Ten For Ten - Twenty Four Hour Short Story

It was better than the hard smack of drugs, the giddy thrill of sex. Better than that warm blush at the cusp of tipsy. Better than hurling yourself out of a tin can at 12,000 feet. It was the best fix Zach knew. A time junkie.

The dreamy, hazey descent into the past was like a riding a carnival merry go round on a busy day. The crowds swirling past until faces blurred into each other, the music swimming with the spin. He had to go again. His skin crawled, his bones itched for it. He needed another hit. It was like something coming undone inside of him, a greedy, angry bubbling up, demanding more. His self-restraint was fading.

The time slip was glorious, it tingled through his entire body like static, crashing in great waves of bliss and satisfaction. It almost hurt, a good pain he dove into with all of his senses. Like suffocating in bliss drenched air, engulfing him, wrapping him in its heady embrace. Slowly, he sank into the past. Like the pouring of thick treacle, forming slowly at first, until it passes a tipping point, to suddenly drop.

It didn’t matter to Zach where he was going, the kick was not in the destination. The further, the better. It was all in trip. He had little interest in the past. He just needed another hit. Newspaper ads and billboard bombarded him with the constant taunts. “If you have the credits. We have the time travel” He had to get the credits. It had been easier to manage when he had Chris.

They had grown up on the streets together, pickpockets, wireless hackers, they would eek credits from passersby. It was easier to push for the big hit then, the longer trip. To wait just another hour to see how many credit crumbs they could mine. It wasn’t illegal, crumb mining, but it was slow, boring work for a small pay off. Unless they hacked it, turned those crumbs into whole credits and got out of there before the mark had chance to twig what was happening. Chris had been the better hacker, Zach had picked up a few tricks, but he never got the big pay days on his own.

About two months ago Chris had gone for a quick slip, just one more, it had been a good day. He never came back, Zach hadn’t gone looking for him. It wasn’t that sort of city. The homeless, the junkies mining transactions in the streets disappeared at the time. Dropping in the streets, having lost the will to live. Taken by the slavers, dragging them off to some distant colony to go stark-raving shaved-balls crazy. Others bucked up, went to the Present Clinic, learnt how to live for now. Chris wasn’t any of those things, he was a brawling mess of muscle and addict. He would die hacking over give up slumped in a corner, or admit he had a problem. He wasn’t the kind to get hurled into the back of a van, as useful as his bulking body could have been in a mine, they never took anyone who stood a chance of resisting.

Chris had gone and never come back. They squatted in a makeshift lean to, a little down from the Time Travel Agency. Zach always kept one eye on that building, his need for another hit was a constant draw, but he never saw Chris again.

He nearly had enough, just a few more crumbs, and he would have the whole credits needed for a ten year hit.

Ten years was the shortest trip they offered, “Going ten for ten” as they called it on the streets. Ten years, in ten minutes. Then you were there, a ghost in the past, unable to touch, feel, talk, but there nonetheless. The unseen observer. That part meant nothing to him, ten minutes wasn’t enough to stop reeling from the exhilaration of getting there. It was just a blissful cushion before you got a second ride. Coming back was never as good as going, the consuming ecstasy always seemed faded in the return trip. The ripping, racing back towards your time. Chris has always said it was in the head, the return felt exactly the same. The only difference was, you knew it was nearly over.

The crumbs were flying in, the auction house behind him must have started up. He picked at his thumb, greedily, anxiously, watching the decimals tick over above his wrist. It was so close now. He didn't notice the goblets of blood, pricking tiny balls of red forming on his thumb. He was in the zone, winning for once. Finally, it ticked to ten, but the crumbs were still building.

Zach hopped from one foot to the other, torn between the waiting hit and the greater fix. Over ten, he could pick the number, every whole credit was a minute longer there, and a minute longer back. More time in the past cost more as well, but he never saw the point in that.

The crumbs were still racking up, 10.2540275 already. This was crazy. He must be the only one near the auction centre. There was normally a good few dozen miners scattered around the big auction centre, hoping to collect the crumbs. The huge computer housed inside reached out to the waiting miners, boosting its power in return for an infinitesimal decimal of a credit. The more hardware it used, the more crumbs. He had a decent set up. In the age of the minuscule, the cart he pushed represented an insane amount of solar powered hardware. Normally the overspill barely registered on the capacity he had. Today it was lighting up.

Chris built it, it had a way of drawing the signal in, sucking more than normally given. Chris had used it for hacking, hijacking a connection he was supposed to be facilitating, bypassing the high level encryption in seconds of opportunity. It was incredible to watch him work. Zach felt a pang of guilt for his initial apathy. He could have at least pushed the cart around a bit, tried to find some trace of him.

Time junkies passed like ghosts through the rush hour swell. Their drawn faces, their pallid complexions and dishevelled appearances blended into the same haunted face to passersby. No one else cared about them, the drifters of their age. Zach was the only person who would have known to look, and he didn't. The guilt was pushing up as crumbs continued to rush in. They always looked out for each other, and Zach had done nothing. In a way he knew there was nothing he could have done. Gone was gone, but he felt like still, he should have tried.

The crumbs were stacking up, 11.8641239. For the first time in as long as he could remember, it felt like luck was on his side. The guilt was gnawing up at him, he needed another hit. His thoughts swirled. “If Chris was here, he could have stayed with the cart, hah,” he snorted, “if Chris was here…”

He slumped against the cold brick wall, shaded by the propped up roof. He couldn't walk away from this sort of pay out. He hadn't ‘felt’ in months, an influx of passing miners had forced a dry spell on him. It was nearly impossible to accept it willingly, even knowing how the minutes stacked up.

He hadn't thought much about Chris since he had disappeared, in a way it felt good to remember, despite the guilt. He was good to slip with, to come down with, to mine with. That's what mattered. The numbers moved faster when he didn't watch them, 13.9264825. The cold hard wall was hurting his slouched back. He sat, shuffled around on the sleeping bag, re-positioning it on the cardboard below. There is no comfortable way to sit against a hard brick wall, but at least he could ache somewhere else for a bit.

The burning itch to slip was pulsing through him. He could almost taste the rush in the memory of it, like salivating at the thought of good food. They had some good slips together. One time Chris had hijacked a motherload, 500 credits. They blew it together in a fantastic 250 year slip. Over four hours each way. It was like riding a wave of ecstasy through Heaven itself. They felt the blush of over 19,000 sunrises, they touched the passing seasons. The oneness with time and the universe as they slipped was beyond human comprehension. They basked in the rays of its glory. The best he had ever felt. One with everything, a part of a perfect whole, drenched in the bliss. He needed it. His limbs felt taut with the sheer need for it.

His soul burnt through his body, pleading for just the tiniest bit of it. The muscles in his legs twinged, begging him. He lifted his wrist, the numbers dancing in light. 17.2836493, he shook his wrist, but it didn't shift. A rush flipped in his insides. Subtle and pathetic compared to the one he was chasing, but something. He jumped to his feet, checking his mining capacity. 65%. It only got this high when Chris was getting started on a hack. No wonder the crumbs were snowballing, he had never seen overspill like it.

---

His dial got to 43.4729464 before the capacity started to dip. It was all for him, every drop. In that greedy, hungry, itchy moment, he forgot the guilt, the caring in selfish victory. He had one hell of a little trip heading his way. The capacity was steadily declining, but the crumbs were still trickling in. He got all the way to 47.4820562 before the activity dropped out. Part of him niggled, he could save it, take four ten for tens, one a day while he worked up that last ten. Have a good week. He knew there was no chance he would do that. He had waited too long for a big hit, getting a quick fix every few days, scraping by. He needed to feel it, feel it properly, ten was not enough.

He paused, hoping. Nothing happened, capacity at zero. Excitement burst through his chest as he rushed down the street. It wasn't far to the Agency, minutes at most.

He crashed through the doors. Vagrant junkies made up the larger portion of their client base, the agency hostess was more than accommodating.

“Ahhh Zach my dear, with the fabulous mining equipment, it’s so wonderful to see you again"

The doors scanned clients credits. The hostess always knew exactly how nice she needed to be.

She fussed over him, removing his grimy coat with her manicured fingertips,

“And of course for you, one of our most secure locker bays" she said, wheeling the cart away from him, “do have a lovely trip now dear”

She was scurrying off down the locker bay corridor, pushing the cart some way before opening a door and disappearing inside.

Zach made his way to the slip room, clad in thick drapes, soft cushions littered the floor. Perfect for staggering back to. Another charming hostess loaded up the time stream, sending him on his glorious way.

The trip was as mind blowing as ever. He stood reeling in the past, a moment in history playing out before him. Faces of people he never knew, people likely dead. His vision was still flashing with the colours of the slipstream. The passage of time in the past felt surreal, the return trip was creeping up on him, kissing him with the beginnings of the trip. Beckoning him back to the blissful slipstream. In that last moment, in the crowd, suddenly thrown into perfect focus, he saw a face he knew.

This is my entry to @mctiller 's 24 hour Story Contest

The prompt this time was "A man reads a newspaper ad: If you have the credits. We have the time travel." I had a really hard time staying under the 2000 words, but just about managed it, so have ended up having a bit of a rush this morning to post. These run pretty much every week, kicking off on Monday morning, so if you won't have time to enter this round, there is always next time!

Hope you enjoyed, and what do you think, did he see someone before he slipped back? Or was it just the startings of the trip?

Check out all the entries under #twentyfourhourshortstory

Photo Credit by Pixabay User ractapopulous who had a wide range of watercolour based abstract paintings in the public domain. This one is so beautiful, I would love to have it on the wall!

Love and Sparkle - Calluna