Stealing Time

to take backthe narrative. “I have to stay here and pretend that everything hashappened as the authorities expect.”
Daniel frowned. “You have to stay here andpretend I’m dead.”
Zoe bit her lip and nodded sadly. “Yes.”
“But you’re going to figure out how toreverse the drain and you’ll come and get me when you have?”
“Yes,” said Varya.
“But I’ll visit you,” said Zoe. “Everyday.”
Daniel stood up. “Alright. What do I do now?Just walk into it?”
“I’ll go first, just follow me,” said Varya,standing up and taking Daniel’s hand to lead him through. Shebraced herself for the sudden, brief plunge in temperature, andthen felt Daniel shudder as he failed to brace for the same.

Chapter twenty-four
Elena
It was my idea, you must understand, to come in herewith Kir. Four years of age, he was, so full of life and then to betold there’s nothing more they can do. It just wasn’t true.
“You go. Go and find out what more can bedone,” I told my Varya. She held our little boy’s hand and lookedinto his face. His eyes were dark smudges above his pale littlecheeks.
“I can’t, Mama. I don’t know what else todo, either.”
“You’re a scientist,” I told her. “You willfind the answers.”
“Mama, shush. Enough.” She said it sogently, my Varya, though I heard the catch in her voice. She hadgiven up all hope, you see. That monstrous excuse of a husband andfather had left and taken it all with him. I’ll never forgive himfor that. I sat down on the bed then, on the same side as her,jolting Kir slightly as I came to rest. I took her hand. I made herlook at me.
“You are a magician scientist who discoveredhow to bend the laws of time itself and alter the course of aperson’s life. This…” I waved my hand theatrically at the bed, theboy and everything that was attached to him. “This is easy. All youneed is time and money.”
She looked at me then. I wanted to make herangry, I wanted to fire up the girl I had fought with for so long.But I saw only despair, incredulity. And pity.
“Mama, I’m a physicist. Was a physicist. Idon’t know anything about medical science. All the money in theworld is useless without time and expertise. I don’t have theexpertise and Kir…” She trailed off and her eyes drifted back toher little boy. It seemed as though the minutes were draining outof him as we watched.
“You know how to make time.” My Varya, shedidn’t move. She didn’t look at me, but she didn’t dismiss me. Iknew, then, that I would win the day. I chose my words carefully.“So, go now - make the time. For Kir, and for me. Then I will carefor him while you find a way to make the money and the expertisehappen.”
“I don’t know how long it will take,” shewhispered, not moving.
“I will care for our little boy. For howeverlong it takes,” I told her firmly. “Go. Find a way to make himlive.”
My Varya reached out her hand to that palelittle boy and brushed the fragile strands back from his forehead.Then she bent her forefinger and ran the soft skin of the middlesection down his soft, cool cheek.
My Varya nodded. “Okay. Okay, I will go andmake the time.” She looked up at me with dry eyes then, and stood.She kissed me lightly on the cheek and almost floated out the door.I sat down and took her place on the chair, warmed by her. I tookour Kir’s cool, unmoving hand. And I waited.
I chose the place, that was my onecondition. If I was going to be spending months—and we had thoughtit would only be months when we first started—I wanted to make sureit was in a place that I knew and loved. It’s the place where Igrew up, and where I would have moved back to had I had the chance.It was never an option though, not really. I would follow thatlittle boy to the ends of the earth.
I was happy to let Varya go, back when shewas a baby-faced university graduate and she decided she needed tomove cities to do her studies. To learn about time and how to bendit. Children need time away from their parent, to grow and find outthat they really can stand on their own two feet. And so, she went,flying on an airplane, north to Sydney, to the University of NewSouth Wales, where they teach them these things of nationalimportance. Of course, back then it was all so new, just an ideathought of by the National Committee that the scientists werescratching their heads to see if they could make a reality. Thattook priority for the whole faculty, creating the Time Chips. Herbending-of-time research project would have to wait. Policy beforepleasure.
And what a pleasure it was to my Varya tolearn all there was about time and how it worked. When I called hereach week, she was full of news. Did I know that the Time Chipswere based on technology which could actually sense time? There wasno clock inside them, nothing you could just wind forward orbackwards. They could literally sense how many seconds, minutes oryears had passed. Sixty-five exactly, for each person. And embeddedright into the brain stem, so that they couldn’t be tampered withat all. Perfectly safe, nothing to worry about.
My heart sang for her, the joy I felt at herexcitement—it was wondrous. Though all the while it was mixed withmy foreboding of what might come. Because too much joy cannot existwithin one person without finding somewhere to leak out eventually.And once that hole has been punctured it can grow and grow untilall the joy has ebbed away and left nothing but a hollow shell. Ididn’t want my Varya to become a hollow shell.
At first it was just fine because the holewas just tiny, the size of a pin head, just enough to release thebuilt-up pressure of all her happiness. It leaked out onto a youngman named Sebastian who was also in her class. An extra that he wastaking, it was, an ‘elective’, I think they called it.