Now everything would be different; a little today, all of it tomorrow. - Sten Nadolny

He didn't want to learn another thing. Motionless, he constantly stared at the same spot, unseeing. He breathed as if the air were loam. ...he no longer wanted to be quick. ...he wanted to slow down until he died. ...Outside the passage of time... until they'd think him dead. ...The alterations of day and night would finally become just a flickering... John sucked in the air and held his breath. ...everything would be as it had been before his birth. He would have never been.

Present and past—what had Dr. Orme said about that? The light was most fully in the present when, flaring up, it met John's eye directly. Whatever else he saw must have been lit up before and now shone only within his own eye—a light of the past.

If he could just stay there and gaze upon the land like a stone, whole centuries long, while grassy plains became forests and swamps turned into villages or tilled land. ...He'd be recognized as human only when he stirred.