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You don't remember the conversation for a long time. It was one of hundreds of late-night discussions, mumbled across the space of the carpet (or, on the bad nights, across the gap between two pillows). It had blended in with everything else they said, all the beautiful and horrible and frightening and wonderful thoughts.
When it comes back, it comes back all at once.
"What if..." Their voice was loud and clear in the day, but reduced to a hoarse whisper after the lights were out. As if they were scared of being heard. You strained to catch their words, but for a little while there was just silence.
"What if... it all stopped?" they said at last.
"All what?" you replied, shifting to sit up a bit in bed.
"All... everything." A gesture in the dark, indicating the glow in the dark stickers high overhead. "Everything hit a maximum and just never went anywhere again. Clock stopped at 99:99--" A pause. You could almost see the face they were making. "99:59. Whatever. No more change, no more--anything."
"That'd be terrible," you protested, the way you so often did. "So like, we'd just be here forever like this? It'd never be morning? What about breakfast?"
"We wouldn't know about it," they answered, shrugging. "We wouldn't know anything. Or think anything. Or feel anything. It'd just be... quiet. Forever."
"But I like things happening," you said. "If that happens, we'll never get to make up new games together, or film new videos, or try new recipes..."
"But you'll never get new injuries. You'll never face new dangers. You'll never--get hurt, period." A tiny catch in their voice. "If--if you were in a situation where it was never, ever going to get better. If everything was stacked up so that no matter how many new days came everything would only get worse. Wouldn't it be better if it just stopped instead?"
You wished, as you so often did, that you knew the right words. That you understood truly what was hurting them so badly, so you could remove that pain from them and ease it. But you didn't know. You just had them in the dark.
"There's always something new," you said at last. "There's always some new thing to do. Some new chance to take. It... If it all goes on to infinity, then everything good will happen eventually."
"Everything bad, too," they mumbled.
"Yeah, but I think there's more good things."
A long silence, and then--
"That's because you're a dweeb," they retorted.
And even as you protested, and their laugh rose in response, you knew that at least this moment had passed.
You let yourself hope for the one after, and the one after that, on until infinity.