From: m13079@mwunix (Mary Anne Walters)
Subject: TIME
Organization: MITRE Corporation, McLean VA
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 11:51:43 GMT

Thanks to everyone who commented to me on the story I posted, SPACE.  

In response to the many who asked if I had written anything else, here is
another, very different story.  Some of you may have already read it in
an issue of InterText a year or more ago.  

Just brief background, both this and SPACE were written as "challenge"
stories -- that is some friends of mine and I picked words then wrote
stories around, about, or somehow (no matter how loosely) related to the
words.

So, again, any comments are not only welcomed but encouraged :-)
This and the one previously posted are the only two I have warehoused, so
I guess I'll have to work on some new stuff -- my output is low, but I
hope to work on some new stuff soon.        

                          Do You Have Some Time?

     He looked down at the gold Rolex on his wrist.  The time was 1:00,
Eastern Standard Time.  He thought, once again, that there is never enough
time.
     "Excuse me, do you have some time?" A simple question.
     She was tiny and pert looking, and very well-dressed.  She was also
in a hurry.  There was no time to stop and chat.  With an irritated glance
at her watch she said, "Yes, it's 1:00," and went to move on.
     "No, no, no. I didn't say 'Do you have THE time,' I said 'Do you have
SOME time.'  You see, I've run out and need some more."
     Her eyes glazed over, and the look on her face was one that most
people save for use only when they are required to deal with a child, a
fool, or a lunatic. "I'm sorry, I'm in a hurry. I have no time for this."
With that, she scurried off, like a tiny, pert looking rat in a maze,
rushing nowhere, but determined to get there on time nonetheless.
     He sighed. He walked a block more.  Turning, his eyes scanned the
crowd.  They were all rushing.  But, there, in the shadow of a building,
was a young man in jeans and a tee shirt.  The tee shirt said IF YOU HAVE
THE MONEY, I HAVE THE TIME.  Quickly, he walked over to the young man and
said, "I have the money.  Do you have some time for me?"
     "Sure, dude.  I got all the time in the world."  The boy's vapid face
was surrounded by stringy blond hair.  There was a bit of fuzz on his
upper lip.  The boy grinned, but it looked more like a leer to the man,
who cringed.
     "While I doubt you do, in fact, have ALL the time in the world, I
would like to avail myself of some of the time you DO have.  You see, I
seem to have run out of time myself, and I could use a little more.  So,
if you will tell me how much you charge for your time, it will be easy for
me to compute what amount of money I will need to acquire the amount of
time I desire.  I have found that 24 hours in a day is just not enough--I,
myself, would prefer about 32 hours..." As he spoke, he say the boy's
leering smile turn to a scowl.
     "Buzz off, buddy. One thing for damn sure is that I got no time for
weirdos like you!" The boy sauntered away and resumed his languid pose in
another shadowy corner, where he was soon approached by a timid little man
with a bald head, glasses sliding off the end of his nose, and the look of
a rabbit gathering the courage to sneak under the fence into the cabbage
patch.
     The man sighed again, heavier.  Once more, he scanned the crowd.  He
needed someone with time to spare, but who understood the importance and
the value of time.  People in a hurry had no time to spare.  People who
seemed to have an abundance of time, like the boy, were somewhat
unbalanced.  He searched for the perfect mix.
     There, on a park bench, was an older man, reading.  He wasn't reading
a book or a magazine, but was reading the newspaper-
-and not just the headlines, either. Aha! Could this be the one? He
approached slowly.
     "Excuse me, sir.  Do you have some time?"
     The man on the bench was wearing a rather wide, garishly patterned,
luridly colored tie.  His suit was on the dusty side of grey, made of some
thick material that gave off a damp-closet smell.  He looked up, and
answered in a booming voice, "Sure, the time is 1:24."
     NO, No, No, NO! Not THE time, SOME time! I wanted SOME time!"
     "Well, there's no time like the present.  What time did you want?
Did you want some of my time?  I'm usually a little short of it myself.
Hey, maybe I should take some of your time! He, he, he.  Actually, you're
in luck.  I have some spare time right now.  We could spend some time
together.  And, speaking of time, let me show you some of my samples."
     The loud man spoke fast, in a machine-gun-like stream of patter. The 
man looked down, reeling from the assault on his senses.  The loud man was
opening up his briefcase and there within it was a display of watches, all
cheap, and all ticking.  The hours were wasting away before his very eyes.
With a look of horror, he flung a hand up over his face, as if to ward off
a blow, and blocked the sight from his eyes.  He recoiled, and looked for
a way to escape this wretched man.
     "Wait! Don't go! My bus is late.  Stick around for a while--we can
kill some time together." The loud man reached for him.
     That was it.  The final straw. He spun on his heels and fled.

                           ********************

     The bus driver was only trying to make up for lost time.  That broken
traffic light put him way off schedule.  Now, time was of the essence.  He
had to be on time--not early, not late.  His record was one of the best,
and he was proud of it.  And, he was mad at the delay that had robbed him
of the precious minutes and had made him late.  With all these thoughts on
his mind, it was no wonder he never saw the well-dressed, wild-eyed, and
generally harried looking man that dashed out in front of the bus.  By the
time he realized, it was too late.
     "Shit! Now I'll never get back on schedule!"  This thought was echoed
by the majority of the people on the bus, to include the tiny, pert, well-
dressed woman who got on at the last stop, as well as by the timid,
balding man in the car behind the bus (who's passenger was a dirty,
languid blond boy, his lip curled into a leer).
     The loud and damp smelling man stepped off the curb and walked over
to where the previously well-dressed, but now considerably rumpled, man
lay sprawled in the street, still as a stone.  He reached down and took
the gold Rolex off the now-broken wrist.  The bus driver walked over,
unsure whether he should attempt to stop this ghoulish act.
     "Don't worry," the loud man assured the bus driver, "I saw the whole
thing--this guy stole one of my samples, then ran out into the street,
right in front of you.  That's what happened, all right."  The loud man
replaced the gold watch with a cheap imitation, and let the wrist drop
back to the pavement.  "That's what I'll tell the police." He winked a
particularly nasty wink at the bus driver, who breathed a sigh of relief
nonetheless.  The loud man laughed.
     "I guess his time ran out, hey buddy?"
--
--Mary Anne  
"What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all
that we love deeply becomes a part of us."  Helen Keller
                                                 [for Alexander]
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