Free A Time for Dying by Jude Hardin

1
    It was almost the middle of February, and I was still writing 2059 on my checks.
    Maybe it was some kind of denial, my subconscious mind refusing to admit that my time was almost up.
    In thirty-two hours, I would celebrate my one hundredth birthday.
    I would celebrate it by dying.
    It didn’t seem fair. There was nothing wrong with me, but that didn’t matter. It hadn’t mattered since the war. When your time was up, it was up. Your microchip released its toxin, and that was it.
    They say it’s painless, and that’s probably true. But it’s the dread that gets you. Knowing that it’s coming. It’s enough to drive you bonkers.
    I’d been trying not to think about it too much, but as the time drew near, the absurdity of it all became increasingly difficult to ignore. I was going to die, day after tomorrow at thirty minutes after midnight, and here I was sitting at my desk in my home office, going about my business as if I had all the time in the world. I’d crossed everything off my bucket list years ago, but still. With just over a day to live, it seemed like I should have been out getting drunk or something.
    I paid the electric bill, and the phone bill, and then I opened an envelope that I’d thought to be junk mail. A credit card offer or something. It had that look.
    I pulled the single sheet of paper out and turned to feed it into the shredder, but then the big red letterhead caught my eye.
    William B. Rutherford, Attorney at Law.
    Everyone in town knew the name. Billboards, TV commercials, all that crap.
     
    Dear Mr. Lockhart:
    My client, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been authorized to make you an offer—five million dollars for one hour of your life.
    It seems that you and my client were born just one hour apart, he on February 13, 1960 at 11:30 p.m., and you on February 14, 1960 at 12:30 a.m.
    Which of course means that the two of you are scheduled to die one hour apart. By selling your last hour to him, the two of you will, in essence, be trading places. My client will die February 14, 2060 at 12:30 a.m., and you will die on February 13, 2060 at 11:30 p.m.
    As those hours are quickly approaching, Mr. Lockhart, I shouldn’t need to remind you that time is of the essence. Please contact my office no later than the end of business hours on February 12. That is the deadline. If we haven’t heard from you by then, we will be forced to make other arrangements.
    Thank you for your consideration, and please have a wonderful day.
    Sincerely,
    William B. Rutherford
     
    February 12. That was today.
    The letter had been on my desk for a couple of weeks. Plain brown envelope with the word IMPORTANT stamped near the bottom edge in front. To me, it had looked like a million other direct mail solicitations, the kind I’d been seeing for as long as I could remember.
    Sometime around the turn of the century, everyone started believing that our world would eventually become paperless, at least for the most part. But that little prediction had never come true. If anything, there was more paper than ever now.
    The leading causes of death had been conquered with the advent of Gen-41, but it was almost as though we’d regressed in other ways. The younger generation didn’t know any better, but some of us were old enough to have witnessed things like the Internet and cell phones and solar-powered cars come and go. We’d taken some steps backwards in the past thirty years or so. There was no doubt about it.
    Things might have been different if it hadn’t been for the war, but there was no way to know for sure.
    And there was no point in thinking about it.
    Five million dollars. Not that I would have much time to enjoy the money, but it would make a nice inheritance for Brenda. At twenty-nine, my wife still had a long way to go, and she was eight weeks pregnant now. A girl. A child I would never be able to see.
    I wouldn’t be around for her birth, but maybe I could make sure that she and the children from my