Silent Night, PART 2

Silent Night, Part 1


There wasn't supposed to be any noise at all during the time-stop—not even the dust mites were breathing.  The only ones who could actually disturb the air to make sounds were Santa and his reindeer.  In fact, Santa had to keep moving around so he wasn't breathing the same air over and over again.  (The cyborg reindeer were outfitted with oxygen tanks, so they didn't have that problem.)  Even the Brownian motion of the air molecules was stopped.  Santa had long ago gotten used to the feeling of completely still air and total silence—like someone had shoved cotton in his ears.  

But there was definitely a sound happening right now, he admitted, as he fiddled with the size settings of his bag of gifts on a rooftop.  It was a low thumping sound.  He paused.  Even the reindeer had cocked their heads to the side, listening.

"Blitzen, do a spectogram analysis—identify the source of the sound," he barked.  "And Dasher, give me a location and distance."  Meanwhile, he checked the readings on his time-stopper.  Everything seemed to be working normally.

After a few moments, Blitzen and Dasher had sent their results to the sleigh's main control screen.  Santa tried to scroll through, but it was hard to operate a touch-screen with gloves.  Meanwhile, the thumping was definitely getting louder, and there was a sniffling sound too.  Santa could feel his heart rate slowing down ever so slightly.

It was just as he had feared.  The words "SLOWICUS SLOTHICUS" flashed across the screen, followed by:

Current distance:  1 km

Current speed:  60 km/hr

Current direction:  Toward us.

The Slow Sloth slept in the Applalachain mountains.  He was a Time Beast, one of several who kept the Earth's time stream in check just by breathing.  The problem was, when the Slow Sloth got sad, time around him started to slow down.  If he got really sad, time slowed down so much it started to go backwards.  The last time that had happened, the planet experienced a mass extinction—the dinosaurs.  Their bodies had been trying to occupy the same space at the same time but twice (time going backwards was complicated).  According to the elves who had been watching from their time-protected workshop, it was pretty brutal.  It had taken an entire comedy team to cheer up the Sloth to allow time to continue after that.

Every year, Santa left the Slow Sloth a present to make sure he knew he was cared for.  This year Santa had selected a boxed set of the unabridged Histories of Herodotus (the Slow Sloth had a penchant for reading).  The set was deep in the bag of presents—Santa had been planning to drop it off at the Slow Sloth's cave on his way out of this time zone.  

Why had the Slowicus Slothicus woken up?  He almost never woke up during a time stop.  And on the rare occasion that he had (Santa could recall the year 1904, most recently), the Slowicus Slothicus was always very happy to see Santa and his cyborg reindeer.  What had made the Sloth so sad he was even slowing Santa down during a time-stop?

The answer came from a half a kilometer away.  "SANTA?  I DREAMED A REALLY BAD DREAM…." the Slow Sloth bellowed, sniffling.  It was strange to hear such a childlike sentence from a voice so deep.  The Sloth could speak and understand every language of every living creature—but not necessarily at an adult level.

Santa could feel the stiffness in his arms and legs as he stood and turned toward his bigger-on-the-inside bag.  His blood flowed thickly through his veins.  He told his arms to reach, to open the bag—told his feet to step inside, but by the time his hands were pulling at the drawstring, the giant Slow Sloth was sitting beside the apartment, eye level with the roof.

"I DREAMED I WAS ALL ALONE," the Sloth said, sniffling again. "AND WHEN I WOKE UP… I WAS…."

Santa could barely move now.  Time was slowing down faster than he had imagined possible.  Even if he got inside the bag now, he wouldn't be able to sort through the various items and select the Sloth's present in time.  His thoughts were becoming muggy; he knew he had to do something or else he would stop moving altogether.  And once Santa had caught up with the time-stop, the Sloth's sad mood could make the entire time zone—or even the whole world—slow down enough to go backwards.

Santa imagined future archaeologists digging up all of their bones and wondering if a giant asteroid had hit the earth.  He would have shuddered, if his muscles could have responded fast enough.  Instead, he ended up fumbling the drawstring of the bag of presents.

This was too big a problem for Santa to solve alone.

"Ruuuudooooooooolfffffffffff," he drawled, panic in his eyes.  "Caaaaaaallllllll fooooooor heeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllp!"

Luckily, Rudolph's distress signal usually travelled at the speed of light; even the Slow Sloth couldn't slow down electromagnetic waves that much.

There was only one person Santa knew could help him in times like these.




TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW in Silent Night, Part 3....