All the Time

          “All the Time” is a part of the Twilight Zone series and tells about the story of a man who really loves reading.  His passion for books was so great that he would even jump for joy at just the sight of them.  However, as much as he loved reading, he had no time to read.  His wife doesn’t want to see him reading at home and his boss doesn’t want to see him reading at work.  But he couldn’t just stop reading.  So one time, he went down into the basement of the bank where he worked and got inside a safe where he spent a great deal of time reading.  But out of a blue, a great explosion came and when he went out of the safe, his whole city was devastated and there was no one left but him.  At first, he was still alright but after a while, he couldn’t bear the loneliness, so he tried to commit suicide with a gun he found.  But just at the nick of time, he saw the town library.  He ran towards it with much excitement.  He hugged the books and started piling them up and determining what month he would read each pile.  He had all the time in the world.  But this man you see was wearing eyeglasses since his eyesight had grown weak and as he walked down the stairs, he accidentally dropped his eyeglasses, breaking them in the process.  Yes, he had all the time in the world to read yet he could not.  He was trapped in the twilight zone.

          If I was to make an adaptation, I would put it in the context of the modern world.  Instead of a man with eyeglasses, I’d make use of a teenager with eyeglasses and instead of books, I’ll use gadgets.  So there’s this boy who had so much passion for gadgets and computer games but had no time to play because his mother disapproved of it at home and the teacher at school disapproved of it as well.  One day, he decided to hide inside a water tank below ground level and play with his gadgets and an explosion happened.  When he went up, all was destroyed.  He then moved around and started to find ways to kill himself to end his misery when he found a gadget centre in the mall that wasn’t yet fully wrecked.  He ran with excitement but slipped, throwing off his eyeglasses on the ground, destroying them.  He had all the time in the world to play and check out the gadgets but he could not.  He was trapped in the twilight zone.

-David Bryan Lao

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