Liz liked that his name was Robert, starting with the same letter as her husband’s. There are certain moments when a woman wants to say the name of her partner out loud. Both men being started from the same letter saved her some confusion.
She met Robert in Kinko when the worker messed up her set of copies and she requested a manager. She noticed sparkles of excitement in his eyes when he first looked at her and sparkles of humor when he listened to her complaints and, somehow easily, she let him lull her into resolving their disagreement in the nearby Starbucks. Nothing came out of it...Besides maybe a couple of sweet emails. Nothing. Yet.
Liz stretched with the pleasure of remembrance and supposition. It was eight-thirty AM on Wednesday. The beach, place of her daily morning stroll after dropping kids to school, was almost completely deserted. She looked at the horizon and her train of thought switched to the contemplation of her life in general.
She knew that everybody thought she had it made. Fifteen years ago she married a successful attorney. Now she was the “lady of the castle” as she often thought of herself. Indeed she had a great house, Jaguar, a yacht, trips over the Atlantic where she got to dine in the restaurant on top of the Ethel tower, took a gondola ride in Venice and ski in Swiss Alps. Meetings with relatives, she could sit with proud and accomplished countenance if not with the hint of arrogance to them “all” - well dressed, well-groomed and feeling above all their skirmishes and little territorial disputes. Roger and kids were her life.
But… Was she HAPPY?
Was this life to her ultimate liking? Something she chose to live or something she settled for?
Back when they met – their relationship were new, exciting, different. Roger Powell came across as smart, witty, charming and certainly way more attractive than all other people in the town; certainly, much more, overall, attractive than Tony Beady - her high school sweetheart. And back then when she was twenty-two and Robert was forty the difference in age didn’t feel so much.
But now, more often than not, she really felt it. His age manifested itself on the top of his head where now Liz could witness the color of his skin, with the heavy breathing when they were hiking, with the special diet he had to adhere to and a BP medicine he had to take and with (ah how unromantic) the sample of his urine she had to take today to the lab for his kidney test.
But especially it was noticeable in the bedroom. From spontaneous and frequent, their lovemaking became much less spontaneous and, alas, so much less frequents. To hint this to Roger was humiliating whereas he as if realizing his shortcomings, became suspicious and possessive.
If she could only return these moments of excitement, of passion! Liz buttoned her coat because a gust of wind made her feel cold.
“Excuse me, ma’am, may I have some of your time, please?”
Startled, Liz quickly turned around and shivered. Behind her, literally next to her, there stood a tall man. Not that she sensed anything threatening, in fact, he seemed as polite as an experienced salesman, but his sheer appearance “from a thin air” and his contradictory conduct made her feel alerted.
On one hand, he looked old – wrinkly face, a completely gray hair, the eye color that used to be blue now dissolved into off white. On the other hand, his smile and demeanor were of the relatively young man, the one who knew of his charm and tried to make a use of it.
“Sure,” Liz’s answer lacked confidence. “Are you a reporter of a sort?” Roger was a respected member of the community and, now and then, their photograph flickering in the local newspaper.
“Of a sort, of a sort, mam and, don’t worry, I won’t take much of your time.” The man’s lips stretched.
‘Weirdo,’ Liz mentally rolled her eyes.
Meanwhile, the man pulled out a gadget, what Liz originally thought, was a movie camera, but what turned out to be a cell phone looking device with unusually large footprint.
“Can you please hold it for me?” he handed the gadget to Liz showing sign of approaching sneeze. Liz held it through two sneezes and then gave it back. “Bless you.”
Now looking from his side Liz saw that the display panel had two viewing areas, left one labeled “Bio-Time Server” and the right one labeled as “Bio-Time Receiver,” with the button labeled “Transmit” in between.
To her utmost surprise Liz saw that the left panel contained her information:
Name: Elisabeth Powell
Biological age 37
Psychological age 22
Donated Age 0 …
The right one contained the information, apparently, of the reporter:
Leslie Berwick
Biological Age 77
Psychological age 50
Donated Age -43 …
“How do you know?” Liz approached closer to the gadget.
“A little patience, ma'am.” Leslie winked at her and then again looked down at the gadget that displayed green status line message “Loading Transmission Matrix. Please wait...”
As soon as the message changed to “Ready to Transmit” Leslie looked around the beach both direction and quickly, almost hurriedly pressed the Transmit button.
The message box showed: You are about to transmit 20 Bio-Time years from Elizabeth Powell to Leslie Berwick. Are you sure?
“Wait just a second!” Liz started suspecting that something was wrong. “Whatever you are doing, I don’t want you to use my name for whatever it is that you are doing!”
“I am afraid, ma’am,” Leslie smirked, about to press the “Yes” option, “this is already not in your power.”
“No, so fast Berwick!” Liz heard a new voice and observed the gadget flying four feet away.
“Shit, MacFearson,” Leslie rushed after the device as fast as he could, “didn’t you mother teach you to knock?” The man, who kicked the gadget out of Leslie’s hands was faster and took a position between Berwick and the device.
Leslie, who apparently used to act quickly, swung at MacFearson, but the later, acted even faster and with one short right hook to the jaw, dropped Leslie and letting him lay face down in the sand, picked up the device and turned to Liz who was in the state of a complete bewilderment.
“Special Agent Sam MacFearson, ma-am.” The man bowed. “…sorry that you had to go through this, Mrs…” he looked at the left panel of the device. “Mrs. Powell. Luckily, I arrived just in time to stop him.”
“…stop him from what?”
“…from stealing” he looked at the device again “of twenty years of your bio-time.”
“Well thank you, officer.” By now Liz has already come to her senses. “And you are, I guess, from the … future,” she made exaggeratedly big eyes and lifted her eyebrows.
MacFearson nodded as if not even noticing her irony keeping his eyes on the tall figure of Berwick spread on the sand.
“Wouldn’t I, knowing this all,” she made a wide gesture pointing both to the device and knocked out man, “change something in the future?”
“Mrs. Powell, normally we try to avoid contacts with the subjects from the “past.” But since the contact has already occurred we are obligated by law to minimize the possibility of a bio-time theft.”
Sam stopped for a moment as if struggling with himself. “…you see, where Berwick and I came from it’s a common offense. Well, actually, the “time donating” is a legitimate business, sort of like the organ donating in your time. But time is expensive and only a few wealthy people can afford it or it could be done between close relatives. So pirates acquire Bio-Time illegally and resell it on the Black market, which results in big losses to the company I am working for. ”
“Bio-time?”
“Ah…sorry. A time travel seemingly might gain you some time. But if you spend two weeks in Ancient Rome, you’d still be biologically two weeks older. Bio-time would, in fact, make you younger or older depending on whether you sold or bought it.”
“But how come did this Berwick chose specifically me?” Liz pointed to the old man who still lay unconscious. “How did he know I would be here waiting for him?”
“An accident, pure accident, Mrs. Powell. What wasn’t an accident was the fact that Berwick was going so far back in time. You see with the modern Global Planetary Security System (GPSS), it is close to impossible to execute the time theft. But GPSS is calibrated only from the year 2050 so pirates like Berwick, travel earlier than that. They make themselves both donors and recipients – sell their time in the future, jump to a remote past, pirate bio-time, make themselves young and then come back to resale it in the future. Berwick made his last sale two bio days ago - thirty bio-years to a broker in Hong-Kong. This made him quite old, the circumstance, as you could observe, that made it much easier for me to neutralize him. When Berwick is bio-young he is a pretty dangerous in hand-to-hand combat.” MacFearson shook his head “yes” with appreciation.
“Unless a large company like Travel Anywhere does the arrangements, it’s a pretty risky to travel so far into the past, unpredictable both in the sense of the time slot and in circumstances of the landing.”
“But how were you able to track us so easily?”
“Oh, our agency was tracking Berwick already for a while. We were just waiting to catch him in action.”
MacFearson stopped and pulled on his lower lip. “Still I am not sure how he was able to bypass the transmitter security,” then he mumbled to himself“…he needed a sample of your DNA… Tell me, Mrs. Powell, did Berwick somehow have gotten a hold of your fingerprints?”
“I…. I don’t think so.” She wrinkled her forehead remembering. “Wait, he asked me to hold this thingy,” she pointed to the device,” while he was sneezing.”
“…Ah, there we go. Anything other questions ma’am?”
“Mr. MacFearson, what was that other number on the panel? The one that said I am twenty-two.”
“Oh, how should one put it?” He scratched his chin arranging an explanation. “It’s that age that describes how old you feel rather than how old you are, actually. Make sense?”
Liz nodded.
“As for your concern regarding you affecting anything in the future. Don’t even worry about it, because in a couple of minutes when we’re done I will erase your memory of this incident. Don’t worry. It’s very safe.” He added seeing her hand instinctively lifting to defend her head. MacFearson turned away from the pirate, smiled and looked Liz in the eyes.
“Sam!” Liz screamed, seeing with her peripheral vision that Berwick within this short moment woke up and was aiming at MacFearson. “HE’S GOT THE GUN!”
MacFearson spun around pulling his own weapon. Two laser beams sparked at the same time and both men instantly evaporated.
Shaken and exhausted, Liz sat on the sand with her thoughts in disarray. What was she supposed to do? Call the police? Which police, from what time, how? Did all of this actually happen? Oh yes, it did – the transmitter laid next to her on the sand. MacFearson apparently resets it but the power was still on. Whatever happened was unbelievable; made absolutely no sense. It made sense but only to her. No not only to her, to millions of people somewhere in the future. After seeing laser shots Liz was pretty sure of that. Oh, what a mess? Liz’s eye watered.
Two people died in her presence and she couldn’t do a thing about it. It was nice, at least, that there was no blood or anything. But still… The tears continued to roll while she wanted that someone big, strong and kind came to her and calmed her down. Put her in bed, covered her with a blanket and tucked it in … then, maybe, they could do something else.
Phooey…This was just stupid. Stupid. She was a big and responsible adult. She could handle it. If only the difference in age with Roger wouldn’t be so drastic. If she could only return these emotionally fulfilled moments of excitement, of passion!
With widened eyes, Liz looked at the transmitter turning around the thought in her head.
If she could give him five years of her life then their difference would be only eight years. Five years? What kind of a difference do they make? What is going to happen with her over these years? Nothing but frustration and boredom. What does she live for anyway? Is there a purpose? Procreation? Haven’t she already done with that? Roger and she didn’t plan to have more children. Certainly, she still needed to care for them and love them and stuff, but really, at this point in time, she was sort of living on overdrive.
Five years?
If she wanted to go alone with it, she better do it and do it fast. Who knows who else would pop up from the thin air? Nervously Liz looked at the device. There was no keypad except for numbers. She entered the number five.
MacFearson talked about DNA. But how can she get Roger’s DNA? Wait… Liz run toward the car got Roger’s urine sample and turning away her nose she poured a drop of it on the recipient side of the device. Yes! Roger’s data appeared on the panel. Now she thumb-printed the server side and her data appeared there as well. Liz pressed the button.
You are about to transmit 5 Bio-Time years from Elizabeth Powell to Roger Powell. Are you sure?
Was she? Liz was shivering. Was she really ready to give away five years of her own youth so that Roger and she could, perhaps, experience emotional fulfillment? What if not? What if this would be a stupid useless loss? What if the spring in a relationship only possible once? Her psychological age was twenty-two. This meant she didn’t at all grow as a person since she got married.
Robert, young, powerful! He was excited about her. Even now when she was so much older than him. With him, she would experience the emotional fulfillment once again and I would grow as a person.
Liz pushed the ‘No’ button, reset the device and quickly redone the procedure, now putting her husband on the donor and herself on the receiving side. Five years? No, I want to come back to the beginning, to the same point where I started.
Liz entered the digit fifteen and pressed the transmit button.
You are about to transmit 15 Bio-Time years from Roger Powell to Elizabeth Powell. Are you sure?
“Yes,” Liz said out loud and pushed the button again.