Chapter Text
“If a clock could count down to the exact moment you meet your soulmate, would you want to know? That’s the claim of the manufacturers of a new device called the Timer.”
“Scientists have estimated by 2015, fifty percent of the world's population will have a timer.”
“It zeros at midnight the night before and can go off at any time the next day . . .”
So much for a countdown to meeting her soulmate. Rey had spent the last fifteen years looking at flashing dots across her screen. The flashing dots should be numbers that indicated the hours, minutes, and seconds she would have to wait until she met her soulmate. All her dots did was tell her that her soulmate had yet to have a Timer installed.
Rey Niima pushed an errant strand of hair from her eye while she re-read the description of the Timer on the Timeless Partners’ Support Group website. “A support group for people waiting to meet their soulmate. Life shouldn’t stop just because the clock on your Timer hasn’t started!” Maybe this was just what she needed to start feeling more in control of her life. She’d be able to meet other timeless people and see how they dealt with the daily disappointment of never seeing the countdown to meeting the love of their life beginning.
“Really, Rey? A support group? What can they tell you that I haven’t already been saying since we were teenagers? Get under someone and get over someone!” Her roommate Rose peered over her shoulder to get a better look at the website. “It’s probably a bunch of bitter Bettys and Bobs mad that their soulmate,” Rose emphasized the word soulmate with finger quotes, “isn’t dumb enough to fall for that scam.”
“So I’m stupid for having one installed?” Rey looked up at Rose with an expectant look on her face. They’d had this argument many times. Rose never backed down from calling Timers a scam, but always claimed Rey wasn’t stupid, but eager for love.
“No!” Rose threw up her hands in a defensive position. “You come from a broken home, you never knew your parents. We both know you want unconditional love, so it’s easy to think this might be real.”
Rey began to type in the address for the Timer’s website to show Rose for the millionth time the data that supported the Timer’s manufacturer’s claims. “Studies have shown this works. I know you have read the data, I can’t believe you-an engineer!-won’t believe in the science of it all.”
Rose frowned. “It’s just not how I would want to fall in love,” she began. “There’s someone out there for me, but I want to bump into him at a coffee shop or running at the track. I don’t want some dumb clock going ‘Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! This is your soulmate! Now kiss!’” Rose slapped two hands together in imitation of two faces apparently meeting in a passionate kiss. “I’ll be super happy if it works out for you, I just can’t picture that there’s some dude out there waiting for me to get a Timer and holding off on his life.” Rose rolled her eyes and adjusted the shoulder strap of her sports bra. “I doubt there’s some soulmate out there waiting for me with puppy dog eyes every time he looks at his timer. My luck he’s some creep that mansplains things or hates animals or he can’t tell me where he was on January 6. No thanks.”
“So you don’t worry that there’s someone like me, watching and waiting for his Timer to start and you’re just out living your life, not even thinking about how sad he feels?” Rey knew she was taking this too personally, but she couldn’t help empathizing with Rose’s mystery man.
Rose leaned down to whisper in Rey’s ear. “What if I get a Timer and suddenly yours begins and it turns out we’re our soulmates?” Rose always joked to get out of uncomfortable situations.
Now it was Rey’s turn to roll her eyes. “Hello? They don’t work like that, butthead,” she said as she playfully knocked on the top of Rose’s head. “It’s romance, not friendship. You’re like a sister to me!”
Rose laughed and began to head to the door. “You never know! Remember Finn and Poe?” She stood in front of the mirror in their entranceway and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “I’m gonna go to Supremacy Park for a run. If you want I’ll drop you off at that meeting on my way to work when I come back.”
Rey knew Rose was offering an olive branch, so she took it. Nodding, she said, “Alright. See you in about an hour. Don’t be late, please. The meeting starts at nine and coming in late as a first-timer seems so embarrassing!”
Rose waved at Rey in agreement and left the house they shared.
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Rey looked at the different faces of the Timerless Partners meeting. There were so many people there and the group was so diverse-both young and old, with different ethnicities and personalities. A tall man with copper-colored hair spoke to the group and told them about his brother, who also refused to get a Timer. “It’s just so irritating! He knows what it would mean to me if my Timer started working, yet he is refusing to get one! He’s just doing it to irritate his parents.” The man shook his head in an irritated manner and took a deep sip of whatever was in his travel mug.
Rey noticed he said “his parents” and not “our parents.” Weird. Still, she felt the need to speak up. “My roommate is the same way! She doesn’t care who she’s hurting. It’s hard not to take it personally. We were just arguing about it.”
A middle-aged woman in the back with lavender hair stood up and raised her hand. “Listen, we’re all in the same boat. I’m not even going to meet my soulmate until I’m,” and she glanced down at her wrist where the Timer had been implanted, “seventy-five. How much time am I going to have left with this person? What if I die the next day? I almost wish I’d never gotten this damn thing.”
Rey turned shocked eyes to the red-haired man she had been speaking to. “I thought this meeting was just for people whose Timers hadn’t started?”
“They let people who aren’t meeting their soulmates for twenty or so more years into the group a few months back.” He nodded to the lavender-haired woman who was now arguing with the people around her about her Timer situation. “Amilyn’s a lawyer that argued that that type of situation was very similar to someone whose Timer had never started. She threatened to sue for discrimination or something, so we had to let her in.” He took another sip from his travel mug and shook his head. “I wish I’d never spoken to her about the meetings in the first place. I never thought she’d want to join.”
“You know her?”
The man sighed. “She’s my boss at the law firm. We were having a debate about whose Timer situation was worse and I mentioned this group as something I was using to help me deal with my feelings and she just jumped right into the meetings. I couldn’t stop her.” The argument between Amilyn and the other Timerless people was starting to get heated, so the man winked at Rey and whispered, “Listen to this, this will make everyone in this room happy.” He cleared his throat and loudly said, “Oh wow. I just got a news alert on my phone that due to the pandemic, a lot of people’s Timers have had their soulmate meeting dates pushed back.”
Amilyn gave an anguished sound and sat back down to examine her Timer. People began pulling out their phones to find the story. Rey turned to the man and asked, “Is that true?”
“Maybe? It seems logical with how people weren’t able to go out and do their normal routines. How are you going to meet that person if you miss your regular bird watching in the park?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I thought that would give them a thrill for a day or so.”
Rey noticed that it was about ten o’clock and the group began to file out of the room, all still staring at their phones and searching for some proof of what the man had said. “You are absolutely awful! I can’t believe you,” she said, scandalized.
The man ignored her shocked face and held out a hand to Rey. “I’m Armitage Hux. Never, ever call me Armitage, I prefer Hux. And you are?”
“Rey,” she took his hand and gingerly shook it as if she was afraid his lies would rub off on her. “Listen, I have to be going or I’m going to miss the bus.”
“I’ll give you a ride and tell you about the ins and outs of our group. You’ll see, I’m not so bad.” Hux smiled winningly at her and Rey soon found herself sitting in Hux’s car while he gave detailed descriptions of group regulars.