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Idol winced at the sour flavour of edible metal as it cracked and released it's brittle aniseed tasting liquid. Time, he reflected, tasted terrible.
It took about half a minute and a long drink of wasser but there it was: Save Completed. Now that he had done it, he felt he had made a terrible mistake. Since the Savepoint had cost him three months credit, the fact that it was gone in thirty seconds was bound to be disappointing. That was normal. Regardless of the fact that what he had just done would have been deemed an act of science fiction only forty years ago, it was still a pricey moment, even if it was an everyday occurrence for some people.
Even through his cost worries there was no escaping the shrill excitement of having made his mark in time, having made a moment he could return to again if the mission ahead of him didn't go to plan. This was what people had dreamed of for centuries, a second chance, and now it was commonplace. Too commonplace, he thought with a shudder at the sudden image of those PSP junkies, crippled by the inability to make any decision without covering it with every other possibility, then frantically trying to compensate for the wildly unstable juice dispensed by the Public Save Point machines. The thought of that alternative buoyed him slightly, made the cost of his own private purchase easier to bear. What he was going to do was too important to be left to the whims of cheap Time.
What he was about to do. He had been avoiding thinking about that directly out of sheer nervousness. Even when he had been planning the whole operation he had somehow managed to do it out of the side of his mind's eye, as if it was a task he was setting for someone else, with no great consequences for himself. That wasn't possible anymore. He had taken the first step, now he must take the rest.
He stepped away from the time booth, avoiding eye contact with the man waiting to take his place. Outside, the permanent 23-degree warmth of the city took the booth's chill from him. He and the man slipping past him had sat together silently before Idol's turn without exchanging a word and now that awkwardness put up it's own barrier between them.
It took a moment to get oriented. Idol even had to glance at the map floating in the sky, something he hadn't done regularly since he had arrived from Rudcorn three years ago. The glance set him on his way to the park where Heila sat herself when she was working. Was she working today? A sudden panic gripped him. Had he confused the days? Would she choose to break her habit and set up terminal somewhere else today? Why not? Anyone could plug in wherever they wanted, that was the whole point, after all. What if she was ill? Or just chose to take the day off?
The panic was veering out of control. He stopped walking and tightened his stomach muscles deliberately, taking long slow breaths. He was being silly. The worst that could happen was that he would have to wait until tomorrow or the day after...The thought brought the panic back but he stamped on it hard.
She would be there.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the park. He could have grabbed a pedcar and dropped it in the park but he didn't want to take any chances. Imagine having to waste the Save Point because of some stupid accident. He, along with the rest of the world, regularly moaned about the fact that every Save could only be returned to once. There were dark rumours that the very rich could afford the legendary repeating Saves. These were always strenuously denied, with Time Scientists wheeled out to explain how such a thing was everything from potentially unstable to very improbable to downright impossible.
Idol continued his walk with due care and, he began to think, some sense of occasion. He made a point of taking in his surroundings and his responses to them as perhaps someone on his way down the wedding aisle might. Or perhaps someone on his way to his execution.
On his way to the park, the ramp had taken him over business seats, sprinkled around the stumps of old skyscrapers, which now only served as marker posts in the generally flat city. It was odd; he mused, how the removal of urban weather had allowed such a complete change in work practices. Not so long ago, really, people had spent all day inside and only come out when it was dark. What kind of insane way was that of organising time? Now, if you had to work, at least you could sit outside and do it, seeing as terminals were finally free and, to Idol's guess, were beginning to outnumber workers. What was odd, quaint even, was that people, when their transaction was business, tended to come to the old business places. They could have met anywhere but the old echo of commerce seemed to draw them to these neatly preserved ruins.
As he had walked on the subtle change in the human traffic below him had been from wholesale to retail. In the Tourist area, he country people (like himself he had to consciously note) came to see where the old shops had been. They were mostly empty now, a bit like museums although some of them sold items, in a parody of face to face shopping. It was the tourists rather than the rather tacky shops that Idol noticed more than anything. The way they dressed in clothes that had a function other than visual. How easy it was to forget that there, out in The World, people still got hot and cold, wet and windblown. It really didn't take long to forget that there was such a thing as weather when you didn't meet it every day.
The Tourist area finally gave way to the Casual Park where Heila B liked to sit. Even though what she did there was work, Idol knew that she was one deliberately kept herself away from the business area. He didn't know why exactly but that was only one of the many questions he planned to ask her in their long future together.
The slope off the ramp encouraged him to run. So did his impatience to see if she was where he needed her to be for everything to be perfect. He fought both impulses. No point in arriving looking bedraggled.
The park was busier that he had expected. In his mind's eye he had seen only the two of them but that was always going to be an unlikely scenario. Inevitably, at first he couldn't see her. The old fear came back - she wouldn't be there. He allowed himself two hurried steps forward and of course when she appeared, looking straight up at him he looked harassed and rushed. Two men on wheels darted between them for a moment and when Idol reached Heila she was looking back at her terminal, chewing softly. She looked up again as he arrived beside her.
Damn. After all that. Twenty minutes of strolling, half a second of rushing and to her it looked like he'd run the whole way. He couldn't resist touching the other half of the Time Pill in his pocket, the half that would allow him to have and improve on this moment again if he had to return to the Save Point, if this didn't go well, if she said...
He bit down on that train of thought. Stay focussed.
"Idol. It's bad?"
"What's bad?" he answered, confused.
"Whatever's chasing you," she said, laughing. This laughing didn't hurt him but it wasn't in the script he'd written in his head either.
"No, no. Nothing like that," he trailed off, trying to start again. He was beginning to sweat slightly under his papier suit. To keep busy he sat beside her, glancing at her terminal as he did.
"Don't peek," she chided him.
"You're on the Timesite."
"We're all on the Timesite," she sang to the tune of the corny advertising jingle. Idol felt his smile, as stiff as a corpse. He really didn't want to be talking about timesites and savepoints right now. He couldn't let her know that he had safeguarded himself against her possible rejection by saving before asking. What sort of message would that send?
"There is something, isn't there?" she asked him, suddenly serious. She could read him so easily. He was embarrassed and felt the sudden urge to laugh at her. Her small pretty face didn't look right without the knowing smile that normally danced around it. Still ubėrcute though.
"Yes," he said, aware that his throat was drying rapidly. He touched the wasser pouch inside his pocket, felt it touch against the split time pill. "Yes. There is something..." he stalled trying to remember how he had rehearsed this. It wouldn't come. He couldn't remember. He could barely remember how to speak at all, never mind remember a specific series of words in a coherent and hopefully eloquent, romantic, even lifechanging order.
Idol could feel Heila B's eyes on him, gently waiting. But still waiting. This was terrible. This was why he had saved. This moment never had to happen. He held the little pill that was his salvation between his fingers as if it was an olden prayer bead.
He was so caught up in escaping this moment that he didn't even feel the touch of Heila B's fingers on his knee. He only became aware of her as her face was close to his, whispering; "I say yes..."
She kissed him. Idol couldn't breathe but he didn't care. Heila B was kissing him. She had said yes without him even asking. Without him even being able to ask. Instead of humiliation that would have to be washed away by time his awkwardness would now be endearing and, if anything a greater proof of their love.
He crushed the time pill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she had shown she could love him however he was? He felt the precious liquid spill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she knew he cared so much he could hardly speak.
The strong smell of aniseed came to Idol. He was vaguely surprised at how strong it was but who cared. He was in a kiss that was lasting forever with the woman who would be with him forever.
And then it came to him. The aniseed wasn't a smell. It was a taste. It was a taste from Heila's mouth. He could taste it now in his mouth as their kisses mingled but it was definitely stronger in her mouth. The taste was too distinctive to be anything other than Time.
When? She had been chewing. She had seen him arrive and then she was chewing. How? The site. The Timesite. She had been on the Timesite and because of her work she was allowed remote savepoints. She had told him before. He knew that. He had envied her the privilege. He had even hoped, secretly, that the privilege might extend to him if they were together. If they were together.
That thought inevitably brought him to a question. Why? Why had she made a savepoint at that moment. There was only one possible answer. She knew what he was going to say, what he was going to ask of her. But if she knew, then she would know her answer and if she knew her answer why would she need to waste a precious save point?
Idol kept the kiss going, desperately now because he knew they were never going to kiss again. She would only have given herself a second chance if she was going to say no. She had saved so that she could rescue him from his predictable collapse and embarrassment. She was kissing him from sympathy.
He felt the liquid of his own crushed Time pill begin to dry between his fingertips.
She was kissing him goodbye.
It took about half a minute and a long drink of wasser but there it was: Save Completed. Now that he had done it, he felt he had made a terrible mistake. Since the Savepoint had cost him three months credit, the fact that it was gone in thirty seconds was bound to be disappointing. That was normal. Regardless of the fact that what he had just done would have been deemed an act of science fiction only forty years ago, it was still a pricey moment, even if it was an everyday occurrence for some people.
Even through his cost worries there was no escaping the shrill excitement of having made his mark in time, having made a moment he could return to again if the mission ahead of him didn't go to plan. This was what people had dreamed of for centuries, a second chance, and now it was commonplace. Too commonplace, he thought with a shudder at the sudden image of those PSP junkies, crippled by the inability to make any decision without covering it with every other possibility, then frantically trying to compensate for the wildly unstable juice dispensed by the Public Save Point machines. The thought of that alternative buoyed him slightly, made the cost of his own private purchase easier to bear. What he was going to do was too important to be left to the whims of cheap Time.
What he was about to do. He had been avoiding thinking about that directly out of sheer nervousness. Even when he had been planning the whole operation he had somehow managed to do it out of the side of his mind's eye, as if it was a task he was setting for someone else, with no great consequences for himself. That wasn't possible anymore. He had taken the first step, now he must take the rest.
He stepped away from the time booth, avoiding eye contact with the man waiting to take his place. Outside, the permanent 23-degree warmth of the city took the booth's chill from him. He and the man slipping past him had sat together silently before Idol's turn without exchanging a word and now that awkwardness put up it's own barrier between them.
It took a moment to get oriented. Idol even had to glance at the map floating in the sky, something he hadn't done regularly since he had arrived from Rudcorn three years ago. The glance set him on his way to the park where Heila sat herself when she was working. Was she working today? A sudden panic gripped him. Had he confused the days? Would she choose to break her habit and set up terminal somewhere else today? Why not? Anyone could plug in wherever they wanted, that was the whole point, after all. What if she was ill? Or just chose to take the day off?
The panic was veering out of control. He stopped walking and tightened his stomach muscles deliberately, taking long slow breaths. He was being silly. The worst that could happen was that he would have to wait until tomorrow or the day after...The thought brought the panic back but he stamped on it hard.
She would be there.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the park. He could have grabbed a pedcar and dropped it in the park but he didn't want to take any chances. Imagine having to waste the Save Point because of some stupid accident. He, along with the rest of the world, regularly moaned about the fact that every Save could only be returned to once. There were dark rumours that the very rich could afford the legendary repeating Saves. These were always strenuously denied, with Time Scientists wheeled out to explain how such a thing was everything from potentially unstable to very improbable to downright impossible.
Idol continued his walk with due care and, he began to think, some sense of occasion. He made a point of taking in his surroundings and his responses to them as perhaps someone on his way down the wedding aisle might. Or perhaps someone on his way to his execution.
On his way to the park, the ramp had taken him over business seats, sprinkled around the stumps of old skyscrapers, which now only served as marker posts in the generally flat city. It was odd; he mused, how the removal of urban weather had allowed such a complete change in work practices. Not so long ago, really, people had spent all day inside and only come out when it was dark. What kind of insane way was that of organising time? Now, if you had to work, at least you could sit outside and do it, seeing as terminals were finally free and, to Idol's guess, were beginning to outnumber workers. What was odd, quaint even, was that people, when their transaction was business, tended to come to the old business places. They could have met anywhere but the old echo of commerce seemed to draw them to these neatly preserved ruins.
As he had walked on the subtle change in the human traffic below him had been from wholesale to retail. In the Tourist area, he country people (like himself he had to consciously note) came to see where the old shops had been. They were mostly empty now, a bit like museums although some of them sold items, in a parody of face to face shopping. It was the tourists rather than the rather tacky shops that Idol noticed more than anything. The way they dressed in clothes that had a function other than visual. How easy it was to forget that there, out in The World, people still got hot and cold, wet and windblown. It really didn't take long to forget that there was such a thing as weather when you didn't meet it every day.
The Tourist area finally gave way to the Casual Park where Heila B liked to sit. Even though what she did there was work, Idol knew that she was one deliberately kept herself away from the business area. He didn't know why exactly but that was only one of the many questions he planned to ask her in their long future together.
The slope off the ramp encouraged him to run. So did his impatience to see if she was where he needed her to be for everything to be perfect. He fought both impulses. No point in arriving looking bedraggled.
The park was busier that he had expected. In his mind's eye he had seen only the two of them but that was always going to be an unlikely scenario. Inevitably, at first he couldn't see her. The old fear came back - she wouldn't be there. He allowed himself two hurried steps forward and of course when she appeared, looking straight up at him he looked harassed and rushed. Two men on wheels darted between them for a moment and when Idol reached Heila she was looking back at her terminal, chewing softly. She looked up again as he arrived beside her.
Damn. After all that. Twenty minutes of strolling, half a second of rushing and to her it looked like he'd run the whole way. He couldn't resist touching the other half of the Time Pill in his pocket, the half that would allow him to have and improve on this moment again if he had to return to the Save Point, if this didn't go well, if she said...
He bit down on that train of thought. Stay focussed.
"Idol. It's bad?"
"What's bad?" he answered, confused.
"Whatever's chasing you," she said, laughing. This laughing didn't hurt him but it wasn't in the script he'd written in his head either.
"No, no. Nothing like that," he trailed off, trying to start again. He was beginning to sweat slightly under his papier suit. To keep busy he sat beside her, glancing at her terminal as he did.
"Don't peek," she chided him.
"You're on the Timesite."
"We're all on the Timesite," she sang to the tune of the corny advertising jingle. Idol felt his smile, as stiff as a corpse. He really didn't want to be talking about timesites and savepoints right now. He couldn't let her know that he had safeguarded himself against her possible rejection by saving before asking. What sort of message would that send?
"There is something, isn't there?" she asked him, suddenly serious. She could read him so easily. He was embarrassed and felt the sudden urge to laugh at her. Her small pretty face didn't look right without the knowing smile that normally danced around it. Still ubėrcute though.
"Yes," he said, aware that his throat was drying rapidly. He touched the wasser pouch inside his pocket, felt it touch against the split time pill. "Yes. There is something..." he stalled trying to remember how he had rehearsed this. It wouldn't come. He couldn't remember. He could barely remember how to speak at all, never mind remember a specific series of words in a coherent and hopefully eloquent, romantic, even lifechanging order.
Idol could feel Heila B's eyes on him, gently waiting. But still waiting. This was terrible. This was why he had saved. This moment never had to happen. He held the little pill that was his salvation between his fingers as if it was an olden prayer bead.
He was so caught up in escaping this moment that he didn't even feel the touch of Heila B's fingers on his knee. He only became aware of her as her face was close to his, whispering; "I say yes..."
She kissed him. Idol couldn't breathe but he didn't care. Heila B was kissing him. She had said yes without him even asking. Without him even being able to ask. Instead of humiliation that would have to be washed away by time his awkwardness would now be endearing and, if anything a greater proof of their love.
He crushed the time pill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she had shown she could love him however he was? He felt the precious liquid spill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she knew he cared so much he could hardly speak.
The strong smell of aniseed came to Idol. He was vaguely surprised at how strong it was but who cared. He was in a kiss that was lasting forever with the woman who would be with him forever.
And then it came to him. The aniseed wasn't a smell. It was a taste. It was a taste from Heila's mouth. He could taste it now in his mouth as their kisses mingled but it was definitely stronger in her mouth. The taste was too distinctive to be anything other than Time.
When? She had been chewing. She had seen him arrive and then she was chewing. How? The site. The Timesite. She had been on the Timesite and because of her work she was allowed remote savepoints. She had told him before. He knew that. He had envied her the privilege. He had even hoped, secretly, that the privilege might extend to him if they were together. If they were together.
That thought inevitably brought him to a question. Why? Why had she made a savepoint at that moment. There was only one possible answer. She knew what he was going to say, what he was going to ask of her. But if she knew, then she would know her answer and if she knew her answer why would she need to waste a precious save point?
Idol kept the kiss going, desperately now because he knew they were never going to kiss again. She would only have given herself a second chance if she was going to say no. She had saved so that she could rescue him from his predictable collapse and embarrassment. She was kissing him from sympathy.
He felt the liquid of his own crushed Time pill begin to dry between his fingertips.
She was kissing him goodbye.
Idol winced at the sour flavour of edible metal as it cracked and released it's brittle aniseed tasting liquid. Time, he reflected, tasted terrible.
It took about half a minute and a long drink of wasser but there it was: Save Completed. Now that he had done it, he felt he had made a terrible mistake. Since the Savepoint had cost him three months credit, the fact that it was gone in thirty seconds was bound to be disappointing. That was normal. Regardless of the fact that what he had just done would have been deemed an act of science fiction only forty years ago, it was still a pricey moment, even if it was an everyday occurrence for some people.
Even through his cost worries there was no escaping the shrill excitement of having made his mark in time, having made a moment he could return to again if the mission ahead of him didn't go to plan. This was what people had dreamed of for centuries, a second chance, and now it was commonplace. Too commonplace, he thought with a shudder at the sudden image of those PSP junkies, crippled by the inability to make any decision without covering it with every other possibility, then frantically trying to compensate for the wildly unstable juice dispensed by the Public Save Point machines. The thought of that alternative buoyed him slightly, made the cost of his own private purchase easier to bear. What he was going to do was too important to be left to the whims of cheap Time.
What he was about to do. He had been avoiding thinking about that directly out of sheer nervousness. Even when he had been planning the whole operation he had somehow managed to do it out of the side of his mind's eye, as if it was a task he was setting for someone else, with no great consequences for himself. That wasn't possible anymore. He had taken the first step, now he must take the rest.
He stepped away from the time booth, avoiding eye contact with the man waiting to take his place. Outside, the permanent 23-degree warmth of the city took the booth's chill from him. He and the man slipping past him had sat together silently before Idol's turn without exchanging a word and now that awkwardness put up it's own barrier between them.
It took a moment to get oriented. Idol even had to glance at the map floating in the sky, something he hadn't done regularly since he had arrived from Rudcorn three years ago. The glance set him on his way to the park where Heila sat herself when she was working. Was she working today? A sudden panic gripped him. Had he confused the days? Would she choose to break her habit and set up terminal somewhere else today? Why not? Anyone could plug in wherever they wanted, that was the whole point, after all. What if she was ill? Or just chose to take the day off?
The panic was veering out of control. He stopped walking and tightened his stomach muscles deliberately, taking long slow breaths. He was being silly. The worst that could happen was that he would have to wait until tomorrow or the day after...The thought brought the panic back but he stamped on it hard.
She would be there.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the park. He could have grabbed a pedcar and dropped it in the park but he didn't want to take any chances. Imagine having to waste the Save Point because of some stupid accident. He, along with the rest of the world, regularly moaned about the fact that every Save could only be returned to once. There were dark rumours that the very rich could afford the legendary repeating Saves. These were always strenuously denied, with Time Scientists wheeled out to explain how such a thing was everything from potentially unstable to very improbable to downright impossible.
Idol continued his walk with due care and, he began to think, some sense of occasion. He made a point of taking in his surroundings and his responses to them as perhaps someone on his way down the wedding aisle might. Or perhaps someone on his way to his execution.
On his way to the park, the ramp had taken him over business seats, sprinkled around the stumps of old skyscrapers, which now only served as marker posts in the generally flat city. It was odd; he mused, how the removal of urban weather had allowed such a complete change in work practices. Not so long ago, really, people had spent all day inside and only come out when it was dark. What kind of insane way was that of organising time? Now, if you had to work, at least you could sit outside and do it, seeing as terminals were finally free and, to Idol's guess, were beginning to outnumber workers. What was odd, quaint even, was that people, when their transaction was business, tended to come to the old business places. They could have met anywhere but the old echo of commerce seemed to draw them to these neatly preserved ruins.
As he had walked on the subtle change in the human traffic below him had been from wholesale to retail. In the Tourist area, he country people (like himself he had to consciously note) came to see where the old shops had been. They were mostly empty now, a bit like museums although some of them sold items, in a parody of face to face shopping. It was the tourists rather than the rather tacky shops that Idol noticed more than anything. The way they dressed in clothes that had a function other than visual. How easy it was to forget that there, out in The World, people still got hot and cold, wet and windblown. It really didn't take long to forget that there was such a thing as weather when you didn't meet it every day.
The Tourist area finally gave way to the Casual Park where Heila B liked to sit. Even though what she did there was work, Idol knew that she was one deliberately kept herself away from the business area. He didn't know why exactly but that was only one of the many questions he planned to ask her in their long future together.
The slope off the ramp encouraged him to run. So did his impatience to see if she was where he needed her to be for everything to be perfect. He fought both impulses. No point in arriving looking bedraggled.
The park was busier that he had expected. In his mind's eye he had seen only the two of them but that was always going to be an unlikely scenario. Inevitably, at first he couldn't see her. The old fear came back - she wouldn't be there. He allowed himself two hurried steps forward and of course when she appeared, looking straight up at him he looked harassed and rushed. Two men on wheels darted between them for a moment and when Idol reached Heila she was looking back at her terminal, chewing softly. She looked up again as he arrived beside her.
Damn. After all that. Twenty minutes of strolling, half a second of rushing and to her it looked like he'd run the whole way. He couldn't resist touching the other half of the Time Pill in his pocket, the half that would allow him to have and improve on this moment again if he had to return to the Save Point, if this didn't go well, if she said...
He bit down on that train of thought. Stay focussed.
"Idol. It's bad?"
"What's bad?" he answered, confused.
"Whatever's chasing you," she said, laughing. This laughing didn't hurt him but it wasn't in the script he'd written in his head either.
"No, no. Nothing like that," he trailed off, trying to start again. He was beginning to sweat slightly under his papier suit. To keep busy he sat beside her, glancing at her terminal as he did.
"Don't peek," she chided him.
"You're on the Timesite."
"We're all on the Timesite," she sang to the tune of the corny advertising jingle. Idol felt his smile, as stiff as a corpse. He really didn't want to be talking about timesites and savepoints right now. He couldn't let her know that he had safeguarded himself against her possible rejection by saving before asking. What sort of message would that send?
"There is something, isn't there?" she asked him, suddenly serious. She could read him so easily. He was embarrassed and felt the sudden urge to laugh at her. Her small pretty face didn't look right without the knowing smile that normally danced around it. Still ubėrcute though.
"Yes," he said, aware that his throat was drying rapidly. He touched the wasser pouch inside his pocket, felt it touch against the split time pill. "Yes. There is something..." he stalled trying to remember how he had rehearsed this. It wouldn't come. He couldn't remember. He could barely remember how to speak at all, never mind remember a specific series of words in a coherent and hopefully eloquent, romantic, even lifechanging order.
Idol could feel Heila B's eyes on him, gently waiting. But still waiting. This was terrible. This was why he had saved. This moment never had to happen. He held the little pill that was his salvation between his fingers as if it was an olden prayer bead.
He was so caught up in escaping this moment that he didn't even feel the touch of Heila B's fingers on his knee. He only became aware of her as her face was close to his, whispering; "I say yes..."
She kissed him. Idol couldn't breathe but he didn't care. Heila B was kissing him. She had said yes without him even asking. Without him even being able to ask. Instead of humiliation that would have to be washed away by time his awkwardness would now be endearing and, if anything a greater proof of their love.
He crushed the time pill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she had shown she could love him however he was? He felt the precious liquid spill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she knew he cared so much he could hardly speak.
The strong smell of aniseed came to Idol. He was vaguely surprised at how strong it was but who cared. He was in a kiss that was lasting forever with the woman who would be with him forever.
And then it came to him. The aniseed wasn't a smell. It was a taste. It was a taste from Heila's mouth. He could taste it now in his mouth as their kisses mingled but it was definitely stronger in her mouth. The taste was too distinctive to be anything other than Time.
When? She had been chewing. She had seen him arrive and then she was chewing. How? The site. The Timesite. She had been on the Timesite and because of her work she was allowed remote savepoints. She had told him before. He knew that. He had envied her the privilege. He had even hoped, secretly, that the privilege might extend to him if they were together. If they were together.
That thought inevitably brought him to a question. Why? Why had she made a savepoint at that moment. There was only one possible answer. She knew what he was going to say, what he was going to ask of her. But if she knew, then she would know her answer and if she knew her answer why would she need to waste a precious save point?
Idol kept the kiss going, desperately now because he knew they were never going to kiss again. She would only have given herself a second chance if she was going to say no. She had saved so that she could rescue him from his predictable collapse and embarrassment. She was kissing him from sympathy.
He felt the liquid of his own crushed Time pill begin to dry between his fingertips.
She was kissing him goodbye.
It took about half a minute and a long drink of wasser but there it was: Save Completed. Now that he had done it, he felt he had made a terrible mistake. Since the Savepoint had cost him three months credit, the fact that it was gone in thirty seconds was bound to be disappointing. That was normal. Regardless of the fact that what he had just done would have been deemed an act of science fiction only forty years ago, it was still a pricey moment, even if it was an everyday occurrence for some people.
Even through his cost worries there was no escaping the shrill excitement of having made his mark in time, having made a moment he could return to again if the mission ahead of him didn't go to plan. This was what people had dreamed of for centuries, a second chance, and now it was commonplace. Too commonplace, he thought with a shudder at the sudden image of those PSP junkies, crippled by the inability to make any decision without covering it with every other possibility, then frantically trying to compensate for the wildly unstable juice dispensed by the Public Save Point machines. The thought of that alternative buoyed him slightly, made the cost of his own private purchase easier to bear. What he was going to do was too important to be left to the whims of cheap Time.
What he was about to do. He had been avoiding thinking about that directly out of sheer nervousness. Even when he had been planning the whole operation he had somehow managed to do it out of the side of his mind's eye, as if it was a task he was setting for someone else, with no great consequences for himself. That wasn't possible anymore. He had taken the first step, now he must take the rest.
He stepped away from the time booth, avoiding eye contact with the man waiting to take his place. Outside, the permanent 23-degree warmth of the city took the booth's chill from him. He and the man slipping past him had sat together silently before Idol's turn without exchanging a word and now that awkwardness put up it's own barrier between them.
It took a moment to get oriented. Idol even had to glance at the map floating in the sky, something he hadn't done regularly since he had arrived from Rudcorn three years ago. The glance set him on his way to the park where Heila sat herself when she was working. Was she working today? A sudden panic gripped him. Had he confused the days? Would she choose to break her habit and set up terminal somewhere else today? Why not? Anyone could plug in wherever they wanted, that was the whole point, after all. What if she was ill? Or just chose to take the day off?
The panic was veering out of control. He stopped walking and tightened his stomach muscles deliberately, taking long slow breaths. He was being silly. The worst that could happen was that he would have to wait until tomorrow or the day after...The thought brought the panic back but he stamped on it hard.
She would be there.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the park. He could have grabbed a pedcar and dropped it in the park but he didn't want to take any chances. Imagine having to waste the Save Point because of some stupid accident. He, along with the rest of the world, regularly moaned about the fact that every Save could only be returned to once. There were dark rumours that the very rich could afford the legendary repeating Saves. These were always strenuously denied, with Time Scientists wheeled out to explain how such a thing was everything from potentially unstable to very improbable to downright impossible.
Idol continued his walk with due care and, he began to think, some sense of occasion. He made a point of taking in his surroundings and his responses to them as perhaps someone on his way down the wedding aisle might. Or perhaps someone on his way to his execution.
On his way to the park, the ramp had taken him over business seats, sprinkled around the stumps of old skyscrapers, which now only served as marker posts in the generally flat city. It was odd; he mused, how the removal of urban weather had allowed such a complete change in work practices. Not so long ago, really, people had spent all day inside and only come out when it was dark. What kind of insane way was that of organising time? Now, if you had to work, at least you could sit outside and do it, seeing as terminals were finally free and, to Idol's guess, were beginning to outnumber workers. What was odd, quaint even, was that people, when their transaction was business, tended to come to the old business places. They could have met anywhere but the old echo of commerce seemed to draw them to these neatly preserved ruins.
As he had walked on the subtle change in the human traffic below him had been from wholesale to retail. In the Tourist area, he country people (like himself he had to consciously note) came to see where the old shops had been. They were mostly empty now, a bit like museums although some of them sold items, in a parody of face to face shopping. It was the tourists rather than the rather tacky shops that Idol noticed more than anything. The way they dressed in clothes that had a function other than visual. How easy it was to forget that there, out in The World, people still got hot and cold, wet and windblown. It really didn't take long to forget that there was such a thing as weather when you didn't meet it every day.
The Tourist area finally gave way to the Casual Park where Heila B liked to sit. Even though what she did there was work, Idol knew that she was one deliberately kept herself away from the business area. He didn't know why exactly but that was only one of the many questions he planned to ask her in their long future together.
The slope off the ramp encouraged him to run. So did his impatience to see if she was where he needed her to be for everything to be perfect. He fought both impulses. No point in arriving looking bedraggled.
The park was busier that he had expected. In his mind's eye he had seen only the two of them but that was always going to be an unlikely scenario. Inevitably, at first he couldn't see her. The old fear came back - she wouldn't be there. He allowed himself two hurried steps forward and of course when she appeared, looking straight up at him he looked harassed and rushed. Two men on wheels darted between them for a moment and when Idol reached Heila she was looking back at her terminal, chewing softly. She looked up again as he arrived beside her.
Damn. After all that. Twenty minutes of strolling, half a second of rushing and to her it looked like he'd run the whole way. He couldn't resist touching the other half of the Time Pill in his pocket, the half that would allow him to have and improve on this moment again if he had to return to the Save Point, if this didn't go well, if she said...
He bit down on that train of thought. Stay focussed.
"Idol. It's bad?"
"What's bad?" he answered, confused.
"Whatever's chasing you," she said, laughing. This laughing didn't hurt him but it wasn't in the script he'd written in his head either.
"No, no. Nothing like that," he trailed off, trying to start again. He was beginning to sweat slightly under his papier suit. To keep busy he sat beside her, glancing at her terminal as he did.
"Don't peek," she chided him.
"You're on the Timesite."
"We're all on the Timesite," she sang to the tune of the corny advertising jingle. Idol felt his smile, as stiff as a corpse. He really didn't want to be talking about timesites and savepoints right now. He couldn't let her know that he had safeguarded himself against her possible rejection by saving before asking. What sort of message would that send?
"There is something, isn't there?" she asked him, suddenly serious. She could read him so easily. He was embarrassed and felt the sudden urge to laugh at her. Her small pretty face didn't look right without the knowing smile that normally danced around it. Still ubėrcute though.
"Yes," he said, aware that his throat was drying rapidly. He touched the wasser pouch inside his pocket, felt it touch against the split time pill. "Yes. There is something..." he stalled trying to remember how he had rehearsed this. It wouldn't come. He couldn't remember. He could barely remember how to speak at all, never mind remember a specific series of words in a coherent and hopefully eloquent, romantic, even lifechanging order.
Idol could feel Heila B's eyes on him, gently waiting. But still waiting. This was terrible. This was why he had saved. This moment never had to happen. He held the little pill that was his salvation between his fingers as if it was an olden prayer bead.
He was so caught up in escaping this moment that he didn't even feel the touch of Heila B's fingers on his knee. He only became aware of her as her face was close to his, whispering; "I say yes..."
She kissed him. Idol couldn't breathe but he didn't care. Heila B was kissing him. She had said yes without him even asking. Without him even being able to ask. Instead of humiliation that would have to be washed away by time his awkwardness would now be endearing and, if anything a greater proof of their love.
He crushed the time pill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she had shown she could love him however he was? He felt the precious liquid spill between his fingers. Who needed it now that she knew he cared so much he could hardly speak.
The strong smell of aniseed came to Idol. He was vaguely surprised at how strong it was but who cared. He was in a kiss that was lasting forever with the woman who would be with him forever.
And then it came to him. The aniseed wasn't a smell. It was a taste. It was a taste from Heila's mouth. He could taste it now in his mouth as their kisses mingled but it was definitely stronger in her mouth. The taste was too distinctive to be anything other than Time.
When? She had been chewing. She had seen him arrive and then she was chewing. How? The site. The Timesite. She had been on the Timesite and because of her work she was allowed remote savepoints. She had told him before. He knew that. He had envied her the privilege. He had even hoped, secretly, that the privilege might extend to him if they were together. If they were together.
That thought inevitably brought him to a question. Why? Why had she made a savepoint at that moment. There was only one possible answer. She knew what he was going to say, what he was going to ask of her. But if she knew, then she would know her answer and if she knew her answer why would she need to waste a precious save point?
Idol kept the kiss going, desperately now because he knew they were never going to kiss again. She would only have given herself a second chance if she was going to say no. She had saved so that she could rescue him from his predictable collapse and embarrassment. She was kissing him from sympathy.
He felt the liquid of his own crushed Time pill begin to dry between his fingertips.
She was kissing him goodbye.
Well... I quite enjoyed that. Thought it was going to be too gamey but liked the idea anyway. Got quite confused at the end though. Couldn't work out how she knew the question if it hadn't been asked and why she bothered with a savepoint if she was going to say no ... again.
EDIT - it's probably just me - I'm tired :)
EDIT - it's probably just me - I'm tired :)
The whole futuristic world where life has become a videogame is intriguing, and I like the slant you put on it, with the aniseed time capsules and the other details you touched upon. Good stuff. I think I understood the end.