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“I’m not talking about that,” Torne brushed her thought
aside.
In the kitchen he dove into a temporally modified steak
that kept it from having an acetone taste. Marta sat down
to coffee with him in a conciliatory way, though she knew,
that given the current condition of her stomach, it
unavoidably would lead to heartburn. He tried not to look
at her, because with his inner sight he still saw that
beautiful woman, whose physical shell stirred faith in the
existence of ideal beauty.
Torne played dramatic roles in the local theater. Art was
considered antiquated and on the backdrop of all kinds of
cybershows had fallen into decline long ago. On that day,
when they “zeroed” Marta, he was returning home from
rehearsal a bit earlier than usual. He wanted to surprise her,
but found her – already 80 – lying on the grass. It happened
that she had walked out of the building to get the mail from
the postman, and instead of a newspaper, she got the
muzzle of a chronomatizer under her rib and lost fifty
biological years.
With the massive influx of temporal robberies, the police
had nearly stopped investigating similar incidents. In order
to receive a portion of underwritten biotime from the
government, you needed to pass through nine circles of hell
of red tape. You didn’t have the time or strength for that.
After the attack, Marta had several hours to live, but Torne