It wasn't clear if that was temporal or spatial; at least, it wasn't to the others who couldn't see forever. But for great distances, given the nature of this space-time continuum, it didn't seem to matter. The others put them high in orbit, and even on the far side of the moon. There they watched the skies, the infinite distances, and warned and foretold the others of coming evnts and current attractions.
One day Gregor, a young watcher on the moon, happened to look inwards for a moment. He focused on a neutrino passing quietly through his brain, entranced by what he saw. As he cranked the magnification towards infinity, the neutrino seemed to slow in its path, until finally it hung before him, a great globe, huger than the earth appeared the last time he noticed it.
The neutrino's spin somehow held constant, but as it otherwise froze in inner space for his perusal, time slowed to a crawl for Gregor. Eventually it stopped.
So, therefore, did his heart and life support system. Slowly, unaware of anything but the beauty of the two bodies on which he focused, the neutrino and Earth, Gregor died.
George was cold. His chest hurt. He hadn't Gregor's far sight, but he always knew when something was very wrong or very right with his twin. Shivering in the Savannah summer heat, he leaned against a pole and held his aching chest for a moment until the feeling passed. He hoped Gregor was OK. Inadvertently, he looked up just as it it got dark.
It was exactly noon.
The huge, mirrored gray sphere hung a few miles from the Earth for but a few moments. In those seconds, the Earth attempted to shift a few meters closer to the giant ball, which covered the whole sky from anywhere on Earth's surface where one could see it. Vast air masses boiled away towards the gargantuan intruder, along with billions of gallons of water, millions of tons of rock and soil, and countless plants, animals, humans, and human artifacts.
As suddenly as it appeared, the sphere disappeared -- just as the earthquakes began. It took several days for the grizzly rain of items returning to earth to cease; much of what fell was no longer identifable. The quakes went on for days. The planet eventually settled into its new orbit, mere meters from its previous one. The few survivors were effectively left in a new Stone Age. The air was too rare to breathe more than one half kilometer from sea level.
On the far side of the moon, Gregor's frozen corpse exploded, to be instantly buried by the megatons of refuse and rubble the neutrino had attracted in its brief giant phase. Now back to normal size, the neutrino continued placidly on its original path, undaunted by the new mountain it was passing through.
The moon, heavier, moved placidly on its new, slowly descending spiral orbit about its primary.
Copyright 1992, 1997 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved. [an error occurred while processing this directive]