Chapter 0.01 - The Crash

He had made a motion like a javelin thrower holding a fistful of rock. As if his stopwatch demanded the ripples stop at its command, he witnessed an extra moment between the disappearance of the little wrinkles and the pond's return to peace, just as it had been before his intervention.

He noticed the sharp smell of the pond, which was neither black nor green, though he had heard it called both black and green. He thought goofily about how the microbes causing the colors might feel about it if they could. This reminded him to check the measurement on the stopwatch, and, inhaling deeply, he began to say, audibly, that there is no effect without its cause and that time does not exist. In the very next moment, he wondered if time is the intensity of effects relative to their causes.

With a final, long exhale, he realized it meant he would be walking back to the small plane he had just crashed in the dense forest. He wished to return someday, to stand right here and stare at the scenery for hours, as he used to do all those years ago when it was possible to see the plants flourishing near the bottom of the pond, from where he was standing.