There is one frame within the infinite number of possible frames of reference that is unique. I prefer to call it the “metaframe of absolute vacuum”. It is not a frame that can physically exist but is rather merely a reference much like absolute zero and infinity in mathematics. It can be approached but never reached. It is purely conceptual.
Within that metaframe, any potential to affect has one specific propagation speed based strictly upon the logic of an infinitely rapid change in potential traversing each infinitesimal point on a line in sequence. And because each point requires an infinitesimal amount of time and there are an infinite number of such points from zero to one, the propagation speed must be finite, and in RM:AO is defined as 1 propagation speed unit, “c00”. There is nothing else in existence with which to proclaim another relative motion reference frame so relativity and Lorentz equations cannot apply. The speed is only in reference to total non-existence.
That singular speed can never be anything but what it is simply because there is nothing with which to change it. It has no variables. But if one propagating affect crosses the path of another, the speed of each becomes affected, specifically slowed. And since any physically existent universe must have affects traveling in all direction all of the time (absolute zero being impossible), every region of real space is slowing every affect traveling through it. If one thinks about deep space between the galaxies, one must realize that all of the stars can be seen from every point and thus every point is always flooded by light. Deep space is at least an ocean of photons. And each photon, being a traveling affect, slows the others. The resultant rate of propagation is referred to as “c0” in physics.
But unlike c00, c0 has variables that can alter it; the density of affectance as well as any motion of one region compared to another. So c0 can actually change for each region of space relative to c00, which cannot change.
This ability for c0 to be different from region to region is what allows the appearance of the speed of light to be the same for each observer even when an observer is moving relative to the others. The observer’s measured speed of light, c0, is not exactly the same for every observer, but can be extremely close.
In the physical universe, each object carries with it, its own small region of space. The object, being made merely of the affectance within a small region constitutes a “moving region of space”. And as light travels through such a region, the speed of that light is altered. If the light is opposite to the moving region (“object” or “observer”), the light will slow more than if headed in the same direction. If the light has the same vector as the object and the object were to be traveling at the speed of light, obviously the light speed would not be affected. And if the light’s vector is opposite to that of the object, its propagation rate is severely affected by the oncoming object even to the point of being stopped, “hitting the object”.
In early physics, this effect was thought to be an “aether drag” affect (introduced by Augustin Fresnel circa 1800). Through an incomplete understanding of their “aether”, they presumptuously attributed properties to aether which are not the actual behavior of a region of affectance and thus ended up disproving their own “aether”'s existence. In reality, they merely disproved their presumptions about it which had become its definition.
When an affect travels through a region of affectance orthogonally to the region’s motion, the motion of the region has very little “drag” consequence upon the propagation of the affect (none in the case of a simple affect). Light is not dragged sideways even though slowed from head on. This is an issue with which they were not aware in the 19th century and thus had defined aether as a substance with impossible properties.
With that one concept realized, the observer effects become mathematically coherent and the Stopped Clock paradox disappears. The light entering the region of each observer is altered to better match the speed of that region. And with any two observers, there is always a third in between having an in between consequence.
Augustin Fresnel and Hendrik Lorentz and I’m sure other members of the Royal Society actually had it very close to exactly right. But it only takes one non-logic presumption to establish eschatology (Nullius in verba).
So the resolution to the real situation proposed by the scenario is that in a “perfect vacuum” between the observers, neither clock would stop because both clocks are moving from center. And the reason experiments indicate an observer dependent speed of light, is simply because the speed of light in a real region adjusts to closely match that region, but not perfectly. More exact measurements will show that difference (unless they presume pure relativity when recording data, in which case, they only get the data they presumed into existence).