The Button

I was late.

The quad of my high school campus - the central outdoor area of the New York Academy of Arts - was packed with protestors holding handmade signs that screamed TIME IS TIME and NO HURRY NO DELAY in red paint.

I should have expected it; I'd heard on the news that a new and improved version of the Button was about to go on the market, and anytime there was news like that, there would be protests all over the city.

NO HURRY NO DELAY. I shook my head. I did need to hurry. I had an appointment with Amelia Amour. She was a famous actress - two-time Oscar winner, Broadway star, and now, thanks to years of my own hard work, my high school drama professor at NYAA. I couldn’t keep her waiting.

The day was sunny and bright, but breezy. All the protestors were wearing sweatshirts or jackets. There was no other way across the quad, so I had to wiggle my way through the crowd, muttering “excuse me” repeatedly while they all screamed and shouted their chants.

I could hardly believe any of this was happening. I'd requested an appointment with Amelia weeks ago, telling her I needed thirty minutes to talk to her about my upcoming monologue assignment. Fifteen minutes ago, an e-mail confirmation had popped up in my inbox. It was dumb luck that I was even on campus and able to sprint over to Amelia's office. With everything going on at home, I usually headed for the subway immediately after my last class ended, to be with Mom and Claire and Emmeline and Granddad.

Today, however, I'd succumbed to the begging of my drama friends and agreed to hang around for a coffee after school. Thank God I did, or I never would have seen the e-mail confirmation, never would have been in a position to run like hell and get to Amelia’s office in time to ask her the question I desperately needed to ask.

I was almost at the edge of the crowd when a dude in a flannel button-down and a bubble vest swivelled around suddenly. He was holding his protest sign awkwardly at waist height, and it knocked me to the ground.

“Whoa, I’m sorry,” the dude said, kneeling down to help me. I could read his sign clearly. WE CAN’T STOP TIME, it said.

I scowled at him and pushed his hand away, getting up without assistance and stomping out of the throngs of students.

They didn’t know anything, the kid protestors with their meaningless chants. They were protesting something they probably didn’t even understand. Not many of us could comprehend the benefit of the Button, and how much we’d someday want desperately to have what it promised - the ability to control time.

*****

When new technology emerged, older adults were generally skeptical and a bit annoyed - especially my grandfather. He despised devices like Alexa and Google Home. “Just a new-fangled way to be lazy,” he’d grumble. “And to ruin good music, too.”

No one - not even Granddad - spoke that way about the Button. Whether they were in awe of it, or thought of it as evil, they still spoke about the invention with reverence. However one might feel about the Button personally, it was an incredible scientific and technological accomplishment, and when people discussed it, they did so with respect.

Of course, we didn’t have one in our apartment - the cramped three-bedroom in Brooklyn where I’d grown up and still lived today. When I was born, there were six of us, but Grandma died when I was two, so for as long as I can remember it’s always been just us five. My grandfather grumbling, my two older sisters bossing me around, and Mom in the background, quietly taking care of us, a smile and a look of wonder ever-present on her face. My mother had a way of helping all of us, even Granddad, to look at the bright side of life, to see the good in each other and in the world. While Granddad grumbled about new technology, she was in awe of it all.

“Can you even imagine?” she’d say when the news talked about the Button.

“Don’t need to imagine,” Granddad would answer. “We’ll never see one of those in this neighhborhood, not in my lifetime - or yours.”

It was Emmeline who explained to me what he meant - that new technology was never available to people like us, not at first.

“The first CD player cost like a thousand dollars,” she explained. “It was years before regular people like us could afford one and go get it at the store.”

That was certainly true of the Button. The first few Buttons built were sold for one billion dollars - apiece. Now that they’d been around for over a decade, the price had lowered considerably, and you could get one for a million dollars.

“The rich people get most things first,” Emmeline explained. “They pay a ton of money for it and it’s just theirs for a while. Then once newer things come along, the older things are mass marketed and the price goes down. Once the price goes down, people like us can get the thing - usually years later. It’s not as special anymore, but it’s ours then.”

“Why can’t we have it when it’s special?”

“Because we’re not special,” Emmeline said matter-of-factly. Mom hushed her then. Emmeline had a way of telling it like it was, which I appreciated as the youngest child in a house full of grown-ups.

A billion dollars, a million - it could have been a hundred thousand dollars, and it still would have been out of reach. Which didn’t matter a bit to us.

Until, suddenly, it did.

*****

When I burst into her office, Amelia Amour barely acknowledged my arrival. Without looking up, she launched into a speech.

“Well, I received your e-mail, and I do empathize with your circumstances, but I made a policy a long time ago, to never excuse students from their first monologue -”

“I lied,” I said quickly. “I don't need to be excused from the monologue.” I concentrated on keeping my breathing steady, trying not to think about the fact that I'd just lied to one of my childhood heroes, and the only woman who could possibly help my family with our current difficulties.

The fact that Amelia Amour was even my professor was incredible. Her family had founded NYAA, an elite school for young artists and performers in New York City, and she had taught the introductory drama course for decades. Her name was known around the world, the shelves of her office were lined with golden statuettes, and I had just busted into her space and announced that I had lied to her.

I’d wanted to be an actress ever since I was a small child - done every community theatre performance I could, taken dozens of dance and drama classes, and bought discount tickets to every Broadway show I could get. All that hard work had led, six months ago, to my audition and acceptance to NYAA.

Which is why I was here - the only person in my family in any kind of position to get my hands on a Button. The only one in my family who had access to a billionaire.

“I don't need to be excused from the assignment,” I said quietly. “I'm sorry I lied. I need the Button.

Amelia’s eyebrows lifted. “My button?”

I shook my head. “Not yours. But I'm gambling on the fact that you probably have more than one. And that one of them, at least, is stowed away in a box somewhere in case you need it someday.”

Amelia Amour was rich enough that I was certain I was right. Claire wasn’t so sure, when I’d revealed my plan to her, but my sisters were always underestimating me - always doubting that I could be right about something they didn’t understand. Emmeline was in her second year of medical school, a brilliant scientist destined for greatness, and Claire was pre-law at NYU.

Neither of them knew celebrities the way I did. I studied stars like Amelia. If Amelia Amour and her family could buy one Button, they could, and would, buy more than one. Everyone knew that the Buttons as they currently existed were single use only - one chance, to either slow down or speed up time at the press of a button. No reuse - no second chances. Who wouldn’t stockpile them if they could?

“I’m also gambling that you’ll forgive me for lying,” I said quietly. “Because the other part of my e-mail was true.”

Amelia nodded, her eyes fixed on my face. She was sixty-seven years old and breathtakingly beautiful. If I could have wished for anything at that moment, it would have been the chance to see my mother at sixty-seven years old, just as beautiful as the woman before me and looking at me with the same kind of focused attention.

That wish was impossible. All I wanted was what was possible.

All I wanted was a Button.

“For cash?” she asked. “You want to buy it from me?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a dime. I’m fourteen years old, ma’am, and I'm going to try to be someone someday. But for now -”

“You want a Button. For free.”

I nodded.

She stared at me, and I waited - at the mercy of the only millionaire in the world my family could call upon for a favor.

“How long does she have?” Amelia Amour asked me, her voice softening.

I swallowed, hard. Everything had been happening so fast. This was the first time I’d said it out loud. “Six weeks.”

*****

Mom got the diagnosis two months ago, and ever since the day she told us, I’ve thought of nothing but the Button - nothing but the chance to slow down the hands of time.

When the Button was advertised, exact figures weren’t utilized. The way the invention worked was through a combination of technology and science. The organic materials infused within the Button combined with the individual cells of the person whose hand pressed it, creating the phenomenon of either the acceleration or deceleration of time. Because there seemed to be an element unique to the person involved, the numbers weren’t exact, but the general expectation was that you could speed up time so that a week would feel like a day, and vice versa - a day could be slowed down so that it felt like it was seven days long.

Nothing changed for the rest of the world when one person used the Button - the change that occurred was internal. That was why some protestors - and my grandfather - compared it to drugs.

“But Granddad, it’s all natural,” Claire protested whenever he started ranting and raving about the Button being a new opioid. “It’s not addictive, and it doesn’t alter your body permanently at all.”

“So they say,” Granddad said roughly.

“You wouldn’t have used it, Granddad?” I asked. “When Granny was sick?”

That surprised him. He didn’t answer right away, and I felt a little guilty for having asked the question.

My grandmother had died of pancreatic cancer. I had no memories of her illness, but Emmeline did, and what she remembered was Granny being in inexcrutiating pain with little relief. For months, she suffered, with Mom and Granddad taking care of her round the clock and doing anything they could think of to make her comfortable to absolutely no avail.

“For me, or for her?” Granddad finally replied. No one answered him, and I never brought it up with him again.

*****

I ran the three flights of stairs up to our apartment, elated in a way I had never been before. I was the youngest, in all the ways. I was never the one who came through for the family.

Amelia had lost her own mother last year, which was one of the things I figured would help my cause. It was the reason I told her the truth instead of trying to make up a sympathetic story. Was there any daughter on Earth who wouldn’t relate to what I was going through - losing my mother, and wishing desperately to keep her with me for longer?

She had an extra Button stowed away on the top shelf of a closet in her office. She retrieved it for me and placed it in a bag for me to transport home on the subway.

“Do you know which -” Amelia Amour started to ask me as she handed it to me. I never heard her question in its entirety. I was already backing out of the office, ready to get home to my family with my news - and the Button.

They were in Mom's room when I burst into the apartment. Emmeline and Claire got to their feet when I ran into the room.

“I got it,” I told them.

Claire began to cry. Emmeline nodded at me, as if she’d been expecting the news. “Good job, little sister,” she said, holding out her hand.

I passed her the small cloth gift bag in which Amelia Amour had placed the Button. I might have secured the item our family needed, but it was understood by all that Emmeline would now take the lead, as she always did.

The Button was designed simply; you’d never know how powerful it was by looking at it. It was all white, about the length and width of a sheet of looseleaf paper, with the thickness of a mobile phone. There was a dial at the top - that was where you set the speed of time you wanted to experience. At the center was a smooth, wide open area where you would place your hand and press down gently. Once you did that, the rate at which you experienced time would immediately change, or so we’d all been told.

Emmeline moved expertly, almost as if she’d installed a Button previously. Claire had wiped away her tears and was watching Emmeline closely. So was I. That was why I immediately noticed when she made a mistake.

It was so unlike her that it took me a moment to respond.

“Emmeline!”

She turned to look at me over her shoulder. “We don’t have to do it right now, Anna. I just want to have it ready for when Mom wakes up.”

I nodded. “That’s fine. But you have it wrong.”

All three of us looked at the dial, which Emmeline had set, incorrectly, to speed up time. If Mom used the Button without correcting it, she would experience the next six weeks - the time she had left - as six days.

It was a mistake.

Yet Emmeline didn’t make mistakes, and as my two sisters shifted their gazes from the Button to my face, I realized that we were experiencing a horrible misunderstanding.

Emmeline and Claire didn’t want the Button to slow down Mom’s time left with us.

They wanted to speed it up.

*****

It was as if time froze the moment Emmeline stepped away from the Button. They continued to stare at me, and I stared right back.

“Anna -”

“No,” I said sharply. “You have it wrong. You can’t do it.”

“She’s in pain, Anna,” Claire said softly. “Just look at her.”

I didn’t want to look at her. I had barely looked at Mom for days. The diagnosis was pancreatic cancer - same as Granny, except it was already Stage 4. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her skin was pale with tints of yellow. She napped constantly, which was the most unsettling thing; Mom at her healthiest was always moving, cooking, hugging, tidying. Now she was still, and almost always whimpering. Her back ached, she said, and it was incredibly difficult for her to get comfortable.

It was all the more difficult because we’d seen this before.

Mom and Granddad had cared for my grandmother for months - soothed her, read to her, adminstered medication that did little to ease her pain. I understood my sisters’ impulse to want to speed up Mom’s experience - less time should mean less pain, and no one would ever want someone they loved to suffer. Not if they could make the time - and the pain - go by quicker.

I couldn’t remember another time in my life when I'd disagreed with my sisters about something that actually mattered. I steeled myself for the argument of my life, with an aspiring litigator and a sister who was unaccustomed to being wrong.

“Seems like rather than arguing amongst yourselves, you should just ask her.”

The three of us looked over toward the doorway. Granddad was leaning against the door frame. He was as healthy and strong as he’d ever been, but he seemed smaller just then - like he wasn’t standing as tall as he usually was. Mom was his only child, and she was slipping away.

“Granddad, I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you don’t like the Button -”

He waved my words away. “Kathleen!” he said sharply. “Wake up.”

My mother’s eyes opened slowly. I wondered if she’d heard anything we said so far. She looked at each of us, her three daughters, a small smile on her face. Then we watched as her eyes wandered over to the Button and lit up; I felt proud when I saw that.

She squinted. “Emmeline?”

"Yes, Mom?" Emmeline stepped closer to her, and Claire and I leaned in as well.

“You have it set wrong,” my mother said.

My sisters looked at me immediately, but I kept my eyes on Mom, who looked at me and smiled.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Slow it down.”