[ WP ] You buy a new alarm clock with a special feature , and test it out the next morning . Every time you hit snooze , time pauses around you for 10 minutes .

Before mankind learnt to travel in the flow of time, people talked about being rushed off their feet and how the days were n't long enough. 
 
 John knew this because his father liked to talk about his childhood, which he self-mockingly referred to as `` back in the day''. Before John's eighteenth birthday, when he had received his own sleek black control pad, he had liked to hear his father's stories about timetables and schedules. To hear the history which was created in his father's own childhood, with no one having any idea that it was no less immutable than chalk on a blackboard. 
 
 A lot of that history had now been erased, reversed, left in an almost constant state of flux. This did not have the initially feared consequence of constantly altering the present but instead created alternate streams in time, or such was the theory. Many people still believed it was worth altering the alternate future of their past. It was a matter for the quantum philosophers to decide if creating a new reality perceived to be better than the original version of the past was of any real benefit, most people did n't care. 
 
 John was of the first generation to grow up with the time controllers as part of his life. His mother and father owned one but had never used it. They kept it as an emergency measure, like a handgun in a bedside cabinet. 
 But John had been educated in its use, his childhood has been spent waiting for his 18th birthday when he would be allowed to run free. Those like John who chose to leave could not come back; this was the one change they would make to the reality they left behind. 
 
 The suitability test was never going to be an obstacle as John knew exactly how to be suitable in nearly all situations. He possessed the self-control and confidence to survey his surroundings and measure up those he met before addressing them. The interview in the well-furnished room with the respectable looking gentlemen had passed without a hitch. John simply responded as he imagined they would want him to. The truthfulness of his answers never crossed his mind. That John was a young man with one single idea in his head never crossed the minds of his examiners. The certificate was duly signed and the device changed hands. 
 
 Returning to their home with his mother and father the family was quiet. Only when they were in the familiar living room did John's father ask the question - `` When are you going to?''. John of course had an answer prepared for this - `` 2300. What if in the future someone has invented a way to move between streams as well as backward and forwards? We could really fix everything''. His parents, trying to show fortitude, offered hugs and a firm handshake. They had been worried about their son as a child. Something about the infirmity of what they thought they had known as fact had affected their ability to bring up this boy. 
 
 John pressed the button.
