61st Second, The

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. "Time waits for no one. But sometimes, it forgets you." Julian lives his life in microseconds. As a high-frequency trader, every tick of the clock is profit or ruin. But during the latest atomic clock adjustment, something goes wrong. Julian doesn't move forward with the rest of the world. He is left behind in the 61st Second—a frozen, monochromatic version of London where the air tastes like copper and the silence is a physical weight. In this sliver of dead time, the world is a gallery of statues. But Julian is not alone. Moving through the stillness are 'The Maintenance Crew'—towering, spindly entities with needles for fingers, tasked with stitching the loose threads of reality. To them, Julian is a glitch that must be erased. As his own skin begins to flake into grey ash, Julian realizes that the longer he stays, the less human he becomes. He must find a way to sync back with the ticking world before the Crew finds him—or before he disappears into the silence forever. A visceral, chronophobic nightmare that explores the terrifying fragility of our perceived reality. Every second is a wound. And the clock is bleeding.