What If We Had Limited Amount of Breaths

You’re running along the street. People shout in panic and try to move out of your way. But they do it rather slowly — as if in slo-mo.

Magnetic levitation cars stop abruptly — some of them just moments away from crashing into each other. Drivers and passengers are gaping at you, their eyes and mouths wide open.

You pay them no attention — and run, run, run. Rewind 3 months ago.

Your granny wants to see you, so you carefully get into the latest model of the hovering car designed by Tech VIP. You place your hand on the panel, and the computer instantly connects to your brain. In the next second, the car has already figured out the fastest route to your granny’s house. You don’t even notice the vehicle take off and speed up to 200 mph in half a second. You’re scrolling through the news on your contact lenses.

If you looked out of the polarized window of your car, you’d see people standing on moving sidewalks. They stay as still as possible. From time to time, some of them glance at their wrists. There, half-hidden by long sleeves, a small round object always stays in place. Three minutes later, the car is parking itself near a small 5-story building.

Among 200-story skyscrapers, it looks tiny. You greet your granny. It turns out her levitating seat has run out of its operational time. And the maintenance service will only come tomorrow. But she needs something from the attic right away! Duh.

You take the elevator to the fifth floor. If the levitating seat worked, you’d just sit on it and move to the attic. But in this situation, you’ll have to... climb the stairs!!! Very carefully, with seven breaks, you make it to the attic. You glance at your wrist. Your breath counter shows you’ve made twice more breaths than usual!

And here’s the thing: in 3150, every person on Earth has a limited number of breaths. That’s why everyone tries to move as slowly as possible. All over the planet, there are billions of elevators, levitating devices, moving sidewalks, and hovering cars. People hardly ever walk — and, of course, they never run! ’Cause it can make you pant and waste precious breaths! But despite such an unhurried lifestyle, no one has excess weight thanks to special food.

You shake your head and start looking for the smart glasses your granny has lost. Suddenly, you trip over an ancient carpet and start falling... falling... OUCH! You hit a cupboard, half-hidden in the corner. Its door breaks off, and you land right inside the flimsy construction. Duh. You look at your breath counter. Thought so — just great.

Good thing you aren’t hurt. But what is this thing poking you in the back? It turns out to be a device people used more than a thousand years ago — you’ve seen something like this in a museum! It existed when people couldn’t download information directly to their brain. If you remember correctly, it’s called the “e-book.”

You turn it over and see a button. When you press it, the gadget’s screen lights up! How can it still be working?! You hear your granny calling for you. You put the “book” into the adjustable pocket on your silver jumpsuit and continue to look for the glasses. Only much later, at night, you manage to examine the book and its content.

You don’t go to bed that night. Because you find out an earth-shattering thing. Apparently, in the past, the number of breaths people took... was unlimited!!! This revelation makes you think. It sounds like something you’ve been dreaming about for ages! Your energetic personality has always encouraged you to break the rules. So... Why not experiment?!

Right now, you see “150 million” on your breath counter. The average person from 3150 takes about 10,000 breaths a day. But if you take up all the activities you want to try, you’ll breathe much, much faster. You wonder how long you’ll be able to enjoy life before you run out of breaths. You decide to start with something simple — like cycling you’ve just read about. It sounds as if all you need to do is sit on a special device that carries you to your destination!

You visit your friend Lavanda. She’s the most eccentric person in the entire city. The girl is crazy about the past and buys all the ancient things she can find. Lavanda doesn’t ask questions. She takes you to her giant garage and shows you a two-wheeled construction. It looks extremely unstable. You try riding it and fall down. Another attempt — ouch, your elbow isn’t happy.

Together, you figure out how to control the bicycle. That’s a good thing you’ve decided not to worry about your breathing because right now, you’re panting. Your body is hot and covered with a strange salty liquid. You’re ready to freak out — have you broken yourself?! — but Lavanda tells you it’s a normal reaction of your body to physical activity. Your friend allows you to borrow the bike. During the next week, you ride it for at least 3 hours a day.

THE ACCIDENT happens in the morning. You’re riding in the park. It’s still very early because people usually react strangely to you and your bicycle. Anyway, it goes like that: one, you’re riding along the lake’s shore. Two, you’re flailing your arms and legs in the water, your bike sinking to the bottom. Never in your life have you been in a body of water larger than your bath. You take panicked breaths, trying to make your body move toward the shore. Phew! Your foot touches the bottom.

Lavanda forgives you for losing her bike and tells you one secret. That evening, you enter the global communication net. You look for something called “YouTube archive.” Once you enter the passcode Lavanda gave you, your head starts spinning. So much information! You watch several videos on how to learn to swim.

The very next day, you start practicing. A month later, you can already say you’ve become a pretty good swimmer. Once, you pass by a mirror and suddenly stop. You look at yourself and see how much you’ve changed. Muscled arms and legs, wide shoulders, suntanned skin, confident face. Oho! You like these changes! Your breath counter shows an alarmingly decreasing number of breaths. But you don’t care anymore.

You decide to take it up a notch and start jogging, then running. The faster you run, the faster you breathe. But the feeling of freedom is worth it! If people in your world did move fast, they’d probably scatter away every time they saw you running along the street, sweaty, your implanted earphones buzzing with 1,000-year-old rock.

One day, you see a YouTube video where a woman climbs a mountain. The view is so beautiful, and the activity itself looks so exciting that you decide to try it. First, it’s small hills. And wow, isn’t it tough? After you climb your first hill, your breath counter seems to go nuts. It’s vibrating and counting down your breaths at an alarming speed. But now, you’ve got a dream. You want to climb the tallest mountain in the world — Mount Everest! Preparation takes several years. You need to be extremely fit and very careful.

After all, you’re going to climb the colossal mountain on your own! By the time you feel ready for the adventure, you look like a bodybuilder. (You’ve seen their pics on the ancient, archived Internet.) It takes you more than two months to almost get to the top of Everest. It’s incredibly hard: to climb, to see the path against the blinding sun... and, of course, to breathe. The higher the altitude is, the fewer oxygen molecules the air contains. That’s why you have to breathe much faster than at sea level.

Several hundred feet are left till the top when you accidentally glance at your breath counter. Ha! Just look at that — it shows your last breaths! Well, what a way to go. Three... two... You close your eyes and take your last breath. Hmm. Nothing changes. You cautiously open your eyes again and take another breath. And then, you start laughing at the absurdity of the situation. After calming down a bit, you shrug and continue your way. The breath counter on your hand shows zero. In half an hour, you’re at the top of the world — and alive!

You’re still laughing when you notice a black hovership covering the sky over your head. In no time, several people dressed in dark protection suits jump out of it and grab you. The hovership starts flying away at breakneck speed.

You only hear some fragments of the conversation, “...made it so far!” “...have been watching him for 5 years!” “They’ll deal with him, no worries.” The ship lands. You’re allowed to get out of it.

In the next moment, it disappears behind the clouds. You look around and see that you’re surrounded by people. “Oh, look, another one!” a young guy with pink hair says cheerfully. All of them raise their right hands. Their breath counters all show zero...