by Tony Dayoub
In 1986, the first abortive revival of The Twilight Zone aired “A Matter of Minutes,” a short segment within an episode. Adapted by legendary science fiction writer Harlan Ellison and story editor Rockne S. O’Bannon from Theodore Sturgeon’s short story, “Yesterday Was Monday,” the mini-episode centers on a couple who wake up one day to discover that the world around them has stopped. Reality is being taken apart and rebuilt, minute by minute, by construction workers dressed in blue. Things that already exist — their furniture, buildings, and entire city streets — are all being taken apart after being used in one minute of time, only to be replaced by identical constructs in the next minute. While trying to elude a few supervisors aware of the couple’s inadvertent intrusion behind the scenes, the young husband and wife end up running across a white void, an unconstructed area of existence the workers haven’t gotten to yet. The fascinating concept proposed by this story is a variation on solipsism, the philosophical idea that existence is limited only to what we perceive. Except that “A Matter of Minutes” proposes that there is a parallel reality — that of the construction workers — which builds the components that make up the reality of their perceptible surroundings.
