And what a pleasure it was to my Varya to learn all there was about time and how it worked. When I called her each week, she was full of news. Did I know that the Time Chips were based on technology which could actually sense time? There was no clock inside them, nothing you could just wind forward or backwards. They could literally sense how many seconds, minutes or years had passed. Sixty-five exactly, for each person. And embedded right into the brain stem, so that they couldn’t be tampered with at all. Perfectly safe, nothing to worry about.
My heart sang for her, the joy I felt at her excitement—it was wondrous. Though all the while it was mixed with my foreboding of what might come. Because too much joy cannot exist within one person without finding somewhere to leak out eventually. And once that hole has been punctured it can grow and grow until all the joy has ebbed away and left nothing but a hollow shell. I didn’t want my Varya to become a hollow shell.
At first it was just fine because the hole was just tiny, the size of a pin head, just enough to release the built-up pressure of all her happiness. It leaked out onto a young man named Sebastian who was also in her class. An extra that he was taking, it was, an ‘elective’, I think they called it. He was a police officer. A student of policing, whatever it is they teach there. I can’t imagine it’s much. You either have the intellect to solve problems and deal with people or you don’t, I think. Sebastian had the one but not so much of the other. Perhaps it was simply that they didn’t teach the people part well enough.
Varya didn’t seem to mind. They spent all their hours talking about time and its infinite possibilities. Her joy leaked out onto him, seeped into his pores, and made his mouth twitch upwards. Uncharacteristically, that upwards mouth corner trend continued for some time. Long enough for him to marry my Varya.
But that joy, it just kept leaking right out of her. I still hold that Sebastian responsible for not even trying to plug the hole.
It dripped and it dripped the deeper he got her involved in the cases of the time thieves. Invaluable knowledge, he said she had. ‘Help save the children’, was the carrot he dangled in front of her. Nobody could maintain their joy in the face of all those stolen babies returned to their parents, only to wilt forever soon after.
She never did figure out how to do it; turn back the hands of time. It broke her in the end.
Sebastian and his policing friends saved the day by shooting a few of the thieves and capturing another few. Importantly, they captured the impossible technology that the thieves had somehow made possible. It was turned over to Varya and her colleagues to study and understand. But the public, they were heartbroken, and they were angry. Mostly, they were scared. They wanted the technology destroyed. They wanted to never have to fear for the minutes and hours and days they planned to spend with their babies before they left home to find their joy, like my Varya had. It is a wicked thing to have parenting hours stolen from you.
And yet here I am, being given back more hours than I could ever possibly imagine, or perhaps even want, with my grandson Kir. Now a new child is to be placed under my care as well. Daniel, a nine-year-old boy. What do I know about nine-year-old boys? Not much, that’s what.
Chapter twenty-five
Varya
Varya and Daniel were greeted by Kir at the Time Lock portal, the smaller boy bouncing up and down, ready to greet his mother. Varya braced herself as Kir flung himself at her legs, but she kept on walking. Kir giggled as he rose up and down on Varya’s leg, her right foot dug into his bottom. His laughter drowned out the sounds of adult murmuring until they arrived in the kitchen. He peered around and noticed more legs. His gaze travelled upwards to Daniel’s face and his eyes opened wide.
“Mama!” he exclaimed.
Daniel gave him an awkward smile and held up his palm in greeting.
“Mama, Nanna! A moving person! It’s a moving person!” He stood up and raced around to the far side of the round table where Elena sat, a steaming cup of tea in a saucer in front of her. She chuckled as she picked him up and held him close.
“Yes, Kir, it’s a moving person.” To Daniel she explained, “We don’t get moving people around here much, as you’ll soon find out.”
“Mama, this is Daniel.” Varya touched Daniel’s shoulder. “And this is his mother, Zoe.” Varya tried to catch Zoe’s eye but she was too busy staring at Kir.
“He’s really alive. All this time,” she said. She inched towards the chair nearest to Elena and the boy and sat, to get a closer look. “How do you feel?”
“I’m hungry!” shouted Kir, very loudly, in her face, then leaned back against his grandmother and roared with laughter.
“Oh hush, child, you are not hungry. You’ve just finished eating your breakfast.” Elena shook her head.
“But you’re not in any pain?” asked Zoe, lifting one of his arms and then the other, turning them over and searching for signs of... what? She addressed Elena then. “He’s been well?”
“Fit as a fiddle,” Elena retorted. “Runs me off my feet.” Kir bounced up and down in her lap to demonstrate. “Ouch! You’ve got a bony bottom, Kir. Get off me now, you’ll have me as bruised as a mango dropped from a hot air balloon.”
Kir leaped off her lap and went to run out of the room. He stopped short at Daniel’s feet and looked directly up into his face.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Daniel,” said Daniel, taking a small step backwards. Varya watched them closely. She thought he seemed sort of glad to see his former playmate, whom he must have really only remembered from photographs, stories and snippets of his own memories. Mostly, though, he seemed thoroughly overwhelmed and confused.
Varya crouched down beside Kir so their eyes were level. “You two used to be great friends when Daniel was younger. You were four years old together.”
“I’ve been four years old for five years!” said Kir proudly, holding up the correct number of fingers, splayed widely. “But Nanna lets me put an extra candle on my cake every year anyway. Ssh, it’s a secret.” He looked from his mother to Daniel and back again. “Can I show him my room now? I’ve been learning how to play Jingle Bells on my guitar so I can play it at Christmas for everyone!”
“How about you show Daniel the Blue Room first?” suggested Varya.
“Why?”
“Because he’s going to be staying with you and Nanna for a while and that’s where he’ll be sleeping,” she explained. “He’ll probably want to put his bag down in there. It’s pretty heavy.” She whispered this last part conspiratorially to Kir. Kir looked at the bag.
“Why? Why is he staying here? He’s a moving person. Moving people don’t stay here, only the frozen-in-time ones. Moving people come and then they go. Like you and Marisa and… and…” He trailed off, throwing a quick glance to his grandmother.
“You ask a lot of questions,” said Daniel, finally smiling.
“Go show him the Blue Room and Daniel might answer some of the questions for you,” Varya suggested.
Kir gazed up at the moving boy with new respect. “Okay, it’s down here!” He pushed past Daniel and ran down the hallway.
Daniel looked at his mother hesitantly, who nodded. He hefted his bag higher on his shoulder and followed Kir.
“Is he cured?” Zoe asked, after the children were out of ear shot.
Varya shook her head. “No.”
“But he seems so well.”
Varya smiled. “He does, doesn’t he?”
“How long can he stay this way for?” Zoe turned to Elena. “And Elena, you must be nearly…”
“… nearly seventy, dear, though I don’t look a day over sixty-four, yes?” She laughed, a deep-throated—yet somehow tired—sound. “I feel it in my bones, don’t you worry.”
“Nothing wrong with your bones, Mama. You’re as fit as a fiddle.” Varya stood up and moved over to the sink. “He’s safe for now, Zoe. How about you stop here for a few minutes and have a coffee and something to eat? It’s not going to be ea
sy out there.” She jerked her head over her shoulder towards the portal and shuddered slightly.
There was something about the Time Lock which always made Varya feel like she’d come home. If you didn’t look outside the window and you didn’t stay for too long, it was almost as if Kir had just gone to stay with his grandmother for the weekend. If you discounted the passing of time and the lack of growth on Kir’s part, it almost felt normal. This was the life they should have lived. At times she’d been tempted to simply stay in the Time Lock. To live this frozen existence for as long as the three of them could stand it. But it wasn’t practical. Who would work to provide the food? Who would maintain the portal itself? Varya shuddered at the idea of being trapped in the Time Lock to waste away.
Zoe took the proffered ham and cheese sandwich gratefully and swallowed a few bites. She had barely eaten in days. While she chewed and waited for the coffee to percolate, Varya filled in the gaps for Elena.
“Kir hasn’t aged at all,” Zoe interjected, still trapped in the same cycle of wonder.
Varya delivered the steaming mugs to the table and sat down opposite her friend. She shook her head. “No, he hasn’t.”
“Not at the cellular level nor the developmental. He’s still very much a four-year-old child. It’s incredible.”
“It is,” Varya agreed, though with much less enthusiasm. “It’s halted the progression of the cancer as well. The breadth of what he knows is astonishing, as he’s built it up over the past five years. But it’s all still within the bounds of what you’d expect from an above-average four-year-old. He can write, but he still gets his ‘b’s and ‘d’s mixed up. He can read, but anything beyond two syllables he needs to sound out.’
“It’s fascinating. I’d love to…”
“… do some tests?” Varya shot her a wry smile and a raised eyebrow. “Take some blood, maybe, do a full brain scan, submit him to a biopsy or two?”
Zoe grimaced and shook her head slightly. “Sorry.”
Elena clattered her empty cup against her saucer. “Nobody’s doing tests on my grandson. He’s not a guinea pig. Where’s my fresh tea, Varya? Why don’t I get any, hmm?”
Varya rolled her eyes but took her mother’s freshly empty teacup and refilled it from the old-fashioned tea pot, complete with crocheted tea cosy to keep the brew warm.
“It’s okay, it’s a natural curiosity for a doctor. I’ve had the same thoughts myself. Why doesn’t the passing of time seem to affect him? What is it doing to him on a cellular level, if anything?”
Elena took a sip and muttered into her teacup. “Yes, very worried about Kir. Nobody worries about Elena. The passing of time means nothing to an old woman.”
Varya ignored her. “Any changes would be most noticeable in Kir rather than Mum, given he’s at a stage where he would normally experience rapid growth.”
“Unlike me who would normally be experiencing rapid deterioration.”
“Ma! You’d normally be experiencing decomposition if it weren’t for the Time Lock.”
Zoe startled. “Of course. You would have been…”
“Yes, yes.” Elena waved her hand as though it was the most natural thing in the world to live past her official expiration date. Though her coy smile gave away her true pride. “I’ve cheated the Rest Time Authority. I’m living proof that you can live past sixty-five and still be useful to society.”
“I don’t think they’d accept you as a case study, given your body is still sixty-four,” said Varya dismissively, though she smiled after saying it. She turned back to Zoe. “Kir is not a good test subject.”
“No, no, of course not. I mean, he’s your son,” said Zoe quickly. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what I meant. From an objective point of view, he’s not a good test subject because he came in with a terminal illness. He came into the Time Lock pumped full of drugs to keep him stable for a few minutes longer. And it’s worked. But any tests would be corrupted by the drugs.” She paused. “And his illness.” She stared at the hallway entry, down which they heard a plucked guitar float from time to time. “Besides, I’ve had other scientific priorities over the past few years. The effects of time stasis in motion on the human body is a study that will have to wait.”
Chapter twenty-six
Elena
I never finished telling you about my Varya’s joy. We’ll let these two scientific women chat while I explain it to you, shall we?
As I said, Varya’s joy leaked out of her thanks to her involvement in those terrible time thief cases. But not all of it was gone just yet. The hole was still small enough to plug and that plug came along when she needed it, right towards the end of the period of horror. The plug was just the size of a pea at first. She told me and nobody else, not even Sebastian. She just kept on working. He would have made her stop, you see, but she didn’t want to. She was still trying to save those poor children, though her confidence was being shattered with each new failure. I can’t imagine what she was going through. I was a primary school teacher, little kids, you see. When I failed, a few kids might be less able to read and write and count in tens than they otherwise might have been. But they never died because of it. Not like Varya’s work.
That pea-sized joy plug grew into a peach-sized plug and kept right on growing. It made the corners of her mouth twitch upwards ever so slightly, even though fear and failure conspired to regularly drag them down again.
By the time the police caught the thieves and stopped the horror, that plug was the size of a melon and could be hidden no longer. Her joy was watertight by the time she shared it with Sebastian. He was mystified. I watched him touch her as though confused. She no longer leaked joy that he could soak up. Her reserve of happiness was being held tight inside herself by a Kir-shaped plug. Kir fed off her and grew, and her joy fed off him and grew alongside him.
For a while after he was born, my Varya floated in joy. That child had unlimited bottles of happiness to rain over anyone in his presence.
And then, a few short years later, the diagnosis came that changed everything. I watched the hole open again. I tried to plug it for her, with hope and possibilities of cures.
But then, the news that there would be no hope. No cure for our Kir, no plug for my Varya. The day we heard the words ‘rare form of aggressive childhood cancer’ and ‘no research funding’ I watched the joy flow out faster.
A few weeks later came the words ‘palliative care’ and I realised all the joy had gone. My Varya was empty, there was nothing left to plug.
Chapter twenty-seven
Marisa
The morning light retained a chilled, watery quality to it as Marisa pulled her jacket tightly around her and buttoned it at the front. She wore a very different outfit to the one she’d paraded at the mansion soirée the previous afternoon. Worn boots, faded jeans, and an old jacket were her choices of disguise today. Rest Time Chips had done nothing to change the desperation experienced by women with children escaping from violent partners. If anything, the pressure to work longer hours to extend their life from forty to sixty-five had pushed them right to the edge.
It was a noble idea, incentivising work like that. But, unfortunately, the definition of ‘work’ didn’t include raising the next generation of children. Well, unless those children weren’t your own. Day-care centres still operated with twelve children to a room. Job prospects had boomed for childcare attendants, with mothers pushed into the workforce in droves and needing somewhere to leave their offspring. Having a child automatically added fifteen years to your life span, taking it up to fifty-five. This ensured children were cared for by their parents until they could look after themselves. But for a parent who wanted more than that, a mother who wanted as much time as possible with her child, to see them grow and perhaps have their own children? Those parents had to join the ranks of sixty-hour-a-week workers to earn enough credits for the right to live to the maximum age allowed of sixty-five. It was a cruel choice to have to make. Less time
with your young children at the start of their lives, more time with your adult children – and maybe even your grandchildren - towards the end of your own life.
Then, of course, there was the problem of simply affording to feed, house, and care for the children. Wages were kept low by the number of low-skilled workers competing for a finite number of menial jobs. Automation had taken over most of the mid-wage jobs. That meant that most of the poor worked for long hours performing meaningless tasks for a pittance in pay.
Marisa shook herself slightly. Caring for her own child wasn’t a problem she had to face, nor was poverty. Not anymore, not since Varya and her mad schemes came into her life. She looked up at the nondescript apartment block in front of her. It differed from the apartment blocks either side only by the extra locks on the door and the bars on the windows. And even then, it was only one or two extra locks compared to the apartment block to the left, and the bars extended to one extra storey compared to the apartment block on the right.
She raised her hand to press the bell and announced herself and her intention when Tina’s disembodied voice sounded over the intercom.
Tina was a thin woman in her sixties with a grim face but sparkling eyes. She let Marisa in, then disappeared through an internal door and reappeared behind a reception desk.
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