Today Is Optional

How it begins

Rina Moss skipped the day of her father's funeral and found it waiting beneath the pavement six years later.

The calendar fault had been ordinary: a junction clock repeating Tuesday while every household display insisted it was Friday. She opened the service hatch expecting a damaged relay. Instead she heard rain, a hymn and the small metallic sound of someone setting down an umbrella.

Her father's umbrella. She knew the loose ferrule by its rattle.

The maintenance ladder descended farther than the plans allowed. At the bottom lay a street she recognized, wet beneath an afternoon sky. People stood outside the chapel. A younger version of herself was absent from every place she ought to have been.

A man sat on the curb eating a pear.

'You're early,' he said.

'For what?'

'The collapse. Usually the city sends someone after the first roof goes.'

He introduced himself as Joel Pell, resident of an unwanted Tuesday. His coat was patched with calendar squares. Behind him, the street continued into other days: a hospital corridor, a canceled wedding, a kitchen where somebody had received bad news and chosen not to stay.

Rina reached for her work terminal. NO REGISTERED DATE. The city logo remained cheerful.

'These days were removed,' she said.

'From you.' Joel took another bite. 'Not from themselves.'

Above the chapel, a crack opened in the gray sky. Friday's blue light shone through. Rina saw the underside of a bus passing over their heads.

The hymn faltered. One of the waiting mourners looked toward her. She recognized her aunt, still holding the flowers Rina had never asked about afterward.

'Can they see me?'

'If you stay.'

Rina had made a career of repairing dates without entering them. She checked the ladder, the chapel door, the widening crack. On her terminal, an official notice appeared.

PLEASE COMPLETE THIS REPAIR WITHOUT PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT.

She turned the sound off.