Hugh Howey - Shift

Donald followed her gaze and watched the kid for a moment, then realised she was just making a point.

‘Or how about my father?’ she asked. ‘Those nano baths, all the stem-cell vitamins he takes. He truly thinks he’s gonna live for ever. You know he bought a load of stock in one of those cryo firms years back?’

Donald laughed. ‘I heard. And I heard it didn’t work out so well. Besides, they’ve been trying stuff like that for years—’

‘And they keep getting closer,’ she said. ‘All they ever needed was a way to stitch up the cells damaged from the freezing, and now that’s not so crazy a dream, right?’

‘Well, I hope the people who dream such things get whatever it is they’re looking for, but you’re wrong about us. Helen and I talk about having kids all the time. I know people having their first kid in their fifties. We’ve got time.’

‘Mmm.’ She finished what was in her glass and reached for the bottle. ‘You think that,’ she said. ‘Everyone thinks they’ve got all the time left in the world.’ She levelled her cool grey eyes at him. ‘But they never stop to ask just how much time that is.’

After dinner, they waited under the awning for Anna’s car service. Donald declined to share a ride, saying he needed to get back to the office and would just take a cab. The rain hitting the awning had changed, had grown sombre.

Her ride pulled up, a shiny black Lincoln, just as Donald’s phone began vibrating. He fumbled in his jacket pocket while she leaned in for a hug and kissed his cheek. He felt a flush of heat despite the cool air, saw that it was Mick calling and picked up.

‘Hey, you just land or what?’ Donald asked.

A pause.

‘Land?’ Mick sounded confused. There was noise in the background. The driver hurried around the Lincoln to get the door for Anna. ‘I took a red-eye,’ Mick said. ‘My flight got in early this morning. I’m just walking out of a movie and saw your texts. What’s up?’

Anna turned and waved. Donald waved back.

‘You’re getting out of a movie? We just wrapped up our meeting at De’Angelo’s. You missed it. Anna said she emailed you like three times.’

He glanced up at the car as Anna drew her leg inside. Just a glimpse of her red heels, and then the driver pushed the door shut. The rain on the tinted glass stood out like jewels.

‘Huh. I must’ve missed them. Probably went to junk mail. Not a big deal. We’ll catch up. Anyway, I just got out of this trippy movie. If you and I were still in our getting-high days, I would totally force you to blast one with me right now and go to the midnight showing. My mind is totally bent—’

Donald watched the driver hurry around the car to get out of the rain. Anna’s window lowered a crack. One last wave, and the car pulled out into light traffic.

‘Yeah, well, those days are long gone, my friend,’ Donald said distractedly. Thunder grumbled in the distance. An umbrella opened with a pop as a gentleman prepared to brave the storm. ‘Besides,’ Donald told Mick, ‘some things are better off back in the past. Where they belong.’

THE EXERCISE ROOM on level twelve smelled of sweat, of having been used recently. A line of iron weights sat in a jumble in one corner, and a forgotten towel had been left draped over the bar of the bench press, over a hundred pounds of iron discs still in place.

Troy eyed the mess as he worked the last bolt free from the side of the exercise bike. When the cover plate came off, washers and nuts rained down from recessed holes and bounced across the tile. Troy scrambled for them and pushed the hardware into a tidy pile. He peered inside the bike’s innards and saw a large cog, its jagged teeth conspicuously empty.

The chain that did all the work hung slack around the cog’s axle. Troy was surprised to see it there, would have thought the thing ran on belts. This seemed too fragile. Not a good choice for the length of time it would be expected to serve. It was strange, in fact, to think that this machine was already fifty years old — and that it needed to last centuries more.

He wiped his forehead. Sweat was still beading up from the handful of miles he’d gotten in before the machine broke. Fishing around in the toolbox Jones had loaned him, he found the flathead screwdriver and began levering the chain back onto the cog.

Chains on cogs. Chains on cogs . He laughed to himself. Wasn’t that the way?

‘Excuse me, sir?’

Troy turned to find Jones, his chief mechanic for another week, standing in the gym’s doorway.

‘Almost done,’ Troy said. ‘You need your tools back?’

‘Nossir. Dr Henson is looking for you.’ He raised his hand, had one of those clunky radios in it.

Troy grabbed an old rag out of the toolbox and wiped the grease from his fingers. It felt good to be working with his hands, getting dirty. It was a welcome distraction, something to do besides checking the blisters in his mouth with a mirror or hanging out in his office or apartment waiting to cry again for no reason.

He left the bike and took the radio from Jones. Troy felt a wave of envy for the older man. He would love to wake up in the morning, put on those denim overalls with the patches on the knees, grab his trusty toolbox and work down a list of repairs. Anything other than sitting around while he waited for something much bigger to break.

Squeezing the button on the side of the radio, he held it up to his mouth.

‘This is Troy,’ he said.

The name sounded strange. In recent weeks, he hadn’t liked saying his own name, didn’t like hearing it. He wondered what Dr Henson and the shrinks would say about that.

The radio crackled. ‘Sir? I hate to disturb you—’

‘No, that’s fine. What is it?’ Troy walked back to the exercise bike and grabbed his towel from the handlebars. He wiped his forehead and saw Jones hungrily eyeing the disassembled bike and scattering of tools. When he lifted his brows questioningly, Troy waved his consent.

‘We’ve got a gentleman in our office who’s not responding to treatment,’ Dr Henson said. ‘It looks like another deep freeze. I’ll need you to sign the waiver.’

Jones glanced up from the bike and frowned. Troy rubbed the back of his neck with the towel. He remembered Merriman saying to be careful handing these out. There were plenty of good men who would just as soon sleep through all this mess than serve out their shifts.

‘You’re sure?’ he asked.

‘We’ve tried everything. He’s been restrained. Security is taking him down the express right now. Can you meet us down here? You’ll have to sign off before he can be put away.’

‘Sure, sure.’ Troy rubbed his face with his towel, could smell the detergent in the clean cloth cut through the odour of sweat in the room and the tinge of grease from the open bike. Jones grabbed one of the pedals with his thick hands and gave it a turn. The chain was back on the cog, the machine operational again.

‘I’ll be right down,’ Troy said before releasing the button and handing the radio back to the mechanic. Some things were a pleasure to fix. Others weren’t.

The express had already passed when Troy reached the lifts; he could see the floor display racing down. He pressed the call button for the other one and tried to imagine the sad scene playing out below. Whoever it was had his sympathies.

He shook violently, blamed it on the cool air in the hallway and his damp skin. A ping-pong ball clocked back and forth in the rec room around the corner, sneakers squeaking as players chased the next shot. From the same room, a television was playing a movie, the sound of a woman’s voice.