perhaps at this point some of the spectators , swept along by these successive miracles , imagined they possessed the power , self-directed now , to halt clock hands and will them to backward acceleration , tock-tick , tock-tick , back to the time before their definitive identity here in this place next to disused factories and derelict freighters , in strictly limited rehabilitation , defined for good by collisions and treacherous winter roads , by the sniper 's bullet , the car-bomb blast , the anti-personnel mine , the burst shale vein , falls from high places , the greedy chain saw , the uncalculated side-effects of miracle drugs : back to the upright time before all that .