I flip out the pewter pocket watch from my jean pocket. Click the spring cover open. It’s too dark to see the exact time, too loud in the night club to actually hear the tick, but checking the timepiece is a compulsion. It reminds me of why I’m here—that time is limited.

The tension in my shoulders eased, I tuck the watch into my pocket. Then I sip the club soda on the tiny industrial table before me. The club erupts with a pulse of flashing lights and a foghorn, sending a splintering shard through my skull. The clustered bodies on the dance floor gyrate even closer, hands lifted in the air, as if praising the god of debauchery.

The scene is ironic. In ancient Egypt, dance was used to tell the story of the gods—how the mother of creation established order through her song and dance. The ancients often danced in near-nude attire. They didn’t view nudity the way we do now; lust wasn’t a mortal sin.

As I look around at all the bare mid-drifts and revealing skin meant to lure in, a caustic thought comes to mind, how two thousand years of religious pruning has influenced civilization. Where once the body was worshiped and not viewed as a lecherous sexual device, being told no, do not look, touch, want has made the human anatomy the most sinful desire in the modern world.

Everybody wants a taste of the forbidden.

Unless you have a higher purpose—one that makes you immune to temptation.

As such, this isn’t my typical type of hangout. I don’t “hang out.” Maybe I should’ve brought someone with me, looked less suspicious, less like a creep. But again, time.

I don’t have enough of it to waste.

At thirty-seven, I’ve been alive for 13,608 days. I’m in good health, so if I die of natural causes, that leaves me approximately 15,592 days left…if my mind holds out to age eighty.

My father died of a heart attack at age sixty-four. The men on my mother’s side have battled testicular cancer. I get regular check-ups, and my blood pressure is decent. Foregoing any unanticipated diseases or accidents, I could gain an extra few years out of my life expectancy.

A minimum of thirty-five years left to develop a cure.

To the average person, thirty-some-odd years may seem like plenty—but when speaking scientific breakthrough, a lifetime is hardly enough.

As I mentally break down the math, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look at the woman in a black slinky dress to my right.

“You look deep in thought,” she says. Her eyes are heavily rimmed in black kohl, her smiling lips red and plump. The dress is tight and leaves nothing to the imagination.