Twenty seconds

Noah wakes to the sound of the siren. No one goes to the Minero suburb anymore. But just in case some teenagers try to show-off their running skills after sniffing the last fumes of a paint can, it will at least give them a head-start. The relics of an old diamond mine is the last surviving evidence of a forgotten underground mining world. The last time it was active, was in 2085, ten years before the big explosion. Now it still spews angry gases from the holes prior civilizations used to dig. It is out of those holes hot lava now flows. The ground is too cold for it to flow further than two kilometers. The explosion pushed Earth towards Uranus. Older folks talk about the Sun having turned its back on Earth, and the greater focus now is on the new moon, Jupiter. 

Noah stretches and then jumps up and runs towards the bathroom. At the age of eighteen, he is already starting to feel the effects of aging. Once his brain wakes his bladder, he has exactly twenty seconds to make it to the bathroom. Only three months ago, he was still able to hold it for ninety seconds. Looking at his collection of Dry-Bath, he takes a quick sniff under his arms. He decides he can still go without a bath for at least another four days. He is observing his reflection in the mirror when he spots the note on the left corner. Today is the day that he will see her again.

It is breezy outside, with the temperature at a comfortable 1.4 degrees Celsius. Mixing the vanilla milk powder with the vegetable crackers, he is rehearsing the words he wants to say to her. Spotting the diced pears, he decides to be extravagant and pours a handful to the mixture. He feels lucky today! Slowly adding the lye water, the blend rises perfectly in the huge bowl. He finds a spot at the window to build his bodily sustenance for the day.

Looking out onto the beach, he is admiring the calm of the sea as a couple strolls through the sand. And then, as usual, the water rises and swats them violently. When it recedes, the man swims out to give his partner a hand out of the wet. With hunched shoulders and discarded wigs, they walk back to where they came from.

At the door, he adjusts the thermostat. The meter reader blinks methodically, and he smiles at the storage indicator. He did not consume a lot of air this month. He read once that it used to be free. No one claimed dominion over the air, and people actually expanded their lung capacities through exercise and strenuous physical activities. What a crazy world it was then! He is sure happy that it no longer exists.

He presses his left thumb into the scanner to exit, and at the same time shuts down the airflow controls. He slips his ID card into his pocket. Without it, he will not be able to access the cinema complex. No one is allowed to consume air inside a building, unless you have sufficient credit.

He stops to greet his neighbor, as the latter punches in the code to feed the meter reader. Joshua is a great person, but very disobedient towards the system. He once went for a whole week without paying for air. The authorities visited him daily, but he refused to switch onto the grid. He survived by leaving all doors and windows open, seventeen hours a day. Eventually his sister came to visit and gave him medicine. The black liquid was in a brown bottle. The medicine made him happy, and he danced and sang the whole day. Then the next day, his lungs gave him trouble, and he had to, as he put it, plug into the system again.

“So today is the day then.” Noah stops.

Joshua continues, “This is your last chance, young man. Days are getting shorter.”

Noah focuses on the bustle of the street, but all of a sudden, his brain alerts his body to a great pressure. Turning around, he is counting in his head. Five seconds to the entrance, three seconds to confirm his identity on the scanner, and two seconds for the air to start flowing. He counts another seven seconds to reach the bathroom. The timing of his release is so accurate, and he is now starting to contemplate whether the meeting with her is such a good idea. Looking in the mirror, he adjusts his glasses and hand-combs the balding patch.

He met her at the Brain-Health Biohacking seminar one month ago. Sweating under the chrome face-mask, he focused on the soft hands of the person next to him at the laser table. He has never seen such beautiful hands. The nails were so clean, even the cuticles were neatly tucked in, to further enhance the magnificent outlines of the fingers. And then the hand moved. It was rising from the table, moving closer to his face. He reached out to touch it, when suddenly it hit him on the arm.

“You are so silly! I’m trying to embarrass you for staring at a hand! And here you are, having fun.”

From the voice, he could hear it was a woman, but the mask made it difficult to see her face. He was burning hot behind the mask.

After the seminar, he scoured the crowd. Since he only focused on her hand, he knew it was a futile exercise. He packed two bottles of the precious H2O liquid in his backpack, and walked towards the exit. The walk-way to the gate was long. By the time he reached the exit he was fully acclimatized to the outside air. During the long walk, he remembered a time when his mother covered his whole body with a clear liquid. It felt heavy on his body, and kept pressing him down. It was such an amazing thing. But he never experienced that again in his life.

Just before the exit point, a woman approached him. She had a huge smile on her face. She was rather short and quite curvy towards the bottom. Dark shadows were playing underneath her eyes, and she was clutching a branch of a sassafras tree. He politely lowered his gaze. And then she spoke.

“It is me.” He looked at her in bewilderment. She then lifted her hand, and turned the back towards him.

Today is the day he must make his move. Time is running out. Days are shrinking to seven hours, and the nights to five. Men age three times faster than women, therefore if something is going to happen, it must happen soon.

As he exits for the second time, he sees that Joshua is still fiddling with the meter reader. He walks as fast as possible, and stays clear from the enchanting waters. As he passes the drone museum, he spots her in the distance as she navigates her way through lazy toddlers. He knows she will never miss the re-screening of a classic movie released over two hundred years ago, The art of racing in the rain. It is one of the last movies made of the extinct miniature beasts which lived among humans. She is breathing heavily, and seeing the colorful cane, he smiles as he nears her. Giving her space to catch her breath, he looks out over the sandy horizon.

Still wiping sweat from her face and neck, she waddles towards him.

“Noah! What a surprise!”. The toothless smile is making his head spin.

“Are you joining me for the classics?”

As she squints towards him, he feels the warm sensation flowing through his body. The emotions he experiences in her presence, are so pleasant. And today they are making him brave. He steps closer to her, puts his hands on her shoulders, and kisses her on the lips. She looks at him with dancing eyes, and then whispers, “Can I have more?”

Noah’s brain signals the ominous countdown, and before he can say a single word, twenty seconds has passed.