Short story about the lifetime that occurs between a bullet being fired and execution












15














I'm trying to think of the short story about a condemned prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the time a bullet is fired and the time it ends his life.



I feel like the story might be Russian? Or maybe Borges?










share|improve this question









New contributor




Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
















  • 3




    It's not a prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the start and finish of being hanged, is it? If so, it's Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
    – Organic Marble
    yesterday


















15














I'm trying to think of the short story about a condemned prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the time a bullet is fired and the time it ends his life.



I feel like the story might be Russian? Or maybe Borges?










share|improve this question









New contributor




Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
















  • 3




    It's not a prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the start and finish of being hanged, is it? If so, it's Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
    – Organic Marble
    yesterday
















15












15








15


1





I'm trying to think of the short story about a condemned prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the time a bullet is fired and the time it ends his life.



I feel like the story might be Russian? Or maybe Borges?










share|improve this question









New contributor




Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.











I'm trying to think of the short story about a condemned prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the time a bullet is fired and the time it ends his life.



I feel like the story might be Russian? Or maybe Borges?







story-identification short-stories






share|improve this question









New contributor




Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.











share|improve this question









New contributor




Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.









share|improve this question




share|improve this question








edited 1 hour ago









TheLethalCarrot

38.2k15208249




38.2k15208249






New contributor




Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.









asked yesterday









Brent Roady

763




763




New contributor




Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.





New contributor





Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.






Brent Roady is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.








  • 3




    It's not a prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the start and finish of being hanged, is it? If so, it's Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
    – Organic Marble
    yesterday
















  • 3




    It's not a prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the start and finish of being hanged, is it? If so, it's Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
    – Organic Marble
    yesterday










3




3




It's not a prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the start and finish of being hanged, is it? If so, it's Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
– Organic Marble
yesterday






It's not a prisoner that experiences a lifetime between the start and finish of being hanged, is it? If so, it's Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
– Organic Marble
yesterday












4 Answers
4






active

oldest

votes


















23














Certainly you think of Borges' story El milagro secreto (The Secret Miracle). As the synopsis from ISFDB says,




"Jaromir Hladik, a Czechoslovakian writer, confronts a German firing squad. He prays to God for a full year in order to complete his play. A tear starts from his eye. In the time that the tear falls, he mentally finishes, without hurry, revising as he writes, his play. When the tear finishes its fall, at that moment, he is shot to death by the firing squad."







share|improve this answer

















  • 2




    That's almost surely the OP's story. I have just one small question. Does the miraculous year happen with the bullets in flight, or is it in the moment just before the rifles are fired?
    – user14111
    23 hours ago






  • 1




    Wikipedia has a more detailed plot summary.
    – user14111
    21 hours ago



















11














The story we're looking for here is almost certainly the Borges story suggested by Dragan Milosevic. Still, this other story, by a much less famous writer, does more or less match the terse description given in the question; so I've decided to leave this answer here, in case someday someone who is looking for that obscure writer's story runs across this question.




"Moment Without Time", a novelette by Joel Townsley Rogers, previously identified on this site as part of the (unaccepted) answer to this question; first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1952, available at the Internet Archive. A story by an American writer in an American magazine, but with a Russian setting. Here is the editorial blurb from the original magazine publication:




Time stopped for Piridov, deferring his death-sentence while the bullets

were yet in midair, and in that endless—

MOMENT without TIME
—he became the most dangerous man in Moscow!





The dissident physicist is about to be executed, when he suddenly hits on the solution to his research problem:




Piridov was facing the firing squad in the execution cellars when the solution hit him.

It was the answer he needed, the answer to the mathematical relation of time to the three spatial dimensions. It came to him in the form of an equation, as simple as the German's historic energy-mass formula—"e=mc2", where "c" represents the speed of light.

[. . . .]

Sergeant Death had shouted "Fire!", it seemed to Piridov, minutes ago. The waiting was painful. Slowly and reluctantly, he opened his eyes on the cellar scene.

The white-painted walls lit by thousand-watt bulbs, the four rifle muzzles pointed at him, the squinted eyes behind the sights, the taut retracted trigger-fingers, squat thick-chested Sergeant Death standing to one side with his hand down at his thigh in the conclusion of the sweeping axe-blade gesture with which he had accompanied the command to fire, the bullets coming at his breast. Four of them, straight at his heart, not more than twelve to fifteen inches away; while from the corner, out of the range of fire, the one-eyed scavenger directed the stream of water around his feet to wash the blood away.

No, the bullets weren't coming. They were motionless in space. The eyes behind the sights were motionless. The water hosing over his feet was motionless, both the stream and the splattering drops of it. The red second hand of the electric clock on the wall above the steel door was motionless, the minute and hour hands straight up and down at six.





Piridov spent not a lifetime but some hours in the "Moment Without Time", enough to walk around Moscow and visit various people and places including his wife Anna. Finally, he returns to his unfinished execution:




He walked the long miles back, with bowed head and limping gait, toward the city's center and the great prison. He went in, closing the entrance doors behind him. He went through the other doors, closing each in turn, along the corridors, down the flights of stairs. At the end of the long brightly-lit corridor in the deepest basement he went towards that farthest door. He went back in the cellar room, closing the door behind him.

The noseless fire-burned Sergeant Death stood with his hand down-moving. The riflemen stood with their fingers squeezed on their triggers. The one-eyed janitor hosed down the floor in motionless stream and spatter.

Piridov went past them as quietly as a shadow. At the farthest wall he turned, facing the squad, placing his feet carefully on the precise dry spots, in the empty spaces of the spattering water, which marked where he had been standing. The bullets in their swift rifled flight were poised twelve inches from his breast.

Piridov closed his eyes.

"I had a dream," he told himself. "A dream of a bright equation within a timeless instant. Of things I love and things I hate. Of a sword sweeping. A dream of water. But I am very tired. So let the dream be over."

And it was . . .





The rest of the story tells what happened with the various messages he left around town during his timeless moment.






share|improve this answer



















  • 2




    Your answer is better than mine. Leave it up. I've deleted mine.
    – JRE
    yesterday



















6














See also "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, which has a similar concept for an execution by hanging.



A number of similar stories, including Borge's "The Secret Miracle", are given here on the same web page.






share|improve this answer










New contributor




Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.


























    1














    Most probably Dragan Milosevic's answer is the one you're looking for. But since you say "the story might be Russian", I wonder if you're also conflating it with elements of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, in which execution is an important theme and one based on Dostoyevsky's own experience. The topic of condemned prisoners at the moment just before their execution is discussed several times in the novel. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):




    In 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to execution by firing squad for his part in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle. Shortly after the period of interrogation and trial, he and his fellow prisoners were taken, without warning, to Semyonovsky Square where the sentence of death was read out over them. The first three prisoners were tied to stakes facing the firing squad: Dostoevsky was among the next in line. Just as the first shots were about to be fired, a message arrived from the Tsar commuting the sentences to hard labor in Siberia.



    The experience had a profound effect on Dostoevsky, and in Part 1 of The Idiot (written twenty years after the event) the character of Prince Myshkin repeatedly speaks in depth on the subject of capital punishment. On one occasion, conversing with the Epanchin women, he recounts an anecdote that exactly mirrors Dostoevsky's own experience. A man of 27, who had committed a political offence, was taken to the scaffold with his comrades, where a death sentence by firing squad was read out to them. Twenty minutes later, with all the preparations for the execution having been completed, they were unexpectedly reprieved, but for those twenty minutes the man lived with the complete certainty that he was soon to face sudden death. The Prince recounts in detail what the man experienced during those twenty minutes.



    The subject of capital punishment first comes up earlier in Part 1, when the Prince is waiting with a servant for General Epanchin to appear. Engaging the servant in conversation, the Prince tells the harrowing story of an execution by guillotine that he recently witnessed in France. He concludes the description with his own reflections on the horror of death by execution:




    ... the worst, most violent pain lies not in injuries, but in the fact that you know for certain that within the space of an hour, then ten minutes, then half a minute, then now, right at this moment – your soul will fly out of your body, and you'll no longer be a human being, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain. When you put your head right under the guillotine and hear it sliding above your head, it's that quarter of a second that's most terrible of all... Who can say that human nature is able to endure such a thing without going mad? Why such mockery – ugly, superfluous, futile? Perhaps the man exists to whom his sentence has been read out, has been allowed to suffer, and then been told: "off you go, you've been pardoned". A man like that could tell us perhaps. Such suffering and terror were what Christ spoke of. No, a human being should not be treated like that!




    Later, when he is conversing with the Epanchin sisters, the Prince suggests to Adelaida, who has asked him for a subject to paint, that she paint the face of a condemned man a minute before the guillotine falls. He carefully explains his reasons for the suggestion, enters in to the emotions and thoughts of the condemned man, and describes in meticulous detail what the painting should depict. In part 2, the usually comical character of Lebedyev also considers the horror of the moment before execution. In the midst of a heated exchange with his nihilist nephew he expresses deep compassion for the soul of the Countess du Barry, who died in terror on the guillotine after pleading for her life with the executioner.







    share|improve this answer





















      Your Answer








      StackExchange.ready(function() {
      var channelOptions = {
      tags: "".split(" "),
      id: "186"
      };
      initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

      StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function() {
      // Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
      if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled) {
      StackExchange.using("snippets", function() {
      createEditor();
      });
      }
      else {
      createEditor();
      }
      });

      function createEditor() {
      StackExchange.prepareEditor({
      heartbeatType: 'answer',
      autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
      convertImagesToLinks: false,
      noModals: true,
      showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
      reputationToPostImages: null,
      bindNavPrevention: true,
      postfix: "",
      imageUploader: {
      brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
      contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
      allowUrls: true
      },
      noCode: true, onDemand: true,
      discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
      ,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
      });


      }
      });






      Brent Roady is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.










      draft saved

      draft discarded


















      StackExchange.ready(
      function () {
      StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fscifi.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f202502%2fshort-story-about-the-lifetime-that-occurs-between-a-bullet-being-fired-and-exec%23new-answer', 'question_page');
      }
      );

      Post as a guest















      Required, but never shown

























      4 Answers
      4






      active

      oldest

      votes








      4 Answers
      4






      active

      oldest

      votes









      active

      oldest

      votes






      active

      oldest

      votes









      23














      Certainly you think of Borges' story El milagro secreto (The Secret Miracle). As the synopsis from ISFDB says,




      "Jaromir Hladik, a Czechoslovakian writer, confronts a German firing squad. He prays to God for a full year in order to complete his play. A tear starts from his eye. In the time that the tear falls, he mentally finishes, without hurry, revising as he writes, his play. When the tear finishes its fall, at that moment, he is shot to death by the firing squad."







      share|improve this answer

















      • 2




        That's almost surely the OP's story. I have just one small question. Does the miraculous year happen with the bullets in flight, or is it in the moment just before the rifles are fired?
        – user14111
        23 hours ago






      • 1




        Wikipedia has a more detailed plot summary.
        – user14111
        21 hours ago
















      23














      Certainly you think of Borges' story El milagro secreto (The Secret Miracle). As the synopsis from ISFDB says,




      "Jaromir Hladik, a Czechoslovakian writer, confronts a German firing squad. He prays to God for a full year in order to complete his play. A tear starts from his eye. In the time that the tear falls, he mentally finishes, without hurry, revising as he writes, his play. When the tear finishes its fall, at that moment, he is shot to death by the firing squad."







      share|improve this answer

















      • 2




        That's almost surely the OP's story. I have just one small question. Does the miraculous year happen with the bullets in flight, or is it in the moment just before the rifles are fired?
        – user14111
        23 hours ago






      • 1




        Wikipedia has a more detailed plot summary.
        – user14111
        21 hours ago














      23












      23








      23






      Certainly you think of Borges' story El milagro secreto (The Secret Miracle). As the synopsis from ISFDB says,




      "Jaromir Hladik, a Czechoslovakian writer, confronts a German firing squad. He prays to God for a full year in order to complete his play. A tear starts from his eye. In the time that the tear falls, he mentally finishes, without hurry, revising as he writes, his play. When the tear finishes its fall, at that moment, he is shot to death by the firing squad."







      share|improve this answer












      Certainly you think of Borges' story El milagro secreto (The Secret Miracle). As the synopsis from ISFDB says,




      "Jaromir Hladik, a Czechoslovakian writer, confronts a German firing squad. He prays to God for a full year in order to complete his play. A tear starts from his eye. In the time that the tear falls, he mentally finishes, without hurry, revising as he writes, his play. When the tear finishes its fall, at that moment, he is shot to death by the firing squad."








      share|improve this answer












      share|improve this answer



      share|improve this answer










      answered yesterday









      Dragan Milosevic

      3,7671322




      3,7671322








      • 2




        That's almost surely the OP's story. I have just one small question. Does the miraculous year happen with the bullets in flight, or is it in the moment just before the rifles are fired?
        – user14111
        23 hours ago






      • 1




        Wikipedia has a more detailed plot summary.
        – user14111
        21 hours ago














      • 2




        That's almost surely the OP's story. I have just one small question. Does the miraculous year happen with the bullets in flight, or is it in the moment just before the rifles are fired?
        – user14111
        23 hours ago






      • 1




        Wikipedia has a more detailed plot summary.
        – user14111
        21 hours ago








      2




      2




      That's almost surely the OP's story. I have just one small question. Does the miraculous year happen with the bullets in flight, or is it in the moment just before the rifles are fired?
      – user14111
      23 hours ago




      That's almost surely the OP's story. I have just one small question. Does the miraculous year happen with the bullets in flight, or is it in the moment just before the rifles are fired?
      – user14111
      23 hours ago




      1




      1




      Wikipedia has a more detailed plot summary.
      – user14111
      21 hours ago




      Wikipedia has a more detailed plot summary.
      – user14111
      21 hours ago













      11














      The story we're looking for here is almost certainly the Borges story suggested by Dragan Milosevic. Still, this other story, by a much less famous writer, does more or less match the terse description given in the question; so I've decided to leave this answer here, in case someday someone who is looking for that obscure writer's story runs across this question.




      "Moment Without Time", a novelette by Joel Townsley Rogers, previously identified on this site as part of the (unaccepted) answer to this question; first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1952, available at the Internet Archive. A story by an American writer in an American magazine, but with a Russian setting. Here is the editorial blurb from the original magazine publication:




      Time stopped for Piridov, deferring his death-sentence while the bullets

      were yet in midair, and in that endless—

      MOMENT without TIME
      —he became the most dangerous man in Moscow!





      The dissident physicist is about to be executed, when he suddenly hits on the solution to his research problem:




      Piridov was facing the firing squad in the execution cellars when the solution hit him.

      It was the answer he needed, the answer to the mathematical relation of time to the three spatial dimensions. It came to him in the form of an equation, as simple as the German's historic energy-mass formula—"e=mc2", where "c" represents the speed of light.

      [. . . .]

      Sergeant Death had shouted "Fire!", it seemed to Piridov, minutes ago. The waiting was painful. Slowly and reluctantly, he opened his eyes on the cellar scene.

      The white-painted walls lit by thousand-watt bulbs, the four rifle muzzles pointed at him, the squinted eyes behind the sights, the taut retracted trigger-fingers, squat thick-chested Sergeant Death standing to one side with his hand down at his thigh in the conclusion of the sweeping axe-blade gesture with which he had accompanied the command to fire, the bullets coming at his breast. Four of them, straight at his heart, not more than twelve to fifteen inches away; while from the corner, out of the range of fire, the one-eyed scavenger directed the stream of water around his feet to wash the blood away.

      No, the bullets weren't coming. They were motionless in space. The eyes behind the sights were motionless. The water hosing over his feet was motionless, both the stream and the splattering drops of it. The red second hand of the electric clock on the wall above the steel door was motionless, the minute and hour hands straight up and down at six.





      Piridov spent not a lifetime but some hours in the "Moment Without Time", enough to walk around Moscow and visit various people and places including his wife Anna. Finally, he returns to his unfinished execution:




      He walked the long miles back, with bowed head and limping gait, toward the city's center and the great prison. He went in, closing the entrance doors behind him. He went through the other doors, closing each in turn, along the corridors, down the flights of stairs. At the end of the long brightly-lit corridor in the deepest basement he went towards that farthest door. He went back in the cellar room, closing the door behind him.

      The noseless fire-burned Sergeant Death stood with his hand down-moving. The riflemen stood with their fingers squeezed on their triggers. The one-eyed janitor hosed down the floor in motionless stream and spatter.

      Piridov went past them as quietly as a shadow. At the farthest wall he turned, facing the squad, placing his feet carefully on the precise dry spots, in the empty spaces of the spattering water, which marked where he had been standing. The bullets in their swift rifled flight were poised twelve inches from his breast.

      Piridov closed his eyes.

      "I had a dream," he told himself. "A dream of a bright equation within a timeless instant. Of things I love and things I hate. Of a sword sweeping. A dream of water. But I am very tired. So let the dream be over."

      And it was . . .





      The rest of the story tells what happened with the various messages he left around town during his timeless moment.






      share|improve this answer



















      • 2




        Your answer is better than mine. Leave it up. I've deleted mine.
        – JRE
        yesterday
















      11














      The story we're looking for here is almost certainly the Borges story suggested by Dragan Milosevic. Still, this other story, by a much less famous writer, does more or less match the terse description given in the question; so I've decided to leave this answer here, in case someday someone who is looking for that obscure writer's story runs across this question.




      "Moment Without Time", a novelette by Joel Townsley Rogers, previously identified on this site as part of the (unaccepted) answer to this question; first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1952, available at the Internet Archive. A story by an American writer in an American magazine, but with a Russian setting. Here is the editorial blurb from the original magazine publication:




      Time stopped for Piridov, deferring his death-sentence while the bullets

      were yet in midair, and in that endless—

      MOMENT without TIME
      —he became the most dangerous man in Moscow!





      The dissident physicist is about to be executed, when he suddenly hits on the solution to his research problem:




      Piridov was facing the firing squad in the execution cellars when the solution hit him.

      It was the answer he needed, the answer to the mathematical relation of time to the three spatial dimensions. It came to him in the form of an equation, as simple as the German's historic energy-mass formula—"e=mc2", where "c" represents the speed of light.

      [. . . .]

      Sergeant Death had shouted "Fire!", it seemed to Piridov, minutes ago. The waiting was painful. Slowly and reluctantly, he opened his eyes on the cellar scene.

      The white-painted walls lit by thousand-watt bulbs, the four rifle muzzles pointed at him, the squinted eyes behind the sights, the taut retracted trigger-fingers, squat thick-chested Sergeant Death standing to one side with his hand down at his thigh in the conclusion of the sweeping axe-blade gesture with which he had accompanied the command to fire, the bullets coming at his breast. Four of them, straight at his heart, not more than twelve to fifteen inches away; while from the corner, out of the range of fire, the one-eyed scavenger directed the stream of water around his feet to wash the blood away.

      No, the bullets weren't coming. They were motionless in space. The eyes behind the sights were motionless. The water hosing over his feet was motionless, both the stream and the splattering drops of it. The red second hand of the electric clock on the wall above the steel door was motionless, the minute and hour hands straight up and down at six.





      Piridov spent not a lifetime but some hours in the "Moment Without Time", enough to walk around Moscow and visit various people and places including his wife Anna. Finally, he returns to his unfinished execution:




      He walked the long miles back, with bowed head and limping gait, toward the city's center and the great prison. He went in, closing the entrance doors behind him. He went through the other doors, closing each in turn, along the corridors, down the flights of stairs. At the end of the long brightly-lit corridor in the deepest basement he went towards that farthest door. He went back in the cellar room, closing the door behind him.

      The noseless fire-burned Sergeant Death stood with his hand down-moving. The riflemen stood with their fingers squeezed on their triggers. The one-eyed janitor hosed down the floor in motionless stream and spatter.

      Piridov went past them as quietly as a shadow. At the farthest wall he turned, facing the squad, placing his feet carefully on the precise dry spots, in the empty spaces of the spattering water, which marked where he had been standing. The bullets in their swift rifled flight were poised twelve inches from his breast.

      Piridov closed his eyes.

      "I had a dream," he told himself. "A dream of a bright equation within a timeless instant. Of things I love and things I hate. Of a sword sweeping. A dream of water. But I am very tired. So let the dream be over."

      And it was . . .





      The rest of the story tells what happened with the various messages he left around town during his timeless moment.






      share|improve this answer



















      • 2




        Your answer is better than mine. Leave it up. I've deleted mine.
        – JRE
        yesterday














      11












      11








      11






      The story we're looking for here is almost certainly the Borges story suggested by Dragan Milosevic. Still, this other story, by a much less famous writer, does more or less match the terse description given in the question; so I've decided to leave this answer here, in case someday someone who is looking for that obscure writer's story runs across this question.




      "Moment Without Time", a novelette by Joel Townsley Rogers, previously identified on this site as part of the (unaccepted) answer to this question; first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1952, available at the Internet Archive. A story by an American writer in an American magazine, but with a Russian setting. Here is the editorial blurb from the original magazine publication:




      Time stopped for Piridov, deferring his death-sentence while the bullets

      were yet in midair, and in that endless—

      MOMENT without TIME
      —he became the most dangerous man in Moscow!





      The dissident physicist is about to be executed, when he suddenly hits on the solution to his research problem:




      Piridov was facing the firing squad in the execution cellars when the solution hit him.

      It was the answer he needed, the answer to the mathematical relation of time to the three spatial dimensions. It came to him in the form of an equation, as simple as the German's historic energy-mass formula—"e=mc2", where "c" represents the speed of light.

      [. . . .]

      Sergeant Death had shouted "Fire!", it seemed to Piridov, minutes ago. The waiting was painful. Slowly and reluctantly, he opened his eyes on the cellar scene.

      The white-painted walls lit by thousand-watt bulbs, the four rifle muzzles pointed at him, the squinted eyes behind the sights, the taut retracted trigger-fingers, squat thick-chested Sergeant Death standing to one side with his hand down at his thigh in the conclusion of the sweeping axe-blade gesture with which he had accompanied the command to fire, the bullets coming at his breast. Four of them, straight at his heart, not more than twelve to fifteen inches away; while from the corner, out of the range of fire, the one-eyed scavenger directed the stream of water around his feet to wash the blood away.

      No, the bullets weren't coming. They were motionless in space. The eyes behind the sights were motionless. The water hosing over his feet was motionless, both the stream and the splattering drops of it. The red second hand of the electric clock on the wall above the steel door was motionless, the minute and hour hands straight up and down at six.





      Piridov spent not a lifetime but some hours in the "Moment Without Time", enough to walk around Moscow and visit various people and places including his wife Anna. Finally, he returns to his unfinished execution:




      He walked the long miles back, with bowed head and limping gait, toward the city's center and the great prison. He went in, closing the entrance doors behind him. He went through the other doors, closing each in turn, along the corridors, down the flights of stairs. At the end of the long brightly-lit corridor in the deepest basement he went towards that farthest door. He went back in the cellar room, closing the door behind him.

      The noseless fire-burned Sergeant Death stood with his hand down-moving. The riflemen stood with their fingers squeezed on their triggers. The one-eyed janitor hosed down the floor in motionless stream and spatter.

      Piridov went past them as quietly as a shadow. At the farthest wall he turned, facing the squad, placing his feet carefully on the precise dry spots, in the empty spaces of the spattering water, which marked where he had been standing. The bullets in their swift rifled flight were poised twelve inches from his breast.

      Piridov closed his eyes.

      "I had a dream," he told himself. "A dream of a bright equation within a timeless instant. Of things I love and things I hate. Of a sword sweeping. A dream of water. But I am very tired. So let the dream be over."

      And it was . . .





      The rest of the story tells what happened with the various messages he left around town during his timeless moment.






      share|improve this answer














      The story we're looking for here is almost certainly the Borges story suggested by Dragan Milosevic. Still, this other story, by a much less famous writer, does more or less match the terse description given in the question; so I've decided to leave this answer here, in case someday someone who is looking for that obscure writer's story runs across this question.




      "Moment Without Time", a novelette by Joel Townsley Rogers, previously identified on this site as part of the (unaccepted) answer to this question; first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1952, available at the Internet Archive. A story by an American writer in an American magazine, but with a Russian setting. Here is the editorial blurb from the original magazine publication:




      Time stopped for Piridov, deferring his death-sentence while the bullets

      were yet in midair, and in that endless—

      MOMENT without TIME
      —he became the most dangerous man in Moscow!





      The dissident physicist is about to be executed, when he suddenly hits on the solution to his research problem:




      Piridov was facing the firing squad in the execution cellars when the solution hit him.

      It was the answer he needed, the answer to the mathematical relation of time to the three spatial dimensions. It came to him in the form of an equation, as simple as the German's historic energy-mass formula—"e=mc2", where "c" represents the speed of light.

      [. . . .]

      Sergeant Death had shouted "Fire!", it seemed to Piridov, minutes ago. The waiting was painful. Slowly and reluctantly, he opened his eyes on the cellar scene.

      The white-painted walls lit by thousand-watt bulbs, the four rifle muzzles pointed at him, the squinted eyes behind the sights, the taut retracted trigger-fingers, squat thick-chested Sergeant Death standing to one side with his hand down at his thigh in the conclusion of the sweeping axe-blade gesture with which he had accompanied the command to fire, the bullets coming at his breast. Four of them, straight at his heart, not more than twelve to fifteen inches away; while from the corner, out of the range of fire, the one-eyed scavenger directed the stream of water around his feet to wash the blood away.

      No, the bullets weren't coming. They were motionless in space. The eyes behind the sights were motionless. The water hosing over his feet was motionless, both the stream and the splattering drops of it. The red second hand of the electric clock on the wall above the steel door was motionless, the minute and hour hands straight up and down at six.





      Piridov spent not a lifetime but some hours in the "Moment Without Time", enough to walk around Moscow and visit various people and places including his wife Anna. Finally, he returns to his unfinished execution:




      He walked the long miles back, with bowed head and limping gait, toward the city's center and the great prison. He went in, closing the entrance doors behind him. He went through the other doors, closing each in turn, along the corridors, down the flights of stairs. At the end of the long brightly-lit corridor in the deepest basement he went towards that farthest door. He went back in the cellar room, closing the door behind him.

      The noseless fire-burned Sergeant Death stood with his hand down-moving. The riflemen stood with their fingers squeezed on their triggers. The one-eyed janitor hosed down the floor in motionless stream and spatter.

      Piridov went past them as quietly as a shadow. At the farthest wall he turned, facing the squad, placing his feet carefully on the precise dry spots, in the empty spaces of the spattering water, which marked where he had been standing. The bullets in their swift rifled flight were poised twelve inches from his breast.

      Piridov closed his eyes.

      "I had a dream," he told himself. "A dream of a bright equation within a timeless instant. Of things I love and things I hate. Of a sword sweeping. A dream of water. But I am very tired. So let the dream be over."

      And it was . . .





      The rest of the story tells what happened with the various messages he left around town during his timeless moment.







      share|improve this answer














      share|improve this answer



      share|improve this answer








      edited 23 hours ago

























      answered yesterday









      user14111

      99.1k6388498




      99.1k6388498








      • 2




        Your answer is better than mine. Leave it up. I've deleted mine.
        – JRE
        yesterday














      • 2




        Your answer is better than mine. Leave it up. I've deleted mine.
        – JRE
        yesterday








      2




      2




      Your answer is better than mine. Leave it up. I've deleted mine.
      – JRE
      yesterday




      Your answer is better than mine. Leave it up. I've deleted mine.
      – JRE
      yesterday











      6














      See also "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, which has a similar concept for an execution by hanging.



      A number of similar stories, including Borge's "The Secret Miracle", are given here on the same web page.






      share|improve this answer










      New contributor




      Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
      Check out our Code of Conduct.























        6














        See also "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, which has a similar concept for an execution by hanging.



        A number of similar stories, including Borge's "The Secret Miracle", are given here on the same web page.






        share|improve this answer










        New contributor




        Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
        Check out our Code of Conduct.





















          6












          6








          6






          See also "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, which has a similar concept for an execution by hanging.



          A number of similar stories, including Borge's "The Secret Miracle", are given here on the same web page.






          share|improve this answer










          New contributor




          Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
          Check out our Code of Conduct.









          See also "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, which has a similar concept for an execution by hanging.



          A number of similar stories, including Borge's "The Secret Miracle", are given here on the same web page.







          share|improve this answer










          New contributor




          Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
          Check out our Code of Conduct.









          share|improve this answer



          share|improve this answer








          edited 1 hour ago









          TheLethalCarrot

          38.2k15208249




          38.2k15208249






          New contributor




          Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
          Check out our Code of Conduct.









          answered 16 hours ago









          Karl

          611




          611




          New contributor




          Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
          Check out our Code of Conduct.





          New contributor





          Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
          Check out our Code of Conduct.






          Karl is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
          Check out our Code of Conduct.























              1














              Most probably Dragan Milosevic's answer is the one you're looking for. But since you say "the story might be Russian", I wonder if you're also conflating it with elements of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, in which execution is an important theme and one based on Dostoyevsky's own experience. The topic of condemned prisoners at the moment just before their execution is discussed several times in the novel. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):




              In 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to execution by firing squad for his part in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle. Shortly after the period of interrogation and trial, he and his fellow prisoners were taken, without warning, to Semyonovsky Square where the sentence of death was read out over them. The first three prisoners were tied to stakes facing the firing squad: Dostoevsky was among the next in line. Just as the first shots were about to be fired, a message arrived from the Tsar commuting the sentences to hard labor in Siberia.



              The experience had a profound effect on Dostoevsky, and in Part 1 of The Idiot (written twenty years after the event) the character of Prince Myshkin repeatedly speaks in depth on the subject of capital punishment. On one occasion, conversing with the Epanchin women, he recounts an anecdote that exactly mirrors Dostoevsky's own experience. A man of 27, who had committed a political offence, was taken to the scaffold with his comrades, where a death sentence by firing squad was read out to them. Twenty minutes later, with all the preparations for the execution having been completed, they were unexpectedly reprieved, but for those twenty minutes the man lived with the complete certainty that he was soon to face sudden death. The Prince recounts in detail what the man experienced during those twenty minutes.



              The subject of capital punishment first comes up earlier in Part 1, when the Prince is waiting with a servant for General Epanchin to appear. Engaging the servant in conversation, the Prince tells the harrowing story of an execution by guillotine that he recently witnessed in France. He concludes the description with his own reflections on the horror of death by execution:




              ... the worst, most violent pain lies not in injuries, but in the fact that you know for certain that within the space of an hour, then ten minutes, then half a minute, then now, right at this moment – your soul will fly out of your body, and you'll no longer be a human being, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain. When you put your head right under the guillotine and hear it sliding above your head, it's that quarter of a second that's most terrible of all... Who can say that human nature is able to endure such a thing without going mad? Why such mockery – ugly, superfluous, futile? Perhaps the man exists to whom his sentence has been read out, has been allowed to suffer, and then been told: "off you go, you've been pardoned". A man like that could tell us perhaps. Such suffering and terror were what Christ spoke of. No, a human being should not be treated like that!




              Later, when he is conversing with the Epanchin sisters, the Prince suggests to Adelaida, who has asked him for a subject to paint, that she paint the face of a condemned man a minute before the guillotine falls. He carefully explains his reasons for the suggestion, enters in to the emotions and thoughts of the condemned man, and describes in meticulous detail what the painting should depict. In part 2, the usually comical character of Lebedyev also considers the horror of the moment before execution. In the midst of a heated exchange with his nihilist nephew he expresses deep compassion for the soul of the Countess du Barry, who died in terror on the guillotine after pleading for her life with the executioner.







              share|improve this answer


























                1














                Most probably Dragan Milosevic's answer is the one you're looking for. But since you say "the story might be Russian", I wonder if you're also conflating it with elements of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, in which execution is an important theme and one based on Dostoyevsky's own experience. The topic of condemned prisoners at the moment just before their execution is discussed several times in the novel. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):




                In 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to execution by firing squad for his part in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle. Shortly after the period of interrogation and trial, he and his fellow prisoners were taken, without warning, to Semyonovsky Square where the sentence of death was read out over them. The first three prisoners were tied to stakes facing the firing squad: Dostoevsky was among the next in line. Just as the first shots were about to be fired, a message arrived from the Tsar commuting the sentences to hard labor in Siberia.



                The experience had a profound effect on Dostoevsky, and in Part 1 of The Idiot (written twenty years after the event) the character of Prince Myshkin repeatedly speaks in depth on the subject of capital punishment. On one occasion, conversing with the Epanchin women, he recounts an anecdote that exactly mirrors Dostoevsky's own experience. A man of 27, who had committed a political offence, was taken to the scaffold with his comrades, where a death sentence by firing squad was read out to them. Twenty minutes later, with all the preparations for the execution having been completed, they were unexpectedly reprieved, but for those twenty minutes the man lived with the complete certainty that he was soon to face sudden death. The Prince recounts in detail what the man experienced during those twenty minutes.



                The subject of capital punishment first comes up earlier in Part 1, when the Prince is waiting with a servant for General Epanchin to appear. Engaging the servant in conversation, the Prince tells the harrowing story of an execution by guillotine that he recently witnessed in France. He concludes the description with his own reflections on the horror of death by execution:




                ... the worst, most violent pain lies not in injuries, but in the fact that you know for certain that within the space of an hour, then ten minutes, then half a minute, then now, right at this moment – your soul will fly out of your body, and you'll no longer be a human being, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain. When you put your head right under the guillotine and hear it sliding above your head, it's that quarter of a second that's most terrible of all... Who can say that human nature is able to endure such a thing without going mad? Why such mockery – ugly, superfluous, futile? Perhaps the man exists to whom his sentence has been read out, has been allowed to suffer, and then been told: "off you go, you've been pardoned". A man like that could tell us perhaps. Such suffering and terror were what Christ spoke of. No, a human being should not be treated like that!




                Later, when he is conversing with the Epanchin sisters, the Prince suggests to Adelaida, who has asked him for a subject to paint, that she paint the face of a condemned man a minute before the guillotine falls. He carefully explains his reasons for the suggestion, enters in to the emotions and thoughts of the condemned man, and describes in meticulous detail what the painting should depict. In part 2, the usually comical character of Lebedyev also considers the horror of the moment before execution. In the midst of a heated exchange with his nihilist nephew he expresses deep compassion for the soul of the Countess du Barry, who died in terror on the guillotine after pleading for her life with the executioner.







                share|improve this answer
























                  1












                  1








                  1






                  Most probably Dragan Milosevic's answer is the one you're looking for. But since you say "the story might be Russian", I wonder if you're also conflating it with elements of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, in which execution is an important theme and one based on Dostoyevsky's own experience. The topic of condemned prisoners at the moment just before their execution is discussed several times in the novel. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):




                  In 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to execution by firing squad for his part in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle. Shortly after the period of interrogation and trial, he and his fellow prisoners were taken, without warning, to Semyonovsky Square where the sentence of death was read out over them. The first three prisoners were tied to stakes facing the firing squad: Dostoevsky was among the next in line. Just as the first shots were about to be fired, a message arrived from the Tsar commuting the sentences to hard labor in Siberia.



                  The experience had a profound effect on Dostoevsky, and in Part 1 of The Idiot (written twenty years after the event) the character of Prince Myshkin repeatedly speaks in depth on the subject of capital punishment. On one occasion, conversing with the Epanchin women, he recounts an anecdote that exactly mirrors Dostoevsky's own experience. A man of 27, who had committed a political offence, was taken to the scaffold with his comrades, where a death sentence by firing squad was read out to them. Twenty minutes later, with all the preparations for the execution having been completed, they were unexpectedly reprieved, but for those twenty minutes the man lived with the complete certainty that he was soon to face sudden death. The Prince recounts in detail what the man experienced during those twenty minutes.



                  The subject of capital punishment first comes up earlier in Part 1, when the Prince is waiting with a servant for General Epanchin to appear. Engaging the servant in conversation, the Prince tells the harrowing story of an execution by guillotine that he recently witnessed in France. He concludes the description with his own reflections on the horror of death by execution:




                  ... the worst, most violent pain lies not in injuries, but in the fact that you know for certain that within the space of an hour, then ten minutes, then half a minute, then now, right at this moment – your soul will fly out of your body, and you'll no longer be a human being, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain. When you put your head right under the guillotine and hear it sliding above your head, it's that quarter of a second that's most terrible of all... Who can say that human nature is able to endure such a thing without going mad? Why such mockery – ugly, superfluous, futile? Perhaps the man exists to whom his sentence has been read out, has been allowed to suffer, and then been told: "off you go, you've been pardoned". A man like that could tell us perhaps. Such suffering and terror were what Christ spoke of. No, a human being should not be treated like that!




                  Later, when he is conversing with the Epanchin sisters, the Prince suggests to Adelaida, who has asked him for a subject to paint, that she paint the face of a condemned man a minute before the guillotine falls. He carefully explains his reasons for the suggestion, enters in to the emotions and thoughts of the condemned man, and describes in meticulous detail what the painting should depict. In part 2, the usually comical character of Lebedyev also considers the horror of the moment before execution. In the midst of a heated exchange with his nihilist nephew he expresses deep compassion for the soul of the Countess du Barry, who died in terror on the guillotine after pleading for her life with the executioner.







                  share|improve this answer












                  Most probably Dragan Milosevic's answer is the one you're looking for. But since you say "the story might be Russian", I wonder if you're also conflating it with elements of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, in which execution is an important theme and one based on Dostoyevsky's own experience. The topic of condemned prisoners at the moment just before their execution is discussed several times in the novel. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):




                  In 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to execution by firing squad for his part in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle. Shortly after the period of interrogation and trial, he and his fellow prisoners were taken, without warning, to Semyonovsky Square where the sentence of death was read out over them. The first three prisoners were tied to stakes facing the firing squad: Dostoevsky was among the next in line. Just as the first shots were about to be fired, a message arrived from the Tsar commuting the sentences to hard labor in Siberia.



                  The experience had a profound effect on Dostoevsky, and in Part 1 of The Idiot (written twenty years after the event) the character of Prince Myshkin repeatedly speaks in depth on the subject of capital punishment. On one occasion, conversing with the Epanchin women, he recounts an anecdote that exactly mirrors Dostoevsky's own experience. A man of 27, who had committed a political offence, was taken to the scaffold with his comrades, where a death sentence by firing squad was read out to them. Twenty minutes later, with all the preparations for the execution having been completed, they were unexpectedly reprieved, but for those twenty minutes the man lived with the complete certainty that he was soon to face sudden death. The Prince recounts in detail what the man experienced during those twenty minutes.



                  The subject of capital punishment first comes up earlier in Part 1, when the Prince is waiting with a servant for General Epanchin to appear. Engaging the servant in conversation, the Prince tells the harrowing story of an execution by guillotine that he recently witnessed in France. He concludes the description with his own reflections on the horror of death by execution:




                  ... the worst, most violent pain lies not in injuries, but in the fact that you know for certain that within the space of an hour, then ten minutes, then half a minute, then now, right at this moment – your soul will fly out of your body, and you'll no longer be a human being, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain. When you put your head right under the guillotine and hear it sliding above your head, it's that quarter of a second that's most terrible of all... Who can say that human nature is able to endure such a thing without going mad? Why such mockery – ugly, superfluous, futile? Perhaps the man exists to whom his sentence has been read out, has been allowed to suffer, and then been told: "off you go, you've been pardoned". A man like that could tell us perhaps. Such suffering and terror were what Christ spoke of. No, a human being should not be treated like that!




                  Later, when he is conversing with the Epanchin sisters, the Prince suggests to Adelaida, who has asked him for a subject to paint, that she paint the face of a condemned man a minute before the guillotine falls. He carefully explains his reasons for the suggestion, enters in to the emotions and thoughts of the condemned man, and describes in meticulous detail what the painting should depict. In part 2, the usually comical character of Lebedyev also considers the horror of the moment before execution. In the midst of a heated exchange with his nihilist nephew he expresses deep compassion for the soul of the Countess du Barry, who died in terror on the guillotine after pleading for her life with the executioner.








                  share|improve this answer












                  share|improve this answer



                  share|improve this answer










                  answered 11 hours ago









                  Rand al'Thor

                  96.2k41458641




                  96.2k41458641






















                      Brent Roady is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.










                      draft saved

                      draft discarded


















                      Brent Roady is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.













                      Brent Roady is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.












                      Brent Roady is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
















                      Thanks for contributing an answer to Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange!


                      • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

                      But avoid



                      • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.

                      • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.


                      To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.





                      Some of your past answers have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from answering.


                      Please pay close attention to the following guidance:


                      • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

                      But avoid



                      • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.

                      • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.


                      To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.




                      draft saved


                      draft discarded














                      StackExchange.ready(
                      function () {
                      StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fscifi.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f202502%2fshort-story-about-the-lifetime-that-occurs-between-a-bullet-being-fired-and-exec%23new-answer', 'question_page');
                      }
                      );

                      Post as a guest















                      Required, but never shown





















































                      Required, but never shown














                      Required, but never shown












                      Required, but never shown







                      Required, but never shown

































                      Required, but never shown














                      Required, but never shown












                      Required, but never shown







                      Required, but never shown







                      Popular posts from this blog

                      Eastern Orthodox Church

                      Zagreb

                      Understanding the information contained in the Deep Space Network XML data?