CAN YOU IMAGINE?

You’re standing on a station in the South London sprawl out into Kent, there for the earliest train on a Sunday morning. It’s cold, and its drizzling and given it’s a Sunday the trains probably won’t run to time this early, so you’re the only one on the station. You can’t be bothered to get your phone out from underneath your waterproof jacket, so you stand and stare across to the opposite platform, at the old-fashioned clock still hanging from the canopy. Its second hand jerks round, and you find yourself almost hypnotised by it. Then, it stops. You blink, because you know about that optical illusion where when you glance at a clock it can seem not to move for longer than a second, but you didn’t just look at the clock and anyway, it is now much longer than a second.
“This is the moment,” a voice says behind you, and you turn. There’s a man standing behind you, with bright red hair and an engaging grin. You look up and down the platform as if that will tell you something, because you don’t understand how you didn’t hear him approaching.
“This is the moment to walk off the platform,” he said. “While the clock is stopped. When it’s stopped on here, it’s stopped out there. Can you imagine?”
You look at him, trying to understand what he’s saying, what is going on. He smiles again, and turns and walks off the platform. There’s a clunk, and you look back at the clock and see the second hand in jerky motion again. You rush to the platform entrance, and look up and down the street but there is nobody there, because the man who spoke to you has had all the time in the world to walk away.