text: Everyone had a number. Always counting down. My parents had their number, my friends and family, even the president had her own number. Everyone could see everyone’s number except for one person; themselves. The number had five parts to it. Years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. This number was how long you have left to live. About a century ago the world had an overpopulation problem. This was the solution. From the day the law was passed, all children born from then on had to have an implant that limited how long they could live. At first it was a set number but the populus didn’t like that. Now it was a random number from 25-150 years. Only the very rich could live past that. You had to pay one million credits for an extra year. The biggest taboo in society was asking what your number was or telling someone else what it was. There’s a saying that goes: ignorance is bliss. What if you can’t ignore the obvious? “So, what do you want to do for your 25th birthday sweetie? I was thinking we could go skydiving or scuba diving like you’ve always wanted to.” My mom was an amazing woman. She was the lady I wanted to be. Her number was 23:7:3:45:32. She was only 47 years old. My dad didn’t make it that far. “Mom, my birthday isn’t for another three weeks.” I answered. “Well, I want to plan ahead. This is the biggest year of anyone’s life. It’s the last safe year” she answered back. Nobody liked their 25th birthday because it meant that you could die any second afterwards. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything mom. I’ll think about it while I’m at dinner.” “Surprise!” yelled my two best friends when I walked into the dinner room. Asusena and Sarah were my best friends since high school. “Aw guys, you shouldn’t have” I said to them. “Don’t be stupid Renee. You should’ve known we’d do this before we left for London,” said Sarah “We wanted to spend one last night with you before we left” added Asusena. There was a palpable silence. “Well, let’s enjoy the night then!” encouraged Sarah. We sat down and enjoyed our dinner and talked all night. “We have a surprise for you before we head to the airport tonight” said Asusena as she pulled a small box out from under her chair. “Happy birthday best friend!” exclaimed Sarah as Asusena slid it across the table towards me. “Guys you shouldn’t have” I said as I took it in my hands. They both gave me the same look that said “really?” I opened the box as they smiled knowing what it was. It was a small rectangular piece of paper. A check. The amount was on the other side. I saw the amount, dropped the check, and cried. “Why?” I asked sobbing. “Because you are our best friend and we hope this bit of money helps you live forever.” Answered Sarah with a hug. Asusena joined the hug and we sat there crying and laughing then crying again until my two best friends finally had to leave for the airport. When they left I cried more knowing I’d never see them again. They both had a little over a month left. $750,000. That’s a lot of money to give. That’s all that’s been on my mind the past three weeks. I couldn’t buy my extra year until I turned 25 in 6 hours. I would still have to find another $100,000 because apparently my dad had left me $150,000 in his will that wasn’t effective until 3 days before my birthday. My mom and I was waiting in line at a sky diving company while my mom chewed an employee out for being slow to get us our equipment. She finally returned with a victorious smile that read “guess who just got a discount”. She told me that once she talked common sense into him we got a 25% discount. We got our gear on and after the hour-long crash course, no pun intended, we waited for the plane. The plane crawled out of its hanger and my mother and I along with 10 other people climbed in. Everyone besides the employees had an average of a week left of time with the lowest being 12 hours. The plane struggled up into the air and we climbed higher into the sky for about five or ten minutes. The light turned green and out we went. The wind was deafening but so amazing. My heart was pumping so fast and it was hard to breathe because of the force of the wind. All that kept going through my mind was that I was turning 25 in a couple of hours. The man on my backwoods had the parachutes was whooping and telling me this is his favorite part. About 30 seconds later he signaled me he was going to pull the parachute open. I waited for it to open but it never did. He yelled at me that the primary chute wasn’t opening and that he had to use the reserve one. He pulled the cord for the reserve and it opened. There was a sudden jolt of us slowing down. Then a sickening rip as the the parachute tore in half. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” was all that ran through my mind, like a song on repeat, as the ground got closer and closer. “100 more years” my partner yelled in my ear. He was telling me how much time I had left. Too bad I’ll never get to live it through.