The house was silent accept for the occasional moan. He wanted to know where it was coming from. Another moan, or was it more of a grunt? He knew wher... it was coming from this time.Tom crept up to the au pairs door, and slowly eased it open. The site that met his eyes caused his heart to beat faster. There, lying on her bed, naked as the days she was born, was Sylvie, the au pair. Her eyes were closed. Her left hand was feeling her right breast, pinching her nipple. Her right hand was wrapped. Watching. Waiting. Slowly but surely, a sense of normalcy returned. People began to grow accustomed to these silent beings as work began to resume, schools opened their doors once more, and wars continued to be fought.It started as whispers at first. These 'Shadows' as they were referred to, would grant 'deals' and almost godlike power that enabled people to manipulate the world in such a way that could make the impossible possible. If these deals were broken people would vanish or die.. ’ He moved his hand to push some hair back from her eyes, then stroked her cheek. ‘Okay now?’ She nodded, then threw her arms around his neck, hiding her few remaining tears. He pulled her closer and soothed her. With Simon’s arms around her, and the warmth of his body next to hers, Connie calmed down. She did not, however, let go. This is what it would be like , she thought. If we really were together, we could do this all the time. He’d be here whenever I woke up. I should just tell him . . .. When we had everything set up, it was time to test it. I set the hardware clock of the server to about a minute behind the local time; I decided that the Telecom ‘talking clock’ was good enough of a local reference. While the main accuracy of their time keeping system wasn’t anywhere near as accurate as an atomic clock, the system in the Telecom Research Labs were good enough for what we wanted to do. We dialled 1194, and put the phone in my office on speaker.“At the third stroke, it will be.