Because the Master of Death is a fun idea to play with.

In Time (Never)

Fairy tales, superstitions, myths.

They are an inescapable part of life, always held and believed in by someone, somewhere, all throughout humanity.

The elite, those who have immortality, hold their beliefs and superstitions in secret. Some believe that there is a figure beyond death, who will punish them for defying their mortality should they ever slip into his grasp. Others believe that they are blessed by the same figure, deserving of their monopoly on time by something close to divine right. They do not speak of their beliefs for it is considered childish - almost foolish - but they still hold them.

The man who serves as a bodyguard for these elite is paid richly and yet lives meanly. For his time, paid to him, is never owned by him. It is owned by his job, his duties, until he exists only on the fringes of time, losing his sense of self. When he was a child, he believed that being a bodyguard was a cushy job for easy time. Now he just believes that his best future lies in throwing himself in front of a bullet - to survive protecting his employer long enough to retire on benefits - where he will continue to live meanly but at least his time would be his own. He believes that there is someone to whom all time is owed and the more you take in this life, the more is taken from you in the next.

The woman who works a middle-class job in a middle-class time zone used to believe that fairies brought good little boys and girls extra time in exchange for their teeth. At least, until she realised the extra minutes appearing on her savings chip were coming from her stupidly sacrificial parents - both of whom died just before her clock started. Now she believes - devoutly, desperately - in life after death and denies her children all but basic bread, water and nutrient pills so that she might pour her limited time into pious undertakings.

The twenty-five (plus 43) year old prostitute walking the streets of the poorest time zone believes that she just might live forever. Her looks will never fade, her experience only increases and sensual pleasure is a demand that can never be sated. Never mind that richer time zones have simu-lovers for legal and private service. Never mind that she can only ply her craft in Daytona, where the cost of living always seems to be one step ahead of her prices. She believes in herself, in her choices, in her dreams.

When she was a little girl, when her father used to stare more longingly at her arm than her hips, she believed in something else, though. Something other. The tooth fairies never gifted her time in the night, so she didn't believe in them... no, she believed in a myth known by all but almost never spoken of.

She believed... That there existed in the world a being outside of time. A man with no numbers on his arm, no clock always counting down. A boy who was something like a genie, or fairy, or god. A creature who, if you caught it/begged it/served it... could free you too. Could remove the numbers. Stop them. Stop Death.

All children know this myth and almost all of them - no matter their time zone of origin - had spent some of their precious youth in search of him.

If any ever found him, no rumours spoke of it. And as they aged, children traded in this belief for more adult ones.

In Time (Never)

Just because they never found him, didn't mean he didn't exist.

In fact? He very much did. Weary of humanity, waiting for the status quo to change once more, unable to buy food with the time he didn't have and yet never dying of hunger or thirst, The Master of Death cut a pitiable figure. Nothing about him suggested power, only weakness. Too short and skinny to be an adult, he was ignored by time thieves as untouchable. Any who touched him with harm in mind simply fell dead where they stood, their clocks frozen. He never bothered to pretend to die any more but just swatted the more persistent irritants the way a human would swat a fly, and with even less guilt.

If a child had ever found him, realised what he was, pushed back his shirt and jacket sleeves to see no numbers glowing from his arm... There'd be no wishes given. No time granted. Even if he could command a body to ignore the lethal shock of a run-out clock, he wouldn't. Why should he? Why save even one, when millions more were dying in the same wheel?

All it would do, would be to draw attention to him.

Excited, exultant, free of their chains, partially immortal, capable of taking on vast loans they could never be forced to repay... Such people would rise to notice quickly, and point to a benevolent force outside the system almost as fast.

And The Master of Death would be hunted and inevitably captured. He could kill indiscriminately but still be put temporarily down by a bullet he couldn't see coming. They could study him without fear of him perishing. He could be drugged into submission, kept locked away in a prison or zoo or display case. A true-born immortal, envied, hated and held prisoner by the manufactured-immortals.

And that was not how he intended to spend his miserable forever.

So he didn't eat, or drink. He spent his days hunched in deference to his clenching, snarling stomach. He haunted a city for twenty five years - give or take - then moved on to the next one. Sometimes he stole, if it were easy and the other had much more than they needed, and sometimes he even kept his theft for himself. Quiet little luxuries like a good thick blanket or pillow, to sleep away this grim period of human history. Most thefts, though, he passed on - especially the minutes. What use did he have for them, after all?

And perhaps the belief in him was his own fault, fed by these little gifts that trickled into the world like the barest of rain in a drought. The roots of his story were deep in human history, when this change had first been made and he had tried, tried so hard to help people escape it, before the flood of technology had overwhelmed and consumed the dwindling hold-outs, until those without genetic modification had been bred out of the population and only stories - of them, of him, of his efforts - remained.

And so, he simply trudged on. The Master of Death, A myth which had outgrown itself. Not genie nor fairy nor God - just another beaten-down human, making his way through life one minute at a time.

In Time (Never)