Rebecca Dawn wanted more time.
The three-block walk from her quarters to her parents’ first floor apartment was dark and deserted, just as Rebecca liked it. The early mornings were her only time of quiet. A moment of stillness she could hold and appreciate before the noise of the day flooded back in. In a city where the whirr of a generator was never out of earshot, or the information of a screen wasn’t yearning for attention, the morning solitude was the closest she could ever get to true silence.
Unlike Rebecca, the rest of the city had yet to wake. The buildings on either side of her were dark, still lifeless. In twenty minutes, downtown would be swarming with the citizens of New Hope all busying off to their respective workplaces.
The moon was out this morning, half-lit and pale, hanging low above the line of towers. High above, the sky was blank. Not black but gray. No stars. Not even a shimmer. She had never seen one in her life. They were taken. The veil of dark matter, drifting high above the atmosphere, warps time in ways no one understands, and the stars were its first victim. The Sun and Moon forced their way through sheer mass. But the stars were too small. Still there, supposedly. One hoped. But too faint.
The city of New Hope stretched around her. Copper-brown lamps cast long shadows across the cobblestones. The air was too pure, too clean and filtered to carry much scent. Congo humidity pressed lightly against her skin, a reminder that no filtration system could erase the fact that this city had been built on jungle soil.
Already her mother was up, checking her father’s oxygen tank. She dabbed his mouth with a wet rag as he fussed about what he wanted for breakfast. She didn’t even notice Rebecca coming in through the kitchen, boots clomping on the apartment’s outdated linoleum floor. Dark matter had revolutionized so much, but the housing provided by the lab was still cheap as ever. Ray had been one of the first engineers assigned to the meteor dig site. Exposure to so much raw dark matter had left his cells unanchored in time. Certain days seemed to shave years off of his life, his organs failing almost at random. His body seemed to be caught in a perpetual loop of accelerated decay with no end. Even the latest rejuvenation pods were unable to reverse the effects.
“Take your shoes off if you’re coming in,” said Maria. “I spent two hours cleaning the floors yesterday.”
Caring for a disabled man round the clock wasn’t trouble enough for Rebecca’s mother. She was a neat freak, too, here in an industrial city built in the wild jungle of the Congo.
“I’ll only be a minute. I just want him to try this. I redid the formula, and I think this higher dose will make a difference.”
Pharmacology was not Rebecca’s field of expertise. But dark matter was. She had been pilfering trace amounts of it along with other ingredients from Forever Young to try and anchor her father’s cells. If she could find a way to get his body back into the flow of linear time, then the rejuvenation pods would be able to reverse the effects of his sickness.
Maria looked at Rebecca, the back of her hands on each hip. “You’re going to lose that job if you keep stealing.”
Rebecca didn’t answer right away. She examined her mother’s slender frame, more prominent when she wore her hair up. A strand fell down the side of her thin neck, its silver end resting on the collar of one of dad’s denim button-downs, the sleeves folded to her elbows. Her mother’s eyes seemed distant in the lamplight, appearing concave. She was tired. Rebecca was the last thing she needed to worry about.
“It’s not stealing. It’s taking what we’re owed. Forever Young wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for Dad.”
As she popped open the canister of pills, her father’s eyes fluttered open. For a brief moment he scanned the room, then eyed Rebecca’s open palm.
“Does your brother know you’re doing this?”
“No, Dad, it’s me. Rebecca. Your daughter. Mom’s in the kitchen.”
His mind did this. Unmoored from the rhythm of time, he sometimes experienced a kind of dementia.
“Confused again?” asked Maria from the kitchen.
“He thinks I’m you. Please, Dad just take this.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not confused, and I’m not taking that. We can’t keep doing this. And where’s my breakfast?”
He reached for Rebecca. His frail hand was soft, his skin drooping around skeleton fingers. It was almost odd, unnerving even, to see him like this. Wrinkles were so rare to see anymore. In a way it was like peering into a grim version of her own future. While she had the auburn hair of her mother’s youth, her chiseled jaw and dark, intelligent eyes came from her father. People always commented on how much she resembled Ray. Even her countenance favored his, her posture tall and commanding, steps strong and confident. While she hated being teased for these traits in high school, she grew to love them for how they took after her father. To see him this way was almost too much to bear.
“Please. For me.”
“Sit with me awhile, will you?” He closed his eyes and let out a heavy breath, the air struggling to escape him.
He touched the top of her hand and wrist, his finger illuminating the screen of her wristband. Rebecca saw the time and stood.
“Come on, Dad. Please.”
“Just leave them here,” Maria called from the other room. “I’ll give them to him later. At least let him have his breakfast first.”
Rebecca left the pill bottle on the lampstand, then turned to her mother. “This is serious, Mom. You have to actually give them to him. I’m not risking my job for you to flush these.”
“Honey, I know. It means so much what you’re trying to do, but this isn’t the way. I know it’s hard, but at some point you’ll have to just accept this is how it is.”
She hated when her mother got this way. It wasn’t just the defeatism in her voice. It was the way she condescended, as if Rebecca was still a little girl having a hard time accepting that her birthday party had been cancelled.
“Text me the moment you give them to him,” said Rebecca as she walked out. “Monitor his pulse, heart rate, and oxygen levels every half-hour after he ingests the pill and send me the numbers.”
“Please, Rebecca. As if I didn’t have enough to do.”