In her altered state of mind and body, Dabiktria glided into downtown Darenton. Dusk had passed, and the sky was dark – yet the area where she was walking was well illuminated. In addition to the streetlights, there were also the lights from the restaurants and whatever shops hadn’t closed yet. Oh, and there were the lights from the lamps installed on the front of each of the strange vehicles. She had already figured out that they traveled at speeds beyond those which a human could generally walk – but in her present state, they seemed to be almost standing still.

But that was how most things seemed to her in this altered state. It altered her very relation to time in ways that she was now exploring more deeply than she ever had before – because now she had the opportunity to spend more time in this state than she ever had before. Of course, she had entered this state twice before on her home planet of Leraxi, but only long enough to walk a mile or so. This time, however, she had gone on for at least eight miles since she had entered this state upon departing from the bunker. It was possible that she had gone even farther than that.

What was most notable was that she had kept traveling on foot for what she experienced as several hours, yet never tired of it. Throughout this evening’s journey, she had felt light as a feather. Her actual weight hadn’t decreased – but just like all her surroundings, the effect of gravity upon her had slowed down. Not only did her legs never get sore – but it didn’t become a drudgery for her either. It was as though time slowed down for her in some ways, but not in others. It seemed as though the only mental faculties that sped up to experience time in this unusual way were the ones that she needed in order to manage how she moved her body and where she moved it to. The rest of her mental faculties continued to progress in normal time.

As she moved, she weaved around the people on the sidewalk, most of whom were themselves moving from their own perspectives, but which to her eyes were as still as statues. This weaving around forced her to slow down somewhat. Even at the speed she had been traveling since she left the bunker, she could process her surroundings well enough to navigate the crowd safely – but the slowing of gravity’s effect relative to her speed of motion reduced the traction of her feet on the sidewalk. As a result, it was hard for her to make sudden turns. After slowing down enough to avoid hitting people, she was still moving at a speed that rendered the movement of those around her negligible – but she decided at this point that it would be easier to bypass the sidewalk and take the road instead. In this way, she passed block after block of people who seemed to be frozen amidst revelries unlike any she had ever seen since her childhood.

Finally, she came to a crowd of five people standing around and watching an elderly man with a white beard and torn, dirty clothes who was sitting on a chair, holding something that resembled a takraw. A takraw was a musical instrument that she had not seen, also, since her early childhood on her home planet, Leraxi. The man here was holding the takraw as though he were frozen in the act of playing it.

Out of curiosity, Dabiktria stopped to get a closer look at the takraw. She barely noticed as the unchanging background sound became the dynamic sound of the doppler effect as vehicles passed by – of the vehicles using their noisy horns to communicate with one another – of people talking to each other on the street, laughing, and shouting. Her decisions to cease physical activity and to engage mental faculties beyond those associated with managing her high-speed physical motion – those decisions had pulled her back into a normal relation to time.

The man frozen while playing the takraw unfroze – only it wasn’t exactly a takraw he was playing. The keys on the instrument’s neck ordinarily used during the playing of the instrument were missing – and the instrument had only six strings that, for lack of the playing keys, the man had to hold down directly with his fingers. The sound it produced was different from that of a takraw – but it was nonetheless pleasing. And through a broken, scratchy voice, she could hear the man sing: “The only thing a gambler needs / Is whiskey and a trunk. / The only time he’s satisfied / Is when he’s on a drunk.”

The information Dabiktria had been given on the local language was minimal, so she had no idea what a “gambler” was, or what a “trunk”, a “drunk”, or “whiskey” were – nor had she any idea what it meant to be “satisfied”. But despite her inability to understand some of the words, she could tell that hearing this song-master perform brought back to her a joy which she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

Then she remembered – Raphael would not approve of such idle waste of time and thought. In general, the people of Leraxi had come to realize that there were more important things to do with their time. She, having limits on how much time she could spend outside the cryogenic chamber, had to be all the more careful where her time went. At once, she resolved to continue with her duty, and hope that Raphael would never notice her momentary lapse in focus. She had to get back and let Raphael know that whatever existed in but a few spots on Leraxi that enabled her to reach her altered state in which she experienced time differently – whatever it was, it definitely seemed to be far more widespread on this planet.