Time

When you are born, you have your own time. A time when you are born, when fall and scrape your knee for the first time, a time when you die, and a time when you meet the love of your life. However, we did not know when these times would come. Until a few decades ago when the scientific community discovered that when we are born we are connected to certain people through this thing called a "strine." A strine is the force that pulls us to these certain people, like string or twine. So when we are born Doctors are able to look inside our brain and find out what other DNA we are going to be permanently connected to. Most of these people are family, and friends we have not met yet, but there is always one person that we are tethered to with a unique strine. This unique strine has become popularly known as the "soulmate strine" meaning the person that it connects to you is your soulmate, to put it simply. 

After this discovery, people went absolutely crazy and demanded to know who their soulmate was and if they had found them yet... etc. However, it was quickly discovered that adult strines were hard to decipher and because of that a lot of the predictions were wrong. So this whole "strine" discovery was labeled as nothing more than a hoax, but a few years later a company called Riverstone Connections was founded and they launched an incredibly successful marketing campaign that promised the ability to pinpoint your soulmate on your timeline, but this is only available for children under the age of 2. After this campaign, parents were lining up and filling appointments for their children. It is a fairly simple procedure, that end with them implanting a timer into your wrist that counts down to the time when you are supposed to meet your soul mate. Many mothers were unsure about the whole "implanting" process but it was necessary because your timer has to be constantly connected to you because things can change. Time can be added or subtracted from your timer depending on a number of factors. These timers were not meant to tell the future of your fate, they are meant to tell you what your fate is at the time, which is why the amount of time can change. Time changing is rare and if it does happen it is rarely anything substantial, maybe a few minutes.

Now we live in a world where this is common practice and the timers on our wrists are more accurate than ever. They are now down to the second and you rarely hear of anyone having a time change. However, when I was born my timer started at 40 years, 3 months, 9 days, 2 hours, 36 minutes, and 17 seconds... which is honestly quite depressing. When I was little and I would make a new friend one of the first things we would do is compare timers. I quickly became ashamed as to how much time I had but eventually I got used to the ridicule and people got sick of making fun of me. Then the bullying became pity, which is almost worst. Now instead of treating me like an outcast, they treated me like an outcast they had to pretend to feel sorry for me. 

Throughout high school, people were constantly finding their soulmate and posting about it every day. I became anxious and wished that I would wake up one morning and find that my time would have jumped forward while I was asleep, but 17 years later that still hasn't happened. My best friend was one of the last people to find their soulmate, and thank God for that because now I hardly see her... it's like people get so wrapped up in finding this person that when they do they are they only person they want to be around. I was her best friend for 10 years and now this guy comes out of the blue and pretty much replaces me. I am beginning to hate this whole idea of soulmates. 

Then one day when I got into the classroom that morning I sat down and slightly pulled back my jacket sleeve to check my timer and confirm that I still have 23 years left. But instead of seeing the number 23 I see "00" and immediately my heart sinks in my chest. 

It happened. It actually happened. My time jumped! I pulled back the jacket sleeve all the way to see how much time I had left. I was so excited! 

"00-00-00-00-00-00-00" 

What? 

Did I miss it? 

I must be the biggest idiot in the world! How did I miss the most important moment in my life?! I had no idea what I was supposed to do at this point. I was looking around frantically trying to find someone who wasn't already paired up, but nothing. This had to be some sort of mistake... I called my mom bawling my eyes out and she came to pick me up and took me right to Riverstone. 

We sat in the waiting room for a long time. I watched as newborn babies were brought in by their parents who could not wait to know how long their child had. I kept checking my timer, and still all 0's. This didn't make any sense. 

After a few hours, we were called back to the main office and sat with a man who looked like he had more money and power than God himself. 

He explained how sometimes the timers malfunction and it will cause them to completely reset. All we need to do is replace it with a new one and I will be good to go. I let out a massive sigh of relief and looked at my mom, who was also glad to receive the news. He said that we could do the operation today and that there was some risk involved but my mom and I agreed to the operation and the secretary ushered my mom out of the room. 

As soon as the door shut the man said, 

"I am sorry about your timer, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do for you." 

I was incredibly confused because not 3 seconds ago he was telling me a different story. 

"There is actually nothing wrong with the timer and if we were to replace it with a new one the same thing would happen. It would still read all 0's. Now thankfully this is not the first time we have encountered this problem and we have found a way to deal with it. See we need people to believe that this system works 100% of the time and that nothing bad is ever going to happen, unfortunately, that is not the case. There are a few situations that come that we can not simply prevent. One of those is death." 

I could hardly breathe

" We came up with a system that would prevent these stories from leaking and tainting our company name. When you were born you were assigned a soulmate, however, we also knew that they would die before ever meeting you. Therefore, we manually set your timer for a random time because no parent wants to know their baby girl does not have a soulmate or one they will never meet. So we randomly set your time knowing it would reset itself back to 0 when your soulmate died and you would come running to us in a panic. It is an awful situation and I am deeply sorry but you are bad for business. When situations like this first began happening we contemplated killing off the babies but too much of a fuss would be had over that and we need our product to appear safe because it is. So we decided to wait, and here you are." 

As tears streamed down my face I was able to mutter, " So you are just going to kill me because you don't want to admit to your customers that life isn't always a fairytale?"

"When you sell fairytales sweetheart, you don't want to admit they don't always come true."  He replied. 

After that, I was taken by these men in white and strapped into a chair and left. I was completely alone sitting in this white room with one-way glass. I was crying so hard I could not even open my eyes. I started to scream and jerk my body around desperately trying to break free, but it was no use. The feeling of utter helplessness settled into my brain and I began to accept my fate with the deepest of sadness. I heard the voice of the man coming from speakers I could not see. I looked up and saw him on the other side of the glass. He said, " We really are sorry, but there is nothing we can do." 

I pleaded with him, "Please let me go! Please! Please! I have a family! I want to be somebody!  I'm only 17! I won't tell anyone! Please! I can't die! I can't! Please!" 

His voice said, " We will tell your family that there were complications with your operation and that there was nothing more we could do." 

I screamed, "No! Please! Please don't do this!" 

Just then the men in white came back and they held a tray with a single needle.

I became absolutely hysterical... Jerking in the chair, screaming at the top of my lungs and pleading. 

His voice came back, "If it helps... this is what he looked like..." 

One of the men in white held up a computer-generated an image of a boy. 

"... we don't know who he is, but we took the DNA we found when we did you initial scan that linked you to him and ran it through our system and this is what it generated. At least now you will know who to look for when you get there." 

Speechless I stopped screaming because now I understood. 

I sat in my chair and stared up at the lights... until I was gone. 

Reviews

[JoeM]

You had me going at the start. I thought, spelling mistake, you meant 'string theory'. However, I looked up Strine, and what do you know, someone named Liz Strine talking about 'soulmates'. But, still looking, I went to 'Alpha Wolfram' to get the scientific low-down. Yes, vaguely, something about mathematics. Anyway, I read on. I'tts the 'Twilight Zone' for you, girl. Well done.

[Arthur Statham]

I really like the concept of soulmate timers, that was a cool story!