He watched as the fly crawled along the edge of his paperwork, an occasional flutter of a wing or pause to clean a forelimb.

How long had he been sitting here, the fly his only source of entertainment and companionship? Fatigue weighed down his bones and slumped his shoulders. He wanted to sleep, but that put him at risk of losing his place.

Cottonmouth. And his eyes were dry from sitting directly under the HVAC. How could a draft dry his contacts and feel stagnant, as though it had been the same stale air for millennia? He wondered now if it had been hours or days or weeks since he walked into this place.

Had he been young once before all this started?

How was it, here, in this Nothing, that time could simultaneously speed up and slow down? It was like every second was a year, every minute a lifetime, every lifetime a few seconds. But it was also as though the world outside, the world he longed to return to, was traveling through time at an increasingly fast speed without him. Everything he dreamed of, everything he wanted to take part in, was blazing past him, forever lost, as he sat in this… what? What could he call it?

If asked how long he’d been there, he could say, “I’ve never not been here” or “I am not yet here,” and believe both to be true.

Time meant nothing.

Everything that was to happen in this place would happen in its own time, at its own pace. Maybe it had already happened. Perhaps, like Utopia, it never would—left on the horizon forever as unattainable.

The fly flew away. He watched it as it circled in lazy loops, flying high and low, zooming around him like an acrobat before finally flying too far away for him to see. He looked around. How many others were trapped here in this limbo? Local business people, teachers, delivery drivers, doctors, lawyers, teenagers, and retired persons huddled together but still separated in one of the only genuine moments of total equity. Indeed, this was not heaven. Hell was worse, probably. But how much worse could it be?

He longed for something, anything, to take his attention. Nothing worked. None of the usual things- his phone, a book, conversation, even just people watching or daydreaming—pulled his mind away from the endless tedium. All was futile. No one spoke. No one smiled. No one did… anything.

They all merely waited.

For how long?

There was no answer because to answer meant to know and to know meant certainty, and certainty was not a commodity traded in this place; It was anathema here. All that mattered here was the wait. He imagined himself as Dante and above the door: All Who Enter Must Wait.

There was no way to make time move faster or even know if it was moving at all. In this place, Time did as it wanted, and, as though in love with itself and longing to squeeze out every precious moment of itself for as long as it possibly could, Time slowed and slowed and slowed and slowed until the very perception of Time was that of only the Infinite.

He wanted to cry out, scream, shake his fellow un-travellers by the collar, and ask if they could all rise up, bring this to some conclusion, fight for something, anything!

But no. He could merely wait for the voice, the light, the Decider, to call for him.

“Now serving number 12.”

He looked at the mocking red LEDs that echoed the voice, showing a big red twelve on the number board. He looked at his ticket. He was number 1,035.

Maybe he didn’t need his driver’s license renewed at all. Perhaps he could ride the bus. Or walk.