And a game becomes more of a puzzle. For one of us, anyway.

Oleksandr Kolesnyk was cheating.

The lawyer had used his power so he could examine the monitors more closely. He couldn't move, of course, so he had focused on one in particular before stopping the universe in a single moment. The readouts showed a great deal of physical information—pulse, skin conductivity, blood pressure, respiration rate and depth—as well as a number of metrics with which he was less familiar, relating to brain activity, mental acuity, and emotional response. He had studied, of course, but there was an intuition which he had yet to develop that seemed to come naturally to other players.

So in place of intuition, he used his superpower to give himself a few moments to study the screen. It's not like anyone else would notice, no one ever did when he stopped time.

He was able to read the information on the five volunteers who were being... the term was Altered. This timeline had access to fascinating hypnotic technology, and put it to all kinds of recreational purpose. His goal in the game was to convince these five volunteers that a green circle is preferable to an orange triangle, through both suggestion and direct manipulation of their mental state.

He was still learning the game, and so had few qualms about taking a moment with time stopped to look over the information presented, formulating a plan.

Number two should relax some. Three and four I should nudge towards greenness, I think.

A plan, then. When he released his hold on time, he would connect to number two's system and slowly rotate the dial to activate ... he couldn't remember the details, only that that particular dial was what was needed. And before the second volunteer could react to that, he would switch over to three and four and begin to send some nature imagery to their displays.

Oleksandr let his power fall and watched as the game clock resumed its inevitable countdown. Thirteen minutes remained in the match. He selected volunteer two, and for good measure volunteer five, and used the dial to do whatever it did to relax them, then deselected them and chose three and four and quickly accessed the database for a short looped video of a walk in the forest, projecting it to their waiting eyes to try to subconsciously associate the good feelings he was sending them with the soft colours.

He wasn't the only one working on them, though. His opponent had noticed what he was doing and rather than fighting back was working with the imagery and the relaxation that three and four were experiencing to send them mild sensations of disgust. At least, that was how Oleksandr interpreted the information he was getting from the monitors.

He turned to number one and activated the olfactory nerves, hoping that that particular volunteer had happy memories of mint. It was tempting to start using his power again to get back his advantage, but he wasn't sure how best to leverage it at that moment. He decided to take things slowly, watch as events unfolded.

The slow movement of the numbers and indicators was itself somewhat hypnotic, and threatened to lull the labour lawyer into a sense of complacency. Given that he so frequently held it still, watching the passage of time being measured in such a concrete way was fascinating. It was not something he usually considered. He linked his console to the odd-numbered volunteers and tried simply to see how his manipulations might affect them, how deep he might bring them. Perhaps he might learn a level of mastery of Alterations and become a little like his friend, the villainous Silver Tongue, whose voice alone can manipulate thought and emotion to his liking. It hadn't ever been an aspiration of his, just a possibility, a consideration.

Nine minutes remained. As did a whole new potential career, stretching before him. Fortunately, he had all the time he could ever want to think about it.