The other problem with damaging Countdown (besides the fact that it pisses him off) is that it brings out Sophie. And it appears she’s starting to level up.
More below!
Bobservations
That Moment of Indeterminate Time In Which Everything Happens
I wanted Sophie to have some sort of invocation for these “frozen moment” bullet-time sequences. So I dredged into Google trying to find out if anyone had ever come up with a name for that feeling you get when shit is really hitting the fan and time seems to slow to a crawl. It’s a common enough experience. I ended up discovering the Greek word kairos which has a number of definitions, such as “The Supreme Moment” (woo-woo!) or “a time lapse, a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens.”
Works for me. And it looks good in rune-type lettering.
Sure happened to me once, in my teenage years. I was speeding the family sedan past a lumbering truck on a divided highway, when a car waiting to cross the highway decided to pull out, stop at the concrete divider, and wait for the traffic coming the other way to clear. Because I was accelerating faster than the truck, I had been hidden from the other driver and he had assumed my lane was clear. So I’m doing sixty and suddenly there’s another car pulling right out in front of me. Concrete divider to my left and a truck to my right. I had nowhere to go. Mashed the brake but there wasn’t even enough room. I was going to die.
It seemed to take forever.
I remember being very calm. Very reflective; almost philosophical. Somewhere off in the distance I was vaguely aware of tires screeching and the car ahead of me, slowing to a stop in my lane at right angles, the driver not even looking at me, but looking at the traffic coming the other way. And I was thinking: Shit. I’m going to die. Man, what a bummer. I had plans. I wanted to go places. To do things. To bone my best friend’s sister. Important stuff.
And then there was a hell of a lot of noise and glass flying everywhere and pain in both my wrists from locking up on the steering wheel (which did not stop me one iota.) You have to understand that in my day, seat belts were optional. Most people didn’t bother with them. But as it happened, they’d recently showed that ghastly Signal 30 safety film in my school; the one showing mutilated corpses being pulled out of cars because they hadn’t been wearing seat belts. So that morning, I’d decided to actually buckle in. And because of that, I lived.
The other car (a big Lincoln) had been seriously crushed, but in the rear compartment, which was empty. So nobody died or was even seriously hurt, but both cars were totalled. My first reaction after all the noise had subsided was to run away. Just run and run and run until it wouldn’t have happened and everything would be okay again.
What I wouldn’t give for a Hulu-style “10-second rewind” button on life.
I was shaking so hard from the adrenaline rush that all I could do was pry myself out of the wreckage and go sit on the curb. Various emergency people showed up and one of them must have called my father, because before I knew it, he was there, just standing in front of me with his hands in his pockets, looking at the ruined cars and then down at me.
“Well,” he said. “I guess it’s about time you learned how to deal with insurance companies.”
To this day, I still think that was a cool, fatherly line. I liked it so much I later on used it myself. Twice. Once with each son, when they totalled cars. And we all of us did learn how to deal with insurance companies.
But yeah, that Kairos moment. Time slowing to a crawl. Sure I was going to die.
But lo and behold, I lived.
Almost made up for never getting to bone my buddy’s sister.
— Bob out
Well… Someone’s learned magic after death apparently.
Not sure if it was AFTER death. Though death and the link with Max have probably removed some limitations and/or given her a power boost.
I don’t recall there being any indication or mention of her having magical abilities when she was alive – are you thinking of any specific reference, or just speculating? I just assumed that being a spirit entailed some inherent power.
That’s some potent ju-ju right there. Sophie has definitely been doing some level grinding.
Im thinking the sound of “POWER UP” from Altered beast (the original arcade version) to go along with this 🙂 and Sophie, appearing in your undies to a kid, shocking :p
Emergency situation. She didn’t have time to get dressed. 🙂
Holy cow! Did Sophie just slow the bullet in mid-air!? That’s sick! How’d she do that?!
(ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧
Also, I just realized what Sophie meant when she says she spoke with the boy’s mother 🙁
Yep!
Yeah Phantom, I had the same two responses.
Well, in regards to the bullet, if it’s moving so slow, that means that it can’t possibly hurt the boy anymore, right?
You’re probably just kidding, but of course perceived time does not actually change the kinetic energy. That’s why Sophie is struggling. Keeping the boy and Countdown inside the Kairos field is taking a hell of a lot of power, and that bullet’s still coming.
I remember an episode of Batman: The Animated Series that played with this concept. The Clock King froze the Batmobile in the middle of the road. You could see cars speeding around it, and Batman says that if any car hit the Batmobile, even the it appears immobile, would be striking it as if it were moving at high speed!
I can’t tell if the boy can see Sophie, or is looking through her at his father from his expression..
Either way, hope that rifle scope camera is catching this! ‘And look, right HERE! The bullet just.. stops! Can somebody explain that?!’
Every time I see that effect in films I sort of wonder how far it extends. Mostly I think it’s presented as a bubble of selective time, outside of which time is progressing at normal speed. Here, Sophie can include selective elements such as herself, Max, and the boy, but not Hayes and the bullet.
I was wondering whether Hayes (and everyone else) would be moving through time at a rate such that the effect wouldn’t be visible to him.
Wow, she’s dressed and everything. 😛
I’ve had a few of those Kairos moments, most recently when I overextended rock climbing. I’m not sure what was worse, the frozen moment when you know it’s all downhill and there’s nothing you can do, or the five weeks in a cast in the middle of summer.
Oh, and Bob? Maybe you didn’t get to bone a friend’s sister, but you have a beautiful blonde and two good kids, so you still came out ahead.
Certainly not complaining now, but it seemed SO important back in high school…
And man, I’ve fallen down stairs, but at least they weren’t made of stone. Glad you’re okay, PS!
For a certain value of okay. What I did to the ankle shortened the leg by about a centimeter.
I wish your dad would’ve been there either time I totaled the car. My dad was slightly incandescent on the subject.
There was a villain in “The Batman” who could rewind time just a short amount, just enough to try something as many times as he wanted to. That was his only superpower, yet he was basically the most overpowered villain in cartoon history. I won’t spoil the ending but it’s pretty damn cool.
Which villain was that?
I don’t think he had a cool villain name. He was literally just a normal guy who had the best power imaginable. WHICH MADE HIM EVEN COOLER!!
Francis Gray. No costume or anything, just some ordinary guy. But AWESOME. I think that was my favorite episode. If you have not seen it, you should!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0856353/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
A T-shirt with “kairos” on it in that font would be cool…
Hehe, Sophie’s learned Bullet Time.
Quicksilver best illustrates this concept of Kairos, with appropriate music:
Wow, you only did that once? in my first two years of driving I had somewhere near 70 accidents ranging from harmless running off the road to one that gave me amnesia and made it to CNN that day. After the first few, every accident and life threatening event( including being the first officer on the scene to a riot and getting stuck in the middle with an overly gung ho partner) took on that slow motion quality you described. At least it rules out panic!
You must have Berserker-class adrenal glands!
Forget adrenal glands, he must have Berserker-class car insurance if he was still driving after even a fraction of that many accidents. I want to know where I can sign up!
I used to do the slow time thing a lot. The last time things got silly with it though as I got bored waiting on the fist aimed at my face that was almost stopped. I haven’t done the slow motion thing since, I think I broke something. Over exerted the gland, not damage from the punch.
Well, there was more than one insurance company, and I eventually wound up with one that I have stayed with for almost two decades now. You know the one, has a funny lady spokesperson on their tongue in cheek TV adds.
Being so close to Sophie, I wonder just what her resolution is in the kid’s eyes. Can he see moles, arm hairs, droplets of sweat and stuff?
Also, this reminds me of that device that they had in GALAXY QUEST that had a name that I can’t remember(Omega Device? SOMETHING like that).
Omega13.
It rewound the entire universe’s time back for 13 seconds at the potential risk of destroying the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, and no one really knew what was gonna happen when it was activated.
When I saw the movie in the theater and the captain activated it to save the crew and the little squid people from certain death, I found myself wondering what kind of self-centered @$$%$!# rolls the dice with those odds even to save people you care about…
That’s actually not true. The device’s purpose was intentionally left undefined as a part of the last episode’s cliffhanger. Since the show was cancelled, it remained undefined. This left the geeks to speculate what it did. Some thought it destroyed the universe in 13 seconds while others thought it did a 13 second jump-back.
Of course who knows what the Thermians thought when they built the thing…nobody bothered to ask them. 🙂
Well, we have confirmation that the mother is dead. Sophie talked with her.
As for the slow mother stuff…
Nice to finally get a greek or latin name for it.
I don’t exactly get that sort of thing when I get into a situation. I’m not sure if I’m being fortunate or unfortunate, but I do come across a ‘slo-mo’ crisis on occasion.
Each time, I get that ‘exalted’ state you describe, but not the reaction later. I also find reacting and adjusting to a situation easier at the time.
A psychoanalyst says he’s envied me because he believed I’m incapable of panic.
is there a word for the opposite? in situations like that, I find the world SPEEDS UP! but that I also have some amazing fast reaction times. Actually… becasue it happens so fast that I usually have no clue what JUST happened… i wonder… what if time slowed down and someone else took control…
Sometimes such things can effect you remembering the short term and long term memory of the event. Let’s face it, you prioritise current actions over making sure everything is recording right.