Today’s topic will be the currency of Necropolis, which is time itself. “…you earn time by working, you pay for food with time, you rent a flat with time; you loan time from a bank, and if you’re late with payments, poof” (meaning: you cease to exist).
I don’t remember exactly where the idea came from (before you ask, no, it wasn’t from the 2011 blockbuster action film In Time starring Justin Timberlake, which used the same concept as an excuse to push the shooty shooty plot forward, thank you very much). I could’ve dreaded getting a job after finishing my studies, or I might’ve heard the saying “time is money” one too many times. Either way, I thought of putting the idea into practice.
In a capitalistic sense, the saying “time is money” is very true. In theory, the more time we spend working, the more money we could earn. But time is also the currency of life: we have a limited amount of it, and when it runs out, the lights go dark. So how about we cut the middleman—the coin? What if our lifespan was irrevocably linked to our capital, what if it was our capital? Now, that’s a dystopian scenario I could work with.
In our society, if you don’t earn enough for a shelter, you can still live as a homeless; it’s a difficult and often miserable life, but at least it’s something. In Necropolis, everything other than your capital is secondary—if the next loan installment is due and you can’t repay it, you die. There’s no luxury of simply existing from day to day—those who do meet their end rather soon.
In the next part, I’ll cover the logistics of implementing time as currency in a novel.