The Children Who Time Lost (2 page)

I looked at my watch. It was almost 3:50 p.m. and it didn’t look like I’d make my appointment. But I wasn’t really worried about that. They needed me more than I needed them. They had to know everything about me and what made me so fortunate as to have given birth at a time when others couldn’t. I’d actually considered not going back there after my contract with them ended, but the headaches, the trembling hands and the nausea made me their prisoner. I needed the drugs they gave me to remain sane and to salvage what was left of my marriage.

I could sense the rain falling harder and harder. We had reached the legal limit in the air, about a hundred feet above ground. The taxi stayed in the rightmost lane and followed its air marshal, who led us and fifty other cars—both in front and behind us—for the entire trip. Our traffic enforcer was also a Lypso, but a fourth-generation model. The one that drove my taxi was a third-generation but almost light-years behind its counterpart.

The traffic enforcer’s computer was linked to the worldwide database, with traffic information updated to its core processor every two hundred milliseconds. They drove cars similar to law-enforcement cars of the late twentieth century, with the flashing blue lights on top.

I reached South Grand Avenue at 3:25. The Lypso driving my taxi gave me a salute after I pressed my thumb against the reader behind the headboard of its seat. The journey cost twenty-five dollars. Kevin always frowned on my using the credit-card account. I had considered using my index finger, which was linked to our standard account, but with the hefty amount we were still paying the research facility for its efforts to find out what was wrong with me, I opted against it.

I walked into the two hundred-story building and stood by the door. Humans and robots filled the foyer. A woman walked past me holding on to a young girl who couldn’t have been more than three years old. I stared at the woman’s face to see if I recognized her, but she wasn’t immediately familiar. I had missed quite a few of the Worldwide Lotto one-on-one interviews, where the winners spoke of their joy at being parents while parading their children to the world like they were trophies.

I had always hated that such a program existed, but Kevin kept begging me to enter. He had a point, though. It was virtually the same as adopting. But it was also so cruel. Some people I knew had been entering it every weekend for almost fifteen years, each time getting their hopes up only to have them dashed.

“Hi, Mrs. Harris,” a woman said.

I turned and saw a dark-haired woman walking toward me with a robot beside her. Its eyes were blue, which didn’t really go with its gleaming silver body. It looked as if it had just come off the production line—it was as polished as I had ever seen a second-generation Kyso, domesticated robots that never left the confines of their buildings. After a double take, I recognized the woman. Her slightly crooked nose somewhat marred what would otherwise have been a perfect face. I wasn’t complaining, though. It made normal, average women like me feel less self-conscious.

“Hi, Cassandra,” I said. “Is Jarrod upstairs?”

“Upstairs and waiting.” She stopped a few yards from me and pointed at her watch twice, smiling. The Kyso also stopped and stared at me. I glanced nervously at it. They could read people’s minds within seconds and discover any kind of evil within their thoughts. I always worried what they would find lurking inside my head. My mind was a labyrinth of pain and suffering, and I feared it could be misinterpreted as sinister.

I smiled and nodded. The Kyso then moved even closer to me. “Please follow me, madam,” it said in a mechanical voice and walked toward a row of three revolving doors. Cassandra gave me another smile and walked toward a large desk where a host of people had congregated.

I stayed about four feet from the Kyso. I glanced toward the top of the building. Every floor was visible from the ground floor. I even caught a tiny glimpse of the scientists working on the 150th floor, where I was headed. The flashing red lights that ran along the stair railing, all the way from the bottom to the top, looked like twinkling stars.

The Kyso stopped near the foot of the stairs, with a line of ten elevators farther to the right. I saw yet more women walking with children in their grasps; some looked younger than six months. The parents had obviously been some of the more recent winners. I had read that there had been nearly a hundred global winners in July alone.

I smiled at a young boy beside a tall attractive blond-haired man. The boy smiled back. I looked up to see the man staring at me with what seemed to be allure. I shifted my head in the opposite direction and chewed on my fingernails.
That can’t be right.
I used to be very comfortable with who I was before my body became riddled with experimental drugs.

Before my pregnancy, Kevin always paid me compliments. We always went out to nice places and I could always fit into my favorite dresses. But ever since the world’s scientists took an interest in me, my weight had yo-yoed. I felt bloated nearly every day and lost all confidence. I also found it difficult to sleep.

Soon after, I stopped going out with my husband and stayed home, looking after our daughter. He started having mood swings after a while and lost his temper with me on a few occasions. He even brought up the fact that I hadn’t taken his surname after we got married. I started to wonder whether it was out of pity that Kevin stayed with me at all. I didn’t see the passion in his eyes anymore. Instead, I saw pity. Love might have been there, too, but I hadn’t felt attractive in seven years—until now, with this strapping, ruggedly handsome man staring at me like he actually wanted to know me. I just hoped he wasn’t doing so because he had recognized me from the television or something. But regardless, having a child meant he must have also had a wife or a girlfriend. The first rule of the Lotto was that only couples could enter.

I shifted nervously before taking my hand from my mouth. I faced him again. He caressed his son’s hair and cast brief glances at me but took his eyes away whenever they met mine. Four of the elevators arrived at the same time. The Kyso looked at me. “Would you like to take the stairs or the elevator, madam?”

I looked at it as if it were mad. It asked the same question every time I visited. One would think that a multimillion-dollar robot would have had some level of common sense. I noticed the attractive man smiling at me as I responded. “I’ll take the elevator,” I said.

I cast a backward glance at the man as I stepped off the elevator. He looked at me in a manner that suggested he hadn’t taken his eyes off me the entire time. I had felt his gaze boring through me the moment the elevator started rising.

“Please follow me, madam,” the Kyso said.

I smiled at the man and he smiled back. I immediately turned around and swallowed. What was I doing? I was a married woman shamelessly flirting with a stranger who probably had a partner, too.

There’s no harm in looking. Besides, what’s wrong with a handsome man admiring me?

I followed the Kyso toward a room in the corner, a smile lingering on my face.

A woman sat in the waiting room. Red surrounded her pupils, and she twitched like a junkie. She reminded me of how I’d been when I was on the pregnancy program, immediately after the birth of my daughter. I waved at the receptionist, Liz Simpson. Her dark red dress looked like a carpet, but her fashion sense wasn’t her best quality. I did see new pearl earrings on her that looked nice. Her blond hair was also shorter than I remembered.

She stood and smiled at me. “Hi, Rachel. Do you need anything?”

I shook my head. “No, Liz, thanks. I’ll just wait for Jarrod.” I sat and noticed the woman’s eyes on me.

She opened her mouth to speak. Her lips trembled. She slurred her words. “Are you new here?”

“Only nine years,” I half-laughed.

She blinked rapidly. “Good God. Why …” She paused and studied me further. “You’re her. You’re that person. Rachel Harris. The last person …” She stopped and chewed on her bottom lip.

I smiled at her and nodded. “It’s okay. I get that a lot.”

“How was it?” she asked.

I looked at her dumbfounded.

“Childbirth, I mean.”

“Oh.” I smiled. “Well, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience in the world, but I didn’t really care. Madeline was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.” I swallowed and turned toward the wall. The smallest of tears fell from my eyes. “She was the perfect daughter, too,” I blurted.

She rose and walked toward me. Then she squeezed my left hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” She continued to study me.

I nodded and wiped my eyes. “Thank you.”

She gave me a warm smile and sat down. We drifted into comfortable silence.

“Are you trying to get another child?” she said after a few minutes.

My eyes widened. “Oh no. I can’t put myself through that again. They tried for years because of my little girl, but nothing.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean …”

I stared at her dumbfounded again, before realizing what she meant. “Oh, you mean the… No, I don’t believe in the Lotto. I just couldn’t. To get your hopes up every weekend only to see them crushed? That’s punishment for any family.”

“I agree,” the woman said. “It’s all government control if you ask me. I bet they have something to do with all the nonsense going on around natural births and all. My husband plays every weekend, but I want to do things my way, on my own terms. Know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“That’s the only reason I’m here,” she said. “That’s why I look like this. I just hope I can get lucky like you did with your little girl. That’s if my body survives all this. I don’t know how you lived with the pain.” She pressed her right hand against her stomach.

Just then, a tall bald man walked in. He wore a tight-fitting gray suit and a blue shirt. No one would have known that Jarrod Conway was a doctor at first glance. He looked like a lawyer or a high-flying banker. He smiled at me and held his hand out toward the woman. The bottle in his hand contained a thick green liquid.

“This should get you through the month, Mandy,” he said.

The woman took the bottle and put it in her purse. Then she nodded at me and walked toward the elevator. The Kyso that had walked me to the room escorted her out.

“It was nice to meet you, Mandy,” I said.

She looked back at me with wide eyes, as if surprised by my words. She nodded and walked away. I faced Jarrod, who had a smile on his face.

He held his hand out and gestured toward an open door. “Shall we?”

I peeked in and saw a number of operating tables and chairs. I took a deep breath and walked in.

Chapter Two

T
he medicine Jarrod gave me started to cause drowsiness. I gazed at the ceiling in silence. The lights were bright and dazzling. I felt claustrophobic with my hands strapped to the arms of the reclining cream-colored chair I lay in. Jarrod walked into the room for the third time in a minute. This time, another Kyso walked in with him, holding a metal tray. This one was a first-generation robot. It didn’t have the same shiny silver body but a dull bronze complexion.

Jarrod walked up to me and knelt. He held my head and looked into my eyes. “So, how’re you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Except for the nightmares?”

I nodded. “The same ones all the time, right to the last detail.”

He took a syringe from the tray the Kyso had in its hand and held it up. I squinted at the sight of the long needle. “What’s that for?” I asked.

“I know I promised never to see your dreams, Rachel,” Jarrod said, “but it’s happening way too much. I’m afraid we’ll be going backward rather than forward if we don’t get to the root of it now. After this session, you’ll never have this dream again. It will be completely gone from your mind.”

“Are you sure about that? After all the drugs I’ve taken? Will it really work?”

He smiled at me. “Relax. We did exactly the same thing to the lady you saw out there.”

“Who, Mandy?”

He nodded. “The nightmares stopped her from sleeping, but she wasn’t like you. She had quite a few of them. You’re just having one recurring one. We erased as much as we could from her subconscious mind, and now, she’s doing just fine.”