在他看来，他的第六年持续了很长时间，他坦率地想知道他是否会年满7岁。但是现在这是他生日的前一天晚上，除非发生宇宙灾难，这是一个意外的黑洞的到来，随之而来的是，随之而来的是随之而来的地球，随之而来的是时间的逆转或暂停时间，几个小时后，他将醒来他在这个七岁的孩子中被人数。
(His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, and barring some cosmic disaster, the advent of some unexpected black hole into which the earth might be sucked, with the attendant reversal or suspension of time, in very few hours he would be waking up to a world in which he was numbered among the seven-year-olds.)