Time Is Money

It was a cool, damp day. The sun was low and white and the air had a bite of early frost to it, causing Kaspar to pull his black woollen scarf closer to his pale jaw and mingle with the black stubble there, stark against the white of his cheek. Kaspar was making his way to hospital for the fourth time that month. He was heading for a meeting with a new client, and had located the spring in his step; this one would bring him to target.

He was nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, dangling it from his long fingers as he walked. The trails of silky, smoky liquor following him and marking his path in ghostly tendrils were, in waves, suddenly snatched away by the teasing wind that followed. Kaspar enjoyed the smoking irony, so strong he could taste it; these things took five minutes off your life, each. An expensive hobby, especially in his line of work. But Kaspar’s luck was high, and instead he thought about the glass of red wine he’d have later to lengthen his span by five minutes and ‘cancel’ the cigarette. Doctor’s orders. Sort-of. Only pleasures in these contented, yet stringent, times.

At this passing thought, he couldn’t help but let his mouth turn to the slightest of grimaces. He thought now about the mortgage due, the length of time it had been since he’d properly worked, using his mind instead of being just a salesman, but being made redundant from his only passion, his career... Then his expression softened into his more recently habitual look of soothed transience, present since he had started his new ‘business’ nearly six months ago, and he smiled, somewhat relieved, to himself.

His original career - as a Physicist - had started him off well. But the universal switchover of the natural order from Science to Magic two years ago had completely put paid to his career. Nothing now was needed of detailed scientific discovery or formula. Now, one could wave a wand or say a word and reduce your trouble at once. The agreed-upon magic, so popular once and forgotten, and now enjoying a fashionable resurgence that had led it to replace, in a sceptic’s view, the more traditional R&D with D&D, had lifted the current millennium into the stratosphere of simple and easy pleasures it could only have so far have dreamed of. He knew of several phenomenologists who had committed suicide rather than relent to the breaking of the laws of physics – their own rules of existence - for the sake of an easier and consequence-proof world, in which an answer seemed to have been found for everything. Although - he noted to himself, bringing the cigarette to his lips for an expedient puff - most mathematicians he knew had weathered the change, becoming sorcerers of sorts, honing their powers of prediction as seers.

With the loss of science there was no possibility of cures, but with the gaining of magic there was no need for religion, or morals, that might have continued the search. Magic took the pain out of most suffering. Despite the lack of actual cure, most people were happy, and despite the overall use of magic being heavily regulated, the people thrived. Food and luxuries were still to be bought with currency in order to keep the economy running to a certain degree, and now gold, still impervious to magic as the alchemists had long ago discovered, was now currency of the realm and still had to be earned. Which is what Kaspar, in the only way he now thought possible, now that his specialty was lost and the world turned over to superstition that actually worked, was trying to do.

The only relief to the situation was the discovery that magic could not prolong life shortened by certain diseases – Cancer, for example, which was a sort of magic of itself, reproducing the wrong cells in the wrong places. Instead, magic was used to combat the symptoms: a glamour for fixing hair lost by pre-magic chemo; the ritual of the waning moon to reduce the most superficial of lumps; a binding spell to keep the size of larger tumours at bay. It still mystified Kaspar that pearly teeth and curling hair cells could be reproduced at random to turn up inside even scrotal or mammary tissue. He grimaced; imagine that inside your sac. Or, even worse, your brain. It would be as if a tiny version of yourself was living inside your precious processor tissue, all teeth and hair, and possibly (murder for him) holding the position of conscience almost-personified. You wouldn’t be able to ignore it for once, it would force you to think and account. He physically swatted this image away, said a charm over his privates for the protection of his future offspring (pointless habit now, no chance of him daring to bring life into this world) and kept up his pace.

Kaspar turned the corner and headed towards the red-and-blue of Balham Underground, passing still-shuttered shops where electrical appliances had mouldered in their factory-fresh boxes for over a year. Thinking about it, the only other scientists he could think that were better off since The Switch were the quantum physicists and higher dimension theorists, and they were having a field-day; most laymen had thought they were wizards to begin with. Doctors, surprisingly, hadn’t done too badly out of it, as most regarded them as still the only really competent folk to wield medical magics, as if their fast-paced med-speak from before had trained them for it. It amused Kaspar slightly that he had turned from Physicist to Physician of sorts. People had always got the pronunciation wrong before. Nowadays the meaning was almost indeed synonymous.

Almost. Walking briskly now against the frozen air, unswirled or warmed by traffic, Kaspar looked down at the scruffy briefcase he carried to pretend what he was doing was a viable alternative to his beloved career. He coughed, smudging saliva into his stubble with the back of his cigarette hand, and then taking another drag. Real doctors had had proper doctors’ bags, a signifier for their trade in curing; here is the bag from whence all cures come, we shall all be well. All he offered as an alternative to cure and care was scratched up from a second-hand school satchel, weather-beaten and worn in a way that was less than charming. Kaspar suddenly hoped, glancing down at the careworn scratches on the sides that they said ‘experienced’ instead of ‘tramp’, and ducked into the Tube.

Sitting in the packed, cramped carriage – even at this hour – his head lolled and he let his gaze wander around at all the other passengers. All stared off, trying to ignore each other. Some things hadn’t changed.

The lights flickered; the whole company of glassy eyes was as if switched on and off in the dark, illumined by occasional track sparks, like lightning. He noticed more and more the lines around people’s eyes as their morning glamours wore off. People all seemed a little older these days, as if the hedonism of an easier, magical lifestyle were taking its toll. Kaspar briefly wondered if any of them could be ‘donors’? Maybe he should leave his card on the seat as he left? People who still rode the Tube instead of flying their own broomstick or magic carpet were at the most Pragmatists, at the least Nostalgics, and might be interested in the product he had to offer, or desperate enough to consider selling their most underused personal asset. He mused, alone in the crush.

At Borough the crowd lessened, and a certain, familiar odour entered the carriage. Kaspar looked up and was not at all surprised to see a wizened old man with a sandwich board, his dark face leathery with age and almost matching the crusty navy parka he wore over a pair of frayed, greying cords. His whole person seemed to be washed out and faded, and even his black skin seemed washed out to charcoal, covered with a fine, pale dust. No glamours to fix the picture here. His sandwich board read the same as all the others that had appeared since The Switch: ‘The End Is Nigh’. Pretty traditional, Kaspar mused. Who supplies those things, and do they come ready-printed? He fixed his gaze on the nothingness of the ceiling to get him through the coming rant. This one was relatively simple.

“We’re all running out of time!” the man called down the carriage. His voice was low and calm, as if he knew the message off by heart and was simply performing his job by calling it out.
“We’re all running out of time!” Hand over fist, he pulled himself with surprising ease and agility down the swaying carriage, commuters automatically moving their feet away from his ignorable but factual presence as he passed. His voice rose.
“You don’t believe it, but it’s true!”

Kaspar shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Next stop, next stop and out, almost like a spell itself in chanting. He hated these old men - they were nearly always old men - with their pomp and attitude; a message to give from a higher power that was no longer believed in but still knew better. Kaspar found himself wondering how many of them had been Priests. Most of them were Magic-deniers, refusing to use it even now it was so common and made life so easy, and so had fallen out of society, regarded with suspicion.

Even without looking directly at him, he felt the old man grow nearer, the smell of him grow stronger. He braced himself for his passing. But the man didn’t go past. Kaspar found himself all at once eye-to-eye with the aged seer, gazing into brown-black irises that were like deepening, darkening pools of nothing. After a moment of stillness, he blinked. The man, unblinking, breathed out, slowly, into his face. The odour of his breath was strong and unplaceable. Kaspar flinched, and the man’s lips slowly widened in a smile.

“You know.” He spoke evenly and calmly, but there was a sting of reproach in his voice. His eyes flickered, studying Kaspar’s own. He must have found them wanting because his lips began to frown and his eyes hardened as he pulled away from Kaspar’s face.
“You know,” he said again, and stood back, his dusty dreadlocks nodding as the train pulled into London Bridge. He lowered an arm from the ceiling rail, and held out his hand towards the sliding door. Kaspar realised the man was gesturing for him to leave. How did he know that? Guesswork, or wishful thinking Kaspar thought, grabbing his satchel from between his feet and swinging for the door. But, looking back from the platform as the train left the station, accompanied by the rising note that plateaued at a D, he found himself meet the old man’s eyes once more. They seemed to burn from the carriage, the man’s face no longer smiling, but fierce, then swallowed by the eternal dark at the end of the platform.

Filing back out to the topside, the wash of tube air over him in a rush as he left the underground behind, Kaspar tried to forget the little old man with the dark eyes and ready himself for his appointment. Although he had held it together pretty well in the carriage, the encounter had shaken him. Because, he did know. Or at least, he had an idea.

Kaspar always preferred to take the footbridge up to the Hospital, even though it wasn’t always the most direct route to the wards he wanted. Normally, he would be on the lookout for prospective buyers among the undiagnosed, awaiting treatment or prognosis. He tried to remember faces and drop cards. The hospital staff mostly ignored him. Today, he was selling, though he might find a donor on the way. By now, though, he really didn’t feel like either. Taking the stairs up to Guy’s from the station, he found his legs were shaking.

With the acceptance of Magic, and the crashing down of Physics, had come the realisation of most intangible concepts as commodities. No one knew how to deal with Space: this seemed too large a concept to grasp. But Time, everyone understood Time, or thought they did. It was something everyone had, it was personal, and before The Switch, people, with their busy, stressful lifestyles of doing everything and having everything and fitting everything in, didn’t have enough of it. Now, post-Switch and with simple magical solutions to everyday problems, they were rolling in it. Selling time had had to be made illegal shortly after it was discovered to be theoretically possible. As with most things that seemed too difficult to understand, it was deemed, simply, wrong, immoral. Most importantly, however, it seemed impossible to regulate; Fate was non-existent, thus Time was infinite, and in this new economy everyone was rich with it. But the concept of tangible, saleable time was difficult to conceive, and not enough people could come to terms with the idea and break out in business on their own, even after the ban on such industry, and it quickly fell out of favour. Those in power took it in hand, found people left over from the time before who said they understood it, and now people donated their time in government schemes, not just in volunteered labour and services because they had more of it to offer, but actually physically, to others who needed it more than them. It was the public face of something the people didn’t understand, and it sated them. In these satisfied and contented times, where there was little effort needing to be made, people felt guilty, and false altruism was high. It was the Organ Donor Card of The Switch.

But, Kaspar had been desperate. All Kaspar had known, cared at first: time was money, especially to him. And time was something he understood as a Physicist. To him, and others like him, it was tangible, the Magic for it possible, seen as delicately as the glimmer of light on a spider’s web, but still seen. To most of those though it was still immoral, and most of those who still clung to the almost-physics properties of time management had opted for the government jobs in Time Donation Regulation, but some, like Kaspar, had quietly moved out of silent satisfaction with magic and into the criminal sphere. People dying wanted more time if they could afford it, to offset the precious moments that were eaten up by the putting of their affairs into order before they died, or simply to enjoy what life had left to give them. Magic had taken so much away from him. No allowances had been made for those who actually suffered from the removal of Science. Wasn’t he owed something for his skills? Wasn’t this his contribution to Magic?

No one had truly explored the overall effects of buying and selling time. As Kaspar now entered the Blundell Ward to meet with his client, a throat and mouth cancer patient, he felt a flicker of the doubt that had always been at the back of his mind. He wasn’t by nature an out-and-out criminal. He had a conscience, morals, that couldn’t help but prick him into promising that this would be the last time, the last seedy, illegal handover of time for money. He had had an idea that disturbed him and made him finally feel the need to stop trading, but the end was in sight now, the final goal, and he couldn’t until the sale was done. His inkling was that buying and selling time was like burning coal; a seemingly limitless, natural product that covered the Earth, it had very quickly disappeared because of complacency over its usage. In fact, very ironically perhaps, the finally-admitted end of the coal supply had been one of the deciding factors in The Switch – Magic could power everything with a word.

No one had thought to consider what powered Magic.

The customer coughed heavily into a kidney-dish, depositing something that looked like a small kidney of phlegm, wrapped in saliva and blood, with a metallic ping. Kaspar shivered, aching for a cigarette. The man in front of him was dying of throat and mouth cancer, having been a lifelong smoker. Even now, Kaspar realised the patient was staring searchingly at him, smelling the fading scent of nicotine in Kaspar’s presence, and breathing him deeply through his gasping tracheotomy.

The handover was almost silent. Kaspar left the customer a full year richer, with his satchel impossibly heavier, the vision of a wink of gold still present in his mind’s eye after he closed the bag. This was his time, the stuff that kept him going. And this was enough – he could stop now. He’d sold, in total in the last six months, thirty-four years worth of time – almost exactly the equal of his own life - and earned himself the right to give it up and enjoy a paid-for lifestyle with the proceeds. Magic had paid him back. Now he could stop. Before I can do any more damage, he attempted to joke with himself, and scolded himself as the guilt he meant to mask still rose in his chest.

Escaping the hospital and that scent he still couldn’t place – was it one of those hospital smells then? That could explain it, maybe the old man on the Tube had been terminal himself, railing about it in public to make himself feel better - he sparked up and took a long drag that warmed him from inside in the shockingly cold air. Maybe winter was coming on sooner this year.

He descended the steps and took another drag... and was suddenly dizzy. He gripped the hand rail and had to sit on the step until it passed. The pavement roared up at him from two storeys below, and there was a ringing in his ears that softened to the reality of blood pounding, hard. He took a breath, found it shallow, and panicked, dropping his cigarette over the rail as he clawed at his scarf which was suddenly too tight. A moment or two later, and he felt better. He passed a charm over himself, tried to stand and fell back, again struggling to breathe. The air became cloudy in front of him, and he waved his hands through it to waft the invisible mist from his face. He found himself staring into a familiar pair of deep, dark eyes, and smelling that same non-smell, only now he recognised it.

“You’ve run out of time,” the old man said softly, reaching out to hold Kaspar’s head as he struggled and choked against nothing at all. His fingers were ice-cold. Kaspar could feel the sandwich board clunk against his knees as the old man leant to him for a final embrace. Kaspar tasted blood in his throat.

“You can’t sell what you don’t have,” the old man chided, then was almost chuckling. He shook his head sadly.
“Time-poor, cash-rich...”
Kaspar understood. The scent of death finally upon him.
“...Time is money, but Magic is time...you take Time by Magic, Magic eats Time away...”
A bubble of blood bloomed and burst on Kaspar’s wrinkling lips. He nodded in understanding. Then his eyes started to glaze, beaten.

The old man waited for the final motes of time to dissipate from Kaspar’s body with his last breath, then laid his head gently to the ground. Standing up slowly, pausing to rub his aging knees, he spied the satchel, now without an owner. Experimentally, he picked it up. He found it came willingly.

“Time-poor, cash-rich, works for some people...” he murmured, and trudged back down to ground level, a spring just about noticeable in his step.

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(Originally written on Friday, 26 December '08, am posting this story now as suddenly a film on the same theme is about to be released, 'In Time', and I wanted to get my version read first :))