"What?!" Nick squeaked, or, at least tried to. He still couldn't make a sound out of his mouth. "What did you do to Judy you son of a bitch?!" He tried to yell.

"Nick, Nick calm down. Judy is fine, I promise." He said, mouth still not moving. "I'm not here to hurt you, or anyone you love. You have a lot of questions. I know." He continued.

Nick couldn't do anything. He wanted to take out the IV so he could knock the doppelgänger of himself out, but something else caught his eye.

"Don't touch Judy, please. You will only hurt her." The other Nick stated, a caring look in his eye.

There was a needle in his arm, it's the IV used to put some sort of medicine in his body. But there was a problem. The wire connecting the needle to the bag was not making just one curve, like something following the laws of physics. Nick didn't like physics class, but he knew that IV wires aren't supposed to float like that. In fact…

"Yes I look like you, named after you, all that. But I'm not coping you. Trust me."

Nick swayed his right arm slowly back and forth. The wire, still connecting to his arm, was floating. Floating like wires he saw on space stations like the ISSS (InterSpecies Space Station), the ones with no gravity. Nick looked up to the plastic tube connecting the IV bag to the IV wire, it usually has a steady drip, but now there was no dripping, in fact, he could see a teardrop shape, the droplet frozen in mid air.

"Are you listening to me, Nick?" The other Nick said. "Listen. This is gonna sound crazy I know. If you wanna know, I'm communicating to you via thought-speak type of thing. I don't really understand it either. It's two way, too."

Nick was preoccupied with the wire that was supposed to be giving him painkillers. It moved in ways he didn't think were possible with regular objects in the real world. It wasn't obeying gravity. But he was fine, laying fine on the bed, except that it felt like he was underwater when breathing and moving his arm.

"Nick, c'mon. I don't really want to wait around while you play around with your medicine. Try talking. Well, not actually talking, just think about it."

Nick tried thinking about talking. He heard himself making short squeaks in his mind, different from the regular thoughts he was having. Like he was speaking in a microphone and he was hearing himself talk, echoing a little.

"You're coming through, roughly, try again. Imagine that you're talking to me regularly, but without actually... doing it, eh?"

This was a very good actor if this guy was a fraud. Nick thought again following the other Nick's directions.

"What… is… going… on?"

It worked.

"I know, it's crazy. I stopped time."

"You're joking. There's no way you stopped time." Nick replied immediately.

"Ehh… yeah, you're right. The guys who made this said it's not stopping time it's just slowing it down by a lot or something like that. I'm not even sure how." The other Nick explained.

"Oh my god." Nick said slowly. This guy must be from the future or something.

"Call me… Mr. Hopps. I know you hate saying your name as much as I do. We… are the same person, after all." He stated.

"You're kidding." Nick said back.

"Nope! 78 years coming up soon in fact." He flashed his wedding ring.

"78 years?!" Nick exclaimed.

"Yep. Still going strong. And she's still beautiful, too. Also, the folks that made the whole… time travel thing made me say I'm not actually from the future. Something about the multiverse and a bunch of numbers I don't understand nor care to." He continued. "But, I'll get to the point, and you can go back to comforting your future wife and all. I need your help. There's something really, really really bad that's going to happen soon, and you need to stop it." Mr. Hopps said, breaking his cool and happy composure and switching to a much more serious one.

"Me? Why don't you do it?" Nick asked in return.

"Because I can't. Nick, I'm 111 years old. I can't do that sort of thing anymore. All I can do is help you along the way. You can bring Judy too, but only her! You can't tell another being on this planet. I swear. Don't even write this down in that diary you kept from when you were twelve 'just in case'." Mr. Hopps continued.

"Wait… how do you know about- wait, right. You're me." Nick sighed, this was a bit much to wrap his mind around. "Did you say you were 111? How do you look so young?"

"Ha, right. Not gonna seem like I'd look like this for about 20 years. The future is bright my friend." He replied, then added, "You are handling this information quite well, Nick. Meeting your future self isn't quite something that happens every day."

"Well, I guess it's the huge amount of morphine coursing though my veins." Nick answered.

"Hah, I guess so. Well, here." Mr. Hopps passed him a card with a phone number on it, but it had two extra digits at the end.

Nick looked at his otherworldly self nodded, hoping that the two extra digits wouldn't be a problem for his phone.

Mr. Hopps gave him a CarrotPhone as well. "I'm sure you'll need this too." He said, tacking on a small laugh as Nick remembered what happened to his own phone.

"Oh, right, thanks." He said in return.

"I'll be off now, give you time to think about it. Lay it softly to Judy, but I know that she will be able to handle it. Here, take this as well." He handed Nick a digital watch.

"What's this? I already have a watch" Nick asked, confused.

"That isn't for telling time, it's for diluting it. An app on the phone actually does the work, but that's how you tell it what you want to stay "real time" or whatever you'd call it. It also automatically does it for whoever holds the phone as well, so the watch is for Judy. I have a more expensive version that does it remotely, so you don't need a watch while I've stopped time like right now. Also, don't ask me how it works. I don't have a damn clue."

All Nick could reply with is a quiet "woah.." looking at all the power in his hands.

"Time is your greatest power, Nick. Use it wisely."

Nick nodded. Mr. Hopps turned on his phone, tapped a couple things, and disappeared.

Nick thought the phone could also teleport, but after he heard a beep again, he realized he just disconnected him from the app on his phone, and he just walked out. The IV wire was yanked out of his arm and the whole was thrown across the room and down into the tiled ground, the wire itself, snapping apart into many pieces. Judy, still crying on his chest, quickly looked up, shocked by the sudden movement of the inanimate object.

"What the-?" She said slowly, getting up to check it out.

Nicks arm, having the hollow needle yanked out of him, started bleeding profusely, the artery that was poked to get the medicine into his bloodstream was now gushing with every heatbeat.

"Ow, ow, ow, Judy, get a bandaid!" Nick said quickly.

Judy looked at his bleeding arm and asked "What just happened? Did you yank your arm down or something? And what happened to this wire? It's shredded!" Judy said, getting up and opening a drawer next to Nick's bed to get a bandaid.

"Uhm…" Nick did know what happened, he realized he was moving at maybe a million miles an hour, swaying his arm back and forth ripped the IV wire apart and sent it flying when he finally set his arm back down. Now he knows why moving felt like moving through water, the air itself was having trouble moving out of the way of him. He might as well tell Judy what happened now instead of later, he knew she would be able to handle it, at least she'd be excited over this apparent superpower.

"Judy… you might wanna sit down for this." Judy attaching his bandage and wiping up the blood on his arm looked at Nick strangely. Nick never called her by her first name, not at any point in the three months that she knew him, unless it was serious.

"Erm... why?" She asked.

"'Cause you aren't gonna believe this…"