Big Ben, famous synchronizing device, caught in a strange time-void. We move from frame to frame in a blur, each blurred tick of the tall clock caught like a bubble's surface in the mesh of a substrate-ether. This ether, though empty according to all definitions, still has the ability to shape through absence. Oh, how we miss the times that have passed; though we no longer give them thought, it is certain that the void of our attention, and the missing shape of their substance, still blur the blue halo that surrounds such famous clocks at middle-day, just when we pass by on the way to lunch, our eyes searching the polarized light for the time on the face, and across the faces of the time, people on the street, for one or another among the masses of the people, the one who we do love.     In London, that summer, the telegraph company had begun to modernize its operation.