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managed to sell his car that very same day and buy from
some wheeler-dealers a used unlicensed chronomatizer. He
didn’t have enough money to buy a charge of time – for his
paltry actor’s wages he could only buy at most just a few
years from black marketeers. That’s why Torne became a
temporal donor for his wife. He gave her a quarter century,
so their bodies would feel like they were the same age. In
reality they had lived to the age of 29, but now both of
them were over 55.
The fact that he gave Marta his biological time made them
much closer, although it was a closeness with a certain
heartbreaking aftertaste. They, however, were bored with
this life of retirement, with the daily unpleasant discoveries
regarding their body’s degradation. The metabolism in their
abruptly aged bodies slowed down, and because of that, it
seemed that the days were skating past the window with a
quickness of a sprinter.
Torne couldn’t reconcile himself with this kind of existence
and constantly reproached himself for his inability to
change anything. He became even more successful in his
dramatic roles in the theater. Just now he didn’t play
Hamlet, but instead his bodiless father.
In general the dilemma of life resembled for him something
repulsively literary. At times he was ready to steal from an
unexpected passer-by what was stolen from his Marta. But
that would mean continuing the chain of injustice with his