“I want my time back!” I screamed.
I was standing in the personal time dealership office, on the 30th floor of the time exchange tower.
Ironic, I thought. The 30th floor, and here I am, 12 minutes before my 30th birthday, when I will cease to exist.
I stood with my back against the floor-to-ceiling windows, pointing my destabilizer at the salesman. The office was painted in tranquil, neutral tones. A manmade babbling brook wound between the expensive furnishings. Bamboo dividers, usually used to partition the open room into sitting areas, now served as hiding places for frightened customers and employees alike. A few brave souls peered around the edges at me. What they saw was a sweaty, bloody, panting mess wielding a dangerous weapon.
The dealer made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. You were compensated for your time at a market-dependent rate. All time transactions are non-refundable. You can purchase time from us for 5,000 units per day—”
“That’s robbery! You only gave me 200 units per day when I sold my time to you!”
“Supply and demand, sir. That is the selling price of time, but the buying price of time is 5000 units.”
The destablilizer shook in my hand. “What’s to keep me from splattering your destabilized cells all over the wall?”
The dealer gave me a patronizing frown. “That still wouldn’t get your time back, sir.”
When I was 18 years old, the legal age to buy or sell time without parental consent, I’d sauntered down to the time dealership. I walked inside the ground floor of the time exchange tower, and gave the security guards a cocky nod when I reached the elevators.
“What floor’s the personal dealership on?” I asked the guards.
“30,” replied one of them, and stepped to the side.
When I got off the elevator, several elderly men greeted me. The office had looked exactly the same then as it did now. A white-haired man in a gray pinstripe suit walked up and shook my hand. “Hello, young man. Are you buying or selling?”
“Selling.”
“Marvelous, marvelous. Have a seat on the left side of the office.”
I flopped onto a plush couch and tucked my hands behind my head. The old man brought over a machine about the size of a toaster and set it on a coffee table between us. It had nozzles attached to each end. The old man set two coils of tubing down next to the machine, and took a seat in a severe-looking wingback chair.
“Is that chair comfortable?” I asked with a smirk.
“Not in the least. But I have to have it, because I can’t get up from the soft sofas. Bad hip, you see,” he said.
I laughed. “I do see. That’s why I’m here. If I can make some good money for those years of bad hips and bad memories, well, who wouldn’t be a seller?”
The old man smiled and said nothing.
“Shall we take a look at what you’ve got?” he said.
“Sure, chief. Whatever you say.”
He uncoiled one set of the tubing and attached it to the nozzle on one side of the machine. He unfolded something transparent that looked like sandwich wrap, which was attached to the other end of the tubing. The clear substance attached to my palm. The old man smoothed out all the edges and made sure it was stuck to my skin everywhere, and then flipped a switch on the machine. I felt a tingle radiating from my palm, all the way up my arm. My fingertips felt like I was strumming a guitar. Then it stopped abruptly.
“Excellent,” said the man with a wolfish grin. “You will die of a massive stroke when you are 83 years old, almost to the day. You have about 65 years of time. It is, of course, up to you how much you wish to sell. Most people’s first sale is pretty conservative, often between one week to a month—”
“53 years. I don’t want to live past 30.”
The man’s grin faltered a bit. “That’s, um. That’s quite a lot.”
“You think I don’t know that, old man? I know what I’m doing. Who in their right mind wants to live past 30?”
The old man cleared his throat. “You—hrm—may want to rethink that. Time is non-refundable.”
“Do you need to turn your hearing aid up? I told you I want to sell 53 years.”
The salesman blinked a few times. For a brief moment he looked profoundly sad, but then his smiling facade came back. “As you wish. The going rate is 200 units per minute—”
“Hey, that’s great! I’m gonna be rich!”
The old man walked away and then returned with a stack of papers. “I just need you to sign here, here, here and here. I encourage you to read the terms of the contract.”
I gave the papers a cursory glance and signed them. The old man reviewed the forms, and then returned his attention to the machine. He flipped several dials and unrolled the second coil of clear tubing. He attached this tube to the other nozzle on the machine and then slid aside the bamboo divider behind him to expose a giant metal tank, which was taller and wider than a grown man.
“This small machine here,” the salesman said, “is the extractor, which takes your time and transfers it to the storage tank here.”
He paused and looked at me. “Last chance, kid,” he said. “You sure you want to go through with this?” There was none of the salesman bravado from earlier.
“Yeah, man. I got this.”
He shrugged and pressed a few buttons on a screen attached to the tank, and then on the extractor. My vision blurred and an intense feeling of suction spread through my whole body. When I breathed it felt like I was trying to blow up a balloon in a windstorm. I gripped the sofa cushion so tight I felt the fabric tear underneath my fingers. Then it was over.
I slumped over on my side, gasping for air and feeling exhausted.
“Am...I...gonna die?” I gasped.
“Well, eventually, yes, and now much sooner than before. But the extraction process itself is harmless.”
“Will...I...feel...normal...‘gain?”
“Yes, yes, don’t worry. The time transfer is exhausting, but you’ll sleep for about sixteen hours and then feel fine,” the dealer said.
He walked to a door at the back of the office, punched in a code on the keypad, and disappeared inside. A moment later he reappeared carrying a unit card.
“3,869,000 units for 53 years of your life. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” He took my limp hand and shook it, set the card on the table and walked away.
After several minutes I found the strength to pull myself off the couch, put the unit card in my wallet and stumble home.
When I awoke the next morning, I found out what he said was true. It was as if nothing had happened. I hopped out of bed, looked in the mirror and screamed with joy. I was rich.
The first five years after I sold my time, I indulged my every whim. I wore hallucino-patches on the roofs of skyscrapers. I bought hookers two and three at a time. I ate, boozed, danced, puked, brawled, and even lost a finger to a gambler on a New Atlantic City Moon resort.
When I was 23 I realized that 3,869,000 units could quickly be whittled down to 11,214 units in the hands of the young and irresponsible. I had no education or skills, and had about two months’ worth of money to live on, with seven years before I ceased to exist.
I stashed my remaining units in an account and got a job as a taxi driver in the business district. It was dreary work, but it paid the bills. I had thought my time-money would last forever, but I had been painfully mistaken.
On a whim I enrolled in a college course in history with my few remaining units. It seemed appropriate, since I had such a limited future. What I found surprised me; I liked learning, and, when studying the right thing, I was good at it. I kept driving the taxi to pay my rent, and took out loans for an education. In four and a half years I had my bachelor’s degree in Ancient History. Since I wasn’t going to live to have to pay back my loans, I went ahead and got my Master’s as well.
When I was finishing graduate school I met a woman. She was vibrant, strong, and smart. She was sexy and vulnerable and complicated. I loved her. She wanted to marry me, but I told her my secret, about my lack of time. She was crushed—not because I had so little time, but because I had kept it from her for our whole relationship. She broke it off with me when I had a year left. I graduated the next week.
I finally quit driving the taxi and took up a teaching position at a community college. I figured I would do something I actually cared about for the last year of my life. The thought of ceasing to exist gave me great anxiety, so much so that I started to save up to try and buy my time back. Unfortunately, the cost of time was so high, I was only able to save up the equivalent of one day for each month I worked, and still pay my bills.
A month before I started teaching I got a tearful call from the woman I had loved. She wasn’t calling because she wanted me back, as I had hoped. She was calling because she was pregnant. One of our final goodbyes had been the moment.
Something she said to me haunted me every evening when the sun would set on another day. She said, “I want you to meet the baby, and to love the baby. But I won’t marry you. It’ll just hurt too much when your time runs out.”
The baby was born when I had three months left to live. I spent every moment I could with him, and each day I became more convinced that I had to get more time, by any means necessary. I had managed to save 50,000 units. 10 more days. I thought about using this up and enjoying what little time I had left. Instead, I stashed the money in an account under my son’s name in case my plan didn’t work out.
Several days before my final day alive, I tried to work up the nerve to rob the time dealership. I even made it up to the door a few times, with a destabilizer in my pocket. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to kill anyone. If I failed, I didn’t want to spend my precious few remaining days in a jail cell or be dead. So I waited until I couldn’t wait any more. My 30th birthday.
Two guards stood lazily by the elevator. I destabilized their cells before they even noticed I was there. People on the first floor screamed, ducked for cover or fled. I was sure one of them was going to call the cops. I figured I had about 10 minutes before the police showed, but that was the least of my worries. I only had 12 minutes until I would cease to exist completely.
The salesman looked at me impassively. In the distance I heard sirens wailing, getting closer. I had 8 minutes until I ceased to exist.
“Well,” he said, “are you going to kill me? I assure you there is no way for me to get your time back.”
“Hey, you were the sonofabitch who bought the time from me in the first place. How in the hell are you still alive?” I said, recognizing the old man with the bad hip.
“Think about that: I work at a time store. I get discounts. There are perks to being a time salesman.”
My mind was racing. “Why would you want to take people’s time and sell it to other people anyway? It’s—it’s unethical.”
The salesman looked amused. “This is ironic, coming from the man with the gun pointed at me. And what’s unethical about it? You knew what you were doing. You were a legal adult. You signed all the forms.”
7 minutes.
“But I’ve got so much to live for now! I have a son! I’ve got to have more time.”
“If you’ve got the money, I would be happy to sell it to you.”
6 minutes.
I wiped sweat from my forehead. “I only have enough money for a few days, and I want those units to go to my son.”
“Well,” said the salesman with a sigh, “I guess you are just another present-minded youth left with a future short on time and long on regrets.”
My vision blurred with tears. “Jesus! I only have six minutes left. Hook me up to the damn machine already!”
“Afraid I can’t do that. You have to have a card with units on it in order for the machine to dispense time. Even for one of us who works here.”
“Then give me your card!”
“You are welcome to it, but it won’t do you any good. We empty our cards every morning. It’s company policy, to prevent situations like this. Think of it as a convenience store only keeping twenty dollars in the cash register.”
5 minutes.
“You’re lying!”
“Here,” the salesman said, lowering one of his hands slowly into his breast pocket. He tossed his wallet on the table. “Try it.”
I kept my destabilizer trained on him as I pulled the card from his wallet. I took it over to one of the tanks and inserted the card into a slot on the side. It showed a message on the attached screen: zero balance.
“See?” he said smugly.
I turned around and destabilized him. He fell to the ground, his chest cavity a pile of gurgling goo. “How do you like it, you bastard? Your time is up too!”
I turned and looked at the frightened faces around me. They cowered behind partitions and furniture, staring at me like I was a rabid animal. An old woman threw up on the rug.
4 minutes.
“I’m not an evil person, all right? I just—I have to get my time back. They are the evil ones.” I gestured toward the dead salesman. “Not me!”
I snatched the old woman’s purse from the table. I dumped its contents on the couch and sifted through the items until I found her unit card.
A trembling salesman in a dark green suit huddled under the couch. I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out, forcing him to his feet.
“Look, dammit, you are going to hook that tank up to me and I am going to use this lady’s units to get time. Do it quick, or the last thing I will do is destabilize the hell out of you.”
“It won’t—” he started.
“Do what I say!”
He yelped and grabbed an extractor from a nearby table. He unwound the tubes and spread the clear substance on my palm with trembling fingers.
3 minutes.
“Hurry up, dammit, no stalling!” I screamed.
He finished with my palm, and then plugged the other tube into the extractor and the tank. The machine hummed with potential energy.
2 minutes.
I inserted the unit card into the register on the tank. The screen lit up, showing the unit total at just over 3 million units. That would buy me just under 2 more years, I thought. Enough time to save up more money, or figure something else out on how to get more time.
The machine requested that the salesman insert his key. He pulled it from his suit pocket and I snatched it from his hand.
1 minute.
The screen showed the total unit amount, and the cost per day to transfer it into time. I plugged in for the full amount, willing the machine to move faster. A confirmation screen appeared and I clicked that I was sure. Another screen appeared, saying that I had to touch ‘yes’ to accept that I understood Time purchases were non-refundable.
30 seconds...
The screen showed that it was transferring units. I clutched the tank for support, sweat pouring down my face, trying not to pass out.
“Congratulations, your units have been transferred. Will start time transfusion now,” said the machine’s robotic voice. The extractor on the table began to vibrate.
10, 9, 8...
The relief brought me to my knees. I laughed in spite of myself, and started to think about how to escape once it was complete.
Then the machine abruptly turned off.
“Our sensors indicate you are not Ms. Sanders,” said the voice. “Time transfusion aborted. Goodbye.”
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story. As always, I will now badger you to buy my books. You can get SCAB AMONG THE STARS, the first book of my dark fantasy LUNAR LIVES series here. Come on, gang. It’s literally a buck. One dollar. If you enjoyed SCAB please pick up book two ECHO FROM THE VOID here. Feel free to subscribe, share, comment or message. Thanks!