Conan walked to school. It was a cloudy September 1994 morning. Nobody noticed that this September 1994 morning had been extremely similar to the one exactly a year earlier. Except for Conan, who was walking to school.

Conan recalled how things had changed and yet nothing had changed at all. Smartphones and tablets and Wi-Fi and funny little game systems that had a 3D eye trick built in (uncreative) were all relatively new. Or were they? Only a couple of months back Kogoro had bought a Super Famicom for him. No, no, that's not right, by months he really meant years. Now it was dusty and barely worked, stored away in a closet, and not even he had noticed that it had been far too short of a time for that to make sense at all.

Ayumi's family had been lucky enough to buy her an iPad so she could play all sorts of touch sensor games. That sort of technology shouldn't exist in the same year that Agasa had gotten a new dial-up connection working in his lab. The murder case involving a manga artist using tablets couldn't have been pulled off in a different, older 1994. Things were beginning to become less and less clear to Conan now, and it was starting to cause a headache.

If Conan was actually considering this anomaly as a plausible idea, why couldn't anyone else?

"Yo, Conan!" Conan nearly yelled in surprise as Genta appeared next to him, followed by Mitsuhiko, Ayumi, and Ai, who was leisurely pacing herself instead of catching up.

"Don't scare me like that. I'm thinking."

"Is it a case?" asked Mitsuhiko. It stopped being a question after that. "I saw on TV that crime happens most often on Fridays. Like bank robberies."

"Yeah," said Conan. "It's a really important one, too."

Ai finally caught up to the group. "It wouldn't happen to be what I'm thinking you're thinking about?"

"It is. I still think it's possible."

"How?"

Conan lowered his voice, which wasn't that necessary, because Genta was singing about eels. "I don't see why you can't understand it. I opened up a photo journal yesterday and there was too much content in it to fit in a single year, much less the six months we've been led to believe."

"If anyone other than you had noticed that this year was continuing without end, the world would be up in arms. How do you know that you're not just paranoid because of what Vermouth told you? She may as well be leading you on the wrong trail because of a complication. Maybe this is all a distraction just to slow down your pursuit of them."

"That's not what I'm asking, Haibara. I'm wondering whether you believe me or not."

"No."

"But can't you at least see that nothing makes sense any more?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Your mind is overworked, Kudo-kun. I lived within the Organization for all my life, and I was never given information regarding anything of that sort. It is scientifically impossible for time to stop in such a way that we can keep living, untouched by its effects. Vermouth is toying with your perception of things, giving you doubt, so that she can slow down your search, like I just said. She wants to keep her deeper secrets hidden from the public. It's her own selfish strategy."

"Age reduction is impossible, too, Haibara, and you managed it."

"That's different. It seems impossible, but that's only because science hasn't gotten that far yet, while the Organization has. That affects people on a small scale. If what you said about time's flow was true, the entire world, much less the universe, would be in chaos. Things like that can only actually happen in science fiction. Physics prevents these kinds of things from taking effect. Time is an independent variable that is required for nearly everything in this world to work. Not only that, but you claim that only certain parts of time have been restricted, and that makes even less sense and creates several complications that cannot be explained sensibly."

Ai stopped and noticed that everybody was staring at her.

"Ai-chan, what does that mean?" asked Ayumi.

"Oh, I was just talking with Conan-kun about this science fiction book I'm reading."

"Oh. I didn't understand any of it."

"My brain hurts," said Genta.

"Regardless," said Ai, "you have no idea what you're talking about, Conan-kun."

Conan sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets.

Kobayashi-sensei pointed to a simple symbol on the chalkboard. "Can any of you tell me what this kanji means?"

Genta shot up his hand before Mitsuhiko could. Conan would have thought this was amusing, but he was not in the right mood for it.

Genta looked at it for a moment. He had raised his hand without properly thinking about the answer. The class was staring silently at him.

"It's grass." he said.

"Very good, Genta-kun. Now, can anyone think of a compound that uses this kanji?"

Conan wondered why everyone put up with learning the same knowledge over and over again. He surely had learned a lot in the past twenty years through experience. For example, when Asou Seiji committed suicide, he vowed never to let it happen again, and he passed this teaching on to Heiji. This hadn't been wiped from his memory every school year, and yet the kids in the first grade were still struggling to relearn important kanji that they should already know at a millisecond's glance.

Maybe the fact that he actually hadn't learned anything useful at school factored into how he felt. If he had been in high school, he probably would have re-forgotten the information over and over again, just like everybody else. He already knew so much worldly information from reading books that it didn't seem like much of a detriment. He had a flashback to the roller coaster murder case, where he figured that a passerby was a gymnast with only an improper glance.

In that day and age he had acted radically different. He had been a devout follower of Sherlock Holmes's behavior and personality, which made him act like an obnoxious jerk all the time around Ran. He had been through these feelings of regret for his egotistical behavior many times before. It was what had gotten him into this awful situation, anyway. Now he could care less about whether he played the violin or had a proper Dr. Watson (Haibara, however, was very qualified) and hadn't read a Holmes book in ages, even if he was still a fan. He acted a lot more like himself than he cared to admit because he had to act like he was six all the time anyway.

But why was his personality changing if his academic knowledge didn't? Why were people like Sato and Takagi and Kobayashi and Shiratori gradually hooking up and advancing in their relationships? Shiratori was no longer in a competition for Sato's heart, Agasa had found the woman he had missed for so long, and Kogoro and Eri had been occasionally working on somewhat friendlier terms. Even he himself had finally arrived at the point where he told Ran that he loved her. That was kind of awkward, though.

Kobayashi rapped her pointer stick on Conan's desk. He had gradually sunk his head down and looked like he was sleeping, even though he was just in extremely deep thought.

"All right, Conan-kun, since you've been sleeping, can you demonstrate for the class the correct way to write this kanji?"

"Hey, Cool Kid," said Jodie in English.

"You're absolutely sure this place is free of surveillance?"

"I've thoroughly searched, it's safe."

"Did you check under our table?"

"I didn't become an FBI agent without knowing to look under the table, Conan-kun. You need to trust me."

Conan briefly felt guilty about not telling Jodie that Akai was alive and well. He metaphorically shoved it off his heart. That was for Akai's own safety, and she would understand in the end.

"I have some important information to share with you," said Conan. He looked around. Nobody had followed them into the café. They were far away from the other customers. The waiter had just left with their orders. "Vermouth is dead."

"Oh," said Jodie in English again. She took it in for a moment and then said, "How did you find this out?"

Conan sort of stared at the little circle in Jodie's framed glasses. Those were allegedly her father's glasses. Vermouth killed her father, and now Vermouth was dead. "She told me two nights ago through a text message with no return address. I followed her instructions and found her bleeding to death in an alleyway in block 3. She died quickly." He purposefully left out what Vermouth told him and her method of accelerating her demise.

"It wasn't in the papers. Did you get there early enough to talk to her? Did she tell you anything?"

Conan took a chance. "She did. But most of what she said involved something that makes little sense…"

"What was it?" "She claimed that time had stopped and that it had been 20 years since then."

"What's 'then'?"

"Since…" Conan stopped. "I don't know. But it's hard to believe. I think she may have been lying."

"Well, of course she was lying. That kind of science fiction material can't happen. But why would she tell you that in her dying words? Was she throwing us off the trail?"

"I'm unsure," said Conan, "but I have a theory."

Jodie smirked. "Maybe if it's been 20 years then that's why you're so smart for a little boy and I'm losing my touch."

"No, that's not it."

"I've placed my full faith in you, Conan. If you've got a serious reason to hide things from me, don't hesitate to."

They were quiet for a little while, and then the waiter brought the drinks. Conan took a sip of his lemonade.

"I can't go around telling people what my deal is," said Conan. "It could compromise a lot of things."

"You are kind of an enigma to everyone."

"Well," said Conan, "people who know the truth about it will react differently to me. Like Vermouth. I don't know if it'd make much of a difference to you, though, since I act honestly when I'm talking with you and the other agents."

"You should probably stop there. You're making me more curious about it, and giving yourself excuses to tell me. If you keep going I might even figure it out myself."

"You're right."

"Let's focus back on Vermouth. Let's say what she said was true. How much evidence is there to support what she said?"

"I can't provide any obvious evidence, apart from the fact that I've attended nineteen different versions of the exact same summer festival and have filled 20 or so picture albums with pictures taken only in 1994."

"How long do people think it's been since time 'stopped'?"

"About six months."

"What do you mean about the photo albums, though?"

"I have five pictures from 1994 that were taken on the same date and all had different events going on that couldn't all be accomplished in one day."

"What are the details?"

"Ran, who organized the photos, dated all of the photographs. The first year, on June 20th, Ran and I went to the beach. Then after that, after an entire two years of pictures, on June 20th we went to a hotel and we solved a murder case. Seven years' worth of pictures after that one, on June 20th, Ran took a photo of Goro, her mother's cat, who was staying with us that day. A year after that, there is a picture of us at a wedding that took place on June 20th. Finally, three years later, we visited a national park on the 20th and Ran took several pictures of flowers. I'm six years old. I shouldn't have even been alive for those earlier ones."

Jodie put a hand to her forehead. "I'm as lost as you are now. But you said earlier that you doubted what Vermouth told you."

"I didn't want to sound like I was taking her seriously until I got into the details."

"Well, Conan-kun, I'm not sure how to believe it. No one else noticed, too?"

"Right. I tried to tell Haibara and she wouldn't take a word of it for the truth."

"That's natural, I suppose."

"Let me explain this more. I've dealt with hundreds of murder cases over these six months. That's definitely not possible for anyone. If I compared the statistics with the time, I'd have to have had nearly one murder per week to fill the quota. From memory, this isn't how it had actually been."

"Conan-kun, I can see where you're coming from. But all of the evidence you've found only deals with your own experiences. Let me do some talking."

"All right."

"From memory, I first came to America to look for Vermouth and become an English teacher about four months ago. From what you've seen, how many years in does this place me?"

Conan recalled that the first time he heard of Jodie was when he was Shinichi for a day and was told about the new English teacher by his rowdy classmates. Ran had some pictures from that day. They were about five years in by then. "Five years," said Conan. "That leaves fourteen."

"That's ridiculous, if I had lived in Japan for fourteen years instead of four months, I would be a lot more used to it than I am now."

"Do you really think all the operations we've had could have been done reasonably within that time frame of four months?"

Jodie paused to think about it. She also started counting on her fingers, then she stopped suddenly and put down her hands. "Probably not. I can see where you're coming from now, Conan-kun."

"That's good," said Conan. He took another drink of his lemonade. "I don't know what to do next. We don't have any leads. The only thing we know now is what Vermouth told us."

"So for now it's probably impossible to get to the bottom of this, right?"

"Yeah...maybe."

"Have you thought of something?"

"How much information on the Organization do we have in the first place?"

"Hmm…" Jodie's brow lowered. "Not much. Just about as much as you know, unless there's something you haven't told me yet."

"Those things compromise me, and aren't as important."

"OK."

"I know someone who knows people in Interpol. I told him back when this began that I could do it myself, but I may need to swallow my pride and ask for his help."

"You wanted to go after this dangerous organization without anyone to back you up?"

"I was brash about it at first. I didn't know how clever they were, as well, until I had more encounters with them."

"You're six years old. Whatever caused you to find out about them must have been very jarring."

"It was. And if we count our lost time, I should be twenty-six now."

"That's frightening. It's like you never grew up. You're trapped in that body."

Conan shuddered at how close she was. He was reeling on the edge of telling her because it was just that similar. "I… don't think I've gotten any smarter since this first started. No one else has changed at all."

"So you've always been like this?"

"Jodie-san, you're pushing it."

"Well, sorry."

"It's getting late. I need to get home soon."

"Go ahead, we should continue this later. Got a good time tomorrow?"

"Sure, how about…"

Conan stood in a public phone booth.

"Otou-san?"

"Hey, Shinichi, what's up?"

"I have a favor to ask of you."

"Go ahead. Keep in mind that I still have to finish this Night Baron volume by the end of this month."

"Okay. You know how I said that I needed to solve this case by myself?"

"Is this going where I think this is going, Shinichi?"

"Yes, I admit that I need your help with the situation I'm in."

"Do you need to come to America?"

"It's not that desperate, Otou-san...in fact, you have plenty of time."

"What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to get Interpol to look into something."