Early Retirement - Part One

Standing in the queue of the Swap Clinic waiting room I shuffle awkwardly, my hands wringing themselves before darting in and out of my pockets in search of something to distract me before repeating the process over and over again. The waiting room, while quiet, is certainly not empty. Nearly a dozen other patrons sit around the room, spaced out seemingly for privacy as they slowly tap away at a small tablet in Swap Clinic branded hard cases.

"Just like a catalogue" I think to myself, my eyes darting to a pimply and rather heavy-set young woman as she holds up the screen for an older woman to review.

"Is that okay?" she asks, her rounded cheeks growing red beneath a sweaty mane of black hair. "Please mom, it could be a birthday and graduation present."

The older woman purses her red painted lips, her dainty fingers clutching the tablet in one hand before she adjusts her glasses slightly with the other in an effort to combat the glare of the screen. She lazily swipes up and down a bit, her green eyes narrowing as the text before finally speaking up.

"I suppose we..." she begins to muse, scrolling up and down more slowly in search of something on the screen. However, before she can even finish her thought the young woman blurts out in a fit of squealing.

"Thank you thank you thank yoooou" she cries, her doughy arms wrapping around her mother's rather thin frame. "You're the..." she begins to coo, her excited voice being cut short by a sharp tut from her mother.

"... if..." her mother states, pausing for a moment as she reads the screen again. "We get rid of that obsession you have with those... oh what are they called... Ani..." she begins to muse, her train of thought derailing as she tries to even remember the name of her daughter's interest.

"Mom!..." the young woman whines, pulling away from the hug as her jaw drops. "I've spent so much on my anime figur..." the young woman groans, her eyes wide as she stares at her mother.

"Correction..." she mother states as she interrupts her daughter with a harsh click of her tongue. "Your father and I have spent 'so much', and I'm sure we can sell them to help pay for these changes you want." The older woman scrolls through, her nails tapping against the screen with a series of loud clicks against the glass as she quickly makes a few more selections.

"We should also add in something to help maintain this investment in your health..." the mother mutters, pausing before she moves to hand the tablet back. "We can replace that ani-whatever with an interest in running and dance" she explains, her daughter's face growing sickly pale as she looks down at changes her mother was proposing.

As if catching her daughter's hesitance she leans over swiping a little further down for the young woman. "And... I suppose we can pay for an increased metabolism as well, just to make it easier to keep you trim and..."

 

'NEXT!" shouts a voice from behind the counter, my attention quickly turning as I find myself staring in shock at the short middle-aged Thai woman behind the reception desk. Blinking rapidly I find myself looking around as if on instinct for the man that had been in-front of me, the previous customer having disappeared elsewhere while I had been caught up in my eavesdropping.

"Sorry, I..." I begin to mutter as I step towards the counter, my gaze shifting down as I meet the gaze of the short woman on the other side. She types a little at her keyboard before looking up at me from her rather old swiveling office chair.

"Do you have an appointment, or are you here to view the..." she begins to ask, her gaze shifting between the screen and me expectantly.

"Oh, no... I don't have an..." I begin to answer, only to be cut off as the woman kicks off against the desk and rolls down to the far right end. She quickly snatches a tablet from a small wooden rack before pushing herself again back towards me with a slight grunt.

"You can browse current available traits on this" she explains, holding out the tablet for me to take. "You can make an account or login if you have one with the Swap Clinic for the purpose of creating your cart. Additionally..." she states, pausing for a moment as I take the tablet.

My gaze locks to the screen, a small little login screen asking for an email and password. My heart races a little, my palms sweating as I feel my nerves build.

Suddenly I'm brought back to the room as the woman snaps her fingers at me, the receptionist sucking in her lips in frustration at my constant distractions.

"Additionally... you can put your own traits up for sale or for credit in any purchase you make. It's a self assessment, but we'll verify what you intend to sell and make any adjustments to the price as necessary. For bulk sales we will pay upfront and sell the traits ourselves, but for individual traits you may need to wait for a buyer to be found before..."

"Got it..." I chirp anxiously, my whole body shrinking back as I hold up the tablet. "Just... looking at browsing a bit... we'll see..." I state, looking around the room before spotting an empty seat in the corner for me to curl up into.

"Okay sir, have a nice browse" the woman coos, her practiced customer service voice faltering as I begin to walk away and hear her mutter.

"Fucking time-wasters..."

 

Shuffling over to my seat I drop down into the aging plastic chair, the sun-bleached seat creaking beneath me as my larger frame sinks back into the thankfully private corner. As I punch in my login details my mind begins to wander, my eyes glazing over as I thought about how I'd even ended up here.

My grandmother had lived a long and healthy life before her passing, the woman nearly reaching her hundredth birthday before the unfortunate accident that ended her life. It had been at the funeral, as family and friends reminisced about her life that this idea had begun to form.

"I mean her cousins lived well into their nineties too, I guess we're just built to be long-lived"

"Can you believe she got to retire in her fifties? She was nearly retired for half her life! Doubt I'll be that lucky"

"She really got to live how she wanted in that time though. I mean she slowed down a bit later on, but she got to really make the most of those nearly fifty years."

"Owning her own home helped, way easier to keep expenses down when you own a house... but in this economy..."

As we had laughed and chatted at the wake I couldn't help but feel the reality of my own future crash down on me. Having been made redundant from my teaching job so long ago and without a single bite on my attempts to find more work in the field my own retirement was beginning to look grim. Each day, each week, each month slowly whittled away at my savings and froze any growth of my own retirement.

At this rate I wouldn't be retiring until my seventies if I was lucky, presuming I even retired at all. Even my personalized ads seemed to understand, each an every advert being served to me being some sort of job service or get rich quick scheme. It wasn't until I got an had for the Swap Clinic, stating that they were willing to pay for 'traits of all shapes' that the plan crystalized.

"Maybe I can retire..." I had thought to myself, the gears grinding in my head as I brushed my teeth that night. "Maybe I could jump start my savings again... put some money in my retirement fund... maybe even quit early and just... retire now..."

The idea of retiring now refused to leave my mind the next day, and the next day, and the next. It was basically the same as being unemployed, but without the stress and struggle of finding a job. Before long it was a fixation, my thoughts returning to the question of just how much I'd need to sell to be able to retire multiple times per day.

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't see the prices the Swap Clinic was offering without going into one of their branches. There was no way to tell just how much I would need to add to...