Stealing Time by Rebecca Bowyer (acx book reading .txt) 📕

“In your hands you now have everythingthat’s known about how to create a device which is capable oftransferring blocks of time from one Rest Time Chip to another.We’re going to use it to recreate the device. Once we have aprototype, we’ll turn it over to the Rest Time Corps to enable themto assist any others who fall victim to the time thieves.” Varya’svoice wavered slightly as she clasped her hands together.

A scientist shot his hand into the air, eyeson the sheet of paper in front of him. “This is kind of outside ofour usual area of expertise. Isn’t there someone else who could dothis?” Varya saw genuine concern on his face.

Her initial revelation that she was takingon a senior management role at the facility, effective immediately,hadn’t seemed to bother anyone very much. It wasn’t like she wastaking on the CEO role, and she’d been there long enough, workinglong enough hours, that questions had started to be asked about whyher career appeared to have stalled. She’d shrugged off Marisa’surging to tell the entire truth of her background and her role insetting up the charity in the first place. Marisa wanted her tostep out from behind the curtain completely. Varya wasn’t ready togo that far just yet.

She had, however, agreed that imparting someinformation about her career path was probably necessary. She dug afingernail into her palm and forced a smile.

“At heart, you’re all scientists. Granted,you don’t have doctorates in temporal physics, but that’s not whatthis requires. Think of this as more of a scientificproblem-solving exercise. The answers are already there, they’vebeen found before. Your role is to figure out how to put the piecesof the puzzle back together again.” She took a deep breath. “Myrole is to identify, and fill in, the missing pieces.” There wassome murmuring to her left. She fought the urge to look or try tolisten to what they were saying. “You know that I have worked herefor the past four-and-a-half years, as a lab tech. You know that Iwent to UNSW and completed my doctorate there. What you don’t knowis that I did a stint attached to the Rest Time Corps after Igraduated.”

“I knew it! I told you so!” A scientist toher left clapped in excitement and nudged the older man next toher. Then she pointed at Varya. “You’ve cut your hair. And dyed it.But I knew it was you. I watched all the news items back then.”

“What news items?” called out anothervoice.

“She invented the time transfer tech,” shesaid, in an awed, hushed tone.

Varya nodded. “I was on the team thatinvented the time transfer tech, yes.”

“Hey, something I never really understood.We can add bonus years to Time Chips, yeah? So, how come theycouldn’t just add years back to the kids’ Chips when theyreturned?” The woman leaned forward eagerly, as though Varya was anoracle who was about to provide an answer to her most burningquestion.

“We did think of trying that on the firstfew kids that were returned, but the tech doesn’t work like that.”She turned and started to draw on the whiteboard behind her. “Eachperson gets a limit of sixty-five years programmed into their Chipat birth.” She wrote ‘65’ at the end of the straight line she’ddrawn. “It’s not a quota so much as a limitation. There’s noguarantee you’ll make it to sixty-five. That’s up to your lifespan, which might be fifty-five, thirty or even two.” She spokeslowly and emphasised the keywords. After pausing briefly, she drewa small vertical slash across the line approximately two-thirdsfrom the start. “But there’s a blocker artificially programmed inat forty years. If you meet the requirements of the timeextension—work extra hours, produce a child, steer clear of troublewith the law—the blocker will be deactivated, and you can push pastit.” She paused to gather her thoughts. Trying to explain complextemporal concepts to scientists who studied a completely differentbranch was not easy. Every eye in the room was studying either thenotes in front of them or squinting at the board. Connor caught hereye and smiled encouragingly. She’d already practised on him thatmorning, answering much the same questions then.

Varya turned and started to point at theearlier vertical slashes. “The time transfer tech works on thislife span section. The unknown quantity. The returned children hadbeen drained of their life span and it had already been insertedinto someone else. The time thieves didn’t know whether they weregoing to be able to extract sixty years, or six, of the children’slife span. The time transfer tech can also measure aperson’s life span. It can tell you when you’re going to die,barring a catastrophic incident such as car accident or gunshotwound.” She started to draw a long arrow from one of the slashesback to the start of the timeline, then pointed to it. “The onlyway to get this life span back is to either retrieve their originallife span or take a life span from somebody else.”

“Wouldn’t the parents have volunteered todonate life span?” asked a woman in the back row, rubbing herpregnant belly.

Varya nodded and felt her face grow hot.“Yes, they did. Of course, they did. But the Rest Time Authoritywouldn’t allow it.” She left it at that.

The older man at the front frowned. Varyaglanced at him and thought she could see his thought processes ashis facial expressions changed. Her stomach flipped. This wasexactly what she’d feared, exactly why she’d kept a low profile allthese years.

“So, it’s your fault they’re in this mess,”he said eventually.

“Simon!” The woman pushed him again, not sogently this time.

Varya looked at him levelly, her old friend,guilt, threatening to drown her. “In a sense, yes. As a scientistyourself, I’m sure you can appreciate the excitement that comeswith the discovery of a new technology. Life span isn’t somethingwe ever thought we could even quantify, hold on to, let alonetransfer from one human being to another.”

“But you did,” he said.

“Yes, we did. And we have paid for thatnaïve excitement dearly, I assure you. Which is why the technologyand most of the instructions on how to build it weredestroyed.”

“Except somebody’s figured it outagain.”

“Yes, it appears that way.”

Silence filled the