After paying my fee, we stepped into the room. It looked like a cyber café from the nineties: long tables lined with computer terminals, but also a few overstuffed easy chairs where people sat reading. Through the windows on the far wall, afternoon sun fell in rectangles on the floor. A door off to the side was shut tight, a paper sign taped to it: QUIET.
“Here you are,” the employee said quietly. “If you’ll notice, time has stopped.”
I tugged back the sleeve of my dress and glanced at my wristwatch. The second hand hovered mid-tick, perfectly still.
“Once you step back out into the lobby, it will have been as if you had just walked in. People come here to cram for exams, catch up on reading, even sleep.” He nodded toward the QUIET door. “You can also venture out into the wider world through the back. As far as we can tell, you can buy anything out there, eat whatever you want. When you return and step back out into normal time, your wallet is exactly as full as when you arrived. The calories don’t count either.”
“But the mind…?”
“Your mind keeps what it keeps,” he said. “As well as it ever does.”
I wanted to be precise about this. “So when I leave, my body will be exactly the same as when I came in.” I tried to steady my voice. “But I’ll remember. How does that work?”
“Proprietary information,” he said, smiling faintly.
“And if I were injured? A cut, a disease — gone the moment I leave?”
“You’ll be restored.”
“Completely?”
“Completely.” He hesitated. “With the possible exception of PTSD. Trauma.”
The word hung between us, strangely fragile.
I looked around the room again, at the students chasing perfect grades, the readers chasing completion, the sleepers chasing rest. All of us trying to borrow something from forever without paying for it in flesh.
“No other questions?” he asked.
I shook my head.
I headed for the back door.
I was going to find someone to sleep with.