He paced from the kitchen to the dining room. He even paced in the living room. He was clearly bothered. He never paces this much.

  Mom, no longer able to take the pacing, finally said, “Ok, clue me in here. What did Ivy mean about the tractor stopping? Did you run out of gas?”

  Benjamin Thomas Stolidmeyer shook his head, but kept pacing. “No, it runs on diesel. And no, I didn’t run out of fuel. It just stopped.”

  “Start over again. What just stopped?” Melody asked.

  Dad stopped pacing and related the story. He was mowing along and heard a large clang just an instant before the world went still. He couldn’t move the levers on the tractor. He could remove the key, but it wouldn’t turn in the ignition. There was no breeze and no sound. The only movement in the whole world that he could see was Ivy and me waving our hands in the window.

  He climbed down from the tractor and was going to come into the house, when he noticed the bird. He called it a barn swallow; I don’t know if that is what it was or if he just made up that name. The bird was stuck right there in midair above his shoulder. If he wasn’t paying attention he might have run right into the thing. You don’t really expect birds to stop in midair, he explained.

  The most curious thing happened. Out of inquisitiveness, in this case meaning he couldn’t resist touching the bird, he reached out for its beak.

  Dad said, “I touched the bottom of the beak. It all happened in an instant. The silly bird’s eyes slowly gained recognition. It was like it could see, but couldn’t move its head. The eyes looked at me, then the tractor, then back at me. If the bird could talk I wonder what it would have said.”

  Ivy said, “My first reaction would have been to ask why I was stuck in midair.”

  Everyone laughed. Dad said that is probably exactly what was going through the bird’s head. Almost on cue we all looked out the same window and there was that same silly bird just sitting on the window sill, as if it knew we were talking about it.

  “That little bird must have been as startled as I was,” Dad said. “As I said, it ended just as quickly as it began. If I had been facing the bird directly, it would have crashed right into my head. The weirdest part was the noise: once everything stopped, the noise was gone, too. Once everything started back up again, the noise came back with such force that it nearly knocked me to the ground.”

  Melody Sophia Stolidmeyer, my mom, sat there speechless, which was a record. She usually had something to say. Little Abacus just held on tightly now that Mom started pacing too. After a few minutes of gathering her thoughts, she said, “And you two saw t
he same thing?”

  I told her that the only thing we saw moving was Dad, and us kids.

  Dad tried to explain that it was like the bird was in suspended animation. I don’t know what that means, but it must have something to do with not moving. Mom must have been in suspended animation as well. The big question was not only how did it happen, but why were we unaffected.

  Chapter 3 – Peanut Butter in the Uncanny Valley

  The sun was shining. The smell of the freshly cut grass still hung in the air. Birds, with the exception of our new quiet little friend, were chirping through the light breeze. It was an otherwise beautiful day. The only indication of a problem had been the clang of the mower right before everything stopped.

  The most logical thing to do was to look over the tractor to see what had caused the problem, but we didn’t find anything at first. Dad was reluctant to start it back up, just in case the tractor had been the cause of our missing minute. With nothing else to try he finally started the tractor. It started without any fanfare on the first try. The tractor slowly inched forward several feet.

  Sure enough, there was a gleaming glint of gold, hidden in the mix of green grass clippings and brown dirt disturbed by the mower. Ivy thought it looked like the tip of a majestic unicorn horn sticking out of the ground. I thought it looked more like the potatoes that we have to help dig up every year. On one side where the mower blades must have hit, it had the metallic glow of a freshly minted coin. Dad took a red dust cloth and small hand brush from the tractor tool chest. He brushed the debris away and rubbed the top of the device clean. In case you were wondering, it didn’t work like a magic lamp. Rubbing it didn’t seem to do anything; well, it did get it clean. With a good bit of elbow grease, he was able to make the top shine just like the tiny chip that had been engraved by the mower.

  I tried to pull on it, but nothing happened. It was stuck in the ground, but good. Ivy tried to pull on it. Abacus tried to sit on it, but she only snagged her diaper on the top of the metallic barb now sticking out of the ground a few inches. Thankfully, it wasn’t too sharp. The mower must have nicked the sharp tip right off the top. Mom went to the pole barn and brought out a small spade garden shovel. She poked the shovel into the ground near the metal object, thinking it would just pop right up like a potato. Instead, the shovel barely made it below the surface before striking something hard like a rock.

  Before long we were all digging. Abacus even had a small spoon, although no one could figure out how she had gotten it. The hole was getting bigger. It was now 6 inches deep and over 12 inches around, or so my dad commented.

  Mom asked the most obvious question, “If this is what caused our time distortion, why hadn’t it occurred again?”

  I suggested that maybe it was only a one-time event. I was kind of hoping we could repeat it to see what would happen next time. Mom was still skeptical, but she still helped us dig anyway.

  Dad had one of his light bulb moments. “Ok, stand back everyone. What if we have to hit it hard just like the mower did?” Dad asked.

  He swung the shovel hard and hit the object with a loud clang! At least, it would have been a loud clang any other time. The shovel hit its mark right on the top of the metal object. Instead of an echoing clang, clang, clang, it was just one clang and then nothing. The air stopped moving. Mom stopped moving.

  Dad was shaking his hands in an obvious sign that they were smarting. He let go of the shovel just as it had hit the device. Now the shovel sat there in midair at an unnatural vertical angle halfway between falling and standing. Dad, Ivy, Abacus and I were the only things that seemed to be able to move. Even our new bird friend was back to static nothingness. The silly bird had perched itself onto the tractor, watching us dig up our new discovery. I was tempted to go try the trick of touching its beak to see what would happen, but I was a little scared it might try to peck at me.

  We couldn’t hear each other, but Ivy and I knew the secret. We had already learned about it the first time this happened back at the window. I scooped up Abacus and moved close to Dad’s ear. I touched his arm and said, “We can hear each other, but only if we are really close together.”

  He pulled away then turned and looked at me and mouthed the words, “OK.” He leaned in so I could hear. “How long do you think this will last? Oh, my watch is still working,” he said in surprise.

  Ivy looked curiously at Mom. She held Mom’s hand then pulled away quickly. She had also picked up on the communication. She leaned in toward Dad’s ear, and grabbed his hand to get his attention. I moved away with Abacus to explore our surroundings.

  Dad and Ivy slowly parted and then came back together. They parted again, just touching fingertips in what looked like a pointless fairy dance. I didn’t want to be left out though, so I went back. I reached for his other hand and discovered what they had just learned.

  As long as you were touching the other person or even within an inch or two, you could hear them perfectly clear. It was a little quieter, like you were listening through a tunnel, but you could definitely still hear them.

  Ivy was explaining that Mom’s hand was warm to the touch. It was soft, but still didn’t move. It wasn’t like stone or anything, but more like it just didn’t have a way to move by itself. Before she finished explaining, the world suddenly came roaring back into focus. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that it came out of focus, since everything was moving again. Things that had been so crystal clear just a moment before, like when the birds had been still as statues, were now blurry with motion.

  Mom looked ashen. She was clearly disturbed when she pointed, “You were there… then you were over there. It was like I blinked and everyone moved.” She rubbed her hand where Ivy had touched her. Then she balled up her hands and rubbed her eyes just to make sure she was seeing properly.

  Ivy asked, “Is your hand ok?”

  “Yeah, but it tingled for a little bit. It doesn’t hurt, but it fell asleep.”

  Dad explained what happened to her. He even compared his watch to Mom’s cell phone, which was off by exactly one minute, a true 60 seconds. He and Ivy had indeed tested to see how far away from each other they could get before losing the sound stream. According to their unscientific test it looked like about 3-4 inches apart before losing contact.

  I suspect this was why most of the grass would bend beneath our feet. We must have a small barrier all around us that could interact with our surroundings. It was probably why the bird’s eyes and head were able to move, but its body was stuck in place when Dad touched its beak.

  “Have you ever heard of the Uncanny Valley?” Dad asked Mom.

  “No, what is it?”

  “It is exactly what I thought of when I saw you frozen in time. The Uncanny Valley is when nonliving things are designed to look like human beings. If the nonliving thing looks a lot like a person, but appear somewhat out of place, then people find it disturbing. If a doll or robot looks too human like, then people are creeped out by it. You looked more like a perfect wax museum version of yourself standing there.”

  Mom was still not totally buying into the whole thing and thought maybe it was just an illusion or sleight of hand trick we were playing on her. Dad devised an experiment. Mom really didn’t want to try it out, but he insisted. He figured if she sat down on the ground we could all place our hands on her head so that she could at least see what we were talking about.

  With everything in place, the shovel clanged against the metal pointy object that now stuck out of the hole in the ground. We gathered around and placed our hands on Mom’s head all at once.

  Mom’s eyes blinked a few times and she looked around wildly. She didn’t speak but there was definitely fear in her eyes. It was scary for us, too. We quickly removed our hands to make sure she didn’t get hurt. Abacus must have thought it was a game since she tried to put her hands over Mom’s eyes several times in a crude game of peak-a-boo.

  After the minute was up, Mom explained what happened fro
m her perspective. “I could see and hear you, but I couldn’t breathe, talk, or even move my mouth. I know what the bird felt like now. My head is still tingling. It is like the top of my head fell asleep. I don’t like it. I don’t think we should do that again,” she asserted.

  I asked, “Do you believe us now?”

  “Do I have a choice? The few seconds that you were all standing over me, I could see leaves hanging in midair as if someone just pasted them onto a canvas.”

  We sat there for a few minutes, contemplating our next move. I think we all knew what we would have to do next. No one wanted to say it, but we needed to get it out of the ground. We might have taken a different tact if we had known how big it was.

  Mom finally stood up. Of course, Abacus started crying, “Dit-tou, Dit-tou”, which was her way of saying ‘pick me up’. Mom said, “I am going in the house to make some ice tea and PB&J’s. My head is still a little foggy and I think the work will help me clear my thoughts. Anyone want a sandwich?”