“You know, before Rest Time?” hepressed.
“Yes, Daniel, I knew what you meant,” shesaid, more curtly than she’d intended. She paused. Images of hergrandmother’s disapproving face flashed through her mind, skin cooland smooth in the valleys between the wrinkled peaks.
Tell him the truth, her grandmother’s ghostseemed to whisper to her. Varya shook her head.
“It was… terrible,” she said brightly.Daniel’s face fell slightly, and Nanna shook her head in disgust.Varya swallowed and pressed on with the official version. “Oncepeople reached their eighties, sometimes as early as theirseventies, their minds and bodies would start to deteriorate. Anentire aged care industry sprung up to care for them, often abusingthem behind closed doors. Many lost their minds to dementia, theystopped recognising their own children.” She told the story withall the enthusiasm of a spooky ghost tale on Halloween. It rangfalse even to her own ears.
Daniel had that faraway look in his eyes.He’d stopped listening.
“But surely not everyone was like that?” heinterjected. “A kid at school says that he heard somewhere thatlots of old people used to be fine, that they even kept workinginto their nineties.” His eyes lit up now. “He said he found astory about an old lady who went out every day to feed her sheepwith hay bales from the back of her pick-up truck in the drought of2018. She was eighty-nine. That’s twenty-four extra years on top ofwhat we get.” Daniel stopped and looked at Varya expectantly.Imaginary Nanna crossed her arms, leaned against her bright, yellowLaminex bench, and raised both eyebrows questioningly.
“Daniel,” she started, in her best imitationof what she understood to be a ‘teacher voice’. The challenginglook on Daniel’s face told her she’d got the tone right. “Daniel…yes, you’re right. There were certainly some people who lived wellinto their nineties independently. They kept working, earningmoney, stayed healthy, and needed little help.” Daniel regarded hertriumphantly. “But…” She held a finger up in the air. He gloweredat her. “But most of those who were over sixty-five started todecline almost immediately. Their health fell apart, with multipleand complex issues, they stopped working and became a drain on theeconomy. The healthy, younger people had to pay higher taxes tofund the infirm for decades after they’d stopped contributing tosociety. The droughts and the storms, the earthquakes, and thebushfires, they kept coming. Resources were scarce and, as asociety, we simply couldn’t afford to support a massive section ofthe population who couldn’t support themselves. The birth ratecontinued to decline, and people realised that this was actually agood thing for the planet, for the environment. And so, we wentabout transitioning to a new economic system and looked at otherways to reduce our population gradually and sustainably. This—theRest Time Chips—was one of them.”
Varya had been a teenager when Rest Time wasintroduced in Australia. They’d still been behind the earlyadopters—China and Russia—but ahead of many others, including mostAfrican and Pacific Nations. For a while, these countries hadn’tneeded Rest Time, or the Time Chips—the brutal effects of climatechange had taken care of their overpopulation problems. WesternEurope and the United Kingdom were still arguing amongst themselvesabout exceptions and enforcement protocols. But it was coming, eventhere.
At first it had been voluntary in Australia,with lethal injections provided to those good citizens who wereselfless enough to want to ease the burden on their children andgrandchildren. But then the food and fuel shortages worsened, therecession turned into a depression and dragged on. The governmentreduced medical support to over-sixty-fives. Then they reduced thepension at the same time the price of food sky-rocketed. Wealthierelderly, and those who had wealthy children, were taken care of.The lower and middle classes suffered the most. Emaciated bodieswere more and more commonly being removed from private aged carehomes. Mysterious outbreaks of influenza in government-funded agedcare facilities took care of large numbers of the elderly. Researchinto illnesses which commonly affected the elderly, such asdementia and arthritis, ceased due to their strategic fundingcuts.
The slow squeeze was successful.Octogenarians started to show up at their local doctor requesting alethal injection kit. Septuagenarians looked around and began tosee they were the next to go. Retirement wasn’t something anyonespoke about or looked forward to anymore. People held onto theirjobs, literally for dear life, fearful of being labelledunproductive and being tapped on the shoulder. The meaningfulglances, the unsolicited information: “Did you hear they’ve startedselling those injection kits over the counter, if you’ve got I.D.that shows you’re over sixty-five?”
The government ensured the time evangelistswere given an ever-increasingly large platform. A program waslaunched to send these productivity advocates into schools to talkabout the innate satisfaction of working hard and living life tothe fullest while you were young and healthy. They preached that alife of idleness was detrimental to your health and wellbeing andthat those who idled were a drain on society.
The invention of the Rest Time Chips by ajoint Australia-China eminent research facility simply breathedpermanency into the new end-of-life ritual.
“But before Rest Time Chips, kids weren’ttaken away so people could steal their years,” said Daniel quietly.His expression was reproachful and mournful at the same time.Varya’s heart caught. Imaginary Nanna wiped a tear from her eye andsniffed.
“People have always fought over scarceresources,” Varya began, gentler this time. “Oil, gold, land,water. And time has always been a scarce resource. It’s just that,in the past, nobody really knew how much of that particularcommodity they had, until they ran out of it.”
“But now we do know.”
Varya nodded. “Yes. Now we know. And nowsome people fight because the Rest Time Chips have turned time intoa commodity that can be bought and sold. And, of course,stolen.”
Daniel thought for a moment. “Maybesixty-five years is enough.”
“Maybe.” Varya shrugged and turned away,suddenly exhausted.
“I hope Ben comes back soon,” Danielmumbled.
Varya closed her eyes, wishing she couldpretend she hadn’t heard him. But she was the only one here forDaniel right now. She ran her finger around the edge of the medicaljournal article on her screen: The interaction of Rest TimeChips with the nervous system and their effects on the body duringlife. She wondered if she should leave Zoe and
