The man in the brown corduroy blazer was Per Einar Eriksen. He was forty-three, a professor at Karolinska Insitutet in Stockholm, and the father of two girls in their early teens.
But more than anything, right now he was floating in weightlessness. From a strictly scientific perspective this admittedly gave him an excellent opportunity for observation. His brain was working flat out, and ironically, that was his specialist subject–human consciousness, thought processes, the meandering paths between abstract thoughts and concrete actions.
And, like now, how the internal processor seemed to shift up a gear when faced with a crisis, just as his subjects would often describe it after countless tests and experiments. How a sudden, unforeseen danger could cause time to slow down, drag forwards in slow motion, to the point of almost standing still.
Although, of course, in reality it did nothing of the sort. Time is constant. And in reality, Per Einar Eriksen had only seconds left to live.
The text message had arrived almost as soon as the power came back, and he had hesitated for around half a second before deciding to comply with its instructions. He had been in position in the lobby of Kaknäs telecoms tower long before the agreed time, and after a lot of persuasion they had let him into the tower even though the view was closed for the day–however the hell a view could close, something he found far more amusing than the girl on the till did–and although the restaurant had shut up shop for the day as soon as the power went.
As he stepped out of the lift on the thirteenth floor, he’d been all alone. He had walked over to the huge windows, looked right out into the darkness, down on the millions of fuzzy white dots that formed the city’s street lighting.
And then, nothing happened. Nothing at all.
In the distance, the revolving clock on the NK Department Store roof completed one revolution after another, and when the hands reached ten thirty he just had to accept it. Someone had tricked him. What most annoyed him was that he didn’t have anyone to call and bawl out, no one to say For fuck’s sake to, I’ve got more important things to do with my life than stand here waiting to meet someone whose identity I don’t even know
Because that was the situation. He didn’t know who’d summoned him there. The only thing he did know was that he’d been too curious to ignore it, and that the only one he could blame was himself, and those thoughts, frankly, were not particularly satisfying.
My fault, he thought as he fell.
At thirty-three minutes past ten he had stepped back into the lift, consoled himself with the thought that he would probably be able to blag himself something from the gift shop on the way out, pressed the button to take him down to the ground floor, and then, in an instant, realised that everything was wrong.
First came the sensation of lifting away from the floor, even if he knew that the opposite was happening. Then the feeling that his internal organs were coming adrift from their moorings, floating around inside him like cooking oil in a glass of water, and then the thoughts–rushing through his head at hyper-speed, making it seem that the world was standing still.
Thoughts about the events that had led him here.
The emails, the weird, frightening emails with their incomprehensible pleas for help, short, without a sender, and in which someone had asked to meet at Central Station without saying why. Then the CD, the one that had arrived in the regular mail, with a handwritten message saying the meeting was canselled. Because we are in danger.
And now, the text that arrived along with the power, that once again consisted of a single line, and that was the reason for him being here, heading for his own death.
Kaknäs Tower, it had said. Restaurant, 22:00.
And that’s where he was, only not in the restaurant, but standing in a lift in free-fall, the floor beneath his feet disappearing as quickly as he was, at a speed that was constantly increasing and in the shiny, stainless steel walls he could see his own face scream in desperation.
Five and a half seconds, that’s how long it took, the longest–and shortest–seconds in his forty-three-year life, a time that passed in slow motion, yet still way too quickly. Five and a half seconds of thoughts, questions with no answers, and of pleading to all conceivable higher powers to please make this stop.
In the end it did.