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Empty. Overcast.

The roads and corner stores and sidewalks and business parks and baseball fields and basketball courts and middle schools and high schools and skies and grass and backyard white picket fences with pruned gardens and oak birdhouses, were lifeless.

A wind whispered, stirring dented stop signs and rusty flagpoles. The heat from before was gone.

Above, the mountains encircled the metropolis.

Then a bright crimson flash.

At the middle of an intersection free of cars and working lights, there was a lanky man in a loose undershirt and jeans: He was frozen, his eyes closed, his gaunt face formed in stupid curiosity, his arms bent at his sides, his right knee lifted partially in walking gait—completely frozen in time. Like a wax sculpture.

As if time itself has paused.

The flash came again.

Sitting on the curb, a teenager with thick blonde curls. He wore a T-shirt, sweatpants and sneakers. His eyes were closed. In his outstretched palm, an Iphone.

The wind rustled thickets of grass along the sidewalk. But his blonde curls were undisturbed. He did not move, or breathe.

Another crimson flash.

A person here.

FLASH

A person in a car.

FLASH

A person in mid-walk.

FLASH

All frozen in time.

All with their eyes closed.

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