The routine was atrocious, time there felt different, time there was different. Once set foot out of home he was in a limbo where time made no sense. No obsessive checking the cards stamps, no time schedules, nothing. Everything took the time that it took, there was often no telling how much a given task would take, when a certain person would be found, how many alleys there would be explored before finding your destination.


    People adapted to this situation, what was a fifteen minutes waiting. An hour of talking or an afternoon spent in bed in the end?


    <


    > said Lhyps to him


    <<Excuse me captain?>>


    <<Time is like an ocean. You can’t understand how limitless is an ocean so you are lost in it. The same thing happens with time, you need to reduce, put it into a given place, keep schedules in order to understand and use it.>>


    <<And if you don’t?>>


    <<Time escapes you...forever. If it is not right to do it once never do it. This is my motto.>>


    Pxan didn’t knew how to respond so he simply went outside the station doing yet another delivery.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report itThings were so strange there. In the middle quarters, they used to have schedules, tables, things to do it. But things there were different like someone understood a profound truth about time and could swim in it like it was water. It was an exceptional quality and one that he wished to have.


    Yet days went on, his apartment was too similar to his old one for Pxan to like it. There was a bathroom, a bedroom, a sofa, some furniture, tv and...nothing else really. That apartment was pretty empty. One day he went outside of his house to buy a vacuum cleaner like the one that James had. Wonder how he is, haven’t heard from him in a long time.


    Pxan remembered where he lived thanks to that drunken night that they had passed together. He called him with the community phone in his apartment complex.


    <<Hi, who do you want to talk to?>> said a feminine voice, probably the district telephone manager.


    <<James 235, tell him that I am Pxan>>


    <<Wait a moment that I call him…>>


    <<Hi Pxan...hmm…>> his voice was insecure <<I am very sorry for your degradation...can’t do much against the captain...I hope that you don’t hold against me if I don’t go in those quarters...you know how is it...the taint, the corruption…>>


    Pxan noticed that he was speaking with far too many pauses <<James It’s fine, I just wanted to hear from you. How are you?>>


    <<Oh fine thanks. Last night I stumbled on my sofa half-drunk, thanks for that night when you carried me… how are you by the way?>>


    The two talked for some twenty minutes before he had to do something else.


    “It is good to keep in touch with friends.” Pxan thought “I wish I had more friends...let’s ask Marth to hang out.” and so Pxan went to the station to his slight colleague to drink something together.