The silence that followed the collapse of the temporal field was profound, broken only by the whirring of the lab equipment and the heavy breathing of the men in suits. Director Thorne, a man who believed entirely in the quantifiable, stared at the humming blue field, his carefully composed corporate mask cracking.
"Explain," Thorne demanded, his voice low and dangerous, directed at Aris.
Aris leaned heavily on the console, the physical toll of his subjective month in isolation settling onto his body all at once. He felt hollowed out, but clear-eyed.
"It's a stable, localized temporal stasis field," Aris said, his voice a rasp. "It doesn't stop time, it dilates it. Massively. The energy consumption is negligible at this stabilized frequency."
Lena, still blinking away the residual shock of the time jump, looked at Aris, a hundred questions in her eyes. She hadn't experienced the subjective eternity he had; to her, only seconds had passed since she screamed his name.
"Negligible?" Thorne scoffed, regaining his composure. "Our grid monitors showed a spike that nearly triggered a city-wide blackout moments ago."
"That was the activation surge," Aris corrected, pushing himself off the console. The room spun for a second, and he steadied himself. "It's stable now. My adjustments in the field made sure of that." He stopped himself from adding "over the last three weeks."
"In the field," Thorne repeated, his eyes narrowing. "You were inside the effect, Dr. Thorne? The data shows you moved. How?"
Aris paused. This was the rub. The scientific community wasn't ready for the truth of subjective time manipulation. He had lived an entire lifetime in the blink of an eye. He had to decide what to reveal.
"I... I calibrated the field from within the safety of my own chronometer's shielded temporal bubble," Aris lied smoothly, a plausible bit of techno-babble. He looked at Lena; she understood he was keeping a secret. "It allowed me just enough subjective time to stabilize the flux."
Thorne scrutinized him, then looked at his accompanying guards. "Sweep the room. Secure all data logs. This is now a proprietary Chronos Dynamics project."
Lena rushed to Aris's side as the guards moved past them. "Are you okay? Aris, what happened to you in there? You look different."
He managed a weak smile. "I had a lot of time to think, Lena. I realized what really matters." He glanced at the director. "I had the time to break the cycle."
The immediate crisis was averted. The project was saved from corporate shutdown, but it was now firmly in corporate hands. Aris had traded his autonomy for the machine's existence.
As the technicians began dismantling his life’s work for transport to their secure labs, Aris watched Lena argue with Thorne about intellectual property rights. He felt a profound sense of isolation again. The world moved at a relentless, fleeting pace, a sharp contrast to the stagnant eternity he had just left.
He was a man who had seen the end of time and returned, but the world didn't care. It wanted the machine.
His battle with Chronos Dynamics was just beginning, and this time, he had no time-bubble to hide in. He had to play by their rules, in their time, armed only with the wisdom gained from a month of perfect, crushing silence. The Chronos Lock was stable, but Aris Thorne was forever changed, carrying the weight of infinite 'nows' on his shoulders in a world of fleeting seconds
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