Every so often, the world around me falls unnaturally silent and still. At first, I believed it was my doing—an inexplicable power housed in my own heartbeat.

The air shimmers, conversations hang mid-syllable, and clocks freeze on their dials. I stand alone, convinced that my emotions, especially panic, must be rupturing the fabric of reality.

One evening at a crowded house party, the familiar hush descends again. Music cuts off mid-beat, guests freeze mid-dance, and glasses hover half in midair.

I brace myself for another solitary vigil, only to catch sight of a solitary figure across the room. He’s the only person moving—a stranger whose curious gaze is fixed on me.

He introduces himself simply as Ezra, though his eyes carry the weight of centuries. With gentle ease he explains that time travel was first theorised in the late 21st century by Dr Hildegard Meinhardt, who discovered the “Chrono Syphon” effect when an experiment on quantum entanglement produced a bubble of suspended time.

Over decades, travel advanced beyond secret military projects into the hands of a few intrepid explorers—and now, Ezra is one of them.

He confesses that my laughter first drew him through the centuries. He’d been charting parallel realities, searching for moments of genuine joy. The first time he heard my voice crack into full-bellied laughter, he knew he had to find me in every timeline. And here, in this frozen living room, time has finally led him back.

As he speaks of time travel, possibilities unfurl like constellations:

* We might witness the first dawn of human civilisation, walking among early settlers of Mesopotamia.

* Perhaps we’ll glimpse a Victorian London teeming with fog and lamp-lit streets, helping an inventor perfect the steam-driven automaton.

* We could dive into a future where humanity has colonised distant asteroids, tasting the tang of zero gravity on our tongues.

* There’s a chance of encountering paradoxes: meeting our own descendants or preventing our birth and watching entire lifetimes vanish.

* We could slip into a parallel universe where the Great Fire of London never happened, or where art evolved in completely alien forms.

He makes it sound almost effortless—one step through his slender, iridescent doorframe and the world as I know it dissolves. The mundane chain of my office commute, my daily chores, my quiet evenings alone: all of it becomes an invitation to the extraordinary.

I taste the temptation on my tongue. Should I trust this man who has mastered centuries? Could I truly shoulder the burden of rewriting history or preserving it? My heart thrums with equal parts fear and wonder.

The music may be paused, the guests may be statues, but the moment between us pulses with possibility.

And as Ezra extends his hand, I realise that life’s greatest adventure may lie not in staying still, but in daring to move through time itself.